Chapter II. Mr Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Tom
Chapter III. Mr Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom
Chapter IV. Tom Is Expected
Chapter V. Tom Comes Home
Chapter VI. The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming
Chapter VII. Enter the Aunts and Uncles
Chapter VIII. Mr Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side
Chapter IX. To Garum Firs
Chapter X. Maggie Behaves Worse Than She Expected
Chapter XI. Maggie Tries to Run away from Her Shadow
Chapter XII. Mr and Mrs Glegg at Home
Chapter XIII. Mr Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life
BOOK SECOND. SCHOOL-TIME.
Chapter I. Tom’s “First Half”
Chapter II. The Christmas Holidays
Chapter III. The New Schoolfellow
Chapter IV. “The Young Idea”
Chapter V. Maggie’s Second Visit
Chapter VI. A Love-Scene
Chapter VII. The Golden Gates Are Passed
BOOK THIRD. THE DOWNFALL.
Chapter I. What Had Happened at Home
Chapter II. Mrs Tulliver’s Teraphim, or Household Gods
Chapter III. The Family Council
Chapter IV. A Vanishing Gleam
Chapter V. Tom Applies His Knife to the Oyster
Chapter VI. Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-Knife
Chapter VII. How a Hen Takes to Stratagem
Chapter VIII. Daylight on the Wreck
Chapter IX. An Item Added to the Family Register
BOOK FOURTH. THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION.
Chapter I. A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet
Chapter II. The Torn Nest Is Pierced by the Thorns
Chapter III. A Voice from the Past
BOOK FIFTH. WHEAT AND TARES.
Chapter I. In the Red Deeps
Chapter II. Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob’s Thumb
Chapter III. The Wavering Balance
Chapter IV. Another Love-Scene
Chapter V. The Cloven Tree
Chapter VI. The Hard-Won Triumph
Chapter VII. A Day of Reckoning
BOOK SIXTH. THE GREAT TEMPTATION.
Chapter I. A Duet in Paradise
Chapter II. First Impressions
Chapter III. Confidential Moments
Chapter IV. Brother and Sister
Chapter V. Showing That Tom Had Opened the Oyster
Chapter VI. Illustrating the Laws of Attraction
Chapter VII. Philip Re-enters
Chapter VIII. Wakem in a New Light
Chapter IX. Charity in Full-Dress
Chapter X. The Spell Seems Broken
Chapter XI. In the Lane
Chapter XII. A Family Party
Chapter XIII. Borne Along by the Tide
Chapter XIV. Waking
BOOK SEVENTH. THE FINAL RESCUE.
Chapter I. The Return to the Mill
Chapter II. St Ogg’s Passes Judgment
Chapter III. Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us
Chapter IV. Maggie and Lucy
Chapter V. The Last Conflict
BOOK FIRST
BOY AND GIRL.
Chapter I.
Outside Dorlcote Mill
A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green
banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its
passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black
ships—laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of
oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal—are borne along to
the town of St Ogg’s, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the
broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the
river-brink, tingeing the water with a soft purple hue under the
transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch
the rich pastures, and the patches of dark earth made ready for the
seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of
the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn. There is a remnant still of last
year’s golden clusters of beehive-ricks rising at intervals beyond the
hedgerows; and everywhere the hedgerows are studded with trees; the
distant ships seem to be lifting their masts and stretching their
red-brown sails close among the branches of the spreading ash. Just by
the red-roofed town the tributary Ripple flows with a lively current
into the Floss. How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing
wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along
the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice, as to the voice of one
who is deaf and loving. I remember those large dipping willows. I
remember the stone bridge.
And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two here on the
bridge and look at it, though the clouds are threatening, and it is far
on in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of departing February
it is pleasant to look at,—perhaps the chill, damp season adds a charm
to the trimly kept, comfortable dwelling-house, as old as the elms and
chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast. The stream is
brimful now, and lies high in this little withy plantation, and half
drowns the grassy fringe of the croft in front of the house. As I look
at the full stream, the vivid grass, the delicate bright-green powder
softening the outline of the great trunks and branches that gleam from
under the bare purple boughs, I am in love with moistness, and envy the
white ducks that are dipping their heads far into the water here among
the withes, unmindful of the awkward appearance they make in the drier
world above.
The rush of the water and the booming of the mill bring a dreamy
deafness, which seems to heighten the peacefulness of the scene. They
are like a great curtain of sound, shutting one out from the world
beyond. And now there is the thunder of the huge covered wagon coming
home with sacks of grain. That honest wagoner is thinking of his
dinner, getting sadly dry in the oven at this late hour; but he will
not touch it till he has fed his horses,—the strong, submissive,
meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at him from
between their blinkers, that he should crack his whip at them in that
awful manner as if they needed that hint! See how they stretch their
shoulders up the slope toward the bridge, with all the more energy
because they are so near home. Look at their grand shaggy feet that
seem to grasp the firm earth, at the patient strength of their necks,
bowed under the heavy collar, at the mighty muscles of their struggling
haunches! I should like well to hear them neigh over their
hardly-earned feed of corn, and see them, with their moist necks freed
from the harness, dipping their eager nostrils into the muddy pond. Now
they are on the bridge, and down they go again at a swifter pace, and
the arch of the covered wagon disappears at the turning behind the
trees.
Now I can turn my eyes toward the mill again, and watch the unresting
wheel sending out its diamond jets of water. That little girl is
watching it too; she has been standing on just the same spot at the
edge of the water ever since I paused on the bridge. And that queer
white cur with the brown ear seems to be leaping and barking in
ineffectual remonstrance with the wheel; perhaps he is jealous because
his playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so rapt in its movement. It is
time the little playfellow went in, I think; and there is a very bright
fire to tempt her: the red light shines out under the deepening gray of
the sky. It is time, too, for me to leave off resting my arms on the
cold stone of this bridge....
Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been pressing my elbows on the
arms of my chair, and dreaming that I was standing on the bridge in
front of Dorlcote Mill, as it looked one February afternoon many years
ago. Before I dozed off, I was going to tell you what Mr and Mrs
Tulliver were talking about, as they sat by the bright fire in the
left-hand parlour, on that very afternoon I have been dreaming of.
Chapter II.
Mr Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Tom
“What I want, you know,” said Mr Tulliver,—“what I want is to give Tom
a good eddication; an eddication as’ll be a bread to him. That was what
I was thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave the academy at
Lady-day. I mean to put him to a downright good school at Midsummer.
The two years at th’ academy ’ud ha’ done well enough, if I’d meant to
make a miller and farmer of him, for he’s had a fine sight more
schoolin’ nor _I_ ever got. All the learnin’ _my_ father ever paid for
was a bit o’ birch at one end and the alphabet at th’ other. But I
should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard, so as he might be up to the
tricks o’ these fellows as talk fine and write with a flourish. It ’ud
be a help to me wi’ these lawsuits, and arbitrations, and things. I
wouldn’t make a downright lawyer o’ the lad,—I should be sorry for him
to be a raskill,—but a sort o’ engineer, or a surveyor, or an
auctioneer and vallyer, like Riley, or one o’ them smartish businesses
as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big watch-chain and a high
stool. They’re pretty nigh all one, and they’re not far off being even
wi’ the law, _I_ believe; for Riley looks Lawyer Wakem i’ the face as
hard as one cat looks another. _He’s_ none frightened at him.”
Mr Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blond comely woman in a
fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to think how long it is since fan-shaped
caps were worn, they must be so near coming in again. At that time,
when Mrs Tulliver was nearly forty, they were new at St Ogg’s, and
considered sweet things).
“Well, Mr Tulliver, you know best: _I’ve_ no objections. But hadn’t I
better kill a couple o’ fowl, and have th’ aunts and uncles to dinner
next week, so as you may hear what sister Glegg and sister Pullet have
got to say about it? There’s a couple o’ fowl _wants_ killing!”
“You may kill every fowl i’ the yard if you like, Bessy; but I shall
ask neither aunt nor uncle what I’m to do wi’ my own lad,” said Mr
Tulliver, defiantly.
“Dear heart!” said Mrs Tulliver, shocked at this sanguinary rhetoric,
“how can you talk so, Mr Tulliver? But it’s your way to speak
disrespectful o’ my family; and sister Glegg throws all the blame upo’
me, though I’m sure I’m as innocent as the babe unborn. For nobody’s
ever heard me say as it wasn’t lucky for my children to have aunts and
uncles as can live independent. Howiver, if Tom’s to go to a new
school, I should like him to go where I can wash him and mend him; else
he might as well have calico as linen, for they’d be one as yallow as
th’ other before they’d been washed half-a-dozen times. And then, when
the box is goin’ back’ard and forrard, I could send the lad a cake, or
a pork-pie, or an apple; for he can do with an extry bit, bless him!
whether they stint him at the meals or no. My children can eat as much
victuals as most, thank God!”
“Well, well, we won’t send him out o’ reach o’ the carrier’s cart, if
other things fit in,” said Mr Tulliver. “But you mustn’t put a spoke i’
the wheel about the washin,’ if we can’t get a school near enough.
That’s the fault I have to find wi’ you, Bessy; if you see a stick i’
the road, you’re allays thinkin’ you can’t step over it. You’d want me
not to hire a good wagoner, ’cause he’d got a mole on his face.”
“Dear heart!” said Mrs Tulliver, in mild surprise, “when did I iver
make objections to a man because he’d got a mole on his face? I’m sure
I’m rether fond o’ the moles; for my brother, as is dead an’ gone, had
a mole on his brow. But I can’t remember your iver offering to hire a
wagoner with a mole, Mr Tulliver. There was John Gibbs hadn’t a mole on
his face no more nor you have, an’ I was all for having you hire _him_;
an’ so you did hire him, an’ if he hadn’t died o’ th’ inflammation, as
we paid Dr Turnbull for attending him, he’d very like ha’ been drivin’
the wagon now. He might have a mole somewhere out o’ sight, but how was
I to know that, Mr Tulliver?”
“No, no, Bessy; I didn’t mean justly the mole; I meant it to stand for
summat else; but niver mind—it’s puzzling work, talking is. What I’m
thinking on, is how to find the right sort o’ school to send Tom to,
for I might be ta’en in again, as I’ve been wi’ th’ academy. I’ll have
nothing to do wi’ a ’cademy again: whativer school I send Tom to, it
sha’n’t be a ’cademy; it shall be a place where the lads spend their
time i’ summat else besides blacking the family’s shoes, and getting up
the potatoes. It’s an uncommon puzzling thing to know what school to
pick.”
Mr Tulliver paused a minute or two, and dived with both hands into his
breeches pockets as if he hoped to find some suggestion there.
Apparently he was not disappointed, for he presently said, “I know what
I’ll do: I’ll talk it over wi’ Riley; he’s coming to-morrow, t’
arbitrate about the dam.”
“Well, Mr Tulliver, I’ve put the sheets out for the best bed, and
Kezia’s got ’em hanging at the fire. They aren’t the best sheets, but
they’re good enough for anybody to sleep in, be he who he will; for as
for them best Holland sheets, I should repent buying ’em, only they’ll
do to lay us out in. An’ if you was to die to-morrow, Mr Tulliver,
they’re mangled beautiful, an’ all ready, an’ smell o’ lavender as it
’ud be a pleasure to lay ’em out; an’ they lie at the left-hand corner
o’ the big oak linen-chest at the back: not as I should trust anybody
to look ’em out but myself.”
As Mrs Tulliver uttered the last sentence, she drew a bright bunch of
keys from her pocket, and singled out one, rubbing her thumb and finger
up and down it with a placid smile while she looked at the clear fire.
If Mr Tulliver had been a susceptible man in his conjugal relation, he
might have supposed that she drew out the key to aid her imagination in
anticipating the moment when he would be in a state to justify the
production of the best Holland sheets. Happily he was not so; he was
only susceptible in respect of his right to water-power; moreover, he
had the marital habit of not listening very closely, and since his
mention of Mr Riley, had been apparently occupied in a tactile
examination of his woollen stockings.
“I think I’ve hit it, Bessy,” was his first remark after a short
silence. “Riley’s as likely a man as any to know o’ some school; he’s
had schooling himself, an’ goes about to all sorts o’ places,
arbitratin’ and vallyin’ and that. And we shall have time to talk it
over to-morrow night when the business is done. I want Tom to be such a
sort o’ man as Riley, you know,—as can talk pretty nigh as well as if
it was all wrote out for him, and knows a good lot o’ words as don’t
mean much, so as you can’t lay hold of ’em i’ law; and a good solid
knowledge o’ business too.”
“Well,” said Mrs Tulliver, “so far as talking proper, and knowing
everything, and walking with a bend in his back, and setting his hair
up, I shouldn’t mind the lad being brought up to that. But them
fine-talking men from the big towns mostly wear the false shirt-fronts;
they wear a frill till it’s all a mess, and then hide it with a bib; I
know Riley does. And then, if Tom’s to go and live at Mudport, like
Riley, he’ll have a house with a kitchen hardly big enough to turn in,
an’ niver get a fresh egg for his breakfast, an’ sleep up three pair o’
stairs,—or four, for what I know,—and be burnt to death before he can
get down.”
“No, no,” said Mr Tulliver, “I’ve no thoughts of his going to Mudport:
I mean him to set up his office at St Ogg’s, close by us, an’ live at
home. But,” continued Mr Tulliver after a pause, “what I’m a bit afraid
on is, as Tom hasn’t got the right sort o’ brains for a smart fellow. I
doubt he’s a bit slowish. He takes after your family, Bessy.”
“Yes, that he does,” said Mrs Tulliver, accepting the last proposition
entirely on its own merits; “he’s wonderful for liking a deal o’ salt
in his broth. That was my brother’s way, and my father’s before him.”
“It seems a bit a pity, though,” said Mr Tulliver, “as the lad should
take after the mother’s side instead o’ the little wench. That’s the
worst on’t wi’ crossing o’ breeds: you can never justly calkilate
what’ll come on’t. The little un takes after my side, now: she’s twice
as ’cute as Tom. Too ’cute for a woman, I’m afraid,” continued Mr
Tulliver, turning his head dubiously first on one side and then on the
other. “It’s no mischief much while she’s a little un; but an
over-’cute woman’s no better nor a long-tailed sheep,—she’ll fetch none
the bigger price for that.”
“Yes, it _is_ a mischief while she’s a little un, Mr Tulliver, for it
runs to naughtiness. How to keep her in a clean pinafore two hours
together passes my cunning. An’ now you put me i’ mind,” continued Mrs
Tulliver, rising and going to the window, “I don’t know where she is
now, an’ it’s pretty nigh tea-time. Ah, I thought so,—wanderin’ up an’
down by the water, like a wild thing: She’ll tumble in some day.”
Mrs Tulliver rapped the window sharply, beckoned, and shook her head,—a
process which she repeated more than once before she returned to her
chair.
“You talk o’ ’cuteness, Mr Tulliver,” she observed as she sat down,
“but I’m sure the child’s half an idiot i’ some things; for if I send
her upstairs to fetch anything, she forgets what she’s gone for, an’
perhaps ’ull sit down on the floor i’ the sunshine an’ plait her hair
an’ sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur’, all the while I’m waiting
for her downstairs. That niver run i’ my family, thank God! no more nor
a brown skin as makes her look like a mulatter. I don’t like to fly i’
the face o’ Providence, but it seems hard as I should have but one
gell, an’ her so comical.”
“Pooh, nonsense!” said Mr Tulliver; “she’s a straight, black-eyed wench
as anybody need wish to see. I don’t know i’ what she’s behind other
folks’s children; and she can read almost as well as the parson.”
“But her hair won’t curl all I can do with it, and she’s so franzy
about having it put i’ paper, and I’ve such work as never was to make
her stand and have it pinched with th’ irons.”
“Cut it off—cut it off short,” said the father, rashly.
