"That means mischief, eh?" said Mr. Hawley. "He's got the freak of
being a popular man now, after dangling about like a stray tortoise.
So much the worse for him. I've had my eye on him for some time. He
shall be prettily pumped upon. He's a damned bad landlord. What
business has an old county man to come currying favor with a low set of
dark-blue freemen? As to his paper, I only hope he may do the writing
himself. It would be worth our paying for."
"I understand he has got a very brilliant young fellow to edit it, who
can write the highest style of leading article, quite equal to anything
in the London papers. And he means to take very high ground on Reform."
"Let Brooke reform his rent-roll. He's a cursed old screw, and the
buildings all over his estate are going to rack. I suppose this young
fellow is some loose fish from London."
"His name is Ladislaw. He is said to be of foreign extraction."
"I know the sort," said Mr. Hawley; "some emissary. He'll begin with
flourishing about the Rights of Man and end with murdering a wench.
That's the style."
"You must concede that there are abuses, Hawley," said Mr. Hackbutt,
foreseeing some political disagreement with his family lawyer. "I
myself should never favor immoderate views--in fact I take my stand
with Huskisson--but I cannot blind myself to the consideration that the
non-representation of large towns--"
"Large towns be damned!" said Mr. Hawley, impatient of exposition. "I
know a little too much about Middlemarch elections. Let 'em quash
every pocket borough to-morrow, and bring in every mushroom town in the
kingdom--they'll only increase the expense of getting into Parliament.
I go upon facts."
Mr. Hawley's disgust at the notion of the "Pioneer" being edited by an
emissary, and of Brooke becoming actively political--as if a tortoise
of desultory pursuits should protrude its small head ambitiously and
become rampant--was hardly equal to the annoyance felt by some members
of Mr. Brooke's own family. The result had oozed forth gradually, like
the discovery that your neighbor has set up an unpleasant kind of
manufacture which will be permanently under your nostrils without legal
remedy. The "Pioneer" had been secretly bought even before Will
Ladislaw's arrival, the expected opportunity having offered itself in
the readiness of the proprietor to part with a valuable property which
did not pay; and in the interval since Mr. Brooke had written his
invitation, those germinal ideas of making his mind tell upon the world
at large which had been present in him from his younger years, but had
hitherto lain in some obstruction, had been sprouting under cover.