Middlemarch
Should he apply directly to Mr. Brooke, and demand of that troublesome
gentleman to revoke his proposal? Or should he consult Sir James
Chettam, and get him to concur in remonstrance against a step which
touched the whole family? In either case Mr. Casaubon was aware that
failure was just as probable as success. It was impossible for him to
mention Dorothea’s name in the matter, and without some alarming
urgency Mr. Brooke was as likely as not, after meeting all
representations with apparent assent, to wind up by saying, “Never
fear, Casaubon! Depend upon it, young Ladislaw will do you credit.
Depend upon it, I have put my finger on the right thing.” And Mr.
Casaubon shrank nervously from communicating on the subject with Sir
James Chettam, between whom and himself there had never been any
cordiality, and who would immediately think of Dorothea without any
mention of her.
Poor Mr. Casaubon was distrustful of everybody’s feeling towards him,
especially as a husband. To let any one suppose that he was jealous
would be to admit their (suspected) view of his disadvantages: to let
them know that he did not find marriage particularly blissful would
imply his conversion to their (probably) earlier disapproval. It would
be as bad as letting Carp, and Brasenose generally, know how backward
he was in organizing the matter for his “Key to all Mythologies.” All
through his life Mr. Casaubon had been trying not to admit even to
himself the inward sores of self-doubt and jealousy. And on the most
delicate of all personal subjects, the habit of proud suspicious
reticence told doubly.
Thus Mr. Casaubon remained proudly, bitterly silent. But he had
forbidden Will to come to Lowick Manor, and he was mentally preparing
other measures of frustration.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
“C’est beaucoup que le jugement des hommes sur les actions humaines;
tôt ou tard il devient efficace.”—GUIZOT.
Sir James Chettam could not look with any satisfaction on Mr. Brooke’s
new courses; but it was easier to object than to hinder. Sir James
accounted for his having come in alone one day to lunch with the
Cadwalladers by saying—
“I can’t talk to you as I want, before Celia: it might hurt her.
Indeed, it would not be right.”
“I know what you mean—the ‘Pioneer’ at the Grange!” darted in Mrs.
Cadwallader, almost before the last word was off her friend’s tongue.
“It is frightful—this taking to buying whistles and blowing them in
everybody’s hearing. Lying in bed all day and playing at dominoes, like
poor Lord Plessy, would be more private and bearable.”
“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 bye) 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 what not.”
“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 _attache_ 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 upon
that already. And it really is painful for me to see. It is a nuisance
under one’s very nose. I do think one is bound to do the best for one’s
land and tenants, especially in these hard times.”
“Perhaps the ‘Trumpet’ may rouse him to make a change, and some good
may come of it all,” said the Rector. “I know I should be glad. I
should hear less grumbling when my tithe is paid. I don’t know what I
should do if there were not a modus in Tipton.”
“I want him to have a proper man to look after things—I want him to
take on Garth again,” said Sir James. “He got rid of Garth twelve years
ago, and everything has been going wrong since. I think of getting
Garth to manage for me—he has made such a capital plan for my
buildings; and Lovegood is hardly up to the mark. But Garth would not
undertake the Tipton estate again unless Brooke left it entirely to
him.”
“In the right of it too,” said the Rector. “Garth is an independent
fellow: an original, simple-minded fellow. One day, when he was doing
some valuation for me, he told me point-blank that clergymen seldom
understood anything about business, and did mischief when they meddled;
but he said it as quietly and respectfully as if he had been talking to
me about sailors. He would make a different parish of Tipton, if Brooke
would let him manage. I wish, by the help of the ‘Trumpet,’ you could
bring that round.”
“If Dorothea had kept near her uncle, there would have been 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