“How can you talk so, Mr Tulliver? She’s too big a gell—gone nine, and
tall of her age—to have her hair cut short; an’ there’s her cousin
Lucy’s got a row o’ curls round her head, an’ not a hair out o’ place.
It seems hard as my sister Deane should have that pretty child; I’m
sure Lucy takes more after me nor my own child does. Maggie, Maggie,”
continued the mother, in a tone of half-coaxing fretfulness, as this
small mistake of nature entered the room, “where’s the use o’ my
telling you to keep away from the water? You’ll tumble in and be
drownded some day, an’ then you’ll be sorry you didn’t do as mother
told you.”
Maggie’s hair, as she threw off her bonnet, painfully confirmed her
mother’s accusation. Mrs Tulliver, desiring her daughter to have a
curled crop, “like other folks’s children,” had had it cut too short in
front to be pushed behind the ears; and as it was usually straight an
hour after it had been taken out of paper, Maggie was incessantly
tossing her head to keep the dark, heavy locks out of her gleaming
black eyes,—an action which gave her very much the air of a small
Shetland pony.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear, Maggie, what are you thinkin’ of, to throw your
bonnet down there? Take it upstairs, there’s a good gell, an’ let your
hair be brushed, an’ put your other pinafore on, an’ change your shoes,
do, for shame; an’ come an’ go on with your patchwork, like a little
lady.”
“Oh, mother,” said Maggie, in a vehemently cross tone, “I don’t _want_
to do my patchwork.”
“What! not your pretty patchwork, to make a counterpane for your aunt
Glegg?”
“It’s foolish work,” said Maggie, with a toss of her mane,—“tearing
things to pieces to sew ’em together again. And I don’t want to do
anything for my aunt Glegg. I don’t like her.”
Exit Maggie, dragging her bonnet by the string, while Mr Tulliver
laughs audibly.
“I wonder at you, as you’ll laugh at her, Mr Tulliver,” said the
mother, with feeble fretfulness in her tone. “You encourage her i’
naughtiness. An’ her aunts will have it as it’s me spoils her.”
Mrs Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered person,—never cried,
when she was a baby, on any slighter ground than hunger and pins; and
from the cradle upward had been healthy, fair, plump, and dull-witted;
in short, the flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But milk
and mildness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn
only a little sour, they may disagree with young stomachs seriously. I
have often wondered whether those early Madonnas of Raphael, with the
blond faces and somewhat stupid expression, kept their placidity
undisturbed when their strong-limbed, strong-willed boys got a little
too old to do without clothing. I think they must have been given to
feeble remonstrance, getting more and more peevish as it became more
and more ineffectual.
Chapter III.
Mr Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom
The gentleman in the ample white cravat and shirt-frill, taking his
brandy-and-water so pleasantly with his good friend Tulliver, is Mr
Riley, a gentleman with a waxen complexion and fat hands, rather highly
educated for an auctioneer and appraiser, but large-hearted enough to
show a great deal of _bonhomie_ toward simple country acquaintances of
hospitable habits. Mr Riley spoke of such acquaintances kindly as
“people of the old school.”
The conversation had come to a pause. Mr Tulliver, not without a
particular reason, had abstained from a seventh recital of the cool
retort by which Riley had shown himself too many for Dix, and how Wakem
had had his comb cut for once in his life, now the business of the dam
had been settled by arbitration, and how there never would have been
any dispute at all about the height of water if everybody was what they
should be, and Old Harry hadn’t made the lawyers. Mr Tulliver was, on
the whole, a man of safe traditional opinions; but on one or two points
he had trusted to his unassisted intellect, and had arrived at several
questionable conclusions; amongst the rest, that rats, weevils, and
lawyers were created by Old Harry. Unhappily he had no one to tell him
that this was rampant Manichæism, else he might have seen his error.
But to-day it was clear that the good principle was triumphant: this
affair of the water-power had been a tangled business somehow, for all
it seemed—look at it one way—as plain as water’s water; but, big a
puzzle as it was, it hadn’t got the better of Riley. Mr Tulliver took
his brandy-and-water a little stronger than usual, and, for a man who
might be supposed to have a few hundreds lying idle at his banker’s,
was rather incautiously open in expressing his high estimate of his
friend’s business talents.
But the dam was a subject of conversation that would keep; it could
always be taken up again at the same point, and exactly in the same
condition; and there was another subject, as you know, on which Mr
Tulliver was in pressing want of Mr Riley’s advice. This was his
particular reason for remaining silent for a short space after his last
draught, and rubbing his knees in a meditative manner. He was not a man
to make an abrupt transition. This was a puzzling world, as he often
said, and if you drive your wagon in a hurry, you may light on an
awkward corner. Mr Riley, meanwhile, was not impatient. Why should he
be? Even Hotspur, one would think, must have been patient in his
slippers on a warm hearth, taking copious snuff, and sipping gratuitous
brandy-and-water.
“There’s a thing I’ve got i’ my head,” said Mr Tulliver at last, in
rather a lower tone than usual, as he turned his head and looked
steadfastly at his companion.
“Ah!” said Mr Riley, in a tone of mild interest. He was a man with
heavy waxen eyelids and high-arched eyebrows, looking exactly the same
under all circumstances. This immovability of face, and the habit of
taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an answer, made him trebly
oracular to Mr Tulliver.
“It’s a very particular thing,” he went on; “it’s about my boy Tom.”
At the sound of this name, Maggie, who was seated on a low stool close
by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, shook her heavy hair
back and looked up eagerly. There were few sounds that roused Maggie
when she was dreaming over her book, but Tom’s name served as well as
the shrillest whistle; in an instant she was on the watch, with
gleaming eyes, like a Skye terrier suspecting mischief, or at all
events determined to fly at any one who threatened it toward Tom.
“You see, I want to put him to a new school at Midsummer,” said Mr
Tulliver; “he’s comin’ away from the ’cademy at Lady-day, an’ I shall
let him run loose for a quarter; but after that I want to send him to a
downright good school, where they’ll make a scholard of him.”
“Well,” said Mr Riley, “there’s no greater advantage you can give him
than a good education. Not,” he added, with polite significance,—“not
that a man can’t be an excellent miller and farmer, and a shrewd,
sensible fellow into the bargain, without much help from the
schoolmaster.”
“I believe you,” said Mr Tulliver, winking, and turning his head on one
side; “but that’s where it is. I don’t _mean_ Tom to be a miller and
farmer. I see no fun i’ that. Why, if I made him a miller an’ farmer,
he’d be expectin’ to take to the mill an’ the land, an’ a-hinting at me
as it was time for me to lay by an’ think o’ my latter end. Nay, nay,
I’ve seen enough o’ that wi’ sons. I’ll never pull my coat off before I
go to bed. I shall give Tom an eddication an’ put him to a business, as
he may make a nest for himself, an’ not want to push me out o’ mine.
Pretty well if he gets it when I’m dead an’ gone. I sha’n’t be put off
wi’ spoon-meat afore I’ve lost my teeth.”
This was evidently a point on which Mr Tulliver felt strongly; and the
impetus which had given unusual rapidity and emphasis to his speech
showed itself still unexhausted for some minutes afterward in a defiant
motion of the head from side to side, and an occasional “Nay, nay,”
like a subsiding growl.
These angry symptoms were keenly observed by Maggie, and cut her to the
quick. Tom, it appeared, was supposed capable of turning his father out
of doors, and of making the future in some way tragic by his
wickedness. This was not to be borne; and Maggie jumped up from her
stool, forgetting all about her heavy book, which fell with a bang
within the fender, and going up between her father’s knees, said, in a
half-crying, half-indignant voice,—
“Father, Tom wouldn’t be naughty to you ever; I know he wouldn’t.”
Mrs Tulliver was out of the room superintending a choice supper-dish,
and Mr Tulliver’s heart was touched; so Maggie was not scolded about
the book. Mr Riley quietly picked it up and looked at it, while the
father laughed, with a certain tenderness in his hard-lined face, and
patted his little girl on the back, and then held her hands and kept
her between his knees.
“What! they mustn’t say any harm o’ Tom, eh?” said Mr Tulliver, looking
at Maggie with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr
Riley, as though Maggie couldn’t hear, “She understands what one’s
talking about so as never was. And you should hear her read,—straight
off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at her book! But
it’s bad—it’s bad,” Mr Tulliver added sadly, checking this blamable
exultation. “A woman’s no business wi’ being so clever; it’ll turn to
trouble, I doubt. But bless you!”—here the exultation was clearly
recovering the mastery,—“she’ll read the books and understand ’em
better nor half the folks as are growed up.”
Maggie’s cheeks began to flush with triumphant excitement. She thought
Mr Riley would have a respect for her now; it had been evident that he
thought nothing of her before.
Mr Riley was turning over the leaves of the book, and she could make
nothing of his face, with its high-arched eyebrows; but he presently
looked at her, and said,—
“Come, come and tell me something about this book; here are some
pictures,—I want to know what they mean.”
Maggie, with deepening colour, went without hesitation to Mr Riley’s
elbow and looked over the book, eagerly seizing one corner, and tossing
back her mane, while she said,—
“Oh, I’ll tell you what that means. It’s a dreadful picture, isn’t it?
But I can’t help looking at it. That old woman in the water’s a
witch,—they’ve put her in to find out whether she’s a witch or no; and
if she swims she’s a witch, and if she’s drowned—and killed, you
know—she’s innocent, and not a witch, but only a poor silly old woman.
But what good would it do her then, you know, when she was drowned?
Only, I suppose, she’d go to heaven, and God would make it up to her.
And this dreadful blacksmith with his arms akimbo, laughing,—oh, isn’t
he ugly?—I’ll tell you what he is. He’s the Devil _really_” (here
Maggie’s voice became louder and more emphatic), “and not a right
blacksmith; for the Devil takes the shape of wicked men, and walks
about and sets people doing wicked things, and he’s oftener in the
shape of a bad man than any other, because, you know, if people saw he
was the Devil, and he roared at ’em, they’d run away, and he couldn’t
make ’em do what he pleased.”
Mr Tulliver had listened to this exposition of Maggie’s with petrifying
wonder.
“Why, what book is it the wench has got hold on?” he burst out at last.
“‘The History of the Devil,’ by Daniel Defoe,—not quite the right book
for a little girl,” said Mr Riley. “How came it among your books, Mr
Tulliver?”
Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her father said,—
“Why, it’s one o’ the books I bought at Partridge’s sale. They was all
bound alike,—it’s a good binding, you see,—and I thought they’d be all
good books. There’s Jeremy Taylor’s ‘Holy Living and Dying’ among ’em.
I read in it often of a Sunday” (Mr Tulliver felt somehow a familiarity
with that great writer, because his name was Jeremy); “and there’s a
lot more of ’em,—sermons mostly, I think,—but they’ve all got the same
covers, and I thought they were all o’ one sample, as you may say. But
it seems one mustn’t judge by th’ outside. This is a puzzlin’ world.”
“Well,” said Mr Riley, in an admonitory, patronizing tone as he patted
Maggie on the head, “I advise you to put by the ‘History of the Devil,’
and read some prettier book. Have you no prettier books?”
“Oh, yes,” said Maggie, reviving a little in the desire to vindicate
the variety of her reading. “I know the reading in this book isn’t
pretty; but I like the pictures, and I make stories to the pictures out
of my own head, you know. But I’ve got ‘Æsop’s Fables,’ and a book
about Kangaroos and things, and the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress....’”
“Ah, a beautiful book,” said Mr Riley; “you can’t read a better.”
“Well, but there’s a great deal about the Devil in that,” said Maggie,
triumphantly, “and I’ll show you the picture of him in his true shape,
as he fought with Christian.”
Maggie ran in an instant to the corner of the room, jumped on a chair,
and reached down from the small bookcase a shabby old copy of Bunyan,
which opened at once, without the least trouble of search, at the
picture she wanted.
“Here he is,” she said, running back to Mr Riley, “and Tom coloured him
for me with his paints when he was at home last holidays,—the body all
black, you know, and the eyes red, like fire, because he’s all fire
inside, and it shines out at his eyes.”
“Go, go!” said Mr Tulliver, peremptorily, beginning to feel rather
uncomfortable at these free remarks on the personal appearance of a
being powerful enough to create lawyers; “shut up the book, and let’s
hear no more o’ such talk. It is as I thought—the child ’ull learn more
mischief nor good wi’ the books. Go, go and see after your mother.”
Maggie shut up the book at once, with a sense of disgrace, but not
being inclined to see after her mother, she compromised the matter by
going into a dark corner behind her father’s chair, and nursing her
doll, toward which she had an occasional fit of fondness in Tom’s
absence, neglecting its toilet, but lavishing so many warm kisses on it
that the waxen cheeks had a wasted, unhealthy appearance.
“Did you ever hear the like on’t?” said Mr Tulliver, as Maggie retired.
“It’s a pity but what she’d been the lad,—she’d ha’ been a match for
the lawyers, _she_ would. It’s the wonderful’st thing”—here he lowered
his voice—“as I picked the mother because she wasn’t o’er ’cute—bein’ a
good-looking woman too, an’ come of a rare family for managing; but I
picked her from her sisters o’ purpose, ’cause she was a bit weak like;
for I wasn’t agoin’ to be told the rights o’ things by my own fireside.
But you see when a man’s got brains himself, there’s no knowing where
they’ll run to; an’ a pleasant sort o’ soft woman may go on breeding
you stupid lads and ’cute wenches, till it’s like as if the world was
turned topsy-turvy. It’s an uncommon puzzlin’ thing.”
Mr Riley’s gravity gave way, and he shook a little under the
application of his pinch of snuff before he said,—
“But your lad’s not stupid, is he? I saw him, when I was here last,
busy making fishing-tackle; he seemed quite up to it.”
“Well, he isn’t not to say stupid,—he’s got a notion o’ things out o’
door, an’ a sort o’ common sense, as he’d lay hold o’ things by the
right handle. But he’s slow with his tongue, you see, and he reads but
poorly, and can’t abide the books, and spells all wrong, they tell me,
an’ as shy as can be wi’ strangers, an’ you never hear him say ’cute
things like the little wench. Now, what I want is to send him to a
school where they’ll make him a bit nimble with his tongue and his pen,
and make a smart chap of him. I want my son to be even wi’ these
fellows as have got the start o’ me with having better schooling. Not
but what, if the world had been left as God made it, I could ha’ seen
my way, and held my own wi’ the best of ’em; but things have got so
twisted round and wrapped up i’ unreasonable words, as aren’t a bit
like ’em, as I’m clean at fault, often an’ often. Everything winds
about so—the more straightforrad you are, the more you’re puzzled.”
Mr Tulliver took a draught, swallowed it slowly, and shook his head in
a melancholy manner, conscious of exemplifying the truth that a
perfectly sane intellect is hardly at home in this insane world.
“You’re quite in the right of it, Tulliver,” observed Mr Riley. “Better
spend an extra hundred or two on your son’s education, than leave it
him in your will. I know I should have tried to do so by a son of mine,
if I’d had one, though, God knows, I haven’t your ready money to play
with, Tulliver; and I have a houseful of daughters into the bargain.”
“I dare say, now, you know of a school as ’ud be just the thing for
Tom,” said Mr Tulliver, not diverted from his purpose by any sympathy
with Mr Riley’s deficiency of ready cash.
Mr Riley took a pinch of snuff, and kept Mr Tulliver in suspense by a
silence that seemed deliberative, before he said,—
“I know of a very fine chance for any one that’s got the necessary
money and that’s what you have, Tulliver. The fact is, I wouldn’t
recommend any friend of mine to send a boy to a regular school, if he
could afford to do better. But if any one wanted his boy to get
superior instruction and training, where he would be the companion of
his master, and that master a first rate fellow, I know his man. I
wouldn’t mention the chance to everybody, because I don’t think
everybody would succeed in getting it, if he were to try; but I mention
it to you, Tulliver, between ourselves.”
