Lydgate, inclined to be sarcastic on the superstitious faith of the people in the efficacy of "the bill," while nobody cared about the low state of pathology, sometimes assailed Will with troublesome questions.
One evening in March, Rosamond in her cherry-colored dress with swansdown trimming about the throat sat at the tea-table; Lydgate, lately come in tired from his outdoor work, was seated sideways on an easy-chair by the fire with one leg over the elbow, his brow looking a little troubled as his eyes rambled over the columns of the "Pioneer," while Rosamond, having noticed that he was perturbed, avoided looking at him, and inwardly thanked heaven that she herself had not a moody disposition. Will Ladislaw was stretched on the rug contemplating the curtain-pole abstractedly, and humming very low the notes of "When first I saw thy face;" while the house spaniel, also stretched out with small choice of room, looked from between his paws at the usurper of the rug with silent but strong objection.
Rosamond bringing Lydgate his cup of tea, he threw down the paper, and said to Will, who had started up and gone to the table--"It's no use your puffing Brooke as a reforming landlord, Ladislaw:
they only pick the more holes in his coat in the `Trumpet.'""No matter; those who read the `Pioneer' don't read the `Trumpet,'"said Will, swallowing his tea and walking about. "Do you suppose the public reads with a view to its own conversion? We should have a witches'
brewing with a vengeance then--`Mingle, mingle, mingle, mingle, You that mingle may'--and nobody would know which side he was going to take.""Farebrother says, he doesn't believe Brooke would get elected if the opportunity came: the very men who profess to be for him would bring another member out of the bag at the right moment.""There's no harm in trying. It's good to have resident members.""Why?" said Lydgate, who was much given to use that inconvenient word in a curt tone.
"They represent the local stupidity better," said Will, laughing, and shaking his curls; "and they are kept on their best behavior in the neighborhood. Brooke is not a bad fellow, but he has done some good things on his estate that he never would have done but for this Parliamentary bite.""He's not fitted to be a public man," said Lydgate, with contemptuous decision. "He would disappoint everybody who counted on him: I can see that at the Hospital.
Only, there Bulstrode holds the reins and drives him.""That depends on how you fix your standard of public men," said Will.
"He's good enough for the occasion: when the people have made up their mind as they are making it up now, they don't want a man--they only want a vote."
"That is the way with you political writers, Ladislaw--crying up a measure as if it were a universal cure, and crying up men who are a part of the very disease that wants curing.""Why not? Men may help to cure themselves off the face of the land without knowing it," said Will, who could find reasons impromptu, when he had not thought of a question beforehand.
"That is no excuse for encouraging the superstitious exaggeration of hopes about this particular measure, helping the cry to swallow it whole and to send up voting popinjays who are good for nothing but to carry it. You go against rottenness, and there is nothing more thoroughly rotten than making people believe that society can be cured by a political hocus-pocus.""That's very fine, my dear fellow. But your cure must begin somewhere, and put it that a thousand things which debase a population can never be reformed without this particular reform to begin with.