Rachel Ray Part 52

"Yes; woman indeed! I suppose I am a woman, and therefore I'm to have no voice in anything. Will you answer me one question, if you please?

Are you going to that man, Sharpit?"

"Yes, I am."

"Then, Mr. Tappitt, I shall consult my brothers." Mrs. Tappitt's brothers were grocers in Plymouth; men whom Mr. Tappitt had never loved. "They mayn't hold their heads quite as high as you do,--or rather as you used to do when people thought that the establishment was all your own; but such as it is n.o.body can turn them out of their shop in the Market-place. If you are going to Sharpit, I shall consult them."

"You may consult the devil, if you like it."

"Oh, oh! very well, Mr. Tappitt. It's clear enough that you're not yourself any longer, and that somebody must take up your affairs and manage them for you. If you'll follow my advice you'll stay at home this evening and take a dose of physic and see Dr. Haustus quietly in the morning."

"I shall do nothing of the kind."

"Very well. Of course I can't make you. As yet you're your own master. If you choose to go to this silly meeting and then to drink gin and water and to smoke bad tobacco till all hours at the Dragon, and you in the dangerous state you are at present, I can't help it. I don't suppose that anything I could do now, that is quite immediately, would enable me to put you under fitting restraint."

"Put me where?" Then Mr. Tappitt looked at his wife with a look that was intended to annihilate her, for the time being,--seeing that no words that he could speak had any such effect,--and he hurried out of the room without staying to wash his hands or brush his hair before he went off to preside at the meeting.

Mrs. Tappitt remained where she was for about half an hour and then descended among her daughters.

"Isn't papa going to dine at home?" said Augusta.

"No, my dear; your papa is going to dine with some friends of Mr.

Hart's, the candidate who was beaten."

"And has he settled anything about the brewery?" Cherry asked.

"No; not as yet. Your papa is very much troubled about it, and I fear he is not very well. I suppose he must go to this electioneering dinner. When gentlemen take up that sort of thing, they must go on with it. And as they wish your father to preside over the pet.i.tion, I suppose he he can't very well help himself."

"Is papa going to preside over the pet.i.tion?" asked Augusta.

"Yes, my dear."

"I hope it won't cost him anything," said Martha. "People say that those pet.i.tions do cost a great deal of money."

"It's a very anxious time for me, girls; of course, you must all of you see that. I'm sure when we had our party I didn't think things were going to be as anxious as this, or I wouldn't have had a penny spent in such a way as that. If your papa could bring himself to give up the brewery, everything would be well."

"I do so wish he would," said Cherry, "and let us all go and live at Torquay. I do so hate this nasty dirty old place."

"I shall never live in a house I like so well," said Martha.

"The house is well enough, my dears, and so is the brewery, but it can't be expected that your father should go on working for ever as he does at present. It's too much for his strength;--a great deal too much. I can see it, though I don't suppose any one else can. No one knows, only me, what your father has gone through in that brewery."

"But why doesn't he take Mr. Rowan's offer?" said Cherry.

"Everybody seems to say now that Rowan is ever so rich," said Augusta.

"I suppose papa doesn't like the feeling of being turned out," said Martha.

"He wouldn't be turned out, my dear; not the least in the world,"

said Mrs. Tappitt. "I don't choose to interfere much myself because, perhaps, I don't understand it; but certainly I should like your papa to retire. I have told him so; but gentlemen sometimes don't like to be told of things."

Mrs. Tappitt could be very severe to her husband, could say to him terrible words if her spirit were put up, as she herself was wont to say. But she understood that it did not become her to speak ill of their father before her girls. Nor would she willingly have been heard by the servants to scold their master. And though she said terrible things she said them with a conviction that they would not have any terrible effect. Tappitt would only take them for what they were worth, and would measure them by the standard which his old experience had taught him to adopt. When a man has been long consuming red pepper, it takes much red pepper to stimulate his palate. Had Mrs. Tappitt merely advised her husband, in proper conjugal phraseology, to relinquish his trade and to retire to Torquay, her advice, she knew, would have had no weight. She was eager on the subject, feeling convinced that this plan of retirement was for the good of the family generally, and therefore she had advocated it with energy. There may be those who think that a wife goes too far in threatening a husband with a commission of lunacy, and frightening him with a prospect of various fatal diseases; but the dose must be adapted to the const.i.tution, and the palate that is accustomed to large quant.i.ties of red pepper must have quant.i.ties larger than usual whenever some special culinary effect is to be achieved. On the present occasion Mrs. Tappitt went on talking to the girls of their father in language that was quite eulogistic. No threat against the absent brewer pa.s.sed her mouth,--or theirs. But they all understood each other, and were agreed that everything was to be done to induce papa to accept Mr. Rowan's offer.