The fixed inquiring glance with which Mr Tulliver had been watching his
friend’s oracular face became quite eager.
“Ay, now, let’s hear,” he said, adjusting himself in his chair with the
complacency of a person who is thought worthy of important
communications.
“He’s an Oxford man,” said Mr Riley, sententiously, shutting his mouth
close, and looking at Mr Tulliver to observe the effect of this
stimulating information.
“What! a parson?” said Mr Tulliver, rather doubtfully.
“Yes, and an M.A. The bishop, I understand, thinks very highly of him:
why, it was the bishop who got him his present curacy.”
“Ah?” said Mr Tulliver, to whom one thing was as wonderful as another
concerning these unfamiliar phenomena. “But what can he want wi’ Tom,
then?”
“Why, the fact is, he’s fond of teaching, and wishes to keep up his
studies, and a clergyman has but little opportunity for that in his
parochial duties. He’s willing to take one or two boys as pupils to
fill up his time profitably. The boys would be quite of the family,—the
finest thing in the world for them; under Stelling’s eye continually.”
“But do you think they’d give the poor lad twice o’ pudding?” said Mrs
Tulliver, who was now in her place again. “He’s such a boy for pudding
as never was; an’ a growing boy like that,—it’s dreadful to think o’
their stintin’ him.”
“And what money ’ud he want?” said Mr Tulliver, whose instinct told him
that the services of this admirable M.A. would bear a high price.
“Why, I know of a clergyman who asks a hundred and fifty with his
youngest pupils, and he’s not to be mentioned with Stelling, the man I
speak of. I know, on good authority, that one of the chief people at
Oxford said, Stelling might get the highest honours if he chose. But he
didn’t care about university honours; he’s a quiet man—not noisy.”
“Ah, a deal better—a deal better,” said Mr Tulliver; “but a hundred and
fifty’s an uncommon price. I never thought o’ paying so much as that.”
“A good education, let me tell you, Tulliver,—a good education is cheap
at the money. But Stelling is moderate in his terms; he’s not a
grasping man. I’ve no doubt he’d take your boy at a hundred, and that’s
what you wouldn’t get many other clergymen to do. I’ll write to him
about it, if you like.”
Mr Tulliver rubbed his knees, and looked at the carpet in a meditative
manner.
“But belike he’s a bachelor,” observed Mrs Tulliver, in the interval;
“an’ I’ve no opinion o’ housekeepers. There was my brother, as is dead
an’ gone, had a housekeeper once, an’ she took half the feathers out o’
the best bed, an’ packed ’em up an’ sent ’em away. An’ it’s unknown the
linen she made away with—Stott her name was. It ’ud break my heart to
send Tom where there’s a housekeeper, an’ I hope you won’t think of it,
Mr Tulliver.”
“You may set your mind at rest on that score, Mrs Tulliver,” said Mr
Riley, “for Stelling is married to as nice a little woman as any man
need wish for a wife. There isn’t a kinder little soul in the world; I
know her family well. She has very much your complexion,—light curly
hair. She comes of a good Mudport family, and it’s not every offer that
would have been acceptable in that quarter. But Stelling’s not an
everyday man; rather a particular fellow as to the people he chooses to
be connected with. But I _think_ he would have no objection to take
your son; I _think_ he would not, on my representation.”
“I don’t know what he could have _against_ the lad,” said Mrs Tulliver,
with a slight touch of motherly indignation; “a nice fresh-skinned lad
as anybody need wish to see.”
“But there’s one thing I’m thinking on,” said Mr Tulliver, turning his
head on one side and looking at Mr Riley, after a long perusal of the
carpet. “Wouldn’t a parson be almost too high-learnt to bring up a lad
to be a man o’ business? My notion o’ the parsons was as they’d got a
sort o’ learning as lay mostly out o’ sight. And that isn’t what I want
for Tom. I want him to know figures, and write like print, and see into
things quick, and know what folks mean, and how to wrap things up in
words as aren’t actionable. It’s an uncommon fine thing, that is,”
concluded Mr Tulliver, shaking his head, “when you can let a man know
what you think of him without paying for it.”
“Oh, my dear Tulliver,” said Mr Riley, “you’re quite under a mistake
about the clergy; all the best schoolmasters are of the clergy. The
schoolmasters who are not clergymen are a very low set of men
generally.”
“Ay, that Jacobs is, at the ’cademy,” interposed Mr Tulliver.
“To be sure,—men who have failed in other trades, most likely. Now, a
clergyman is a gentleman by profession and education; and besides that,
he has the knowledge that will ground a boy, and prepare him for
entering on any career with credit. There may be some clergymen who are
mere bookmen; but you may depend upon it, Stelling is not one of
them,—a man that’s wide awake, let me tell you. Drop him a hint, and
that’s enough. You talk of figures, now; you have only to say to
Stelling, ‘I want my son to be a thorough arithmetician,’ and you may
leave the rest to him.”
Mr Riley paused a moment, while Mr Tulliver, somewhat reassured as to
clerical tutorship, was inwardly rehearsing to an imaginary Mr Stelling
the statement, “I want my son to know ’rethmetic.”
“You see, my dear Tulliver,” Mr Riley continued, “when you get a
thoroughly educated man, like Stelling, he’s at no loss to take up any
branch of instruction. When a workman knows the use of his tools, he
can make a door as well as a window.”
“Ay, that’s true,” said Mr Tulliver, almost convinced now that the
clergy must be the best of schoolmasters.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you,” said Mr Riley, “and I
wouldn’t do it for everybody. I’ll see Stelling’s father-in-law, or
drop him a line when I get back to Mudport, to say that you wish to
place your boy with his son-in-law, and I dare say Stelling will write
to you, and send you his terms.”
“But there’s no hurry, is there?” said Mrs Tulliver; “for I hope, Mr
Tulliver, you won’t let Tom begin at his new school before Midsummer.
He began at the ’cademy at the Lady-day quarter, and you see what
good’s come of it.”
“Ay, ay, Bessy, never brew wi’ bad malt upo’ Michaelmas day, else
you’ll have a poor tap,” said Mr Tulliver, winking and smiling at Mr
Riley, with the natural pride of a man who has a buxom wife
conspicuously his inferior in intellect. “But it’s true there’s no
hurry; you’ve hit it there, Bessy.”
“It might be as well not to defer the arrangement too long,” said Mr
Riley, quietly, “for Stelling may have propositions from other parties,
and I know he would not take more than two or three boarders, if so
many. If I were you, I think I would enter on the subject with Stelling
at once: there’s no necessity for sending the boy before Midsummer, but
I would be on the safe side, and make sure that nobody forestalls you.”
“Ay, there’s summat in that,” said Mr Tulliver.
“Father,” broke in Maggie, who had stolen unperceived to her father’s
elbow again, listening with parted lips, while she held her doll
topsy-turvy, and crushed its nose against the wood of the
chair,—“father, is it a long way off where Tom is to go? Sha’n’t we
ever go to see him?”
“I don’t know, my wench,” said the father, tenderly. “Ask Mr Riley; he
knows.”
Maggie came round promptly in front of Mr Riley, and said, “How far is
it, please, sir?”
“Oh, a long, long way off,” that gentleman answered, being of opinion
that children, when they are not naughty, should always be spoken to
jocosely. “You must borrow the seven-leagued boots to get to him.”
“That’s nonsense!” said Maggie, tossing her head haughtily, and turning
away, with the tears springing in her eyes. She began to dislike Mr
Riley; it was evident he thought her silly and of no consequence.
“Hush, Maggie! for shame of you, asking questions and chattering,” said
her mother. “Come and sit down on your little stool, and hold your
tongue, do. But,” added Mrs Tulliver, who had her own alarm awakened,
“is it so far off as I couldn’t wash him and mend him?”
“About fifteen miles; that’s all,” said Mr Riley. “You can drive there
and back in a day quite comfortably. Or—Stelling is a hospitable,
pleasant man—he’d be glad to have you stay.”
“But it’s too far off for the linen, I doubt,” said Mrs Tulliver,
sadly.
The entrance of supper opportunely adjourned this difficulty, and
relieved Mr Riley from the labour of suggesting some solution or
compromise,—a labour which he would otherwise doubtless have
undertaken; for, as you perceive, he was a man of very obliging
manners. And he had really given himself the trouble of recommending Mr
Stelling to his friend Tulliver without any positive expectation of a
solid, definite advantage resulting to himself, notwithstanding the
subtle indications to the contrary which might have misled a too
sagacious observer. For there is nothing more widely misleading than
sagacity if it happens to get on a wrong scent; and sagacity, persuaded
that men usually act and speak from distinct motives, with a
consciously proposed end in view, is certain to waste its energies on
imaginary game.
Plotting covetousness and deliberate contrivance, in order to compass a
selfish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist:
they demand too intense a mental action for many of our
fellow-parishioners to be guilty of them. It is easy enough to spoil
the lives of our neighbours without taking so much trouble; we can do
it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for
which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralised by small
extravagances, by maladroit flatteries, and clumsily improvised
insinuations. We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small
family of immediate desires; we do little else than snatch a morsel to
satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or the next
year’s crop.
Mr Riley was a man of business, and not cold toward his own interest,
yet even he was more under the influence of small promptings than of
far-sighted designs. He had no private understanding with the Rev.
Walter Stelling; on the contrary, he knew very little of that M.A. and
his acquirements,—not quite enough, perhaps, to warrant so strong a
recommendation of him as he had given to his friend Tulliver. But he
believed Mr Stelling to be an excellent classic, for Gadsby had said
so, and Gadsby’s first cousin was an Oxford tutor; which was better
ground for the belief even than his own immediate observation would
have been, for though Mr Riley had received a tincture of the classics
at the great Mudport Free School, and had a sense of understanding
Latin generally, his comprehension of any particular Latin was not
ready. Doubtless there remained a subtle aroma from his juvenile
contact with the _De Senectute_ and the fourth book of the _Æneid_, but
it had ceased to be distinctly recognisable as classical, and was only
perceived in the higher finish and force of his auctioneering style.
Then, Stelling was an Oxford man, and the Oxford men were always—no,
no, it was the Cambridge men who were always good mathematicians. But a
man who had had a university education could teach anything he liked;
especially a man like Stelling, who had made a speech at a Mudport
dinner on a political occasion, and had acquitted himself so well that
it was generally remarked, this son-in-law of Timpson’s was a sharp
fellow. It was to be expected of a Mudport man, from the parish of St
Ursula, that he would not omit to do a good turn to a son-in-law of
Timpson’s, for Timpson was one of the most useful and influential men
in the parish, and had a good deal of business, which he knew how to
put into the right hands. Mr Riley liked such men, quite apart from any
money which might be diverted, through their good judgment, from less
worthy pockets into his own; and it would be a satisfaction to him to
say to Timpson on his return home, “I’ve secured a good pupil for your
son-in-law.” Timpson had a large family of daughters; Mr Riley felt for
him; besides, Louisa Timpson’s face, with its light curls, had been a
familiar object to him over the pew wainscot on a Sunday for nearly
fifteen years; it was natural her husband should be a commendable
tutor. Moreover, Mr Riley knew of no other schoolmaster whom he had any
ground for recommending in preference; why, then, should he not
recommend Stelling? His friend Tulliver had asked him for an opinion;
it is always chilling, in friendly intercourse, to say you have no
opinion to give. And if you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere
stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded
knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond
of it. Thus Mr Riley, knowing no harm of Stelling to begin with, and
wishing him well, so far as he had any wishes at all concerning him,
had no sooner recommended him than he began to think with admiration of
a man recommended on such high authority, and would soon have gathered
so warm an interest on the subject, that if Mr Tulliver had in the end
declined to send Tom to Stelling, Mr Riley would have thought his
“friend of the old school” a thoroughly pig-headed fellow.
If you blame Mr Riley very severely for giving a recommendation on such
slight grounds, I must say you are rather hard upon him. Why should an
auctioneer and appraiser thirty years ago, who had as good as forgotten
his free-school Latin, be expected to manifest a delicate scrupulosity
which is not always exhibited by gentlemen of the learned professions,
even in our present advanced stage of morality?
Besides, a man with the milk of human kindness in him can scarcely
abstain from doing a good-natured action, and one cannot be
good-natured all round. Nature herself occasionally quarters an
inconvenient parasite on an animal toward whom she has otherwise no ill
will. What then? We admire her care for the parasite. If Mr Riley had
shrunk from giving a recommendation that was not based on valid
evidence, he would not have helped Mr Stelling to a paying pupil, and
that would not have been so well for the reverend gentleman. Consider,
too, that all the pleasant little dim ideas and complacencies—of
standing well with Timpson, of dispensing advice when he was asked for
it, of impressing his friend Tulliver with additional respect, of
saying something, and saying it emphatically, with other inappreciably
minute ingredients that went along with the warm hearth and the
brandy-and-water to make up Mr Riley’s consciousness on this
occasion—would have been a mere blank.
Chapter IV.
Tom Is Expected
It was a heavy disappointment to Maggie that she was not allowed to go
with her father in the gig when he went to fetch Tom home from the
academy; but the morning was too wet, Mrs Tulliver said, for a little
girl to go out in her best bonnet. Maggie took the opposite view very
strongly, and it was a direct consequence of this difference of opinion
that when her mother was in the act of brushing out the reluctant black
crop Maggie suddenly rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in
a basin of water standing near, in the vindictive determination that
there should be no more chance of curls that day.
“Maggie, Maggie!” exclaimed Mrs Tulliver, sitting stout and helpless
with the brushes on her lap, “what is to become of you if you’re so
naughty? I’ll tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt Pullet when they come
next week, and they’ll never love you any more. Oh dear, oh dear! look
at your clean pinafore, wet from top to bottom. Folks ’ull think it’s a
judgment on me as I’ve got such a child,—they’ll think I’ve done summat
wicked.”
Before this remonstrance was finished, Maggie was already out of
hearing, making her way toward the great attic that ran under the old
high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran,
like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Maggie’s
favourite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold; here
she fretted out all her ill humours, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten
floors and the worm-eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with
cobwebs; and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her
misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which once
stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks; but was
now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering. Three
nails driven into the head commemorated as many crises in Maggie’s nine
years of earthly struggle; that luxury of vengeance having been
suggested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in the old
Bible. The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than
usual, for the Fetish on that occasion represented aunt Glegg. But
immediately afterward Maggie had reflected that if she drove many nails
in she would not be so well able to fancy that the head was hurt when
she knocked it against the wall, nor to comfort it, and make believe to
poultice it, when her fury was abated; for even aunt Glegg would be
pitiable when she had been hurt very much, and thoroughly humiliated,
so as to beg her niece’s pardon. Since then she had driven no more
nails in, but had soothed herself by alternately grinding and beating
the wooden head against the rough brick of the great chimneys that made
two square pillars supporting the roof. That was what she did this
morning on reaching the attic, sobbing all the while with a passion
that expelled every other form of consciousness,—even the memory of the
grievance that had caused it. As at last the sobs were getting quieter,
and the grinding less fierce, a sudden beam of sunshine, falling
through the wire lattice across the worm-eaten shelves, made her throw
away the Fetish and run to the window. The sun was really breaking out;
the sound of the mill seemed cheerful again; the granary doors were
open; and there was Yap, the queer white-and-brown terrier, with one
ear turned back, trotting about and sniffing vaguely, as if he were in
search of a companion. It was irresistible. Maggie tossed her hair back
and ran downstairs, seized her bonnet without putting it on, peeped,
and then dashed along the passage lest she should encounter her mother,
and was quickly out in the yard, whirling round like a Pythoness, and
singing as she whirled, “Yap, Yap, Tom’s coming home!” while Yap danced
and barked round her, as much as to say, if there was any noise wanted
he was the dog for it.
