University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
MR. BELCHER CARRIES HIS POINT AT THE TOWN-MEETING, AND
THE POOR ARE KNOCKED DOWN TO THOMAS BUFFUM.

The abrupt departure of Miss Butterworth left Mr. Belcher
piqued and surprised. Although he regarded himself as still
“master of the situation”—to use his own pet phrase,—the
visit of that spirited woman had in various ways humiliated
him. To sit in his own library, with an intruding woman
who not only was not afraid of him but despised him, to sit
before her patiently and be called “Bob Belcher,” and a
brute, and not to have the privilege of kicking her out of
doors, was the severest possible trial of his equanimity. She
left him so suddenly that he had not had the opportunity to
insult her, for he had fully intended to do this before she retired.
He had determined, also, as a matter of course, that
in regard to the public poor of Sevenoaks he would give all
his influence toward maintaining the existing state of things.
The idea of being influenced by a woman, particularly by a
woman over whom he had no influence, to change his policy
with regard to anything, public or private, was one against
which all the brute within him rebelled.

In this state of mind, angry with himself for having tolerated
one who had so boldly and ruthlessly wounded his self-love,
he had but one resort. He could not confess his
humiliation to his wife; and there was no one in the world
with whom he could hold conversation on the subject, except
his old confidant who came into the mirror when wanted, and
conveniently retired when the interview closed.

Rising from his chair, and approaching his mirror, as if he

had been whipped, he stood a full minute regarding his disgraced
and speechless image. “Are you Robert Belcher,
Esquire, of Sevenoaks?” he inquired, at length. “Are you
the person who has been insulted by a woman? Look at me,
sir! Turn not away! Have you any constitutional objections
to telling me how you feel? Are you, sir, the proprietor
of this house? Are you the owner of yonder mill? Are
you the distinguished person who carries Sevenoaks in his
pocket? How are the mighty fallen! And you, sir, who
have been insulted by a tailoress, can stand here, and look
me in the face, and still pretend to be a man! You are a
scoundrel, sir—a low, mean-spirited scoundrel, sir. You are
nicely dressed, but you are a puppy. Dare to tell me you are
not, and I will grind you under my foot, as I would grind a
worm. Don't give me a word—not a word! I am not in a
mood to bear it!”

Having vented his indignation and disgust, with the fiercest
facial expression and the most menacing gesticulations, he
became calm, and proceeded:

“Benedict at the poor-house, hopelessly insane! Tell me
now, and, mark you, no lies here! Who developed his inventions?
Whose money was risked? What did it cost Benedict?
Nothing. What did it cost Robert Belcher? More
thousands than Benedict ever dreamed of. Have you done
your duty, Robert Belcher? Ay, ay, sir! I believe you.
Did you turn his head? No, sir. I believe you; it is well!
I have spent money for him—first and last, a great deal of
money for him; and any man or woman who disputes me is a
liar—a base, malignant liar! Who is still master of the situation?
Whose name is Norval? Whose are these Grampian
Hills? Who intends to go to the town-meeting to-morrow,
and have things fixed about as he wants them? Who will
make Keziah Butterworth weep and howl with anguish? Let
Robert Belcher alone! Alone! Far in azure depths of
space (here Mr. Belcher extended both arms heavenward, and
regarded his image admiringly), far—far away! Well, you're

a pretty good-looking man, after all, and I'll let you off this
time; but don't let me catch you playing baby to another
woman! I think you'll be able to take care of yourself
[nodding slowly.] By-by! Good-night!”

Mr. Belcher retired from the glass with two or three profound
bows, his face beaming with restored self-complacency,
and, taking his chair, he resumed his cigar. At this moment,
there arose in his memory a single sentence he had read in
the warrant for the meeting of the morrow: “To see if the
town will take any steps for the improvement of the condition
of the poor, now supported at the public charge.”

