A Spectacle of Corruption Read Online Free PDF

understood enough to know that it was the Whigs, the party of new wealth and little church, that might be more willing to attract men such as these.
    “Get gone,” I said, waving my pistol. They ran off in one direction, I walked in the other. In an instant I had forgotten about the encounter, and my mind turned to my meeting with Mr. Ufford.
    I have known very few priests in my day, but from my reading I harbored the idea of dignified little men living in neat but unremarkable cottages. I was surprised to see the lavish town house in which Mr. Ufford resided. Men who seek careers in the Church tend ever to be without prospects, either because their families have not much money or because they are younger brothers and excluded from inheritance by the strict laws and customs of the land. But here was a priest who had taken for himself the whole of a fine house on a fashionable street. I could not say how many rooms he possessed, or of what nature, but I soon found that the kitchen was of the finest quality. When I knocked upon the front door, a ruddy-faced manservant told me I could not enter thus.
    “You must approach from the rear,” he told me.
    I rankled not a little at this treatment and thought to comment most unkindly on his orders, but his usage was, if not common, hardly unprecedented. Perhaps the excess of wine I’d consumed the night before inclined me to irritation. Nevertheless, I cast aside my annoyance and walked to the side entrance, where a stout woman with arms as thick as my calves directed me to a large table fixed in one corner. Sitting here already was a fellow of the meaner sort, not old but aging ungracefully, grizzled about the face, lacking a wig, with nothing on his balding and close-cut pate but a wide-brimmed straw hat. His clothes were of the plainer sort of undyed linens, though clearly new, and adorned only with his pewter porter’s badge, which he wore pinned to his right breast. I could not say why, not knowing the man, but I had immediately the distinct impression that Mr. Ufford had bought the clothes for him, and recently too—perhaps for this very meeting.
    Soon another man, wearing a black coat and a white cravat—a style I recognized as priestly—entered the kitchen tentatively, as though sneaking a look at a room in a house where he was a dinner guest. On meeting my eyes, he simpered briefly. “Benjamin,” he cried with great warmth, though we had never before met. “Come in, come in. I am glad you could meet me as I requested, and at such short notice too.” He was tall, inclined to be plump if not fat, and with a sunken face that resembled a crescent moon. He wore a tie wig, new and carefully powdered.
    I bristled a little, I admit, at the unexpected use of my name. I had never met the man before and had no reason to expect such familiarity. I suspected that if I were to address him as Christopher, or perhaps even Kit, he would not take it kindly.
    “I am honored to be able to attend you, sir,” I said, with a shallow bow.
    He gestured toward the table. “Come, sit down. Sit down. Oh, yes. Where have my manners gone? Benjamin, this fellow is John Littleton. He lives in my parish and has benefited from the kindness of the Church. More than that, however, he knows the parish and the sort of men who inhabit it. I have made much use of him in recent days, and I thought you might as well.”
    I turned to offer the
fellow,
as the priest would have it, my hand in friendship.
    He took it with eagerness, perhaps relieved to see I was of a somewhat more open nature than our host. “How do ye,” he said cheerfully. “Benjamin Weaver, I seen you fight, me spark. More than once, too. I seen you beat the tar out of that Irishman Fergus Doyle, and I seen you take out that French fellow too, but I don’t recollect his name. But the best match I ever saw, let me tell you, sir, was the time you fought Elizabeth Stokes. Now, she was a great fighter of the female sort. They don’t