CHAPTER XXXVI.

VOTE FOR TOMMY!

It was indeed high time for me to be stirring, if I meant to be returned for Larkmount; about which I cared supremely little, except as a stepping-stone, towards my true love, and ambition. For, although the influence of the Towers should have been paramount in the borough, as a matter of right and long usage, the times were become so perverted that a brisk opposition was got up; and some Liberal orators had been brought down, who had nothing whatever to do with the place, and cared not a farthing for its interests. My competitor was the owner of a paper-mill, out of which he had made a good lump of money; and he announced his intention to spend it freely, for the national good--as he presumed to say. As yet, I had only paid a single visit to the enlightened electors, and their wives; whereas Mr. Squelch had been working hard for months, with his agents, committees, and "organisation" of every kind, in full activity. But Sir Roland was as confident, as ever he could be, and made light of the enemy's start in advance.

"They don't understand human nature," he said; "all their promises will have got stale, and insipid, and all their bolts of clap-trap will have been shot. In fact they will have bored the poor electors so, that we shall be a welcome novelty. We shall have all the ladies on our side, of course; and in these days of ballot, that is everything. An elector may promise as much as he pleases; but he dare not tell a lie about his vote, to his wife."

Also concerning my infinitely higher, and a thousandfold dearer ambition, it was high time for me to be doing my best; and I grew hot and cold, when I thought of it. Hot, when I heard from Sir Roland--who took the pleasure of a cannibal in telling me, while I could only reply, "Oh yes," "To be sure," "Very nice," and such like inanities, because of the compact between us,--how my Lord This, and Sir Somebody That, had been staying at the Towers, and were most agreeable, and had shot very fairly, and had admired the neighbourhood, (discharging far too well, I feared, that duty towards their neighbour) and had promised most readily to come again, for the hunting, and the woodcocks, in November.

And cold I became, (quite as cold as a boy, who wants to have his bed warmed, and a treacle-posset, and his head wrapped up in a blanket) whenever I fell back upon my own poor chances, and knew that I must put them to the trial very soon.

This was quite certain to require all my skill, as well as a great deal of good luck at the moment. And one piece of fortune befriended me; to wit, that none of those owners of the earth were there, at the time of my arrival. Two were to come, in about ten days' time; but I hoped to get on a good bit before that, and talk of them as strangers, by the time they came. For ladies in the country, who have not been spoiled in London, like the faces they are accustomed to.

But in spite of all that, my hopes were low; not only because of my commercial birth, and want of high style, and of dashing disdain, and a dozen other lofty attributes; but also because of my natural deficiency in crass weight, and stolid material.

Somebody might say to the most perfect of all created beings, somebody perhaps, with a foot like a duck, and a back like the bole of a Churchyard yew,--"Well, if I did have a husband at all, I should like one to make a mark, when the ground is wet; I should like one, who could come round a corner safely, without looking for a church-tower, to see what way the wind is. Ah, I see how he manages so well down here--because you've got such a lot of weathercocks! Miss Twentifold, what would you say to yourself, for slighting good solid Englishmen, if your bridegroom made it a honey-moon indeed, by soaring to the moon, and leaving you to weigh the honey?"

Truly, there are people who would say all that; however far beyond their own business it might be. But would they have the chance of saying it? If so, they would be welcome; for the right word would be mine--the word that was worth all the world, and its works.

While I was entering into these thoughts, on the road from the Station to Twentifold Towers, Sir Roland was preparing a little device; in my opinion neither friendly, nor brotherly, nor even seemly. Having returned the day before, he sent a groom with a dog-cart, to bring me and my luggage from the Railway, according to the train agreed upon; and a pleasant drive it would have been, except for the troubles invading my heart. But just as we came to a little gate, opening into the grounds, about half a mile from the house, the man said to me,

"If you please, sir, would you mind taking the short cut here to the front? I have got a little job to do at the blacksmith's; and Sir Roland said, I had better not keep you waiting I shall be home with your traps, about a quarter of an hour after you."

I was rather glad to stretch my legs with a pleasant walk, on such a lovely afternoon; so I took my bit of oak, with which I had gone to encounter Professor Brachipod, and cheerfully entered on the footpath way. But when I had walked about a hundred yards, swinging my stick in defiance of dull care, and indulging in a song (which is a favourite of mine, because I have steered so many crews to triumph with it)--

"The flag that braves a thousand years, The battle, and the breeze!"

Suddenly in a bosky dell, I stood face to face with Sir Roland, and his sister. Laura was amazed; and so was I. And Sir Roland maliciously kept his eyes intent upon his sister's face.

"Why, Tommy, what a nightingale you are!" he said. "We took a little stroll, for the chance of this meeting. Well done, old fellow! I am very glad to see you. I forgot to tell you, Laura, what a treat we might expect. Why, you don't seem at all glad to see friend Tommy!"

