'I suppose I shall have to be at this business myself some day,' sighed Palmet. 'Any women on the platform? Oh, but political women! And the Tories get the pick of the women. No, I don't think I 'll stay. Yes, I will; I'll go through with it. I like to be learning something. You wouldn't think it of me, Beauchamp, but I envy fellows at work.'
'You might make a speech for me, Palmet.'
'No man better, my dear fellow, if it were proposing a toast to the poor devils and asking them to drink it. But a dry speech, like leading them over the desert without a well to cheer them—no oasis, as we used to call a five-pound note and a holiday—I haven't the heart for that. Is your Miss Denham a Radical?'
Beauchamp asserted that he had not yet met a woman at all inclining in the direction of Radicalism. 'I don't call furies Radicals. There may be women who think as well as feel; I don't know them.'
'Lots of them, Beauchamp. Take my word for it. I do know women. They haven't a shift, nor a trick, I don't know. They're as clear to me as glass. I'll wager your Miss Denham goes to the meetings. Now, doesn't she? Of course she does. And there couldn't be a gallanter way of spending an evening, so I'll try it. Nothing to repent of next morning! That's to be said for politics, Beauchamp, and I confess I'm rather jealous of you. A thoroughly good-looking girl who takes to a fellow for what he's doing in the world, must have ideas of him precious different from the adoration of six feet three and a fine seat in the saddle. I see that. There's Baskelett in the Blues; and if I were he I should detest my cuirass and helmet, for if he's half as successful as he boasts—it's the uniform.'
Two notorious Radicals, Peter Molyneux and Samuel Killick, were called on. The first saw Beauchamp and refused him; the second declined to see him. He was amazed and staggered, but said little.
Among the remainder of the electors of Bevisham, roused that day to a sense of their independence by the summons of the candidates, only one man made himself conspicuous, by premising that he had two important questions to ask, and he trusted Commander Beauchamp to answer them unreservedly. They were: first, What is a FRENCH MARQUEES? arid second: Who was EURYDICEY?
Beauchamp referred him to the Tory camp, whence the placard alluding to those ladies had issued.
'Both of them 's ladies! I guessed it,' said the elector.
'Did you guess that one of them is a mythological lady?'
'I'm not far wrong in guessing t'other's not much better, I reckon. Now, sir, may I ask you, is there any tale concerning your morals?'
'No: you may not ask; you take a liberty.'
'Then I'll take the liberty to postpone talking about my vote. Look here, Mr. Commander; if the upper classes want anything of me and come to me for it, I'll know what sort of an example they're setting; now that's me.'
'You pay attention to a stupid Tory squib?'
'Where there's smoke there's fire, sir.'
Beauchamp glanced at his note-book for the name of this man, who was a ragman and dustman.
'My private character has nothing whatever to do with my politics,' he said, and had barely said it when he remembered having spoken somewhat differently, upon the abstract consideration of the case, to Mr. Tomlinson.
'You're quite welcome to examine my character for yourself, only I don't consent to be catechized. Understand that.'
'You quite understand that, Mr. Tripehallow,' said Oggler, bolder in taking up the strange name than Beauchamp had been.
'I understand that. But you understand, there's never been a word against the morals of Mr. Cougham. Here's the point: Do we mean to be a moral country? Very well, then so let our representatives be, I say. And if I hear nothing against your morals, Mr. Commander, I don't say you shan't have my vote. I mean to deliberate. You young nobs capering over our heads—I nail you down to morals. Politics secondary. Adew, as the dying spirit remarked to weeping friends.'
'Au revoir—would have been kinder,' said Palmet.
Mr. Tripehallow smiled roguishly, to betoken comprehension.
Beauchamp asked Mr. Oggler whether that fellow was to be taken for a humourist or a five-pound-note man.
'It may be both, sir. I know he's called Morality Joseph.'
An all but acknowledged five-pound-note man was the last they visited. He cut short the preliminaries of the interview by saying that he was a four-o'clock man; i.e. the man who waited for the final bids to him upon the closing hour of the election day.
'Not one farthing!' said Beauchamp, having been warned beforehand of the signification of the phrase by his canvassing lieutenant.
'Then you're nowhere,' the honest fellow replied in the mystic tongue of prophecy.
Palmet and Beauchamp went to their fish and meat; smoked a cigarette or two afterward, conjured away the smell of tobacco from their persons as well as they could, and betook themselves to the assembly-room of the Liberal party, where the young lord had an opportunity of beholding Mr. Cougham, and of listening to him for an hour and forty minutes. He heard Mr. Timothy Turbot likewise. And Miss Denham was present. Lord Palmet applauded when she smiled. When she looked attentive he was deeply studious. Her expression of fatigue under the sonorous ring of statistics poured out from Cougham was translated by Palmet into yawns and sighs of a profoundly fraternal sympathy. Her face quickened on the rising of Beauchamp to speak. She kept eye on him all the while, as Palmet, with the skill of an adept in disguising his petty larceny of the optics, did on her. Twice or thrice she looked pained: Beauchamp was hesitating for the word. Once she looked startled and shut her eyes: a hiss had sounded; Beauchamp sprang on it as if enlivened by hostility, and dominated the factious note. Thereat she turned to a gentleman sitting beside her; apparently they agreed that some incident had occurred characteristic of Nevil Beauchamp; for whom, however, it was not a brilliant evening. He was very well able to account for it, and did so, after he had walked a few steps with Miss Denham on her homeward way.
'You heard Cougham, Palmet! He's my senior, and I'm obliged to come second to him, and how am I to have a chance when he has drenched the audience for close upon a couple of hours!'
Palmet mimicked the manner of Cougham.
'They cry for Turbot naturally; they want a relief,' Beauchamp groaned.
Palmet gave an imitation of Timothy Turbot.
He was an admirable mimic, perfectly spontaneous, without stressing any points, and Beauchamp was provoked to laugh his discontentment with the evening out of recollection.
But a grave matter troubled Palmet's head.
'Who was that fellow who walked off with Miss Denham?'
'A married man,' said Beauchamp: 'badly married; more 's the pity; he has a wife in the madhouse. His name is Lydiard.'
'Not her brother! Where's her uncle?'
'She won't let him come to these meetings. It's her idea; well- intended, but wrong, I think. She's afraid that Dr. Shrapnel will alarm the moderate Liberals and damage Radical me.'
Palmet muttered between his teeth, 'What queer things they let their women do!' He felt compelled to say, 'Odd for her to be walking home at night with a fellow like that.'
It chimed too consonantly with a feeling of Beauchamp's, to repress which he replied: 'Your ideas about women are simply barbarous, Palmet. Why shouldn't she? Her uncle places his confidence in the man, and in her. Isn't that better—ten times more likely to call out the sense of honour and loyalty, than the distrust and the scandal going on in your class?'
'Please to say yours too.'
'I've no class. I say that the education for women is to teach them to rely on themselves.'
'Ah! well, I don't object, if I'm the man.'
'Because you and your set are absolutely uncivilized in your views of women.'
'Common