“My lord,” he cried, waving his hat impudently. “I want to know what you be going to do about me?”
My lord hardly caught his words and did not catch his meaning, but he saw that the man was almost under the horses’ feet and he checked them. Ben stood aside then but, as the carriage passed him, he laid his hand on the splashboard and walked beside it. He looked up at the great man and in the same impudent tone, “Be you agoing to turn me out, my lord?” he cried. “That’s what I want to know.”
“I don’t understand you,” Audley said coldly. He guessed that the man referred to the Election, and what was the use of understrappers like Stubbs if he was to be exposed to this?
“I’m Ben Bosham of the Bridge End, my lord, that’s who I be,” Ben replied brazenly. “I’m not ashamed of my name. I want to know whether you be agoing to turn me out, and my wife and my child! That’s what I want to——”
Then a farmer seized him and dragged him back, and others laid hands on him, though he still shouted. “Dunno be a fool!” cried the farmer, deeply shocked. “Drive on, drive on, my lord! Never heed him. He’ve had a glass too much!”
“Packhorse beer, my lord,” explained a second in stentorian tones—though he knew that Ben was fairly sober. “Ought to be ashamed of himself!” cried a third, and he shook the aggressor. Ben was in a minority of one, and those who held him were inclined to be rough.
Audley waved his whip good-humoredly. “Take care of him!” he said. “Don’t hurt him!” And he drove on, outwardly unmoved though inwardly fuming. Still had it ended there little harm would have been done. But word of the brawl outran the carriage and, as it chanced, reached the door of Hatton’s Works as the men came out to dinner. Ben Bosham had spoken his mind to his lordship! His lordship had driven over him! The farmers had beaten him! The news passed from one to another like flame, and the hands stood, some two score of them, and hooted my lord loudly, shouting “Shame!” and jeering at him.
Now had Audley been the candidate he would have thought nothing of it. He would have laughed in the men’s faces and taken it as part of the day’s work; or had he been the old lord, he would have flung a curse at the men and cut at the nearest with his whip—and forgotten it.
But he was not the old lord, times were changed, and the thing angered him. It was in an ill-temper that he drove on along the road that rose by gentle degrees to the Great Chase.
For the matter of that, he had been in a black mood for some time, because he could not make up his mind. Night and morning ambition whispered to him to put the vessel about; to steer the course which experience told him that it behooved a man to steer who was not steeped in romance, nor too greedy for the moment’s enjoyment; the course which, beyond all doubt, he would have steered were he now starting!