"Then," said Cherry, "he'll marry Rachel Ray, and she'll be mistress of the brewery house."

"Never!" said Mrs. Tappitt, very solemnly. "Never! He'll never be such a fool as that."

"Never!" said Augusta. "Never!"

In the mean time the meeting went on at the Dragon. I can't say that Mr. Tappitt was on this occasion called upon to preside over the pet.i.tion. He was simply invited to take the chair at a meeting of a dozen men at Baslehurst who were brought together by Mr. Sharpit in order that they might be induced by him to recommend Mr. Hart to employ him, Mr. Sharpit, in getting up the pet.i.tion in question; and in order that there might be some sufficient temptation to these twelve men to gather themselves together, the dinner at the Dragon was added to the meeting. Mr. Tappitt took the chair in the big, uncarpeted, fusty room upstairs, in which masonic meetings were held once a month, and in which the farmers of the neighbourhood dined once a week, on market days. He took the chair and some seven or eight of his townsmen cl.u.s.tered round him. The others had sent word that they would manage to come in time for the dinner. Mr. Sharpit, before he put the brewer in his place of authority, prompted him as to what he was to do, and in the course of a quarter of an hour two resolutions, already prepared by Mr. Sharpit, had been pa.s.sed unanimously. Mr. Hart was to be told by the a.s.sembled people of Baslehurst that he would certainly be seated by a scrutiny, and he was to be advised to commence his proceedings at once. These resolutions were duly committed to paper by one of Mr. Sharpit's clerks, and Mr. Tappitt, before he sat down to dinner, signed a letter to Mr. Hart on behalf of the electors of Baslehurst. When the work of the meeting was completed it still wanted half an hour to dinner, during which the nine electors of Baslehurst sauntered about the yard of the inn, looked into the stables, talked to the landlady at the bar, indulged themselves with gin and bitters, and found the time very heavy on their hands. They were nine decent-looking, middle-aged men, dressed in black not of the newest, in swallow-tailed coats and black trousers, with chimney-pot hats, and red faces; and as they pottered about the premises of the Dragon they seemed to be very little at their ease.

"What's up, Jim?" said one of the postboys to the ostler.

"Sharpit's got 'em all here to get some more money out of that ere Jew gent;--that's about the ticket," said the ostler.

"He's a clever un," said the postboy.

At last the dinner was ready; and the total number of the party having now completed itself, the liberal electors of Baslehurst prepared to enjoy themselves. No bargain had been made on the subject, but it was understood by them all that they would not be asked to pay for their dinner. Sharpit would see to that. He would probably know how to put it into his little bill; and if he failed in that the risk was his own.

But while the body of the liberal electors was peeping into the stables and drinking gin and bitters, Mr. Sharpit and Mr. Tappitt were engaged in a private conference.

"If you come to me," said Sharpit, "of course I must take it up. The etiquette of the profession don't allow me to decline."

"But why should you wish to decline?" said Tappitt, not altogether pleased by Mr. Sharpit's manner.

"Oh, by no means; no. It's just the sort of work I like;--not much to be made by it, but there's injury to be redressed and justice to be done. Only you see poor Honyman hasn't got much of a practice left to him, and I don't want to take his bread out of his mouth."

"But I'm not to be ruined because of that!"

"As I said before, if you bring the business to me I must take it up.

I can't help myself, if I would. And if I do take it up I'll see you through it. Everybody who knows me knows that of me."

"I suppose I shall find you at home about ten to-morrow?"

"Yes; I'll be in my office at ten;--only you should think it well over, you know, Mr. Tappitt. I've nothing to say against Mr.

Honyman,--not a word. You'll remember that, if you please, if there should be anything about it afterwards. Ah! you're wanted for the chair, Mr. Tappitt. I'll come and sit alongside of you, if you'll allow me."

The dinner itself was decidedly bad, and the company undoubtedly dull. I am inclined to think that every individual there would have dined more comfortably at home. A horrid mess concocted of old gravy, catsup, and bad wine was distributed under the name of soup. Then there came upon the table half a huge hake,--the very worst fish that swims, a fish with which Devons.h.i.+re is peculiarly invested. Some hard dark brown mysterious b.a.l.l.s were handed round, which on being opened with a knife were found to contain sausage-meat, very greasy and by no means cooked through. Even the _dura ilia_ of the liberal electors of Baslehurst declined to make acquaintance with these dainties.