“Hegh, hegh, Miss! you’ll make yourself giddy, an’ tumble down i’ the
dirt,” said Luke, the head miller, a tall, broad-shouldered man of
forty, black-eyed and black-haired, subdued by a general mealiness,
like an auricula.
Maggie paused in her whirling and said, staggering a little, “Oh no, it
doesn’t make me giddy, Luke; may I go into the mill with you?”
Maggie loved to linger in the great spaces of the mill, and often came
out with her black hair powdered to a soft whiteness that made her dark
eyes flash out with new fire. The resolute din, the unresting motion of
the great stones, giving her a dim, delicious awe as at the presence of
an uncontrollable force; the meal forever pouring, pouring; the fine
white powder softening all surfaces, and making the very spidernets
look like a faery lace-work; the sweet, pure scent of the meal,—all
helped to make Maggie feel that the mill was a little world apart from
her outside everyday life. The spiders were especially a subject of
speculation with her. She wondered if they had any relatives outside
the mill, for in that case there must be a painful difficulty in their
family intercourse,—a fat and floury spider, accustomed to take his fly
well dusted with meal, must suffer a little at a cousin’s table where
the fly was _au naturel_, and the lady spiders must be mutually shocked
at each other’s appearance. But the part of the mill she liked best was
the topmost story,—the corn-hutch, where there were the great heaps of
grain, which she could sit on and slide down continually. She was in
the habit of taking this recreation as she conversed with Luke, to whom
she was very communicative, wishing him to think well of her
understanding, as her father did.
Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her position with him on the
present occasion for, as she sat sliding on the heap of grain near
which he was busying himself, she said, at that shrill pitch which was
requisite in mill-society,—
“I think you never read any book but the Bible, did you, Luke?”
“Nay, Miss, an’ not much o’ that,” said Luke, with great frankness.
“I’m no reader, I aren’t.”
“But if I lent you one of my books, Luke? I’ve not got any _very_
pretty books that would be easy for you to read; but there’s ‘Pug’s
Tour of Europe,’—that would tell you all about the different sorts of
people in the world, and if you didn’t understand the reading, the
pictures would help you; they show the looks and ways of the people,
and what they do. There are the Dutchmen, very fat, and smoking, you
know, and one sitting on a barrel.”
“Nay, Miss, I’n no opinion o’ Dutchmen. There ben’t much good i’
knowin’ about _them_.”
“But they’re our fellow-creatures, Luke; we ought to know about our
fellow-creatures.”
“Not much o’ fellow-creaturs, I think, Miss; all I know—my old master,
as war a knowin’ man, used to say, says he, ‘If e’er I sow my wheat
wi’out brinin’, I’m a Dutchman,’ says he; an’ that war as much as to
say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next door. Nay, nay, I aren’t goin’ to
bother mysen about Dutchmen. There’s fools enoo, an’ rogues enoo,
wi’out lookin’ i’ books for ’em.”
“Oh, well,” said Maggie, rather foiled by Luke’s unexpectedly decided
views about Dutchmen, “perhaps you would like ‘Animated Nature’ better;
that’s not Dutchmen, you know, but elephants and kangaroos, and the
civet-cat, and the sunfish, and a bird sitting on its tail,—I forget
its name. There are countries full of those creatures, instead of
horses and cows, you know. Shouldn’t you like to know about them,
Luke?”
“Nay, Miss, I’n got to keep count o’ the flour an’ corn; I can’t do wi’
knowin’ so many things besides my work. That’s what brings folks to the
gallows,—knowin’ everything but what they’n got to get their bread by.
An’ they’re mostly lies, I think, what’s printed i’ the books: them
printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men cry i’ the streets.”
“Why, you’re like my brother Tom, Luke,” said Maggie, wishing to turn
the conversation agreeably; “Tom’s not fond of reading. I love Tom so
dearly, Luke,—better than anybody else in the world. When he grows up I
shall keep his house, and we shall always live together. I can tell him
everything he doesn’t know. But I think Tom’s clever, for all he
doesn’t like books; he makes beautiful whipcord and rabbit-pens.”
“Ah,” said Luke, “but he’ll be fine an’ vexed, as the rabbits are all
dead.”
“Dead!” screamed Maggie, jumping up from her sliding seat on the corn.
“Oh dear, Luke! What! the lop-eared one, and the spotted doe that Tom
spent all his money to buy?”
“As dead as moles,” said Luke, fetching his comparison from the
unmistakable corpses nailed to the stable wall.
“Oh dear, Luke,” said Maggie, in a piteous tone, while the big tears
rolled down her cheek; “Tom told me to take care of ’em, and I forgot.
What _shall_ I do?”
“Well, you see, Miss, they were in that far tool-house, an’ it was
nobody’s business to see to ’em. I reckon Master Tom told Harry to feed
’em, but there’s no countin’ on Harry; _he’s_ a offal creatur as iver
come about the primises, he is. He remembers nothing but his own
inside—an’ I wish it ’ud gripe him.”
“Oh, Luke, Tom told me to be sure and remember the rabbits every day;
but how could I, when they didn’t come into my head, you know? Oh, he
will be so angry with me, I know he will, and so sorry about his
rabbits, and so am I sorry. Oh, what _shall_ I do?”
“Don’t you fret, Miss,” said Luke, soothingly; “they’re nash things,
them lop-eared rabbits; they’d happen ha’ died, if they’d been fed.
Things out o’ natur niver thrive: God A’mighty doesn’t like ’em. He
made the rabbits’ ears to lie back, an’ it’s nothin’ but contrairiness
to make ’em hing down like a mastiff dog’s. Master Tom ’ull know better
nor buy such things another time. Don’t you fret, Miss. Will you come
along home wi’ me, and see my wife? I’m a-goin’ this minute.”
The invitation offered an agreeable distraction to Maggie’s grief, and
her tears gradually subsided as she trotted along by Luke’s side to his
pleasant cottage, which stood with its apple and pear trees, and with
the added dignity of a lean-to pigsty, at the other end of the Mill
fields. Mrs Moggs, Luke’s wife, was a decidedly agreeable acquaintance.
She exhibited her hospitality in bread and treacle, and possessed
various works of art. Maggie actually forgot that she had any special
cause of sadness this morning, as she stood on a chair to look at a
remarkable series of pictures representing the Prodigal Son in the
costume of Sir Charles Grandison, except that, as might have been
expected from his defective moral character, he had not, like that
accomplished hero, the taste and strength of mind to dispense with a
wig. But the indefinable weight the dead rabbits had left on her mind
caused her to feel more than usual pity for the career of this weak
young man, particularly when she looked at the picture where he leaned
against a tree with a flaccid appearance, his knee-breeches unbuttoned
and his wig awry, while the swine apparently of some foreign breed,
seemed to insult him by their good spirits over their feast of husks.
“I’m very glad his father took him back again, aren’t you, Luke?” she
said. “For he was very sorry, you know, and wouldn’t do wrong again.”
“Eh, Miss,” said Luke, “he’d be no great shakes, I doubt, let’s feyther
do what he would for him.”
That was a painful thought to Maggie, and she wished much that the
subsequent history of the young man had not been left a blank.
Chapter V.
Tom Comes Home
Tom was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was another
fluttering heart besides Maggie’s when it was late enough for the sound
of the gig-wheels to be expected; for if Mrs Tulliver had a strong
feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the sound came,—that
quick light bowling of the gig-wheels,—and in spite of the wind, which
was blowing the clouds about, and was not likely to respect Mrs
Tulliver’s curls and cap-strings, she came outside the door, and even
held her hand on Maggie’s offending head, forgetting all the griefs of
the morning.
“There he is, my sweet lad! But, Lord ha’ mercy! he’s got never a
collar on; it’s been lost on the road, I’ll be bound, and spoilt the
set.”
Mrs Tulliver stood with her arms open; Maggie jumped first on one leg
and then on the other; while Tom descended from the gig, and said, with
masculine reticence as to the tender emotions, “Hallo! Yap—what! are
you there?”
Nevertheless he submitted to be kissed willingly enough, though Maggie
hung on his neck in rather a strangling fashion, while his blue-gray
eyes wandered toward the croft and the lambs and the river, where he
promised himself that he would begin to fish the first thing to-morrow
morning. He was one of those lads that grow everywhere in England, and
at twelve or thirteen years of age look as much alike as goslings,—a
lad with light-brown hair, cheeks of cream and roses, full lips,
indeterminate nose and eyebrows,—a physiognomy in which it seems
impossible to discern anything but the generic character to boyhood; as
different as possible from poor Maggie’s phiz, which Nature seemed to
have moulded and coloured with the most decided intention. But that
same Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the
appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see
through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a
refutation of their confident prophecies. Under these average boyish
physiognomies that she seems to turn off by the gross, she conceals
some of her most rigid, inflexible purposes, some of her most
unmodifiable characters; and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious
girl may after all turn out to be a passive being compared with this
pink-and-white bit of masculinity with the indeterminate features.
“Maggie,” said Tom, confidentially, taking her into a corner, as soon
as his mother was gone out to examine his box and the warm parlour had
taken off the chill he had felt from the long drive, “you don’t know
what I’ve got in _my_ pockets,” nodding his head up and down as a means
of rousing her sense of mystery.
“No,” said Maggie. “How stodgy they look, Tom! Is it marls (marbles) or
cobnuts?” Maggie’s heart sank a little, because Tom always said it was
“no good” playing with _her_ at those games, she played so badly.
“Marls! no; I’ve swopped all my marls with the little fellows, and
cobnuts are no fun, you silly, only when the nuts are green. But see
here!” He drew something half out of his right-hand pocket.
“What is it?” said Maggie, in a whisper. “I can see nothing but a bit
of yellow.”
“Why, it’s—a—new—guess, Maggie!”
“Oh, I _can’t_ guess, Tom,” said Maggie, impatiently.
“Don’t be a spitfire, else I won’t tell you,” said Tom, thrusting his
hand back into his pocket and looking determined.
“No, Tom,” said Maggie, imploringly, laying hold of the arm that was
held stiffly in the pocket. “I’m not cross, Tom; it was only because I
can’t bear guessing. _Please_ be good to me.”
Tom’s arm slowly relaxed, and he said, “Well, then, it’s a new
fish-line—two new uns,—one for you, Maggie, all to yourself. I wouldn’t
go halves in the toffee and gingerbread on purpose to save the money;
and Gibson and Spouncer fought with me because I wouldn’t. And here’s
hooks; see here—I say, _won’t_ we go and fish to-morrow down by the
Round Pool? And you shall catch your own fish, Maggie and put the worms
on, and everything; won’t it be fun?”
Maggie’s answer was to throw her arms round Tom’s neck and hug him, and
hold her cheek against his without speaking, while he slowly unwound
some of the line, saying, after a pause,—
“Wasn’t I a good brother, now, to buy you a line all to yourself? You
know, I needn’t have bought it, if I hadn’t liked.”
“Yes, very, very good—I _do_ love you, Tom.”
Tom had put the line back in his pocket, and was looking at the hooks
one by one, before he spoke again.
“And the fellows fought me, because I wouldn’t give in about the
toffee.”
“Oh, dear! I wish they wouldn’t fight at your school, Tom. Didn’t it
hurt you?”
“Hurt me? no,” said Tom, putting up the hooks again, taking out a large
pocket-knife, and slowly opening the largest blade, which he looked at
meditatively as he rubbed his finger along it. Then he added,—
“I gave Spouncer a black eye, I know; that’s what he got by wanting to
leather _me;_ I wasn’t going to go halves because anybody leathered
me.”
“Oh, how brave you are, Tom! I think you’re like Samson. If there came
a lion roaring at me, I think you’d fight him, wouldn’t you, Tom?”
“How can a lion come roaring at you, you silly thing? There’s no lions,
only in the shows.”
“No; but if we were in the lion countries—I mean in Africa, where it’s
very hot; the lions eat people there. I can show it you in the book
where I read it.”
“Well, I should get a gun and shoot him.”
“But if you hadn’t got a gun,—we might have gone out, you know, not
thinking, just as we go fishing; and then a great lion might run
towards us roaring, and we couldn’t get away from him. What should you
do, Tom?”
Tom paused, and at last turned away contemptuously, saying, “But the
lion _isn’t_ coming. What’s the use of talking?”
“But I like to fancy how it would be,” said Maggie, following him.
“Just think what you would do, Tom.”
“Oh, don’t bother, Maggie! you’re such a silly. I shall go and see my
rabbits.”
Maggie’s heart began to flutter with fear. She dared not tell the sad
truth at once, but she walked after Tom in trembling silence as he went
out, thinking how she could tell him the news so as to soften at once
his sorrow and his anger; for Maggie dreaded Tom’s anger of all things;
it was quite a different anger from her own.
“Tom,” she said, timidly, when they were out of doors, “how much money
did you give for your rabbits?”
“Two half-crowns and a sixpence,” said Tom, promptly.
“I think I’ve got a great deal more than that in my steel purse
upstairs. I’ll ask mother to give it you.”
“What for?” said Tom. “I don’t want _your_ money, you silly thing. I’ve
got a great deal more money than you, because I’m a boy. I always have
half-sovereigns and sovereigns for my Christmas boxes because I shall
be a man, and you only have five-shilling pieces, because you’re only a
girl.”
“Well, but, Tom—if mother would let me give you two half-crowns and a
sixpence out of my purse to put into your pocket and spend, you know,
and buy some more rabbits with it?”
“More rabbits? I don’t want any more.”
“Oh, but, Tom, they’re all dead.”
Tom stopped immediately in his walk and turned round toward Maggie.
“You forgot to feed ’em, then, and Harry forgot?” he said, his colour
heightening for a moment, but soon subsiding. “I’ll pitch into Harry.
I’ll have him turned away. And I don’t love you, Maggie. You sha’n’t go
fishing with me to-morrow. I told you to go and see the rabbits every
day.” He walked on again.
“Yes, but I forgot—and I couldn’t help it, indeed, Tom. I’m so very
sorry,” said Maggie, while the tears rushed fast.
“You’re a naughty girl,” said Tom, severely, “and I’m sorry I bought
you the fish-line. I don’t love you.”
“Oh, Tom, it’s very cruel,” sobbed Maggie. “I’d forgive you, if _you_
forgot anything—I wouldn’t mind what you did—I’d forgive you and love
you.”
“Yes, you’re silly; but I never _do_ forget things, _I_ don’t.”
“Oh, please forgive me, Tom; my heart will break,” said Maggie, shaking
with sobs, clinging to Tom’s arm, and laying her wet cheek on his
shoulder.
Tom shook her off, and stopped again, saying in a peremptory tone,
“Now, Maggie, you just listen. Aren’t I a good brother to you?”
“Ye-ye-es,” sobbed Maggie, her chin rising and falling convulsedly.
“Didn’t I think about your fish-line all this quarter, and mean to buy
it, and saved my money o’ purpose, and wouldn’t go halves in the
toffee, and Spouncer fought me because I wouldn’t?”
“Ye-ye-es—and I—lo-lo-love you so, Tom.”
“But you’re a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off my
lozenge-box, and the holidays before that you let the boat drag my
fish-line down when I’d set you to watch it, and you pushed your head
through my kite, all for nothing.”
“But I didn’t mean,” said Maggie; “I couldn’t help it.”
“Yes, you could,” said Tom, “if you’d minded what you were doing. And
you’re a naughty girl, and you sha’n’t go fishing with me to-morrow.”
With this terrible conclusion, Tom ran away from Maggie toward the
mill, meaning to greet Luke there, and complain to him of Harry.
Maggie stood motionless, except from her sobs, for a minute or two;
then she turned round and ran into the house, and up to her attic,
where she sat on the floor and laid her head against the worm-eaten
shelf, with a crushing sense of misery. Tom was come home, and she had
thought how happy she should be; and now he was cruel to her. What use
was anything if Tom didn’t love her? Oh, he was very cruel! Hadn’t she
wanted to give him the money, and said how very sorry she was? She knew
she was naughty to her mother, but she had never been naughty to
Tom—had never _meant_ to be naughty to him.
