some chance," said Sir James. "She might have got some power
over him in time, and she was always
uneasy about the estate.
She had
wonderfully good notions about such things. But now
Casaubon takes her up entirely. Celia complains a good deal.
We can hardly get her to dine with us, since he had that fit."
Sir James ended with a look of pitying
disgust, and Mrs. Cadwallader
shrugged her shoulders as much as to say that SHE was not likely
to see anything new in that direction.
"Poor Casaubon!" the Rector said. "That was a nasty attack.
I thought he looked shattered the other day at the Archdeacon's."
"In point of fact," resumed Sir James, not choosing to dwell on
"fits," "Brooke doesn't mean badly by his
tenants or any one else,
but he has got that way of paring and clipping at expenses."
"Come, that's a blessing," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "That helps him
to find himself in a morning. He may not know his own opinions,
but he does know his own pocket."
"I don't believe a man is in pocket by stinginess on his land,"
said Sir James.
"Oh, stinginess may be abused like other virtues: it will not do
to keep one's own pigs lean," said Mrs. Cadwallader, who had risen
to look out of the window. "But talk of an independent politician
and he will appear."
"What! Brooke?" said her husband.
"Yes. Now, you ply him with the `Trumpet,' Humphrey; and I will
put the leeches on him. What will you do, Sir James?"
"The fact is, I don't like to begin about it with Brooke, in our
mutual position; the whole thing is so
unpleasant. I do wish people
would
behave like gentlemen," said the good baronet, feeling that
this was a simple and
comprehensive programme for social well-being.
"Here you all are, eh?" said Mr. Brooke, shuffling round and
shaking hands. "I was going up to the Hall by-and-by, Chettam.
But it's pleasant to find everybody, you know. Well, what do
you think of things?--going on a little fast! It was true enough,
what Lafitte said--`Since
yesterday, a century has passed away:'--
they're in the next century, you know, on the other side of the water.
Going on faster than we are."
"Why, yes," said the Rector,
taking up the newspaper. "Here is
the `Trumpet' accusing you of lagging behind--did you see?"
"Eh? no," said Mr. Brooke, dropping his gloves into his hat
and
hastily adjusting his eye-glass. But Mr. Cadwallader kept
the paper in his hand,
saying, with a smile in his eyes--
"Look here! all this is about a
landlord not a hundred
miles from Middlemarch, who receives his own rents.
They say he is the most retrogressive man in the county.
I think you must have taught them that word in the `Pioneer.'"
"Oh, that is Keek--an
illiterate fellow, you know. Retrogressive, now!
Come, that's capital. He thinks it means
destructive: they want
to make me out a
destructive, you know," said Mr. Brooke, with
that
cheerfulness which is usually sustained by an adversary's ignorance.
"I think he knows the meaning of the word. Here is a sharp stroke
or two. If we had to describe a man who is retrogressive in the
most evil sense of the word--we should say, he is one who would
dub himself a
reformer of our
constitution, while every interest
for which he is immediately
responsible is going to decay:
a philanthropist who cannot bear one rogue to be hanged, but does
not mind five honest
tenants being half-starved: a man who shrieks
at
corruption, and keeps his farms at rack-rent: who roars himself
red at
rotten boroughs, and does not mind if every field on his farms
has a
rotten gate: a man very open-hearted to Leeds and Manchester,
no doubt; he would give any number of representatives who will pay
for their seats out of their own pockets: what he objects to giving,
is a little return on rent-days to help a
tenant to buy stock,
or an
outlay on repairs to keep the weather out at a
tenant's barn-door
or make his house look a little less like an Irish cottier's. But
we all know the wag's
definition of a philanthropist: a man whose
charity increases directly as the square of the distance. And so on.
All the rest is to show what sort of
legislator a philanthropist
is likely to make," ended the Rector, throwing down the paper,
and clasping his hands at the back of his head, while he looked at
Mr. Brooke with an air of amused neutrality.
"Come, that's rather good, you know," said Mr. Brooke,
taking up
the paper and
trying to bear the attack as easily as his neighbor did,
but coloring and smiling rather
nervously; "that about roaring himself
red at
rotten boroughs--I never made a speech about
rotten boroughs
in my life. And as to roaring myself red and that kind of thing--
these men never understand what is good
satire. Satire, you know,
should be true up to a certain point. I
recollect they said that in
`The Edinburgh' somewhere--it must be true up to a certain point."
"Well, that is really a hit about the gates," said Sir James,
anxious to tread carefully. "Dagley complained to me the other day
that he hadn't got a
decent gate on his farm. Garth has invented
a new pattern of gate--I wish you would try it. One ought to use
some of one's
timber in that way."
"You go in for fancy farming, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke,
appearing to glance over the columns of the "Trumpet."
"That's your hobby, and you don't mind the expense."
"I thought the most
expensive hobby in the world was standing
for Parliament," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "They said the last
unsuccessful
candidate at Middlemarch--Giles, wasn't his name?--
spent ten thousand pounds and failed because he did not bribe enough.
What a bitter
reflection for a man!"
"Somebody was
saying," said the Rector, laughingly, "that East
Retford was nothing to Middlemarch, for bribery."
