"C'est beaucoup que le jugement des hommes sur les actions
humaines; tot 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."