"Mr. Upmore knows that I am always glad to see him;" the sweet voice, which always made me tremble, replied; as she put her hand in mine, and faced the sun, with a lovelier blush than he can kindle in the west; "but I did not in the least expect to see him; and in these lonely places, one is taken by surprise."

"I should think so indeed!" I exclaimed, with a glance of great indignation at her brother, who was smiling, as calmly as if he had done nothing; "but Sir Roland thought, doubtless, that it was not worth while, to speak of a visitor so insignificant."

"I am sure it was not that," she answered softly; "but he is now so full of politics, that we must excuse him everything. For an hour, I have had to listen to nothing but a lecture upon the Constitution. Oh, I do think the trees are so much more glorious, than the poor little men who cut them down!"

This was uncommonly clever on her part; for it set her brother off upon his favourite tirade, which he never missed a chance of delivering. And so we walked into the avenue, pretending to listen with the deepest interest; while I only knew that at my side was Laura; and she, to make up for the slight put upon me, gave many kind glances, and one or two delicious smiles.

"To-morrow, remember, no waste of time, to-morrow!" her brother said firmly, as soon as he had got to the bottom of the very deep vials of his wrath, by which time we were at the door almost; "no spooning about trees, or the beauties of nature, or any other beauties,--but good solid work. We shall breakfast early, and have a long day at it. I shall drive you to the "_True-Blue Hotel_" myself, and take with me a fellow, who has a brother at the paper-mills, I have a grand trick against old Squelch, in the bottom of my turbid heart, as some ancient writer calls it."

"You seem to be getting very fond of tricks;" cried his sister, as she ran away, to dress for dinner; "perhaps some will be played upon you, before long."

Such was my state now of mind, heart, and soul--as well as of body, which had long been in training for a great constitutional effort--that the paper-mill-man might have passed through his mill, as waste paper, the promises made him. Sir Roland had eight or nine carriages sent from the Towers, of three generations, including some now in use for cock-lofts; and we took all the children of Larkmount, in batches, for a drive, with their pinnies full of sugar-plums. There was nothing in the Bribery Acts as yet, to make such a proceeding penal; though now, if a candidate takes a fly out of the eye of a child, he is bound to ask firmly--"My dear, is your father an elector? Oh, then, I must put that fly back into your eye; or else my election will be null and void."

But the way these children enjoyed their drives, in a carriage with two horses--for none of them had less--and a big coat of arms, and a hand sticking up; and the way they drummed their feet, and holloaed--"Vote for Tommy! Down with Squelch!

"Down with the paper-man, brown and old! Up with young Tommy, all curls and gold!"

--it was indeed a day to make one proud of the British Constitution.

"We'll do it again. We'll do it three times; if you are all good true-blue children;" Sir Roland said to the biggest-voiced ones, when the horses had made a good day of it; "blue jackets for the boys, and for the pretty girls blue bonnets, or hats, if they stand to their principles. But no yellow, mind you; touch no dirty yellow. Yellow fever, and jaundice for you, if you do. You shall all have the Gee-gees, to go and vote for Tommy."

"Vote for Tommy! All curls and gold!"

We heard the clear voices from the hill in chorus, for half a mile, or more, of our homeward road.

Elated as I was, by this triumph of pure principles, and display of unselfish innocence, all I kept asking myself was this--"Will a body, worth the Constituency piled on the top of the Constitution, and the Kingdom on the top of the Continent, ever be persuaded to 'vote for Tommy?' I must know my fate. I can't go on, like this. To-night I shall have to carry on again, as if all I cared about was piano and back-gammon; and tobacco and billiards, afterwards. Roly is full of resources; but I seem somehow to have lost the very simplest move of tactics! Where are all my wits gone? I am only fit to be in the Government."

But if my wits stood me in no stead, Luck (which is a very far higher power, coming immediate from Heaven), she--for beyond any doubt she is female, like the Angels--down she came, and stood at my right hand, and ordered me to listen, while she did my work for me.

"Roly," Lady Twentifold said, when I had sung my song about the flag, which was now become a plague; "he has done a very hard day's work to-day, and he is not made of iron as you are. To-morrow, he shall have a whole holiday, with me and Laura, at Crowton and Sunny Bay. You have got business at Ipswich, I know, and will not be back till dinner-time. But if Tommy will not find it dull to come with us, and the day is as fine as to-day has been, we will go and see Sunny Bay--such a pretty place!--and look for shells, and sharks' teeth, and carnelians. Unless you would rather go practising, Tommy, with the keeper, before they come shooting again? There are plenty of pheasants, in some places, still."

"No; he had better go with you;" Sir Roland answered for me, as he loved to do. "The fates have been against Tommy's shooting so far. He has only been out with me twice at the rabbits, back in the summer; but I find thee apt; and duller should'st thou be than the fat cigar, Tommy--none shall teach thy young idea how to shoot, but I. Go thou with the mother, and play at periwinkles, and sand-hoppers, and cowries; an thou wilt."