"I don't pretend to argue with a lady on politics," said Mr. Brooke,
with an air of smiling indifference, but feeling rather unpleasantly
conscious that this attack of Mrs. Cadwallader's had opened the
defensive campaign to which certain rash steps had exposed him. "Your
sex are not thinkers, you know--varium et mutabile semper--that kind of
thing. You don't know Virgil. I knew"--Mr. Brooke reflected in time
that he had not had the personal acquaintance of the Augustan poet--"I
was going to say, poor Stoddart, you know. That was what _he_ said.
You ladies are always against an independent attitude--a man's caring
for nothing but truth, and that sort of thing. And there is no part of
the county where opinion is narrower than it is here--I don't mean to
throw stones, you know, but somebody is wanted to take the independent
line; and if I don't take it, who will?"
"Who? Why, any upstart who has got neither blood nor position. People
of standing should consume their independent nonsense at home, not hawk
it about. And you! who are going to marry your niece, as good as your
daughter, to one of our best men. Sir James would be cruelly annoyed:
it will be too hard on him if you turn round now and make yourself a
Whig sign-board."
Mr. Brooke again winced inwardly, for Dorothea's engagement had no
sooner been decided, than he had thought of Mrs. Cadwallader's
prospective taunts. It might have been easy for ignorant observers to
say, "Quarrel with Mrs. Cadwallader;" but where is a country gentleman
to go who quarrels with his oldest neighbors? Who could taste the fine
flavor in the name of Brooke if it were delivered casually, like wine
without a seal? Certainly a man can only be cosmopolitan up to a
certain point.
"I hope Chettam and I shall always be good friends; but I am sorry to
say there is no prospect of his marrying my niece," said Mr. Brooke,
much relieved to see through the window that Celia was coming in.
"Why not?" said Mrs. Cadwallader, with a sharp note of surprise. "It
is hardly a fortnight since you and I were talking about it."
"My niece has chosen another suitor--has chosen him, you know. I have
had nothing to do with it. I should have preferred Chettam; and I
should have said Chettam was the man any girl would have chosen. But
there is no accounting for these things. Your sex is capricious, you
know."
"Why, whom do you mean to say that you are going to let her marry?"
Mrs. Cadwallader's mind was rapidly surveying the possibilities of
choice for Dorothea.