During the day or two immediately subsequent to the election, Mr Tappitt found himself to be rather downhearted. The excitement of the contest was over. He was no longer buoyed up by the consoling and almost triumphant assurances of success for himself against his enemy Rowan, which had been administered to him by those with whom he had been acting on behalf of Mr Hart. He was alone and thoughtful in his counting-house, or else subjected to the pressure of his wife’s arguments in his private dwelling. He had never yet been won over to say that he would agree to any proposition, but he knew that he must now form some decision. Rowan would not even wait till the lawsuit should be decided by legal means. If Mr Tappitt would not consent to one of the three propositions made to him, Rowan would at once commence the building of his new brewery. “He is that sort of man,” said Honyman, “that if he puts a brick down nothing in the world will prevent him from going on.”

“Of course it won’t,” said Mrs Tappitt. “Oh dear, oh dear, T.! if you go on in this way we shall all be ruined; and then people will say that it was my fault, and that I ought to have had you inquired into about your senses.”

Tappitt gnashed his teeth and rushed out of the dining-room back into his brewery. Among all those who were around him there was not one to befriend him. Even Worts had turned against him, and had received notice to go with a stern satisfaction which Tappitt had perfectly understood.

Tappitt was in this frame of mind, and was seated on his office stool, with his hat over his eyes, when he was informed by one of the boys about the place that a deputation from the town had come to wait upon him — so he pulled off his hat, and begged that the deputation might be shown into the counting-house. The deputation consisted of three tradesmen who were desirous of convening a meeting with the view of discussing the petition against Mr Cornbury’s return to Parliament, and they begged that Mr Tappitt would take the chair. The meeting was to be held at the Dragon, and it was proposed that after the meeting there should be a little dinner. Mr Tappitt would perhaps consent to take the chair at the dinner also. Mr Tappitt did consent to both propositions, and when the deputation withdrew, he felt himself to be himself once more. His courage had returned to him, and he would at once rebuke his wife for the impropriety of the words she had addressed to him. He would rebuke his wife, and would then proceed to meet Mr Sharpit the attorney, at the Dragon, and to take the chair at the meeting. It could not be that a young adventurer such as Rowan could put down an old-established firm, such as his own, or banish from the scene of his labours a man of such standing in the town as himself! It was all the fault of Honyman — of Honyman, who never was firm on any matter. When the meeting should be over he would say a word or two to Sharpit, and see if he could not put the matter into better training.

With a heavy tread, a tread that was intended to mark his determination, he ascended to the drawing-room, and from thence to the bedroom above in which Mrs Tappitt was then seated. She understood the meaning of the footfall, and knew well that it indicated a purpose of marital authority. A woman must have much less of natural wit than had fallen to Mrs Tappitt’s share, who has not learned from the experience of thirty years the meaning of such marital signs and sounds. So she sat herself firmly in her seat, caught hold of the petticoat which she was mending with a stout grasp, and prepared herself for the battle.

“Margaret,” said he, when he had carefully closed the door behind him, “I have come up to say that I do not intend to dine at home today.”

“Oh, indeed,” said she. “At the Dragon, I suppose then?”

“Yes; at the Dragon. I’ve been asked to take the chair at a popular meeting which is to be held with reference to the late election.”

“Take the chair!”

“Yes, my dear, take the chair at the meeting and at the dinner.”

“Now, T., don’t you make a fool of yourself.”

“No, I won’t; but, Margaret, I must tell you once for all that that is not the way in which I like you to speak to me. Why you should have so much less confidence in my judgement than other people in Baslehurst, I cannot conceive; but —”

“Now, T., look here; as for your taking the chair as you call it, of course you can do it if you like it.”

“Of course I can — and I do like it, and I mean to do it. Put it isn’t only about that I’ve come to speak to you. You said something to me today, before Honyman, that was very improper.”

“What I say always is improper, I know.”

“I don’t suppose you could have intended to insinuate that you thought that I was a lunatic.”

“I didn’t say so.”

“You said something like it.”

“No, I didn’t, T.”

“Yes you did, Margaret.”

“If you’ll allow me for a moment, T., I’ll tell you what I did say, and if you wish it, I’ll say it again.”

“No; I’d rather not hear it said again.”

“But, T., I don’t choose to be misunderstood, nor yet misrepresented.”

“I haven’t misrepresented you.”

“But I say you have misrepresented me. If I ain’t allowed to speak a word, of course it isn’t any use for me to open my mouth. I hope I know what my duty is and I hope I’ve done it — both by you, T., and by the children. I know I’m bound to submit, and I hope I have submitted. Very hard it has been sometimes when I’ve seen things going as they have gone; but I’ve remembered my duty as a wife, and I’ve held my tongue when any other woman in England would have spoken out. But there are some things which a woman can’t stand and shouldn’t; and if I’m to see my girls ruined and left without a roof over their heads, or a bit to eat, or a thing to wear, it shan’t be for want of a word from me.”

“Didn’t they always have plenty to eat?”

“But where is it to come from if you’re going to rush open-mouthed into the lion’s jaws in this way? I’ve done my duty by you, T., and no man nor yet no woman can say anything to the contrary. And if it was myself only I’d see myself on the brink of starvation before I’d say a word; but I can’t see those poor girls brought to beggary without telling you what everybody in Baslehurst is talking about; and I can’t see you, T., behaving in such a way and sit by and hold my tongue.”

“Behave in what way? Haven’t I worked like a horse? Do you mean to tell me that I am to give up my business, and my position, and everything I have in the world, and go away because a young scoundrel comes to Baslehurst and tells me that he wants to have my brewery? I tell you what, Margaret, if you think I’m that sort of man, you don’t know me yet.”

“I don’t know about knowing you, T.”

“No; you don’t know me.”

“If you come to that, I know very well that I have been deceived. I didn’t want to speak of it, but now I must. I have been made to believe for these last twenty years that the brewery was all your own, whereas it now turns out that you’ve only got a share in it, and for aught I can see, by no means the best share. Why wasn’t I told all that before?”

“Woman!” shouted Mr Tappitt.

“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 nobody 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 petition, I suppose he can’t very well help himself.

“Is papa going to preside over the petition?” asked Augusta.

“Yes, my dear.”

“I hope it won’t cost him anything.” said Martha. “People say that those petitions 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 anyone 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 constitution, and the palate that is accustomed to large quantities of red pepper must have quantities 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 passed 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 meantime the meeting went on at the Dragon. I can’t say that Mr Tappitt was on this occasion called upon to preside over the petition. 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 petition 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 clustered 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 passed unanimously. Mr Hart was to be told by the assembled 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 ............