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Ever since that important new arrival in Middlemarch she had woven a little future, of which something like this scene was the necessary beginning. Strangers, whether wrecked and clinging to a raft, or duly escorted and accompanied by portmanteaus, have always had a circumstantial fascination for the virgin mind, against which native merit has urged itself in vain.
It came shortly before the memorable meeting at the town-hall, and was nothing less than a letter from Will Ladislaw to Lydgate, which turned indeed chiefly on his new interest in plans of colonization, but mentioned incidentally, that he might find it necessary to pay a visit to Middlemarch within the next few weeks a very pleasant necessity, he said, almost as good as holidays to a schoolboy.
Brooke, when he purposed to contest the Borough of Middlemarch, found Will Ladislaw extremely useful, because he "remembered what the right quotations are Omne tulit punctum, and that sort of thing." And certainly an apt quotation is one of the most effective decorations of a public speech; but the dangers of inappositeness are correspondingly formidable.
"Is there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch who would question himself as I do?" said poor Lydgate, with a renewed outburst of rebellion against the oppression of his lot. "And yet they will all feel warranted in making a wide space between me and them, as if I were a leper! My practice and my reputation are utterly damned I can see that.
He had conquered himself so far, and was about to speak with a sense of solemnity, as on an occasion which was not to be repeated. He had even opened his lips, when Rosamond, letting her hands fall, looked at him and said "Surely, Tertius " "Well?" "Surely now at last you have given up the idea of staying in Middlemarch. I cannot go on living here. Let us go to London.
To elect a professed Tory would have been an impossibility, so the person fixed upon to oppose him was one whom the author of "Middlemarch" might have had in her eye when she described Sir James Chettam as "a man of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions and uncertain vote." His name was Edward William Thomson, and he professed to be a moderate Reformer.
This second cousin was a Middlemarch mercer of polite manners and superfluous aspirates.
He is very fond of Natural History and various scientific matters, and he is hampered in reconciling these tastes with his position. He has no money to spare hardly enough to use; and that has led him into card-playing Middlemarch is a great place for whist. He does play for money, and he wins a good deal.
"I have been inquiring into the thing, for I've never known anything about Middlemarch politics before the county being my business. What Brooke trusts to, is that they are going to turn out Oliver because he is a Peelite.
It gives me an opportunity of doing some good work, and I am aware that I have to justify his choice of me. But the consequence is, that the whole profession in Middlemarch have set themselves tooth and nail against the Hospital, and not only refuse to cooperate themselves, but try to blacken the whole affair and hinder subscriptions." "How very petty!" exclaimed Dorothea, indignantly.
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