for a background of a portrait in naval uniform, with medal and clasps, and some small smoke of powder clearing off over there:—that’s if we’re to act sagaciously in introducing an unknown candidate to a borough that has a sneaking liking for the kind of person, more honour to it. I’m a political veteran, sir; I speak from experience. We must employ our weapons, every one of them, and all off the grindstone.’
‘Very well,’ said Beauchamp. ‘Now understand; you are not in future to employ the weapons, as you call them, that I have objected to.’
Timothy gaped slightly.
‘Whatever you will, but no puffery,’ Beauchamp added. ‘Can I by any means arrest—purchase—is it possible, tell me, to lay an embargo—stop to-day’s issue of the Gazette?’
‘No more—than the bite of a mad dog,’ Timothy replied, before he had considered upon the monstrous nature of the proposal.
Beauchamp humphed, and tossed his head. The simile of the dog struck him with intense effect.
‘There’d be a second edition,’ said Timothy, ‘and you might buy up that. But there’ll be a third, and you may buy up that; but there’ll be a fourth and a fifth, and so on ad infinitum, with the advertisement of the sale of the foregoing creating a demand like a rageing thirst in a shipwreck, in Bligh’s boat, in the tropics. I’m afraid, Com—Captain Beauchamp, sir, there’s no stopping the Press while the people have an appetite for it—and a Company’s at the back of it.’
‘Pooh, don’t talk to me in that way; all I complain of is the figure you have made of me,’ said Beauchamp, fetching him smartly out of his nonsense; ‘and all I ask of you is not to be at it again. Who would suppose from reading an article like that, that I am a candidate with a single political idea!’
‘An article like that,’ said Timothy, winking, and a little surer of his man now that he suggested his possession of ideas, ‘an article like that is the best cloak you can put on a candidate with too many of ‘em, Captain Beauchamp. I’ll tell you, sir; I came, I heard of your candidature, I had your sketch, the pattern of ye, before me, and I was told that Dr. Shrapnel fathered you politically. There was my brief! I had to persuade our constituents that you, Commander Beauchamp of the Royal Navy, and the great family of the Earls of Romfrey, one of the heroes of the war, and the recipient of a Royal Humane Society’s medal for saving life in Bevisham waters, were something more than the Radical doctor’s political son; and, sir, it was to this end, aim, and object, that I wrote the article I am not ashamed to avow as mine, and I do so, sir, because of the solitary merit it has of serving your political interests as the liberal candidate for Bevisham by counteracting the unpopularity of Dr. Shrapnel’s name, on the one part, and of reviving the credit due to your valour and high bearing on the field of battle in defence of your country, on the other, so that Bevisham may apprehend, in spite of party distinctions, that it has the option, and had better seize upon the honour, of making a M.P. of a hero.’
Beauchamp interposed hastily: ‘Thank you, thank you for the best of intentions. But let me tell you I am prepared to stand or fall with Dr. Shrapnel, and be hanged to all that humbug.’
Timothy rubbed his hands with an abstracted air of washing. ‘Well, commander, well, sir, they say a candidate’s to be humoured in his infancy, for he has to do all the humouring before he’s many weeks old at it; only there’s the fact!—he soon finds out he has to pay for his first fling, like the son of a family sowing his oats to reap his Jews. Credit me, sir, I thought it prudent to counteract a bit of an apothecary’s shop odour in the junior Liberal candidate’s address. I found the town sniffing, they scented Shrapnel in the composition.’
‘Every line of it was mine,’ said Beauchamp.
‘Of course it was, and the address was admirably worded, sir, I make bold to say it to your face; but most indubitably it threatened powerful drugs for weak stomachs, and it blew cold on votes, which are sensitive plants like nothing else in botany.’
‘If they are only to be got by abandoning principles, and by anything but honesty in stating them, they may go,’ said Beauchamp.
‘I repeat, my dear sir, I repeat, the infant candidate delights in his honesty, like the babe in its nakedness, the beautiful virgin in her innocence. So he does; but he discovers it’s time for him to wear clothes in a contested election. And what’s that but to preserve the outlines pretty correctly, whilst he doesn’t shock and horrify the optics? A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized world kin, ye know. That’s the truth. You must appear to be one of them, for them to choose you. After all, there’s no harm in a dyer’s hand; and, sir, a candidate looking at his own, when he has won the Election…’
‘Ah, well,’ said Beauchamp, swinging on his heel, ‘and now I’ll take my leave of you, and I apologize for bringing you down here so early. Please attend to what I have said; it’s peremptory. You will give me great pleasure by dining with me to-night, at the hotel opposite. Will you? I don’t know what kind of wine I shall be able to offer you. Perhaps you know the cellar, and may help me in that.’
Timothy grasped his hand, ‘With pleasure, Commander Beauchamp. They have a bucellas over there that ‘s old, and a tolerable claret, and a Port to be inquired for under the breath, in a mysteriously intimate tone of voice, as one says, “I know of your treasure, and the corner under ground where it lies.” Avoid the champagne: ‘tis the banqueting wine. Ditto the sherry. One can drink them, one can drink them.’
‘At a quarter to eight this evening, then,’ said Nevil.
‘I’ll be there at the stroke of the clock, sure as the date of a bill,’ said Timothy.
And it’s early to guess whether you’ll catch Bevisham or you won’t, he reflected, as he gazed at the young gentleman crossing the road; but female Bevisham’s with you, if that counts for much. Timothy confessed, that without the employment of any weapon save arrogance and a look of candour, the commander had gone some way toward catching the feminine side of himself.
CHAPTER XV. CECILIA HALKETT
Beauchamp walked down to the pier, where he took a boat for H.M.S. Isis, to see Jack Wilmore, whom he had not met since his return from his last cruise, and first he tried the efficacy of a dive in salt water, as a specific for irritation. It gave the edge to a fine appetite that he continued to satisfy while Wilmore talked of those famous dogs to which the navy has ever been going.
‘We want another panic, Beauchamp,’ said Lieutenant Wilmore. ‘No one knows better than you what a naval man has to complain of, so I hope you’ll get your Election, if only that we may reckon on a good look-out for the interests of the service. A regular Board with a permanent Lord High Admiral, and a regular vote of money to keep it up to the mark. Stick to that. Hardist has a vote in Bevisham. I think I can get one or two more. Why aren’t you a Tory? No Whigs nor Liberals look after us half so well as the Tories. It’s enough to break a man’s heart to see the troops of dockyard workmen marching out as soon as ever a Liberal Government marches in. Then it’s one of our infernal panics again, and patch here, patch there; every inch of it make-believe! I’ll prove to you from examples that the humbug of Government causes exactly the same humbugging workmanship. It seems as if it were a game of “rascals all.” Let them sink us! but, by heaven! one can’t help feeling for the country. And I do say it’s the doing of those Liberals. Skilled workmen, mind you, not to be netted again so easily. America reaps the benefit of our folly .... That was a lucky run of yours up the Niger; the admiral was friendly, but you deserved your luck. For God’s sake, don’t forget the state of our service when you’re one of our cherubs up aloft, Beauchamp. This I’ll say, I’ve never heard a man talk about it as you used to in old midshipmite days, whole watches through—don’t you