After that came the dinner, consisting of a piece of roast beef very raw, and a leg of parboiled mutton, absolutely blue in its state of rawness. When the gory mess was seen which displayed itself on the first incision made into these lumps of meat, the vice-president and one or two of his friends spoke out aloud. That hard and greasy sausage-meat might have been all right for anything they knew to the contrary, and the soup they had swallowed without complaint. But they did know what should be the state of a joint of meat when brought to the table, and therefore they spoke out in their anger. Tappitt himself said nothing that was intended to be carried beyond the waiter, seeing that beer from his own brewery was consumed in the tap of the Dragon; but the vice-president was a hardware dealer with whom the Dragon had but small connection of trade, and he sent terrible messages down to the landlady, threatening her with the Blue Boar, the Mitre, and even with that nasty little pothouse the Chequers.

"What is it they expects for their three-and-sixpence?" said the landlady, in her wrath; for it must be understood that Sharpit knew well that he was dealing with one who understood the value of money, and that he did not feel quite sure of pa.s.sing the dinner in Mr.

Hart's bill. Then came a pie with crust an inch thick, which n.o.body could eat, and a cabinet pudding, so called, full of lumps of suet.

I venture to a.s.sert that each liberal elector there would have got a better dinner at home, and would have been served with greater comfort; but a public dinner at an inn is the recognized relaxation of a middle-cla.s.s Englishman in the provinces. Did he not attend such banquets his neighbours would conceive him to be constrained by domestic tyranny. Others go to them, and therefore he goes also.

He is bored frightfully by every speech to which he listens. He is driven to the lowest depths of dismay by every speech which he is called upon to make. He is thoroughly disgusted when he is called on to make no speech. He has no point of sympathy with the neighbours between whom he sits. The wine is bad. The hot water is brought to him cold. His seat is hard and crowded. No attempt is made at the pleasures of conversation. He is continually called upon to stand up that he may pretend to drink a toast in honour of some person or inst.i.tution for which he cares nothing; for the hero of the evening, as to whom he is probably indifferent; for the church, which perhaps he never enters; the army, which he regards as a hotbed of aristocratic insolence; or for the Queen, whom he reveres and loves by reason of his nature as an Englishman, but against whose fulsome praises as repeated to him ad nauseam in the chairman's speech his very soul unconsciously revolts. It is all a bore, trouble, ennui, nastiness, and discomfort. But yet he goes again and again,--because it is the relaxation natural to an Englishman. The Frenchman who sits for three hours tilted on the hind legs of a little chair with his back against the window-sill of the cafe, with first a cup of coffee before him and then a gla.s.s of sugar and water, is perhaps as much to be pitied as regards his immediate misery; but the liquids which he imbibes are not so injurious to him.

Mr. Tappitt with the eleven other liberal electors of Baslehurst went through the ceremony of their dinner in the usual way. They drank the health of the Queen, and of the volunteers of the county because there was present a podgy little grocer who had enrolled himself in the corps and who was thus enabled to make a speech; and then they drank the health of Mr. Hart, whose ultimate return for the borough they pledged themselves to effect. Having done so much for business, and having thus brought to a conclusion the political work of the evening, they adjourned their meeting to a cosy little parlour near the bar, and then they began to be happy. Some few of the number, including the angry vice-president, who sold hardware, took themselves home to their wives. "Mrs. Tongs keeps him sharp enough by the ears," said Sharpit, winking to Tappitt. "Come along, old fellow, and we'll get a drop of something really hot." Tappitt winked back again and shook his head with an affected laugh; but as he did so he thought of Mrs. T. at home, and the terrible words she had spoken to him;--and at the same moment an idea came across him that Mr. Sharpit was a very dangerous companion.

About half a dozen entered the cosy little parlour, and there they remained for a couple of hours. While sitting in that cosy little parlour they really did enjoy themselves. About nine o'clock they had a bit of the raw beef broiled, and in that guise it was pleasant enough; and the water was hot, and the tobacco was grateful and the stiffness of the evening was gone. The men chatted together and made no more speeches, and they talked of matters which bore a true interest to them. Sharpit explained to them how each man might be a.s.sisted in his own business if this rich London tailor could be brought in for the borough. And by degrees they came round to the affairs of the brewery, and Tappitt, as the brandy warmed him, spoke loudly against Rowan.

"By George!" said the podgy grocer, "if anybody would offer me a thousand a year to give up, I'd take it hopping."