When he read this article of the warrant, posted in the
public places of the village, it had not impressed him particularly.
Now, he saw Miss Butterworth's hand in it. Evidently,
Mr. Belcher was not the only man who had been
honored by a call from that philanthropic woman. As he
thought the matter over, he regretted that, for the sake of
giving form and force to his spite against her, he should be
obliged to relinquish the popularity he might have won by
favoring a reformative measure. He saw something in it,
also, that might be made to add to Tom Buffum's profits;
but even this consideration weighed nothing against his desire
for personal revenge, to be exhibited in the form of triumphant
personal power.

He rose from his chair, walked his room, swinging his
hands backward and forward, casting furtive glances into his
mirror, and then rang his bell. He had arrived at a conclusion.
He had fixed upon his scheme, and was ready for work.

“Tell Phipps to come here,” he said to the maid who responded
to the summons.

Phipps was his coachman, body-servant, table-waiter, pet,
butt for his jests, tool, man of all occasions. He considered
himself a part of Mr. Belcher's personal property. To be the
object of his clumsy badinage, when visitors were present and
his master was particularly amiable, was equivalent to an honorable
public notice. He took Mr. Belcher's cast-off clothes,

and had them reduced in their dimensions for his own wearing,
and was thus always able to be nearly as well dressed and
foppish as the man for whom they were originally made. He
was as insolent to others as he was obsequious to his master—
a flunky by nature and long education.

Phipps appeared.

“Well, Phipps, what are you here for?” inquired Mr.
Belcher.

“I was told you wanted me, sir,” looking doubtfully with
his cunning eyes into Mr. Belcher's face, as if questioning
his mood.

“How is your health? You look feeble. Overwhelmed
by your tremendous duties? Been sitting up late along back?
Eh? You rascal! Who's the happy woman?”

Phipps laughed, and twiddled his fingers.

“You're a precious fellow, and I've got to get rid of you.
You are altogether too many for me. Where did you get
that coat? It seems to me I've seen something like that
before. Just tell me how you do it, man. I can't dress the
way you do. Yes, Phipps, you're too many for me!”

Phipps smiled, aware that he was expected to make no
reply.

“Phipps, do you expect to get up to-morrow morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, you do! Very well! See that you do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Phipps—”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bring the grays and the light wagon to the door to-morrow
morning at seven o'clock.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Phipps, gather all the old clothes about the house
that you can't use yourself, and tie 'em up in a bundle, and
put 'em into the back of the wagon. Mum is the word, and
if Mrs. Belcher asks you any questions, tell her I think of
turning Sister of Charity.”

Phipps snickered.

“And Phipps, make a basket of cold meat and goodies,
and put in with the clothes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Phipps, remember:—seven o'clock, sharp, and no
soldiering.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Phipps, here is a cigar that cost twenty-five cents.
Do it up in a paper, and lay it away. Keep it to remember
me by.”

This joke was too good to be passed over lightly, and so
Phipps giggled, took the cigar, put it caressingly to his nose,
and then slipped it into his pocket.

“Now make yourself scarce,” said his master, and the man
retired, entirely conscious that the person he served had some
rascally scheme on foot, and heartily sympathetic with him in
the project of its execution.

Promptly at seven the next morning, the rakish pair of
trotters stood before the door, with a basket and a large
bundle in the back of the rakish little wagon. Almost at the
same moment, the proprietor came out, buttoning his overcoat.
Phipps leaped out, then followed his master into the
wagon, who, taking the reins, drove off at a rattling pace up
the long hill toward Tom Buffum's boarding-house. The
road lay entirely outside of the village, so that the unusual
drive was not observed.

Arriving at the poor-house, Mr. Belcher gave the reins to
his servant, and, with a sharp rap upon the door with the butt
of his whip, summoned to the latch the red-faced and stuffy
keeper. What passed between them, Phipps did not hear,
although he tried very hard to do so. At the close of a half
hour's buzzing conversation, Tom Buffum took the bundle
from the wagon, and pitched it into his doorway. Then,
with the basket on his arm, he and Mr. Belcher made their
way across the street to the dormitories and cells occupied by
the paupers of both sexes and all ages and conditions. Even

the hard-hearted proprietor saw that which wounded his
blunted sensibilities; but he looked on with a bland face, and
witnessed the greedy consumption of the stale dainties of his
own table.

