The Alderman, Annibal, Dewell, the clerk, the sexton, and Arthur Vaughan. White totted them up again and again and made them six. The Bowood voters he made five—four stalwarts and Dyas the butcher.
Certainly he might still poll Pillinger. But, on the other hand, Mr. Vaughan might arrive too late. White had written to his address in town, and receiving no answer had sent an express to Bristol on the chance that the young gentleman was still there. Probably he would be in time. But when things are so very close—and when there were alarm and defeat in the air—men grow nervous. White smiled as he chatted with the pompous Rector and the country squires, but he was very anxious. He thought of old Sir Robert at Stapylton, and he sweated at the notion of defeat. Cobbett had reached his mind, but Sir Robert had his heart!
“Boo!” moaned the crowd higher up the street. The sound sank and the harsh voice of a speaker came fitfully over the heads of the people.
“Who’s that?” asked old Squire Rowley, one of the country gentlemen.
“Some spouter from Bristol, sir, I fancy,” the agent replied contemptuously. And with his eye he whipped in a couple of hobbledehoys who seemed inclined to stray towards the enemy.
“I suppose,” the Squire continued, lowering his voice, “you can depend on your men, White?”
“Oh, Lord, yes, sir,” White answered; like a good election agent he took no one into his confidence. “We’ve enough here to do the trick. Besides, young Mr. Vaughan will be here to-morrow, and the landlord of the Blue Duck, who is not well enough to walk to-day, will poll. He’d break his heart, bless you,” White continued, with a brow of brass, “if he could not vote for Sir Robert!”
“But Dyas, I hear, the d——d rogue, will vote against you?”
“Bad,” he said cryptically, “but not as bad as that, sir.”
“Oh! oh!” quoth the other, nodding, “I see.” And then, glancing at the gang before the cloth works, whose taunts of “Flunkies!” and “Sell your birthright, will you?” were constant and vicious, “You’ve no fear there’ll be violence, White?” he asked.
“Lord, no, sir,” White answered; “you know what election rows are, all bark and no bite!”
“Still I hear that at Bath, where I’m told Lord Brecknock stands a poor chance, they are afraid of a riot.”