“Oh, he is cruel!” Maggie sobbed aloud, finding a wretched pleasure in
the hollow resonance that came through the long empty space of the
attic. She never thought of beating or grinding her Fetish; she was too
miserable to be angry.
These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange,
when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and
the space from summer to summer seems measureless.
Maggie soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and it must be
tea-time, and they were all having their tea, and not thinking of her.
Well, then, she would stay up there and starve herself,—hide herself
behind the tub, and stay there all night,—and then they would all be
frightened, and Tom would be sorry. Thus Maggie thought in the pride of
her heart, as she crept behind the tub; but presently she began to cry
again at the idea that they didn’t mind her being there. If she went
down again to Tom now—would he forgive her? Perhaps her father would be
there, and he would take her part. But then she wanted Tom to forgive
her because he loved her, not because his father told him. No, she
would never go down if Tom didn’t come to fetch her. This resolution
lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes behind the tub; but
then the need of being loved—the strongest need in poor Maggie’s
nature—began to wrestle with her pride, and soon threw it. She crept
from behind her tub into the twilight of the long attic, but just then
she heard a quick foot-step on the stairs.
Tom had been too much interested in his talk with Luke, in going the
round of the premises, walking in and out where he pleased, and
whittling sticks without any particular reason,—except that he didn’t
whittle sticks at school,—to think of Maggie and the effect his anger
had produced on her. He meant to punish her, and that business having
been performed, he occupied himself with other matters, like a
practical person. But when he had been called in to tea, his father
said, “Why, where’s the little wench?” and Mrs Tulliver, almost at the
same moment, said, “Where’s your little sister?”—both of them having
supposed that Maggie and Tom had been together all the afternoon.
“I don’t know,” said Tom. He didn’t want to “tell” of Maggie, though he
was angry with her; for Tom Tulliver was a lad of honour.
“What! hasn’t she been playing with you all this while?” said the
father. “She’d been thinking o’ nothing but your coming home.”
“I haven’t seen her this two hours,” says Tom, commencing on the
plumcake.
“Goodness heart; she’s got drownded!” exclaimed Mrs Tulliver, rising
from her seat and running to the window.
“How could you let her do so?” she added, as became a fearful woman,
accusing she didn’t know whom of she didn’t know what.
“Nay, nay, she’s none drownded,” said Mr Tulliver. “You’ve been naughty
to her, I doubt, Tom?”
“I’m sure I haven’t, father,” said Tom, indignantly. “I think she’s in
the house.”
“Perhaps up in that attic,” said Mrs Tulliver, “a-singing and talking
to herself, and forgetting all about meal-times.”
“You go and fetch her down, Tom,” said Mr Tulliver, rather sharply,—his
perspicacity or his fatherly fondness for Maggie making him suspect
that the lad had been hard upon “the little un,” else she would never
have left his side. “And be good to her, do you hear? Else I’ll let you
know better.”
Tom never disobeyed his father, for Mr Tulliver was a peremptory man,
and, as he said, would never let anybody get hold of his whip-hand; but
he went out rather sullenly, carrying his piece of plumcake, and not
intending to reprieve Maggie’s punishment, which was no more than she
deserved. Tom was only thirteen, and had no decided views in grammar
and arithmetic, regarding them for the most part as open questions, but
he was particularly clear and positive on one point,—namely, that he
would punish everybody who deserved it. Why, he wouldn’t have minded
being punished himself if he deserved it; but, then, he never _did_
deserve it.
It was Tom’s step, then, that Maggie heard on the stairs, when her need
of love had triumphed over her pride, and she was going down with her
swollen eyes and dishevelled hair to beg for pity. At least her father
would stroke her head and say, “Never mind, my wench.” It is a
wonderful subduer, this need of love,—this hunger of the heart,—as
peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to
the yoke, and change the face of the world.
But she knew Tom’s step, and her heart began to beat violently with the
sudden shock of hope. He only stood still at the top of the stairs and
said, “Maggie, you’re to come down.” But she rushed to him and clung
round his neck, sobbing, “Oh, Tom, please forgive me—I can’t bear it—I
will always be good—always remember things—do love me—please, dear
Tom!”
We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart when we
have quarrelled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this
way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side,
and swallowing much grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our
behaviour to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but conduct
ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civilised society.
Maggie and Tom were still very much like young animals, and so she
could rub her cheek against his, and kiss his ear in a random sobbing
way; and there were tender fibres in the lad that had been used to
answer to Maggie’s fondling, so that he behaved with a weakness quite
inconsistent with his resolution to punish her as much as she deserved.
He actually began to kiss her in return, and say,—
“Don’t cry, then, Magsie; here, eat a bit o’ cake.”
Maggie’s sobs began to subside, and she put out her mouth for the cake
and bit a piece; and then Tom bit a piece, just for company, and they
ate together and rubbed each other’s cheeks and brows and noses
together, while they ate, with a humiliating resemblance to two
friendly ponies.
“Come along, Magsie, and have tea,” said Tom at last, when there was no
more cake except what was down-stairs.
So ended the sorrows of this day, and the next morning Maggie was
trotting with her own fishing-rod in one hand and a handle of the
basket in the other, stepping always, by a peculiar gift, in the
muddiest places, and looking darkly radiant from under her
beaver-bonnet because Tom was good to her. She had told Tom, however,
that she should like him to put the worms on the hook for her, although
she accepted his word when he assured her that worms couldn’t feel (it
was Tom’s private opinion that it didn’t much matter if they did). He
knew all about worms, and fish, and those things; and what birds were
mischievous, and how padlocks opened, and which way the handles of the
gates were to be lifted. Maggie thought this sort of knowledge was very
wonderful,—much more difficult than remembering what was in the books;
and she was rather in awe of Tom’s superiority, for he was the only
person who called her knowledge “stuff,” and did not feel surprised at
her cleverness. Tom, indeed, was of opinion that Maggie was a silly
little thing; all girls were silly,—they couldn’t throw a stone so as
to hit anything, couldn’t do anything with a pocket-knife, and were
frightened at frogs. Still, he was very fond of his sister, and meant
always to take care of her, make her his housekeeper, and punish her
when she did wrong.
They were on their way to the Round Pool,—that wonderful pool, which
the floods had made a long while ago. No one knew how deep it was; and
it was mysterious, too, that it should be almost a perfect round,
framed in with willows and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be
seen when you got close to the brink. The sight of the old favourite
spot always heightened Tom’s good humour, and he spoke to Maggie in the
most amicable whispers, as he opened the precious basket and prepared
their tackle. He threw her line for her, and put the rod into her hand.
Maggie thought it probable that the small fish would come to her hook,
and the large ones to Tom’s. But she had forgotten all about the fish,
and was looking dreamily at the glassy water, when Tom said, in a loud
whisper, “Look, look, Maggie!” and came running to prevent her from
snatching her line away.
Maggie was frightened lest she had been doing something wrong, as
usual, but presently Tom drew out her line and brought a large tench
bouncing on the grass.
Tom was excited.
“O Magsie, you little duck! Empty the basket.”
Maggie was not conscious of unusual merit, but it was enough that Tom
called her Magsie, and was pleased with her. There was nothing to mar
her delight in the whispers and the dreamy silences, when she listened
to the light dripping sounds of the rising fish, and the gentle
rustling, as if the willows and the reeds and the water had their happy
whisperings also. Maggie thought it would make a very nice heaven to
sit by the pool in that way, and never be scolded. She never knew she
had a bite till Tom told her; but she liked fishing very much.
It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down
together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them;
they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would always be
like the holidays; they would always live together and be fond of each
other. And the mill with its booming; the great chestnut-tree under
which they played at houses; their own little river, the Ripple, where
the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing the water-rats,
while Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds, which she
forgot and dropped afterward; above all, the great Floss, along which
they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide,
the awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash
which had once wailed and groaned like a man, these things would always
be just the same to them. Tom thought people were at a disadvantage who
lived on any other spot of the globe; and Maggie, when she read about
Christiana passing “the river over which there is no bridge,” always
saw the Floss between the green pastures by the Great Ash.
Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were not wrong in
believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always
make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth so well
if we had had no childhood in it,—if it were not the earth where the
same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our
tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass; the same hips
and haws on the autumn’s hedgerows; the same redbreasts that we used to
call “God’s birds,” because they did no harm to the precious crops.
What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known,
and _loved_ because it is known?
The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown
foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers
and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet, what grove
of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled
blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as
this home scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered
bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and
grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the
capricious hedgerows,—such things as these are the mother-tongue of our
imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle,
inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left
behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass
to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if
it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which
still live in us, and transform our perception into love.
Chapter VI.
The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming
It was Easter week, and Mrs Tulliver’s cheesecakes were more
exquisitely light than usual. “A puff o’ wind ’ud make ’em blow about
like feathers,” Kezia the housemaid said, feeling proud to live under a
mistress who could make such pastry; so that no season or circumstances
could have been more propitious for a family party, even if it had not
been advisable to consult sister Glegg and sister Pullet about Tom’s
going to school.
“I’d as lief not invite sister Deane this time,” said Mrs Tulliver,
“for she’s as jealous and having as can be, and’s allays trying to make
the worst o’ my poor children to their aunts and uncles.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr Tulliver, “ask her to come. I never hardly get a
bit o’ talk with Deane now; we haven’t had him this six months. What’s
it matter what she says? My children need be beholding to nobody.”
“That’s what you allays say, Mr Tulliver; but I’m sure there’s nobody
o’ _your_ side, neither aunt nor uncle, to leave ’em so much as a
five-pound note for a leggicy. And there’s sister Glegg, and sister
Pullet too, saving money unknown, for they put by all their own
interest and butter-money too; their husbands buy ’em everything.” Mrs
Tulliver was a mild woman, but even a sheep will face about a little
when she has lambs.
“Tchuh!” said Mr Tulliver. “It takes a big loaf when there’s many to
breakfast. What signifies your sisters’ bits o’ money when they’ve got
half-a-dozen nevvies and nieces to divide it among? And your sister
Deane won’t get ’em to leave all to one, I reckon, and make the country
cry shame on ’em when they are dead?”
“I don’t know what she won’t get ’em to do,” said Mrs Tulliver, “for my
children are so awk’ard wi’ their aunts and uncles. Maggie’s ten times
naughtier when they come than she is other days, and Tom doesn’t like
’em, bless him!—though it’s more nat’ral in a boy than a gell. And
there’s Lucy Deane’s such a good child,—you may set her on a stool, and
there she’ll sit for an hour together, and never offer to get off. I
can’t help loving the child as if she was my own; and I’m sure she’s
more like _my_ child than sister Deane’s, for she’d allays a very poor
colour for one of our family, sister Deane had.”
“Well, well, if you’re fond o’ the child, ask her father and mother to
bring her with ’em. And won’t you ask their aunt and uncle Moss too,
and some o’ _their_ children?”
“Oh, dear, Mr Tulliver, why, there’d be eight people besides the
children, and I must put two more leaves i’ the table, besides reaching
down more o’ the dinner-service; and you know as well as I do as _my_
sisters and _your_ sister don’t suit well together.”
“Well, well, do as you like, Bessy,” said Mr Tulliver, taking up his
hat and walking out to the mill. Few wives were more submissive than
Mrs Tulliver on all points unconnected with her family relations; but
she had been a Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable
family indeed,—as much looked up to as any in their own parish, or the
next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always been thought to hold up their
heads very high, and no one was surprised the two eldest had married so
well,—not at an early age, for that was not the practice of the Dodson
family. There were particular ways of doing everything in that family:
particular ways of bleaching the linen, of making the cowslip wine,
curing the hams, and keeping the bottled gooseberries; so that no
daughter of that house could be indifferent to the privilege of having
been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were
always conducted with peculiar propriety in the Dodson family: the
hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the
thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be, and there were always
scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or
sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at
the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable
truths that correct family feeling dictated; if the illness or trouble
was the sufferer’s own fault, it was not in the practice of the Dodson
family to shrink from saying so. In short, there was in this family a
peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household
management and social demeanour, and the only bitter circumstance
attending this superiority was a painful inability to approve the
condiments or the conduct of families ungoverned by the Dodson
tradition. A female Dodson, when in “strange houses,” always ate dry
bread with her tea, and declined any sort of preserves, having no
confidence in the butter, and thinking that the preserves had probably
begun to ferment from want of due sugar and boiling. There were some
Dodsons less like the family than others, that was admitted; but in so
far as they were “kin,” they were of necessity better than those who
were “no kin.” And it is remarkable that while no individual Dodson was
satisfied with any other individual Dodson, each was satisfied, not
only with him or herself, but with the Dodsons collectively. The
feeblest member of a family—the one who has the least character—is
often the merest epitome of the family habits and traditions; and Mrs
Tulliver was a thorough Dodson, though a mild one, as small-beer, so
long as it is anything, is only describable as very weak ale: and
though she had groaned a little in her youth under the yoke of her
elder sisters, and still shed occasional tears at their sisterly
reproaches, it was not in Mrs Tulliver to be an innovator on the family
ideas. She was thankful to have been a Dodson, and to have one child
who took after her own family, at least in his features and complexion,
in liking salt and in eating beans, which a Tulliver never did.
In other respects the true Dodson was partly latent in Tom, and he was
as far from appreciating his “kin” on the mother’s side as Maggie
herself, generally absconding for the day with a large supply of the
most portable food, when he received timely warning that his aunts and
uncles were coming,—a moral symptom from which his aunt Glegg deduced
the gloomiest views of his future. It was rather hard on Maggie that
Tom always absconded without letting her into the secret, but the
weaker sex are acknowledged to be serious _impedimenta_ in cases of
flight.
On Wednesday, the day before the aunts and uncles were coming, there
were such various and suggestive scents, as of plumcakes in the oven
and jellies in the hot state, mingled with the aroma of gravy, that it
was impossible to feel altogether gloomy: there was hope in the air.
Tom and Maggie made several inroads into the kitchen, and, like other
marauders, were induced to keep aloof for a time only by being allowed
to carry away a sufficient load of booty.
“Tom,” said Maggie, as they sat on the boughs of the elder-tree, eating
their jam-puffs, “shall you run away to-morrow?”
“No,” said Tom, slowly, when he had finished his puff, and was eying
the third, which was to be divided between them,—“no, I sha’n’t.”
“Why, Tom? Because Lucy’s coming?”
“No,” said Tom, opening his pocket-knife and holding it over the puff,
with his head on one side in a dubitative manner. (It was a difficult
problem to divide that very irregular polygon into two equal parts.)
“What do _I_ care about Lucy? She’s only a girl,—_she_ can’t play at
bandy.”
“Is it the tipsy-cake, then?” said Maggie, exerting her hypothetic
powers, while she leaned forward toward Tom with her eyes fixed on the
hovering knife.
“No, you silly, that’ll be good the day after. It’s the pudden. I know
what the pudden’s to be,—apricot roll-up—O my buttons!”
With this interjection, the knife descended on the puff, and it was in
two, but the result was not satisfactory to Tom, for he still eyed the
halves doubtfully. At last he said,—
“Shut your eyes, Maggie.”
“What for?”
“You never mind what for. Shut ’em when I tell you.”
Maggie obeyed.
“Now, which’ll you have, Maggie,—right hand or left?”
“I’ll have that with the jam run out,” said Maggie, keeping her eyes
shut to please Tom.
“Why, you don’t like that, you silly. You may have it if it comes to
you fair, but I sha’n’t give it you without. Right or left,—you choose,
now. Ha-a-a!” said Tom, in a tone of exasperation, as Maggie peeped.
“You keep your eyes shut, now, else you sha’n’t have any.”