It was by accident that he was led out by a side passage,
and there he caught glimpses of the cells to which Miss Butterworth
had alluded, and inhaled an atmosphere which
sickened him to paleness, and brought to his lips the exclamation:
“For God's sake let's get out of this.”

“Ay! ay!” came tremblingly from behind the bars of a
cell, “let's get out of this.”

Mr. Belcher pushed toward the light, but not so quickly
that a pair of eyes, glaring from the straw, failed to recognize
him.

“Robert Belcher! Oh, for God's sake! Robert Belcher!”

It was a call of wild distress—a whine, a howl, an objurgation,
all combined. It was repeated as long as he could hear
it. It sounded in his ears as he descended the hill. It came
again and again to him as he was seated at his comfortable
breakfast. It rang in the chambers of his consciousness for
hours, and only a firm and despotic will expelled it at last.
He knew the voice, and he never wished to hear it again.

What he had seen that morning, and what he had done,
where he had been, and why he had gone, were secrets to
which his wife and children were not admitted. The relations
between himself and his wife were not new in the world.
He wished to retain her respect, so he never revealed to her
his iniquities. She wished as far as possible to respect him,
so she never made uncomfortable inquiries. He was bountiful
to her. He had been bountiful to many others. She
clothed and informed all his acts of beneficence with the
motives which became them. If she was ever shocked by his
vulgarity, he never knew it by any word of hers, in disapproval.
If she had suspicions, she did not betray them.
Her children were trained to respect their father, and among
them she found the satisfactions of her life. He had long

ceased to be her companion. As an associate, friend, lover,
she had given him up, and, burying in her heart all her griefs
and all her loneliness, had determined to make the best of
her life, and to bring her children to believe that their father
was a man of honor, of whom they had no reason to be
ashamed. If she was proud, hers was an amiable pride, and
to Mr. Belcher's credit let it be said that he respected her as
much as he wished her to honor him.

For an hour after breakfast, Mr. Belcher was occupied in
his library, with his agent, in the transaction of his daily
business. Then, just as the church bell rang its preliminary
summons for the assembling of the town-meeting, Phipps
came to the door again with the rakish grays and the rakish
wagon, and Mr. Belcher drove down the steep hill into the
village, exchanging pleasant words with the farmers whom he
encountered on the way, and stopping at various shops,
to speak with those upon whom he depended for voting
through whatever public schemes he found it desirable to
favor.

The old town-hall was thronged for half-an-hour before the
time designated in the warrant. Finally, the bell ceased to
ring, at the exact moment when Mr. Belcher drove to the
door and ascended the steps. There was a buzz all over the
house when he entered, and he was surrounded at once.

“Have it just as you want it,” shaking his head ostentatiously
and motioning them away, “don't mind anything
about me. I'm a passenger,” he said aloud, and with a
laugh, as the meeting was called to order and the warrant
read, and a nomination for moderator demanded.

“Peter Vernol,” shouted a dozen voices in unison.

Peter Vernol had represented the district in the Legislature,
and was supposed to be familiar with parliamentary
usage. He was one of Mr. Belcher's men, of course—as
truly owned and controlled by him as Phipps himself.

Peter Vernol became moderator by acclamation. He was
a young man, and, ascending the platform very red in the

face, and looking out upon the assembled voters of Seven-oaks,
he asked with a trembling voice:

“What is the further pleasure of the meeting?”

“I move you,” said Mr. Belcher, rising, and throwing open
his overcoat, “that the Rev. Solomon Snow, whom I am exceedingly
glad to see present, open our deliberations with
prayer.”

The moderator, forgetting apparently that the motion had
not been put, thereupon invited the reverend gentleman to
the platform, from which, when his service had been completed,
he with dignity retired—but with the painful consciousness
that in some way Mr. Belcher had become aware of
the philanthropic task he had undertaken. He knew he was
beaten, at the very threshold of his enterprise—that his conversations
of the morning among his neighbors had been
reported, and that Paul Benedict and his fellow-sufferers
would be none the better for him.

