Middlemarch by George Eliot (ebook and pdf reader TXT) 📕

“I see they are beginning to attack our friend Brooke in the Trumpet,” said the Rector, lounging back and smiling easily, as he would have done if he had been attacked himself. “There are tremendous sarcasms against a landlord not a hundred miles from Middlemarch, who receives his own rents, and makes no returns.”

“I do wish Brooke would leave that off,” said Sir James, with his little frown of annoyance.

“Is he really going to be put in nomination, though?” said Mr. Cadwallader. “I saw Farebrother yesterday⁠—he’s Whiggish himself, hoists Brougham and Useful Knowledge; that’s the worst I know of him;⁠—and he says that Brooke is getting up a pretty strong party. Bulstrode, the banker, is his foremost man. But he thinks Brooke would come off badly at a nomination.”

“Exactly,” said Sir James, with earnestness. “I have been inquiring into the thing, for I’ve never known anything about Middlemarch politics before⁠—the county being my business. What Brooke trusts to, is that they are going to turn out Oliver because he is a Peelite. But Hawley tells me that if they send up a Whig at all it is sure to be Bagster, one of those candidates who come from heaven knows where, but dead against Ministers, and an experienced Parliamentary man. Hawley’s rather rough: he forgot that he was speaking to me. He said if Brooke wanted a pelting, he could get it cheaper than by going to the hustings.”

“I warned you all of it,” said Mrs. Cadwallader, waving her hands outward. “I said to Humphrey long ago, Mr. Brooke is going to make a splash in the mud. And now he has done it.”

“Well, he might have taken it into his head to marry,” said the Rector. “That would have been a graver mess than a little flirtation with politics.”

“He may do that afterwards,” said Mrs. Cadwallader⁠—“when he has come out on the other side of the mud with an ague.”

“What I care for most is his own dignity,” said Sir James. “Of course I care the more because of the family. But he’s getting on in life now, and I don’t like to think of his exposing himself. They will be raking up everything against him.”

“I suppose it’s no use trying any persuasion,” said the Rector. “There’s such an odd mixture of obstinacy and changeableness in Brooke. Have you tried him on the subject?”

“Well, no,” said Sir James; “I feel a delicacy in appearing to dictate. But I have been talking to this young Ladislaw that Brooke is making a factotum of. Ladislaw seems clever enough for anything. I thought it as well to hear what he had to say; and he is against Brooke’s standing this time. I think he’ll turn him round: I think the nomination may be staved off.”

“I know,” said Mrs. Cadwallader, nodding. “The independent member hasn’t got his speeches well enough by heart.”

“But this Ladislaw⁠—there again is a vexatious business,” said Sir James. “We have had him two or three times to dine at the Hall (you have met him, by the by) as Brooke’s guest and a relation of Casaubon’s, thinking he was only on a flying visit. And now I find he’s in everybody’s mouth in Middlemarch as the editor of the Pioneer. There are stories going about him as a quill-driving alien, a foreign emissary, and whatnot.”

“Casaubon won’t like that,” said the Rector.

“There is some foreign blood in Ladislaw,” returned Sir James. “I hope he won’t go into extreme opinions and carry Brooke on.”

“Oh, he’s a dangerous young sprig, that Mr. Ladislaw,” said Mrs. Cadwallader, “with his opera songs and his ready tongue. A sort of Byronic hero⁠—an amorous conspirator, it strikes me. And Thomas Aquinas is not fond of him. I could see that, the day the picture was brought.”

“I don’t like to begin on the subject with Casaubon,” said Sir James. “He has more right to interfere than I. But it’s a disagreeable affair all round. What a character for anybody with decent connections to show himself in!⁠—one of those newspaper fellows! You have only to look at Keck, who manages the Trumpet. I saw him the other day with Hawley. His writing is sound enough, I believe, but he’s such a low fellow, that I wished he had been on the wrong side.”

“What can you expect with these peddling Middlemarch papers?” said the Rector. “I don’t suppose you could get a high style of man anywhere to be writing up interests he doesn’t really care about, and for pay that hardly keeps him in at elbows.”

“Exactly: that makes it so annoying that Brooke should have put a man who has a sort of connection with the family in a position of that kind. For my part, I think Ladislaw is rather a fool for accepting.”

“It is Aquinas’s fault,” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “Why didn’t he use his interest to get Ladislaw made an attaché or sent to India? That is how families get rid of troublesome sprigs.”

“There is no knowing to what lengths the mischief may go,” said Sir James, anxiously. “But if Casaubon says nothing, what can I do?”

“Oh my dear Sir James,” said the Rector, “don’t let us make too much of all this. It is likely enough to end in mere smoke. After a month or two Brooke and this Master Ladislaw will get tired of each other; Ladislaw will take wing; Brooke will sell the Pioneer, and everything will settle down again as usual.”

“There is one good chance⁠—that he will not like to feel his money oozing away,” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “If I knew the items of election expenses I could scare him. It’s no use plying him with wide words like expenditure: I wouldn’t talk of phlebotomy, I would empty a pot of leeches upon him. What we good stingy people don’t like, is having our sixpences sucked away from us.”

“And he will not like having things raked up against him,” said Sir James. “There is the management of his estate. They have begun