Maggie’s power of sacrifice did not extend so far; indeed, I fear she
cared less that Tom should enjoy the utmost possible amount of puff,
than that he should be pleased with her for giving him the best bit. So
she shut her eyes quite close, till Tom told her to “say which,” and
then she said, “Left hand.”
“You’ve got it,” said Tom, in rather a bitter tone.
“What! the bit with the jam run out?”
“No; here, take it,” said Tom, firmly, handing, decidedly the best
piece to Maggie.
“Oh, please, Tom, have it; I don’t mind—I like the other; please take
this.”
“No, I sha’n’t,” said Tom, almost crossly, beginning on his own
inferior piece.
Maggie, thinking it was no use to contend further, began too, and ate
up her half puff with considerable relish as well as rapidity. But Tom
had finished first, and had to look on while Maggie ate her last morsel
or two, feeling in himself a capacity for more. Maggie didn’t know Tom
was looking at her; she was seesawing on the elder-bough, lost to
almost everything but a vague sense of jam and idleness.
“Oh, you greedy thing!” said Tom, when she had swallowed the last
morsel. He was conscious of having acted very fairly, and thought she
ought to have considered this, and made up to him for it. He would have
refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a different
point of view before and after one’s own share of puff is swallowed.
Maggie turned quite pale. “Oh, Tom, why didn’t you ask me?”
“_I_ wasn’t going to ask you for a bit, you greedy. You might have
thought of it without, when you knew I gave you the best bit.”
“But I wanted you to have it; you know I did,” said Maggie, in an
injured tone.
“Yes, but I wasn’t going to do what wasn’t fair, like Spouncer. He
always takes the best bit, if you don’t punch him for it; and if you
choose the best with your eyes shut, he changes his hands. But if I go
halves, I’ll go ’em fair; only I wouldn’t be a greedy.”
With this cutting innuendo, Tom jumped down from his bough, and threw a
stone with a “hoigh!” as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been
looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears
and feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the
excellent dog accepted Tom’s attention with as much alacrity as if he
had been treated quite generously.
But Maggie, gifted with that superior power of misery which
distinguishes the human being, and places him at a proud distance from
the most melancholy chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave
herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have
given the world not to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some
of it for Tom. Not but that the puff was very nice, for Maggie’s palate
was not at all obtuse, but she would have gone without it many times
over, sooner than Tom should call her greedy and be cross with her. And
he had said he wouldn’t have it, and she ate it without thinking; how
could she help it? The tears flowed so plentifully that Maggie saw
nothing around her for the next ten minutes; but by that time
resentment began to give way to the desire of reconciliation, and she
jumped from her bough to look for Tom. He was no longer in the paddock
behind the rickyard; where was he likely to be gone, and Yap with him?
Maggie ran to the high bank against the great holly-tree, where she
could see far away toward the Floss. There was Tom; but her heart sank
again as she saw how far off he was on his way to the great river, and
that he had another companion besides Yap,—naughty Bob Jakin, whose
official, if not natural, function of frightening the birds was just
now at a standstill. Maggie felt sure that Bob was wicked, without very
distinctly knowing why; unless it was because Bob’s mother was a
dreadfully large fat woman, who lived at a queer round house down the
river; and once, when Maggie and Tom had wandered thither, there rushed
out a brindled dog that wouldn’t stop barking; and when Bob’s mother
came out after it, and screamed above the barking to tell them not to
be frightened, Maggie thought she was scolding them fiercely, and her
heart beat with terror. Maggie thought it very likely that the round
house had snakes on the floor, and bats in the bedroom; for she had
seen Bob take off his cap to show Tom a little snake that was inside
it, and another time he had a handful of young bats: altogether, he was
an irregular character, perhaps even slightly diabolical, judging from
his intimacy with snakes and bats; and to crown all, when Tom had Bob
for a companion, he didn’t mind about Maggie, and would never let her
go with him.
It must be owned that Tom was fond of Bob’s company. How could it be
otherwise? Bob knew, directly he saw a bird’s egg, whether it was a
swallow’s, or a tomtit’s, or a yellow-hammer’s; he found out all the
wasps’ nests, and could set all sorts of traps; he could climb the trees
like a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting hedgehogs
and stoats; and he had courage to do things that were rather naughty,
such as making gaps in the hedgerows, throwing stones after the sheep,
and killing a cat that was wandering _incognito_. Such qualities in an
inferior, who could always be treated with authority in spite of his
superior knowingness, had necessarily a fatal fascination for Tom; and
every holiday-time Maggie was sure to have days of grief because he had
gone off with Bob.
Well! there was no hope for it; he was gone now, and Maggie could think
of no comfort but to sit down by the hollow, or wander by the hedgerow,
and fancy it was all different, refashioning her little world into just
what she should like it to be.
Maggie’s was a troublous life, and this was the form in which she took
her opium.
Meanwhile Tom, forgetting all about Maggie and the sting of reproach
which he had left in her heart, was hurrying along with Bob, whom he
had met accidentally, to the scene of a great rat-catching in a
neighbouring barn. Bob knew all about this particular affair, and spoke
of the sport with an enthusiasm which no one who is not either divested
of all manly feeling, or pitiably ignorant of rat-catching, can fail to
imagine. For a person suspected of preternatural wickedness, Bob was
really not so very villanous-looking; there was even something
agreeable in his snub-nosed face, with its close-curled border of red
hair. But then his trousers were always rolled up at the knee, for the
convenience of wading on the slightest notice; and his virtue,
supposing it to exist, was undeniably “virtue in rags,” which, on the
authority even of bilious philosophers, who think all well-dressed
merit overpaid, is notoriously likely to remain unrecognised (perhaps
because it is seen so seldom).
“I know the chap as owns the ferrets,” said Bob, in a hoarse treble
voice, as he shuffled along, keeping his blue eyes fixed on the river,
like an amphibious animal who foresaw occasion for darting in. “He
lives up the Kennel Yard at Sut Ogg’s, he does. He’s the biggest
rot-catcher anywhere, he is. I’d sooner, be a rot-catcher nor anything,
I would. The moles is nothing to the rots. But Lors! you mun ha’
ferrets. Dogs is no good. Why, there’s that dog, now!” Bob continued,
pointing with an air of disgust toward Yap, “he’s no more good wi’ a
rot nor nothin’. I see it myself, I did, at the rot-catchin’ i’ your
feyther’s barn.”
Yap, feeling the withering influence of this scorn, tucked his tail in
and shrank close to Tom’s leg, who felt a little hurt for him, but had
not the superhuman courage to seem behindhand with Bob in contempt for
a dog who made so poor a figure.
“No, no,” he said, “Yap’s no good at sport. I’ll have regular good dogs
for rats and everything, when I’ve done school.”
“Hev ferrets, Measter Tom,” said Bob, eagerly,—“them white ferrets wi’
pink eyes; Lors, you might catch your own rots, an’ you might put a rot
in a cage wi’ a ferret, an’ see ’em fight, you might. That’s what I’d
do, I know, an’ it ’ud be better fun a’most nor seein’ two chaps
fight,—if it wasn’t them chaps as sold cakes an’ oranges at the Fair,
as the things flew out o’ their baskets, an’ some o’ the cakes was
smashed—But they tasted just as good,” added Bob, by way of note or
addendum, after a moment’s pause.
“But, I say, Bob,” said Tom, in a tone of deliberation, “ferrets are
nasty biting things,—they’ll bite a fellow without being set on.”
“Lors! why that’s the beauty on ’em. If a chap lays hold o’ your
ferret, he won’t be long before he hollows out a good un, _he_ won’t.”
At this moment a striking incident made the boys pause suddenly in
their walk. It was the plunging of some small body in the water from
among the neighbouring bulrushes; if it was not a water-rat, Bob
intimated that he was ready to undergo the most unpleasant
consequences.
“Hoigh! Yap,—hoigh! there he is,” said Tom, clapping his hands, as the
little black snout made its arrowy course to the opposite bank. “Seize
him, lad! seize him!”
Yap agitated his ears and wrinkled his brows, but declined to plunge,
trying whether barking would not answer the purpose just as well.
“Ugh! you coward!” said Tom, and kicked him over, feeling humiliated as
a sportsman to possess so poor-spirited an animal. Bob abstained from
remark and passed on, choosing, however, to walk in the shallow edge of
the overflowing river by way of change.
“He’s none so full now, the Floss isn’t,” said Bob, as he kicked the
water up before him, with an agreeable sense of being insolent to it.
“Why, last ’ear, the meadows was all one sheet o’ water, they was.”
“Ay, but,” said Tom, whose mind was prone to see an opposition between
statements that were really accordant,—“but there was a big flood once,
when the Round Pool was made. _I_ know there was, ’cause father says
so. And the sheep and cows all drowned, and the boats went all over the
fields ever such a way.”
“_I_ don’t care about a flood comin’,” said Bob; “I don’t mind the
water, no more nor the land. I’d swim, _I_ would.”
“Ah, but if you got nothing to eat for ever so long?” said Tom, his
imagination becoming quite active under the stimulus of that dread.
“When I’m a man, I shall make a boat with a wooden house on the top of
it, like Noah’s ark, and keep plenty to eat in it,—rabbits and
things,—all ready. And then if the flood came, you know, Bob, I
shouldn’t mind. And I’d take you in, if I saw you swimming,” he added,
in the tone of a benevolent patron.
“I aren’t frighted,” said Bob, to whom hunger did not appear so
appalling. “But I’d get in an’ knock the rabbits on th’ head when you
wanted to eat ’em.”
“Ah, and I should have halfpence, and we’d play at heads-and-tails,”
said Tom, not contemplating the possibility that this recreation might
have fewer charms for his mature age. “I’d divide fair to begin with,
and then we’d see who’d win.”
“I’ve got a halfpenny o’ my own,” said Bob, proudly, coming out of the
water and tossing his halfpenny in the air. “Yeads or tails?”
“Tails,” said Tom, instantly fired with the desire to win.
“It’s yeads,” said Bob, hastily, snatching up the halfpenny as it fell.
“It wasn’t,” said Tom, loudly and peremptorily. “You give me the
halfpenny; I’ve won it fair.”
“I sha’n’t,” said Bob, holding it tight in his pocket.
“Then I’ll make you; see if I don’t,” said Tom.
“You can’t make me do nothing, you can’t,” said Bob.
“Yes, I can.”
“No, you can’t.”
“I’m master.”
“I don’t care for you.”
“But I’ll make you care, you cheat,” said Tom, collaring Bob and
shaking him.
“You get out wi’ you,” said Bob, giving Tom a kick.
Tom’s blood was thoroughly up: he went at Bob with a lunge and threw
him down, but Bob seized hold and kept it like a cat, and pulled Tom
down after him. They struggled fiercely on the ground for a moment or
two, till Tom, pinning Bob down by the shoulders, thought he had the
mastery.
“_You_, say you’ll give me the halfpenny now,” he said, with
difficulty, while he exerted himself to keep the command of Bob’s arms.
But at this moment Yap, who had been running on before, returned
barking to the scene of action, and saw a favourable opportunity for
biting Bob’s bare leg not only with inpunity but with honour. The pain
from Yap’s teeth, instead of surprising Bob into a relaxation of his
hold, gave it a fiercer tenacity, and with a new exertion of his force
he pushed Tom backward and got uppermost. But now Yap, who could get no
sufficient purchase before, set his teeth in a new place, so that Bob,
harassed in this way, let go his hold of Tom, and, almost throttling
Yap, flung him into the river. By this time Tom was up again, and
before Bob had quite recovered his balance after the act of swinging
Yap, Tom fell upon him, threw him down, and got his knees firmly on
Bob’s chest.
“You give me the halfpenny now,” said Tom.
“Take it,” said Bob, sulkily.
“No, I sha’n’t take it; you give it me.”
Bob took the halfpenny out of his pocket, and threw it away from him on
the ground.
Tom loosed his hold, and left Bob to rise.
“There the halfpenny lies,” he said. “I don’t want your halfpenny; I
wouldn’t have kept it. But you wanted to cheat; I hate a cheat. I
sha’n’t go along with you any more,” he added, turning round homeward,
not without casting a regret toward the rat-catching and other
pleasures which he must relinquish along with Bob’s society.
“You may let it alone, then,” Bob called out after him. “I shall cheat
if I like; there’s no fun i’ playing else; and I know where there’s a
goldfinch’s nest, but I’ll take care _you_ don’t. An’ you’re a nasty
fightin’ turkey-cock, you are——”
Tom walked on without looking around, and Yap followed his example, the
cold bath having moderated his passions.
“Go along wi’ you, then, wi’ your drowned dog; I wouldn’t own such a
dog—_I_ wouldn’t,” said Bob, getting louder, in a last effort to
sustain his defiance. But Tom was not to be provoked into turning
round, and Bob’s voice began to falter a little as he said,—
“An’ I’n gi’en you everything, an’ showed you everything, an’ niver
wanted nothin’ from you. An’ there’s your horn-handed knife, then as
you gi’en me.” Here Bob flung the knife as far as he could after Tom’s
retreating footsteps. But it produced no effect, except the sense in
Bob’s mind that there was a terrible void in his lot, now that knife
was gone.
He stood still till Tom had passed through the gate and disappeared
behind the hedge. The knife would do no good on the ground there; it
wouldn’t vex Tom; and pride or resentment was a feeble passion in Bob’s
mind compared with the love of a pocket-knife. His very fingers sent
entreating thrills that he would go and clutch that familiar rough
buck’s-horn handle, which they had so often grasped for mere affection,
as it lay idle in his pocket. And there were two blades, and they had
just been sharpened! What is life without a pocket-knife to him who has
once tasted a higher existence? No; to throw the handle after the
hatchet is a comprehensible act of desperation, but to throw one’s
pocket-knife after an implacable friend is clearly in every sense a
hyperbole, or throwing beyond the mark. So Bob shuffled back to the
spot where the beloved knife lay in the dirt, and felt quite a new
pleasure in clutching it again after the temporary separation, in
opening one blade after the other, and feeling their edge with his
well-hardened thumb. Poor Bob! he was not sensitive on the point of
honour, not a chivalrous character. That fine moral aroma would not
have been thought much of by the public opinion of Kennel Yard, which
was the very focus or heart of Bob’s world, even if it could have made
itself perceptible there; yet, for all that, he was not utterly a sneak
and a thief as our friend Tom had hastily decided.
But Tom, you perceive, was rather a Rhadamanthine personage, having
more than the usual share of boy’s justice in him,—the justice that
desires to hurt culprits as much as they deserve to be hurt, and is
troubled with no doubts concerning the exact amount of their deserts.
Maggie saw a cloud on his brow when he came home, which checked her joy
at his coming so much sooner than she had expected, and she dared
hardly speak to him as he stood silently throwing the small
gravel-stones into the mill-dam. It is not pleasant to give up a
rat-catching when you have set your mind on it. But if Tom had told his
strongest feeling at that moment, he would have said, “I’d do just the
same again.” That was his usual mode of viewing his past actions;
whereas Maggie was always wishing she had done something different.
Chapter VII.
Enter the Aunts and Uncles
The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs Glegg was not the
least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs Tulliver’s arm-chair,
no impartial observer could have denied that for a woman of fifty she
had a very comely face and figure, though Tom and Maggie considered
their aunt Glegg as the type of ugliness. It is true she despised the
advantages of costume, for though, as she often observed, no woman had
better clothes, it was not her way to wear her new things out before
her old ones. Other women, if they liked, might have their best
thread-lace in every wash; but when Mrs Glegg died, it would be found
that she had better lace laid by in the right-hand drawer of her
wardrobe in the Spotted Chamber than ever Mrs Wooll of St Ogg’s had
bought in her life, although Mrs Wooll wore her lace before it was paid
for. So of her curled fronts: Mrs Glegg had doubtless the glossiest and
crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in various
degrees of fuzzy laxness; but to look out on the week-day world from
under a crisp and glossy front would be to introduce a most dreamlike
and unpleasant confusion between the sacred and the secular.