The business connected with the various articles of the warrant
was transacted without notable discussion or difference.
Mr. Belcher's ticket for town officers, which he took pains to
show to those around him, was unanimously adopted. When
it came to the question of schools, Mr. Belcher indulged in a
few flights of oratory. He thought it impossible for a town
like Sevenoaks to spend too much money for schools. He
felt himself indebted to the public school for all that he was,
and all that he had won. The glory of America, in his view—
its pre-eminence above all the exhausted and decayed civilizations
of the Old World—was to be found in popular education.
It was the distinguishing feature of our new and abounding
national life. Drop it, falter, recede, and the darkness that
now hangs over England, and the thick darkness that envelops
the degenerating hordes of the Continent, would settle down
upon fair America, and blot her out forever from the list of
the earth's teeming nations. He would pay good wages to
teachers. He would improve school-houses, and he would
do it as a matter of economy. It was, in his view, the only

safeguard against the encroachments of a destructive pauperism.
“We are soon,” said Mr. Belcher, “to consider whether
we will take any steps for the improvement of the condition
of the poor, now supported at the public charge. Here is our
first step. Let us endow our children with such a degree of
intelligence that pauperism shall be impossible. In this thing
I go hand in hand with the clergy. On many points I do not
agree with them, but on this matter of popular education, I
will do them the honor to say that they have uniformly been
in advance of the rest of us. I join hands with them here
to-day, and, as any advance in our rate of taxation for schools
will bear more heavily upon me than upon any other citizen—
I do not say it boastingly, gentlemen—I pledge myself to
support and stand by it.”

Mr. Belcher's speech, delivered with majestic swellings of
his broad chest, the ostentatious removal of his overcoat, and
brilliant passages of oratorical action, but most imperfectly
summarized in this report, was received with cheers. Mr.
Snow himself feebly joined in the approval, although he knew
it was intended to disarm him. His strength, his resolution,
his courage, ebbed away with sickening rapidity; and he was
not reassured by a glance toward the door, where he saw,
sitting quite alone, Miss Butterworth herself, who had come
in for the purpose partly of strengthening him, and partly of
informing herself concerning the progress of a reform which
had taken such strong hold upon her sympathies.

At length the article in the warrant which most interested
that good lady was taken up, and Mr. Snow rose to speak
upon it. He spoke of the reports he had heard concerning
the bad treatment that the paupers, and especially those who
were hopelessly insane, had received in the almshouse, enlarged
upon the duties of humanity and Christianity, and
expressed the conviction that the enlightened people of Seven-oaks
should spend more money for the comfort of the
unfortunate whom Heaven had thrown upon their charge,
and particularly that they should institute a more searching

and competent inspection of their pauper establishment.

As he took his seat, all eyes were turned upon Mr. Belcher,
and that gentleman rose for a second exhibition of his characteristic
eloquence.

“I do not forget,” said Mr. Belcher, “that we have present
here to-day an old and well-tried public servant. I see
before me Mr. Thomas Buffum, who, for years, has had in
charge the poor, not only of this town, but of this county. I
do not forget that his task has been one of great delicacy,
with the problem constantly before him how to maintain in
comfort our most unfortunate class of population, and at the
same time to reduce to its minimum the burden of our taxpayers.
That he has solved this problem and served the public
well, I most firmly believe. He has been for many years my
trusted personal friend, and I cannot sit here and hear his
administration questioned, and his integrity and humanity
doubted, without entering my protest. [Cheers, during which
Mr. Buffum grew very red in the face.] He has had a task
to perform before which the bravest of us would shrink. We,
who sit in our peaceful homes, know little of the hardships to
which this faithful public servant has been subjected. Pauperism
is ungrateful. Pauperism is naturally filthy. Pauperism
is noisy. It consists of humanity in its most repulsive forms,
and if we have among us a man who can—who can—stand it,
let us stand by him.” [Tremendous cheers.]

