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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



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