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, ******-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 ****** 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: