“There ought to be a new valuation made from
time to time,” said Sir James. “Returns
are very well occasionally, but I like a fair valuation.
What do you say, Cadwallader?”
“I agree with you. If I were Brooke, I
would choke the `Trumpet’ at once by getting
Garth to make a new valuation of the farms, and giving
him carte blanche about gates and repairs: that’s
my view of the political situation,” said the
Rector, broadening himself by sticking his thumbs
in his armholes, and laughing towards Mr. Brooke.
“That’s a showy sort of thing to do, you
know,” said Mr. Brooke. “But I should
like you to tell me of another landlord who has distressed
his tenants for arrears as little as I have.
I let the old tenants stay on. I’m uncommonly
easy, let me tell you, uncommonly easy. I have
my own ideas, and I take my stand on them, you know.
A man who does that is always charged with eccentricity,
inconsistency, and that kind of thing. When I
change my line of action, I shall follow my own ideas.”
After that, Mr. Brooke remembered that there was a
packet which he had omitted to send off from the Grange,
and he bade everybody hurriedly good-by.
“I didn’t want to take a liberty with
Brooke,” said Sir James; “I see he is
nettled. But as to what he says about old tenants,
in point of fact no new tenant would take the farms
on the present terms.”
“I have a notion that he will be brought round
in time,” said the Rector. “But
you were pulling one way, Elinor, and we were pulling
another. You wanted to frighten him away from
expense, and we want to frighten him into it.
Better let him try to be popular and see that his
character as a landlord stands in his way. I
don’t think it signifies two straws about the
`Pioneer,’ or Ladislaw, or Brooke’s speechifying
to the Middlemarchers. But it does signify about
the parishioners in Tipton being comfortable.”
“Excuse me, it is you two who are on the wrong
tack,” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “You
should have proved to him that he loses money by bad
management, and then we should all have pulled together.
If you put him a-horseback on politics, I warn you
of the consequences. It was all very well to
ride on sticks at home and call them ideas.”
“If, as I have, you
also doe,
Vertue attired
in woman see,
And dare love that,
and say so too,
And forget
the He and She;
And if this love, though placed
so,
From prophane men you hide,
Which will no faith on this bestow,
Or, if they doe, deride:
Then you have done a braver thing
Than all the Worthies did,
And a braver thence will spring,
Which is, to keep that hid.”
—DR. DONNE.
Sir James Chettam’s mind was not fruitful in
devices, but his growing anxiety to “act on
Brooke,” once brought close to his constant
belief in Dorothea’s capacity for influence,
became formative, and issued in a little plan; namely,
to plead Celia’s indisposition as a reason for
fetching Dorothea by herself to the Hall, and to leave
her at the Grange with the carriage on the way, after
making her fully aware of the situation concerning
the management of the estate.
