MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

Chapter 38

"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.