Occasionally, indeed, Mrs Glegg wore one of her third-best fronts on a
week-day visit, but not at a sister’s house; especially not at Mrs
Tulliver’s, who, since her marriage, had hurt her sister’s feelings
greatly by wearing her own hair, though, as Mrs Glegg observed to Mrs
Deane, a mother of a family, like Bessy, with a husband always going to
law, might have been expected to know better. But Bessy was always
weak!
So if Mrs Glegg’s front to-day was more fuzzy and lax than usual, she
had a design under it: she intended the most pointed and cutting
allusion to Mrs Tulliver’s bunches of blond curls, separated from each
other by a due wave of smoothness on each side of the parting. Mrs
Tulliver had shed tears several times at sister Glegg’s unkindness on
the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the consciousness of looking
the handsomer for them naturally administered support. Mrs Glegg chose
to wear her bonnet in the house to-day,—untied and tilted slightly, of
course—a frequent practice of hers when she was on a visit, and
happened to be in a severe humour: she didn’t know what draughts there
might be in strange houses. For the same reason she wore a small sable
tippet, which reached just to her shoulders, and was very far from
meeting across her well-formed chest, while her long neck was protected
by a _chevaux-de-frise_ of miscellaneous frilling. One would need to be
learned in the fashions of those times to know how far in the rear of
them Mrs Glegg’s slate-coloured silk gown must have been; but from
certain constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odor
about it suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that it
belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come recently
into wear.
Mrs Glegg held her large gold watch in her hand with the many-doubled
chain round her fingers, and observed to Mrs Tulliver, who had just
returned from a visit to the kitchen, that whatever it might be by
other people’s clocks and watches, it was gone half-past twelve by
hers.
“I don’t know what ails sister Pullet,” she continued. “It used to be
the way in our family for one to be as early as another,—I’m sure it
was so in my poor father’s time,—and not for one sister to sit half an
hour before the others came. But if the ways o’ the family are altered,
it sha’n’t be _my_ fault; _I’ll_ never be the one to come into a house
when all the rest are going away. I wonder _at_ sister Deane,—she used
to be more like me. But if you’ll take my advice, Bessy, you’ll put the
dinner forrard a bit, sooner than put it back, because folks are late
as ought to ha’ known better.”
“Oh dear, there’s no fear but what they’ll be all here in time,
sister,” said Mrs Tulliver, in her mild-peevish tone. “The dinner won’t
be ready till half-past one. But if it’s long for you to wait, let me
fetch you a cheesecake and a glass o’ wine.”
“Well, Bessy!” said Mrs Glegg, with a bitter smile and a scarcely
perceptible toss of her head, “I should ha’ thought you’d known your
own sister better. I never _did_ eat between meals, and I’m not going
to begin. Not but what I hate that nonsense of having your dinner at
half-past one, when you might have it at one. You was never brought up
in that way, Bessy.”
“Why, Jane, what can I do? Mr Tulliver doesn’t like his dinner before
two o’clock, but I put it half an hour earlier because o’ you.”
“Yes, yes, I know how it is with husbands,—they’re for putting
everything off; they’ll put the dinner off till after tea, if they’ve
got wives as are weak enough to give in to such work; but it’s a pity
for you, Bessy, as you haven’t got more strength o’ mind. It’ll be well
if your children don’t suffer for it. And I hope you’ve not gone and
got a great dinner for us,—going to expense for your sisters, as ’ud
sooner eat a crust o’ dry bread nor help to ruin you with extravagance.
I wonder you don’t take pattern by your sister Deane; she’s far more
sensible. And here you’ve got two children to provide for, and your
husband’s spent your fortin i’ going to law, and’s likely to spend his
own too. A boiled joint, as you could make broth of for the kitchen,”
Mrs Glegg added, in a tone of emphatic protest, “and a plain pudding,
with a spoonful o’ sugar, and no spice, ’ud be far more becoming.”
With sister Glegg in this humour, there was a cheerful prospect for the
day. Mrs Tulliver never went the length of quarrelling with her, any
more than a water-fowl that puts out its leg in a deprecating manner
can be said to quarrel with a boy who throws stones. But this point of
the dinner was a tender one, and not at all new, so that Mrs Tulliver
could make the same answer she had often made before.
“Mr Tulliver says he always _will_ have a good dinner for his friends
while he can pay for it,” she said; “and he’s a right to do as he likes
in his own house, sister.”
“Well, Bessy, _I_ can’t leave your children enough out o’ my savings to
keep ’em from ruin. And you mustn’t look to having any o’ Mr Glegg’s
money, for it’s well if I don’t go first,—he comes of a long-lived
family; and if he was to die and leave me well for my life, he’d tie
all the money up to go back to his own kin.”
The sound of wheels while Mrs Glegg was speaking was an interruption
highly welcome to Mrs Tulliver, who hastened out to receive sister
Pullet; it must be sister Pullet, because the sound was that of a
four-wheel.
Mrs Glegg tossed her head and looked rather sour about the mouth at the
thought of the “four-wheel.” She had a strong opinion on that subject.
Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped before Mrs
Tulliver’s door, and it was apparently requisite that she should shed a
few more before getting out; for though her husband and Mrs Tulliver
stood ready to support her, she sat still and shook her head sadly, as
she looked through her tears at the vague distance.
“Why, whativer is the matter, sister?” said Mrs Tulliver. She was not
an imaginative woman, but it occurred to her that the large
toilet-glass in sister Pullet’s best bedroom was possibly broken for
the second time.
There was no reply but a further shake of the head, as Mrs Pullet
slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without casting a glance
at Mr Pullet to see that he was guarding her handsome silk dress from
injury. Mr Pullet was a small man, with a high nose, small twinkling
eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black and a white
cravat, that seemed to have been tied very tight on some higher
principle than that of mere personal ease. He bore about the same
relation to his tall, good-looking wife, with her balloon sleeves,
abundant mantle, and a large befeathered and beribboned bonnet, as a
small fishing-smack bears to a brig with all its sails spread.
It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity
introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilisation, the sight
of a fashionably dressed female in grief. From the sorrow of a
Hottentot to that of a woman in large buckram sleeves, with several
bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet, and delicate ribbon
strings, what a long series of gradations! In the enlightened child of
civilisation the abandonment characteristic of grief is checked and
varied in the subtlest manner, so as to present an interesting problem
to the analytic mind. If, with a crushed heart and eyes half blinded by
the mist of tears, she were to walk with a too devious step through a
door-place, she might crush her buckram sleeves too, and the deep
consciousness of this possibility produces a composition of forces by
which she takes a line that just clears the door-post. Perceiving that
the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and throws them
languidly backward, a touching gesture, indicative, even in the deepest
gloom, of the hope in future dry moments when cap-strings will once
more have a charm. As the tears subside a little, and with her head
leaning backward at the angle that will not injure her bonnet, she
endures that terrible moment when grief, which has made all things else
a weariness, has itself become weary; she looks down pensively at her
bracelets, and adjusts their clasps with that pretty studied fortuity
which would be gratifying to her mind if it were once more in a calm
and healthy state.
Mrs Pullet brushed each door-post with great nicety, about the latitude
of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly ridiculous to an
instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and a half across the
shoulders), and having done that sent the muscles of her face in quest
of fresh tears as she advanced into the parlour where Mrs Glegg was
seated.
“Well, sister, you’re late; what’s the matter?” said Mrs Glegg, rather
sharply, as they shook hands.
Mrs Pullet sat down, lifting up her mantle carefully behind, before she
answered,—
“She’s gone,” unconsciously using an impressive figure of rhetoric.
“It isn’t the glass this time, then,” thought Mrs Tulliver.
“Died the day before yesterday,” continued Mrs Pullet; “an’ her legs
was as thick as my body,” she added, with deep sadness, after a pause.
“They’d tapped her no end o’ times, and the water—they say you might
ha’ swum in it, if you’d liked.”
“Well, Sophy, it’s a mercy she’s gone, then, whoever she may be,” said
Mrs Glegg, with the promptitude and emphasis of a mind naturally clear
and decided; “but I can’t think who you’re talking of, for my part.”
“But _I_ know,” said Mrs Pullet, sighing and shaking her head; “and
there isn’t another such a dropsy in the parish. _I_ know as it’s old
Mrs Sutton o’ the Twentylands.”
“Well, she’s no kin o’ yours, nor much acquaintance as I’ve ever heared
of,” said Mrs Glegg, who always cried just as much as was proper when
anything happened to her own “kin,” but not on other occasions.
“She’s so much acquaintance as I’ve seen her legs when they was like
bladders. And an old lady as had doubled her money over and over again,
and kept it all in her own management to the last, and had her pocket
with her keys in under her pillow constant. There isn’t many old
_par_ish’ners like her, I doubt.”
“And they say she’d took as much physic as ’ud fill a wagon,” observed
Mr Pullet.
“Ah!” sighed Mrs Pullet, “she’d another complaint ever so many years
before she had the dropsy, and the doctors couldn’t make out what it
was. And she said to me, when I went to see her last Christmas, she
said, ‘Mrs Pullet, if ever you have the dropsy, you’ll think o’ me.’
She _did_ say so,” added Mrs Pullet, beginning to cry bitterly again;
“those were her very words. And she’s to be buried o’ Saturday, and
Pullet’s bid to the funeral.”
“Sophy,” said Mrs Glegg, unable any longer to contain her spirit of
rational remonstrance,—“Sophy, I wonder _at_ you, fretting and injuring
your health about people as don’t belong to you. Your poor father never
did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any o’ the family as I ever
heard of. You couldn’t fret no more than this, if we’d heared as our
cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his will.”
Mrs Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather
flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much. It was
not everybody who could afford to cry so much about their neighbours
who had left them nothing; but Mrs Pullet had married a gentleman
farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her crying and everything
else to the highest pitch of respectability.
“Mrs Sutton didn’t die without making her will, though,” said Mr
Pullet, with a confused sense that he was saying something to sanction
his wife’s tears; “ours is a rich parish, but they say there’s nobody
else to leave as many thousands behind ’em as Mrs Sutton. And she’s
left no leggicies to speak on,—left it all in a lump to her husband’s
nevvy.”
“There wasn’t much good i’ being so rich, then,” said Mrs Glegg, “if
she’d got none but husband’s kin to leave it to. It’s poor work when
that’s all you’ve got to pinch yourself for. Not as I’m one o’ those as
’ud like to die without leaving more money out at interest than other
folks had reckoned; but it’s a poor tale when it must go out o’ your
own family.”
“I’m sure, sister,” said Mrs Pullet, who had recovered sufficiently to
take off her veil and fold it carefully, “it’s a nice sort o’ man as
Mrs Sutton has left her money to, for he’s troubled with the asthmy,
and goes to bed every night at eight o’clock. He told me about it
himself—as free as could be—one Sunday when he came to our church. He
wears a hareskin on his chest, and has a trembling in his talk,—quite a
gentleman sort o’ man. I told him there wasn’t many months in the year
as I wasn’t under the doctor’s hands. And he said, ‘Mrs Pullet, I can
feel for you.’ That was what he said,—the very words. Ah!” sighed Mrs
Pullet, shaking her head at the idea that there were but few who could
enter fully into her experiences in pink mixture and white mixture,
strong stuff in small bottles, and weak stuff in large bottles, damp
boluses at a shilling, and draughts at eighteenpence. “Sister, I may as
well go and take my bonnet off now. Did you see as the cap-box was put
out?” she added, turning to her husband.
Mr Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten it, and
hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the omission.
“They’ll bring it upstairs, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver, wishing to go
at once, lest Mrs Glegg should begin to explain her feelings about
Sophy’s being the first Dodson who ever ruined her constitution with
doctor’s stuff.
Mrs Tulliver was fond of going upstairs with her sister Pullet, and
looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head, and
discussing millinery in general. This was part of Bessy’s weakness that
stirred Mrs Glegg’s sisterly compassion: Bessy went far too well
dressed, considering; and she was too proud to dress her child in the
good clothing her sister Glegg gave her from the primeval strata of her
wardrobe; it was a sin and a shame to buy anything to dress that child,
if it wasn’t a pair of shoes. In this particular, however, Mrs Glegg
did her sister Bessy some injustice, for Mrs Tulliver had really made
great efforts to induce Maggie to wear a leghorn bonnet and a dyed silk
frock made out of her aunt Glegg’s, but the results had been such that
Mrs Tulliver was obliged to bury them in her maternal bosom; for
Maggie, declaring that the frock smelt of nasty dye, had taken an
opportunity of basting it together with the roast beef the first Sunday
she wore it, and finding this scheme answer, she had subsequently
pumped on the bonnet with its green ribbons, so as to give it a general
resemblance to a sage cheese garnished with withered lettuces. I must
urge in excuse for Maggie, that Tom had laughed at her in the bonnet,
and said she looked like an old Judy. Aunt Pullet, too, made presents
of clothes, but these were always pretty enough to please Maggie as
well as her mother. Of all her sisters, Mrs Tulliver certainly
preferred her sister Pullet, not without a return of preference; but
Mrs Pullet was sorry Bessy had those naughty, awkward children; she
would do the best she could by them, but it was a pity they weren’t as
good and as pretty as sister Deane’s child. Maggie and Tom, on their
part, thought their aunt Pullet tolerable, chiefly because she was not
their aunt Glegg. Tom always declined to go more than once during his
holidays to see either of them. Both his uncles tipped him that once,
of course; but at his aunt Pullet’s there were a great many toads to
pelt in the cellar-area, so that he preferred the visit to her. Maggie
shuddered at the toads, and dreamed of them horribly, but she liked her
uncle Pullet’s musical snuff-box. Still, it was agreed by the sisters,
in Mrs Tulliver’s absence, that the Tulliver blood did not mix well
with the Dodson blood; that, in fact, poor Bessy’s children were
Tullivers, and that Tom, notwithstanding he had the Dodson complexion,
was likely to be as “contrairy” as his father. As for Maggie, she was
the picture of her aunt Moss, Mr Tulliver’s sister,—a large-boned
woman, who had married as poorly as could be; had no china, and had a
husband who had much ado to pay his rent. But when Mrs Pullet was alone
with Mrs Tulliver upstairs, the remarks were naturally to the
disadvantage of Mrs Glegg, and they agreed, in confidence, that there
was no knowing what sort of fright sister Jane would come out next. But
their _tête-à-tête_ was curtailed by the appearance of Mrs Deane with
little Lucy; and Mrs Tulliver had to look on with a silent pang while
Lucy’s blond curls were adjusted. It was quite unaccountable that Mrs
Deane, the thinnest and sallowest of all the Miss Dodsons, should have
had this child, who might have been taken for Mrs Tulliver’s any day.
And Maggie always looked twice as dark as usual when she was by the
side of Lucy.
She did to-day, when she and Tom came in from the garden with their
father and their uncle Glegg. Maggie had thrown her bonnet off very
carelessly, and coming in with her hair rough as well as out of curl,
rushed at once to Lucy, who was standing by her mother’s knee.
Certainly the contrast between the cousins was conspicuous, and to
superficial eyes was very much to the disadvantage of Maggie though a
connoisseur might have seen “points” in her which had a higher promise
for maturity than Lucy’s natty completeness. It was like the contrast
between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten. Lucy put up
the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed; everything about her was
neat,—her little round neck, with the row of coral beads; her little
straight nose, not at all snubby; her little clear eyebrows, rather
darker than her curls, to match hazel eyes, which looked up with shy
pleasure at Maggie, taller by the head, though scarcely a year older.
Maggie always looked at Lucy with delight.
She was fond of fancying a world where the people never got any larger
than children of their own age, and she made the queen of it just like
Lucy, with a little crown on her head, and a little sceptre in her
hand—only the queen was Maggie herself in Lucy’s form.
“Oh, Lucy,” she burst out, after kissing her, “you’ll stay with Tom and
me, won’t you? Oh, kiss her, Tom.”