"Nothing of the kind," said Mr. Brooke. "The Tories bribe,
you know: Hawley and his set bribe with treating, hot codlings,
and that sort of thing; and they bring the voters drunk to the poll.
But they are not going to have it their own way in future--
not in future, you know. Middlemarch is a little
backward, I admit--
the freemen are a little
backward. But we shall
educate them--
we shall bring them on, you know. The best people there are on
our side."
"Hawley says you have men on your side who will do you harm,"
remarked Sir James. "He says Bulstrode the
banker will do you harm."
"And that if you got pelted," interposed Mrs. Cadwallader, "half the
rotten eggs would mean
hatred of your committee-man. Good heavens!
Think what it must be to be pelted for wrong opinions. And I seem
to remember a story of a man they pretended to chair and let him
fall into a dust-heap on purpose!"
"Pelting is nothing to their
finding holes in one's coat,"
said the Rector. "I
confess that's what I should be afraid of,
if we parsons had to stand at the hustings for preferment.
I should be afraid of their
reckoning up all my
fishing days.
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be
pelted with."
"The fact is," said Sir James, "if a man goes into public life he
must be prepared for the consequences. He must make himself proof
against calumny."
"My dear Chettam, that is all very fine, you know," said Mr. Brooke.
"But how will you make yourself proof against calumny? You should
read history--look at ostracism,
persecution,
martyrdom, and that
kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.
But what is that in Horace?--'fiat justitia, ruat . . .
something or other."
"Exactly," said Sir James, with a little more heat than usual.
"What I mean by being proof against calumny is being able to point
to the fact as a contradiction."
"And it is not
martyrdom to pay bills that one has run into one's self,"
said Mrs. Cadwallader.
But it was Sir James's
evidentannoyance that most stirred Mr. Brooke.
"Well, you know, Chettam," he said, rising,
taking up his hat
and leaning on his stick, "you and I have a different
system.
You are all for
outlay with your farms. I don't want to make out that
my
system is good under all circumstances--under all circumstances,
you know."
"There ought to be a new
valuation made from time to time,"
said Sir James. "Returns are very well
occasionally, but I
like a fair
valuation. What do you say, Cadwallader?"
"I agree with you. If I were Brooke, I would choke the `Trumpet'
at once by getting Garth to make a new
valuation of the farms,
and giving him carte blanche about gates and repairs:
that's my view of the political situation," said the Rector,
broadening himself by sticking his thumbs in his armholes,
and laughing towards Mr. Brooke.
"That's a showy sort of thing to do, you know," said Mr. Brooke.
"But I should like you to tell me of another
landlord who has
distressed his
tenants for arrears as little as I have. I let
the old
tenants stay on. I'm uncommonly easy, let me tell you,
uncommonly easy. I have my own ideas, and I take my stand on them,
you know. A man who does that is always charged with eccentricity,
inconsistency, and that kind of thing. When I change my line of action,
I shall follow my own ideas."
After that, Mr. Brooke remembered that there was a
packet which he
had omitted to send off from the Grange, and he bade everybody
hurriedly good-by.
"I didn't want to take a liberty with Brooke," said Sir James;
"I see he is nettled. But as to what he says about old
tenants,
in point of fact no new
tenant would take the farms on the
present terms."
"I have a notion that he will be brought round in time,"
said the Rector. "But you were pulling one way, Elinor, and we
were pulling another. You wanted to
frighten him away from expense,
and we want to
frighten him into it. Better let him try to be
popular and see that his
character as a
landlord stands in his way.
I don't think it signifies two straws about the `Pioneer,'
or Ladislaw, or Brooke's speechifying to the Middlemarchers.
But it does
signify about the parishioners in Tipton being comfortable."
"Excuse me, it is you two who are on the wrong tack,"
said Mrs. Cadwallader. "You should have proved to him that he loses
money by bad
management, and then we should all have pulled together.
If you put him a-horseback on
politics, I warn you of the consequences.
It was all very well to ride on sticks at home and call them ideas."
CHAPTER XXXIX.
"If, as I have, you also doe,
Vertue attired in woman see,
And dare love that, and say so too,
And forget the He and She;
And if this love, though placed so,
From prophane men you hide,
Which will no faith on this bestow,
Or, if they doe, deride:
Then you have done a braver thing
Than all the Worthies did,
And a braver
thence will spring,
Which is, to keep that hid."
--DR. DONNE.
Sir James Chettam's mind was not
fruitful ill devices, but his growing
anxiety to "act on Brooke," once brought close to his constant
belief in Dorothea's
capacity for influence, became formative,
and issued in a little plan;
namely, to plead Celia's indisposition
as a reason for fetching Dorothea by herself to the Hall, and to
leave her at the Grange with the
carriage on the way, after making
her fully aware of the situation
concerning the
management of the estate.
In this way it happened that one day near four o'clock, when
Mr. Brooke and Ladislaw were seated in the library, the door
opened and Mrs. Casaubon was announced.
Will, the moment before, had been low in the depths of boredom, and,
obliged to help Mr. Brooke in arranging "documents" about hanging
sheep-stealers, was exemplifying the power our minds have of riding
several horses at once by
inwardly arranging measures towards getting
a
lodging for himself in Middlemarch and cutting short his constant
residence at the Grange; while there flitted through all these steadier