Middlemarch

CHAPTER LI.

“Party is Nature too, and you shall see / By force of Logic how they both agree.” No gossip about Mr. Casaubon’s will had reached Ladislaw yet; the air was filled with the dissolution of Parliament. Will was one of the busiest. When Lydgate sought him about the Lowick living, Will answered waspishly: “Why should you bring me into the matter? I never see Mrs. Casaubon, and am not likely to, since she is at Freshitt. I never go there. It is Tory ground.”

He had observed that Mr. Brooke seemed to contrive he should go to the Grange as little as possible—a shuffling concession to Sir James. Will concluded he was to be kept away on Dorothea’s account. “We are forever divided,” said Will to himself. “I might as well be at Rome.” Yet what we call despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

Coaching Mr. Brooke was no easy task. Mr. Mawmsey, the grocer, proved a difficult voter. “Will it support Mrs. Mawmsey, and enable her to bring up six children?” he asked, rattling his small silver. “Do as you like, Mawmsey; but if you vote against us, I shall get my groceries elsewhere.” Mr. Brooke soothed him: “Until I hear you send bad sugars, I shall never order him to go elsewhere.” Mawmsey felt politics clearing up.

On nomination day, Mr. Brooke presented himself on the balcony of the White Hart. “Gentlemen—Electors of Middlemarch! I’m uncommonly glad to be here—I was never so proud and happy in my life.” His prepared opening was already slipping. He rambled through machinery, the Levant, the Baltic. Then a diabolical plan unfolded: the effigy of himself in buff waistcoat and eye-glass rose above the crowd, while a parrot-voiced Punch echoed his words. “The Baltic, now.” The laugh became a general shout.

“That reminds me,” Mr. Brooke went on, thrusting his hand into his pocket. “If I wanted a precedent—there is Chatham, now; Pitt, the younger Pitt—he was not a man of ideas.”

“Blast your ideas! we want the Bill,” shouted a voice from the crowd.

“You shall have the Bill—” Mr. Brooke paused to fix on his eye-glass. The invisible Punch followed: “You shall have the Bill, Mr. Brooke, per electioneering contest, five thousand pounds, seven shillings, and fourpence.”

Mr. Brooke turned red. Eggs began to fly. His spirit rose: “Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth—all that is very well.” An unpleasant egg broke on his shoulder. There was a stream of whistles, yells, bellowings. Mr. Brooke re-entered the committee-room. “This is a little too bad, you know. I should have got the ear of the people by-and-by.”

“It was Bowyer who did it,” said Mr. Standish. “He’s uncommonly good at ventriloquism.”

Ladislaw was thoroughly out of temper. He went to shut himself in his rooms with a half-formed resolve to throw up the Pioneer and Mr. Brooke. Then came the dream of wonders: political writing would get a higher value now public life was wider. He could go to town, make himself fit for celebrity by eating his dinners. But not immediately—not until some sign had passed between him and Dorothea.

He soon suspected Mr. Brooke had anticipated him in wishing to break up their connection. “I have felt uneasy about the chest,” Mr. Brooke explained. “A more ordinary man than you might carry it on now—more ordinary, you know.”

“Do you wish me to give it up?” said Will, color rising in his face.

“I have the highest opinion of your powers. But they are inclined to take it into their hands. Under the circumstances, you might like to give up—might find a better field.”

“I am exceedingly obliged to you. Since you are going to part with the Pioneer, I need not trouble you about the steps I shall take. I may choose to continue here for the present.” After Mr. Brooke left, Will said, “The rest of the family have been urging him to get rid of me. I shall stay as long as I like.”