But whether he should succeed in that mode of contributing to the
majority on the right side was very doubtful to him. He had written
out various speeches and memoranda for speeches, but he had begun to
perceive that Mr. Brooke's mind, if it had the burthen of remembering
any train of thought, would let it drop, run away in search of it, and
not easily come back again. To collect documents is one mode of
serving your country, and to remember the contents of a document is
another. No! the only way in which Mr. Brooke could be coerced into
thinking of the right arguments at the right time was to be well plied
with them till they took up all the room in his brain. But here there
was the difficulty of finding room, so many things having been taken in
beforehand. Mr. Brooke himself observed that his ideas stood rather in
his way when he was speaking.
However, Ladislaw's coaching was forthwith to be put to the test, for
before the day of nomination Mr. Brooke was to explain himself to the
worthy electors of Middlemarch from the balcony of the White Hart,
which looked out advantageously at an angle of the market-place,
commanding a large area in front and two converging streets. It was a
fine May morning, and everything seemed hopeful: there was some
prospect of an understanding between Bagster's committee and Brooke's,
to which Mr. Bulstrode, Mr. Standish as a Liberal lawyer, and such
manufacturers as Mr. Plymdale and Mr. Vincy, gave a solidity which
almost counterbalanced Mr. Hawley and his associates who sat for
Pinkerton at the Green Dragon. Mr. Brooke, conscious of having
weakened the blasts of the "Trumpet" against him, by his reforms as a
landlord in the last half year, and hearing himself cheered a little as
he drove into the town, felt his heart tolerably light under his
buff-colored waistcoat. But with regard to critical occasions, it
often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.
"This looks well, eh?" said Mr. Brooke as the crowd gathered. "I shall
have a good audience, at any rate. I like this, now--this kind of
public made up of one's own neighbors, you know."
The weavers and tanners of Middlemarch, unlike Mr. Mawmsey, had never
thought of Mr. Brooke as a neighbor, and were not more attached to him
than if he had been sent in a box from London. But they listened
without much disturbance to the speakers who introduced the candidate,
one of them--a political personage from Brassing, who came to tell
Middlemarch its duty--spoke so fully, that it was alarming to think
what the candidate could find to say after him. Meanwhile the crowd
became denser, and as the political personage neared the end of his
speech, Mr. Brooke felt a remarkable change in his sensations while he
still handled his eye-glass, trifled with documents before him, and
exchanged remarks with his committee, as a man to whom the moment of
summons was indifferent.