Mr. Belcher paused until the wave of applause had subsided,
and then went on:

“An open-hand, free competition: this has been my policy,
in a business of whose prosperity you are the best judges. I
say an open-hand and free competition in everything. How
shall we dispose of our poor? Shall they be disposed of by
private arrangement—sold out to favorites, of whose responsibility
we know nothing? [Cries of no, no, no!] If anybody
who is responsible—and now he is attacked, mark you,
I propose to stand behind and be responsible for Mr. Buffum

myself—can do the work cheaper and better than Mr. Buffum,
let him enter at once upon the task. But let the competition
be free, nothing covered up. Let us have clean hands in this
business, if nowhere else. If we cannot have impartial dealing,
where the interests of humanity are concerned, we are
unworthy of the trust we have assumed. I give the Rev. Mr.
Snow credit for motives that are unimpeachable—unimpeachable,
sir. I do not think him capable of intentional wrong,
and I wish to ask him, here and now, whether, within a
recent period, he has visited the pauper establishment of
Sevenoaks.”

Mr. Snow rose and acknowledged that it was a long time
since he had entered Mr. Buffum's establishment.

“I thought so. He has listened to the voice of rumor.
Very well. I have to say that I have been there recently, and
have walked through the establishment. I should do injustice
to myself, and fail to hint to the reverend gentleman, and all
those who sympathize with him, what I regard as one of their
neglected duties, if I should omit to mention that I did not
go empty-handed. [Loud cheers.] It is easy for those who
neglect their own duties to suspect that others do the same.
I know our paupers are not supported in luxury. We cannot
afford to support them in luxury; but I wash my hands of all
responsibility for inhumanity and inattention to their reasonable
wants. The reverend gentleman himself knows, I think,
whether any man ever came to me for assistance on behalf of
any humane or religious object, and went away without aid.
I cannot consent to be placed in a position that reflects upon
my benevolence, and, least of all, by the reverend gentleman
who has reflected upon that administration of public charity
which has had, and still retains, my approval. I therefore
move that the usual sum be appropriated for the support of
the poor, and that at the close of this meeting the care of the
poor for the ensuing year be disposed of at public auction to
the lowest bidder.”

Mr. Snow was silent, for he knew that he was impotent.

Then there jumped up a little man with tumbled hair,
weazened face, and the general look of a broken-down gentleman,
who was recognized by the moderator as “Dr. Radcliffe.”

“Mr. Moderator,” said he, in a screaming voice, “as I
am the medical attendant and inspector of our pauper establishment,
it becomes proper for me, in seconding the motion
of Mr. Belcher, as I heartily do, to say a few words, and submit
my report for the past year.”

Dr. Radcliffe was armed with a large document, and the
assembled voters of Sevenoaks were getting tired.

“I move,” said Mr. Belcher, “that, as the hour is late,
the reading of the report be dispensed with.” The motion
was seconded, and carried nem. con.

The Doctor was wounded in a sensitive spot, and was determined
not to be put down.

“I may at least say,” he went on, “that I have made some
discoveries during the past year that ought to be in the possession
of the scientific world. It takes less food to support
a pauper than it does any other man, and I believe the reason
is that he hasn't any mind. If I take two potatoes, one goes
to the elaboration of mental processes, the other to the support
of the physical economy. The pauper has only a physical
economy, and he needs but one potato. Anemia is the
normal condition of the pauper. He breathes comfortably
an atmosphere which would give a healthy man asphyxia.
Hearty food produces inflammatory diseases and a general
condition of hypertrophy. The character of the diseases at
the poor-house, during the past year, has been typhoid. I
have suggested to Mr. Buffum better ventilation, a change
from farinaceous to nitrogenous food as conducive to a better
condition of the mucous surfaces and a more perfect oxydation
of the vital fluids. Mr. Buffum —”

“Oh, git out!” shouted a voice at the rear.

“Question! question!” called a dozen voices.

The moderator caught a wink and a nod from Mr. Belcher,

and put the question, amid the protests of Dr. Radcliffe; and
it was triumphantly carried.

And now, as the town-meeting drops out of this story, let
us leave it, and leave Mr. Thomas Buffum at its close to underbid
all contestants for the privilege of feeding the paupers of
Sevenoaks for another year.