Think what it must be to be pelted for wrong opinions. And I seem to remember a story of a man they pretended to chair and let him fall into a dust-heap on purpose!""Pelting is nothing to their finding holes in one's coat,"said the Rector. "I confess that's what I should be afraid of, if we parsons had to stand at the hustings for preferment.
I should be afraid of their reckoning up all my fishing days.
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.""The fact is," said Sir James, "if a man goes into public life he must be prepared for the consequences. He must make himself proof against calumny.""My dear Chettam, that is all very fine, you know," said Mr. Brooke.
"But how will you make yourself proof against calumny? You should read history--look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.
But what is that in Horace?--'fiat justitia, ruat . . .
something or other."
"Exactly," said Sir James, with a little more heat than usual.
"What I mean by being proof against calumny is being able to point to the fact as a contradiction.""And it is not martyrdom to pay bills that one has run into one's self,"said Mrs. Cadwallader.
But it was Sir James's evident annoyance that most stirred Mr. Brooke.
"Well, you know, Chettam," he said, rising, taking up his hat and leaning on his stick, "you and I have a different system.
You are all for outlay with your farms. I don't want to make out that my system is good under all circumstances--under all circumstances, you know.""There ought to be a new valuation made from time to time,"said Sir James. "Returns are very well occasionally, but Ilike 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."
