Middlemarch, George Eliot [which ebook reader .TXT] 📗

echo or discerned the image of himself. Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say. Mr. Brooke heard the laughter; but he had expected some Tory efforts at disturbance, and he was at this moment additionally excited by the tickling, stinging sense that his lost exordium was coming back to fetch him from the Baltic.

“That reminds me,” he went on, thrusting a hand into his side-pocket, with an easy air, “if I wanted a precedent, you know—but we never want a precedent for the right thing—but there is Chatham, now; I can’t say I should have supported Chatham, or Pitt, the younger Pitt—he was not a man of ideas, and we want ideas, you know.”

“Blast your ideas! we want the Bill,” said a loud rough voice from the crowd below.

Immediately the invisible Punch, who had hitherto followed Mr. Brooke, repeated, “Blast your ideas! we want the Bill.” The laugh was louder than ever, and for the first time Mr. Brooke being himself silent, heard distinctly the mocking echo. But it seemed to ridicule his interrupter, and in that light was encouraging; so he replied with amenity—

“There is something in what you say, my good friend, and what do we meet for but to speak our minds—freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, liberty—that kind of thing? The Bill, now—you shall have the Bill”—here Mr. Brooke paused a moment to fix on his eye-glass and take the paper from his breast-pocket, with a sense of being practical and coming to particulars. The invisible Punch followed:—

“You shall have the Bill, Mr. Brooke, per electioneering contest, and a seat outside Parliament as delivered, five thousand pounds, seven shillings, and fourpence.”

Mr. Brooke, amid the roars of laughter, turned red, let his eye-glass fall, and looking about him confusedly, saw the image of himself, which had come nearer. The next moment he saw it dolorously bespattered with eggs. His spirit rose a little, and his voice too.

“Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth—all that is very well”—here an unpleasant egg broke on Mr. Brooke’s shoulder, as the echo said, “All that is very well;” then came a hail of eggs, chiefly aimed at the image, but occasionally hitting the original, as if by chance. There was a stream of new men pushing among the crowd; whistles, yells, bellowings, and fifes made all the greater hubbub because there was shouting and struggling to put them down. No voice would have had wing enough to rise above the uproar, and Mr. Brooke, disagreeably anointed, stood his ground no longer. The frustration would have been less exasperating if it had been less gamesome and boyish: a serious assault of which the newspaper reporter “can aver that it endangered the learned gentleman’s ribs,” or can respectfully bear witness to “the soles of that gentleman’s boots having been visible above the railing,” has perhaps more consolations attached to it.

Mr. Brooke re-entered the committee-room, saying, as carelessly as he could, “This is a little too bad, you know. I should have got the ear of the people by-and-by—but they didn’t give me time. I should have gone into the Bill by-and-by, you know,” he added, glancing at Ladislaw. “However, things will come all right at the nomination.”

But it was not resolved unanimously that things would come right; on the contrary, the committee looked rather grim, and the political personage from Brassing was writing busily, as if he were brewing new devices.

“It was Bowyer who did it,” said Mr. Standish, evasively. “I know it as well as if he had been advertised. He’s uncommonly good at ventriloquism, and he did it uncommonly well, by God! Hawley has been having him to dinner lately: there’s a fund of talent in Bowyer.”

“Well, you know, you never mentioned him to me, Standish, else I would have invited him to dine,” said poor Mr. Brooke, who had gone through a great deal of inviting for the good of his country.

“There’s not a more paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer,” said Ladislaw, indignantly, “but it seems as if the paltry fellows were always to turn the scale.”

Will was thoroughly out of temper with himself as well as with his “principal,” and he went to shut himself in his rooms with a half-formed resolve to throw up the “Pioneer” and Mr. Brooke together. Why should he stay? If the impassable gulf between himself and Dorothea were ever to be filled up, it must rather be by his going away and getting into a thoroughly different position than by staying here and slipping into deserved contempt as an understrapper of Brooke’s. Then came the young dream of wonders that he might do—in five years, for example: political writing, political speaking, would get a higher value now public life was going to be wider and more national, and they might give him such distinction that he would not seem to be asking Dorothea to step down to him. Five years:—if he could only be sure that she cared for him more than for others; if he could only make her aware that he stood aloof until he could tell his love without lowering himself—then he could go away easily, and begin a career which at five-and-twenty seemed probable enough in the inward order of things, where talent brings fame, and fame everything else which is delightful. He could speak and he could write; he could master any subject if he chose, and he meant always to take the side of reason and justice, on which he would carry all his ardor. Why should he not one day be lifted above the shoulders of the crowd, and feel that he had won that eminence well? Without doubt he would leave Middlemarch, go to town, and make himself fit for celebrity by “eating his dinners.”

But not immediately: not until some kind of sign had passed between him and Dorothea. He could not be satisfied until she knew why, even if he were the man she would choose to marry, he would not marry her. Hence he must keep his post and bear with Mr. Brooke a little longer.

But he soon had reason to suspect that Mr. Brooke had anticipated him in the wish to break up their connection. Deputations without and voices within had concurred in inducing that philanthropist to take a stronger measure than usual for the good of mankind; namely, to withdraw in favor of another candidate, to whom he left the advantages of his canvassing machinery. He himself called this a strong measure, but observed that his health was less capable of sustaining excitement than he had imagined.

“I have felt uneasy about the chest—it won’t do to carry that too far,” he said to Ladislaw in explaining the affair. “I must pull up. Poor Casaubon was a warning, you know. I’ve made some heavy advances, but I’ve dug a channel. It’s rather coarse work—this electioneering, eh, Ladislaw? dare say you are tired of it. However, we have dug a channel with the ‘Pioneer’—put things in a track, and so on. 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, the quick color coming in his face, as he rose from the writing-table, and took a turn of three steps with his hands in his pockets. “I am ready to do so whenever you wish it.”

“As to wishing, my dear Ladislaw, I have the highest opinion of your powers, you know. But about the ‘Pioneer,’ I have been consulting a little with some of the men on our side, and they are inclined to take it into their hands—indemnify me to a certain extent—carry it on, in fact. And under the circumstances, you might like to give up—might find a better field. These people might not take that high view of you which I have always taken, as an alter ego, a right hand—though I always looked forward to your doing something else. I think of having a run into France. But I’ll write you any letters, you know—to Althorpe and people of that kind. I’ve met Althorpe.”

“I am exceedingly obliged to you,” said Ladislaw, proudly. “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 had left him Will said to himself, “The rest of the family have been urging him to get rid of me, and he doesn’t care now about my going. I shall stay as long as I like. I shall go of my own movements and not because they are afraid of me.”