Tom, too, had come up to Lucy, but he was not going to kiss her—no; he
came up to her with Maggie, because it seemed easier, on the whole,
than saying, “How do you do?” to all those aunts and uncles. He stood
looking at nothing in particular, with the blushing, awkward air and
semi-smile which are common to shy boys when in company,—very much as
if they had come into the world by mistake, and found it in a degree of
undress that was quite embarrassing.
“Heyday!” said aunt Glegg, with loud emphasis. “Do little boys and
gells come into a room without taking notice of their uncles and aunts?
That wasn’t the way when _I_ was a little gell.”
“Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my dears,” said Mrs Tulliver,
looking anxious and melancholy. She wanted to whisper to Maggie a
command to go and have her hair brushed.
“Well, and how do you do? And I hope you’re good children, are you?”
said Aunt Glegg, in the same loud, emphatic way, as she took their
hands, hurting them with her large rings, and kissing their cheeks much
against their desire. “Look up, Tom, look up. Boys as go to
boarding-schools should hold their heads up. Look at me now.” Tom
declined that pleasure apparently, for he tried to draw his hand away.
“Put your hair behind your ears, Maggie, and keep your frock on your
shoulder.”
Aunt Glegg always spoke to them in this loud, emphatic way, as if she
considered them deaf, or perhaps rather idiotic; it was a means, she
thought, of making them feel that they were accountable creatures, and
might be a salutary check on naughty tendencies. Bessy’s children were
so spoiled—they’d need have somebody to make them feel their duty.
“Well, my dears,” said aunt Pullet, in a compassionate voice, “you grow
wonderful fast. I doubt they’ll outgrow their strength,” she added,
looking over their heads, with a melancholy expression, at their
mother. “I think the gell has too much hair. I’d have it thinned and
cut shorter, sister, if I was you; it isn’t good for her health. It’s
that as makes her skin so brown, I shouldn’t wonder. Don’t you think
so, sister Deane?”
“I can’t say, I’m sure, sister,” said Mrs Deane, shutting her lips
close again, and looking at Maggie with a critical eye.
“No, no,” said Mr Tulliver, “the child’s healthy enough; there’s
nothing ails her. There’s red wheat as well as white, for that matter,
and some like the dark grain best. But it ’ud be as well if Bessy ’ud
have the child’s hair cut, so as it ’ud lie smooth.”
A dreadful resolve was gathering in Maggie’s breast, but it was
arrested by the desire to know from her aunt Deane whether she would
leave Lucy behind. Aunt Deane would hardly ever let Lucy come to see
them. After various reasons for refusal, Mrs Deane appealed to Lucy
herself.
“You wouldn’t like to stay behind without mother, should you, Lucy?”
“Yes, please, mother,” said Lucy, timidly, blushing very pink all over
her little neck.
“Well done, Lucy! Let her stay, Mrs Deane, let her stay,” said Mr
Deane, a large but alert-looking man, with a type of _physique_ to be
seen in all ranks of English society,—bald crown, red whiskers, full
forehead, and general solidity without heaviness. You may see noblemen
like Mr Deane, and you may see grocers or day-labourers like him; but
the keenness of his brown eyes was less common than his contour.
He held a silver snuff-box very tightly in his hand, and now and then
exchanged a pinch with Mr Tulliver, whose box was only silver-mounted,
so that it was naturally a joke between them that Mr Tulliver wanted to
exchange snuff-boxes also. Mr Deane’s box had been given him by the
superior partners in the firm to which he belonged, at the same time
that they gave him a share in the business, in acknowledgment of his
valuable services as manager. No man was thought more highly of in St
Ogg’s than Mr Deane; and some persons were even of opinion that Miss
Susan Dodson, who was once held to have made the worst match of all the
Dodson sisters, might one day ride in a better carriage, and live in a
better house, even than her sister Pullet. There was no knowing where a
man would stop, who had got his foot into a great mill-owning,
ship-owning business like that of Guest & Co., with a banking concern
attached. And Mrs Deane, as her intimate female friends observed, was
proud and “having” enough; _she_ wouldn’t let her husband stand still
in the world for want of spurring.
“Maggie,” said Mrs Tulliver, beckoning Maggie to her, and whispering in
her ear, as soon as this point of Lucy’s staying was settled, “go and
get your hair brushed, do, for shame. I told you not to come in without
going to Martha first, you know I did.”
“Tom come out with me,” whispered Maggie, pulling his sleeve as she
passed him; and Tom followed willingly enough.
“Come upstairs with me, Tom,” she whispered, when they were outside the
door. “There’s something I want to do before dinner.”
“There’s no time to play at anything before dinner,” said Tom, whose
imagination was impatient of any intermediate prospect.
“Oh yes, there is time for this; _do_ come, Tom.”
Tom followed Maggie upstairs into her mother’s room, and saw her go at
once to a drawer, from which she took out a large pair of scissors.
“What are they for, Maggie?” said Tom, feeling his curiosity awakened.
Maggie answered by seizing her front locks and cutting them straight
across the middle of her forehead.
“Oh, my buttons! Maggie, you’ll catch it!” exclaimed Tom; “you’d better
not cut any more off.”
Snip! went the great scissors again while Tom was speaking, and he
couldn’t help feeling it was rather good fun; Maggie would look so
queer.
“Here, Tom, cut it behind for me,” said Maggie, excited by her own
daring, and anxious to finish the deed.
“You’ll catch it, you know,” said Tom, nodding his head in an
admonitory manner, and hesitating a little as he took the scissors.
“Never mind, make haste!” said Maggie, giving a little stamp with her
foot. Her cheeks were quite flushed.
The black locks were so thick, nothing could be more tempting to a lad
who had already tasted the forbidden pleasure of cutting the pony’s
mane. I speak to those who know the satisfaction of making a pair of
scissors meet through a duly resisting mass of hair. One delicious
grinding snip, and then another and another, and the hinder-locks fell
heavily on the floor, and Maggie stood cropped in a jagged, uneven
manner, but with a sense of clearness and freedom, as if she had
emerged from a wood into the open plain.
“Oh, Maggie,” said Tom, jumping round her, and slapping his knees as he
laughed, “Oh, my buttons! what a queer thing you look! Look at yourself
in the glass; you look like the idiot we throw out nutshells to at
school.”
Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly at
her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it,
and something also of the triumph she should have over her mother and
her aunts by this very decided course of action; she didn’t want her
hair to look pretty,—that was out of the question,—she only wanted
people to think her a clever little girl, and not to find fault with
her. But now, when Tom began to laugh at her, and say she was like an
idiot, the affair had quite a new aspect. She looked in the glass, and
still Tom laughed and clapped his hands, and Maggie’s cheeks began to
pale, and her lips to tremble a little.
“Oh, Maggie, you’ll have to go down to dinner directly,” said Tom. “Oh,
my!”
“Don’t laugh at me, Tom,” said Maggie, in a passionate tone, with an
outburst of angry tears, stamping, and giving him a push.
“Now, then, spitfire!” said Tom. “What did you cut it off for, then? I
shall go down: I can smell the dinner going in.”
He hurried downstairs and left poor Maggie to that bitter sense of the
irrevocable which was almost an everyday experience of her small soul.
She could see clearly enough, now the thing was done, that it was very
foolish, and that she should have to hear and think more about her hair
than ever; for Maggie rushed to her deeds with passionate impulse, and
then saw not only their consequences, but what would have happened if
they had not been done, with all the detail and exaggerated
circumstance of an active imagination. Tom never did the same sort of
foolish things as Maggie, having a wonderful instinctive discernment of
what would turn to his advantage or disadvantage; and so it happened,
that though he was much more wilful and inflexible than Maggie, his
mother hardly ever called him naughty. But if Tom did make a mistake of
that sort, he espoused it, and stood by it: he “didn’t mind.” If he
broke the lash of his father’s gigwhip by lashing the gate, he couldn’t
help it,—the whip shouldn’t have got caught in the hinge. If Tom
Tulliver whipped a gate, he was convinced, not that the whipping of
gates by all boys was a justifiable act, but that he, Tom Tulliver, was
justifiable in whipping that particular gate, and he wasn’t going to be
sorry. But Maggie, as she stood crying before the glass, felt it
impossible that she should go down to dinner and endure the severe eyes
and severe words of her aunts, while Tom and Lucy, and Martha, who
waited at table, and perhaps her father and her uncles, would laugh at
her; for if Tom had laughed at her, of course every one else would; and
if she had only let her hair alone, she could have sat with Tom and
Lucy, and had the apricot pudding and the custard! What could she do
but sob? She sat as helpless and despairing among her black locks as
Ajax among the slaughtered sheep. Very trivial, perhaps, this anguish
seems to weather-worn mortals who have to think of Christmas bills,
dead loves, and broken friendships; but it was not less bitter to
Maggie—perhaps it was even more bitter—than what we are fond of calling
antithetically the real troubles of mature life. “Ah, my child, you
will have real troubles to fret about by and by,” is the consolation we
have almost all of us had administered to us in our childhood, and have
repeated to other children since we have been grown up. We have all of
us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny bare legs above our little
socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place;
but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment and weep over
it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago.
Every one of those keen moments has left its trace, and lives in us
still, but such traces have blent themselves irrecoverably with the
firmer texture of our youth and manhood; and so it comes that we can
look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the
reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the experience
of his childhood, not merely with a memory of what he did and what
happened to him, of what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and
trousers, but with an intimate penetration, a revived consciousness of
what he felt then, when it was so long from one Midsummer to another;
what he felt when his school fellows shut him out of their game because
he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day
in the holidays, when he didn’t know how to amuse himself, and fell
from idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from
defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to let
him have a tailed coat that “half,” although every other boy of his age
had gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that early
bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless
conception of life, that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should
not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children.
“Miss Maggie, you’re to come down this minute,” said Kezia, entering
the room hurriedly. “Lawks! what have you been a-doing? I never _see_
such a fright!”
“Don’t, Kezia,” said Maggie, angrily. “Go away!”
“But I tell you you’re to come down, Miss, this minute; your mother
says so,” said Kezia, going up to Maggie and taking her by the hand to
raise her from the floor.
“Get away, Kezia; I don’t want any dinner,” said Maggie, resisting
Kezia’s arm. “I sha’n’t come.”
“Oh, well, I can’t stay. I’ve got to wait at dinner,” said Kezia, going
out again.
“Maggie, you little silly,” said Tom, peeping into the room ten minutes
after, “why don’t you come and have your dinner? There’s lots o’
goodies, and mother says you’re to come. What are you crying for, you
little spooney?”
Oh, it was dreadful! Tom was so hard and unconcerned; if _he_ had been
crying on the floor, Maggie would have cried too. And there was the
dinner, so nice; and she was _so_ hungry. It was very bitter.
But Tom was not altogether hard. He was not inclined to cry, and did
not feel that Maggie’s grief spoiled his prospect of the sweets; but he
went and put his head near her, and said in a lower, comforting tone,—
“Won’t you come, then, Magsie? Shall I bring you a bit o’ pudding when
I’ve had mine, and a custard and things?”
“Ye-e-es,” said Maggie, beginning to feel life a little more tolerable.
“Very well,” said Tom, going away. But he turned again at the door and
said, “But you’d better come, you know. There’s the dessert,—nuts, you
know, and cowslip wine.”
Maggie’s tears had ceased, and she looked reflective as Tom left her.
His good nature had taken off the keenest edge of her suffering, and
nuts with cowslip wine began to assert their legitimate influence.
Slowly she rose from amongst her scattered locks, and slowly she made
her way downstairs. Then she stood leaning with one shoulder against
the frame of the dining-parlour door, peeping in when it was ajar. She
saw Tom and Lucy with an empty chair between them, and there were the
custards on a side-table; it was too much. She slipped in and went
toward the empty chair. But she had no sooner sat down than she
repented and wished herself back again.
Mrs Tulliver gave a little scream as she saw her, and felt such a
“turn” that she dropped the large gravy-spoon into the dish, with the
most serious results to the table-cloth. For Kezia had not betrayed the
reason of Maggie’s refusal to come down, not liking to give her
mistress a shock in the moment of carving, and Mrs Tulliver thought
there was nothing worse in question than a fit of perverseness, which
was inflicting its own punishment by depriving Maggie of half her
dinner.
Mrs Tulliver’s scream made all eyes turn towards the same point as her
own, and Maggie’s cheeks and ears began to burn, while uncle Glegg, a
kind-looking, white-haired old gentleman, said,—
“Heyday! what little gell’s this? Why, I don’t know her. Is it some
little gell you’ve picked up in the road, Kezia?”
“Why, she’s gone and cut her hair herself,” said Mr Tulliver in an
undertone to Mr Deane, laughing with much enjoyment. “Did you ever know
such a little hussy as it is?”
“Why, little miss, you’ve made yourself look very funny,” said Uncle
Pullet, and perhaps he never in his life made an observation which was
felt to be so lacerating.
“Fie, for shame!” said aunt Glegg, in her loudest, severest tone of
reproof. “Little gells as cut their own hair should be whipped and fed
on bread and water,—not come and sit down with their aunts and uncles.”
“Ay, ay,” said uncle Glegg, meaning to give a playful turn to this
denunciation, “she must be sent to jail, I think, and they’ll cut the
rest of her hair off there, and make it all even.”
“She’s more like a gypsy nor ever,” said aunt Pullet, in a pitying
tone; “it’s very bad luck, sister, as the gell should be so brown; the
boy’s fair enough. I doubt it’ll stand in her way i’ life to be so
brown.”
“She’s a naughty child, as’ll break her mother’s heart,” said Mrs
Tulliver, with the tears in her eyes.
Maggie seemed to be listening to a chorus of reproach and derision. Her
first flush came from anger, which gave her a transient power of
defiance, and Tom thought she was braving it out, supported by the
recent appearance of the pudding and custard. Under this impression, he
whispered, “Oh, my! Maggie, I told you you’d catch it.” He meant to be
friendly, but Maggie felt convinced that Tom was rejoicing in her
ignominy. Her feeble power of defiance left her in an instant, her
heart swelled, and getting up from her chair, she ran to her father,
hid her face on his shoulder, and burst out into loud sobbing.
“Come, come, my wench,” said her father, soothingly, putting his arm
round her, “never mind; you was i’ the right to cut it off if it
plagued you; give over crying; father’ll take your part.”
Delicious words of tenderness! Maggie never forgot any of these moments
when her father “took her part”; she kept them in her heart, and
thought of them long years after, when every one else said that her
father had done very ill by his children.
“How your husband does spoil that child, Bessy!” said Mrs Glegg, in a
loud “aside,” to Mrs Tulliver. “It’ll be the ruin of her, if you don’t
take care. _My_ father never brought his children up so, else we should
ha’ been a different sort o’ family to what we are.”
Mrs Tulliver’s domestic sorrows seemed at this moment to have reached
the point at which insensibility begins. She took no notice of her
sister’s remark, but threw back her capstrings and dispensed the
pudding, in mute resignation.
With the dessert there came entire deliverance for Maggie, for the
children were told they might have their nuts and wine in the
summer-house, since the day was so mild; and they scampered out among
the budding bushes of the garden with the alacrity of small animals
getting from under a burning glass.
Mrs Tulliver had her special reason for this permission: now the dinner
was despatched, and every one’s mind disengaged, it was the right
moment to communicate Mr Tulliver’s intention concerning Tom, and it
would be as well for Tom himself to be absent. The children were used
to hear themselves talked of as freely as if they were birds, and could
understand nothing, however they might stretch their necks and listen;
but on this occasion Mrs Tulliver manifested an unusual discretion,
because she had recently had evidence that the going to school to a
clergyman was a sore point with Tom, who looked at it as very much on a
par with going to school to a constable. Mrs Tulliver had a sighing
sense that her husband would do as he liked, whatever sister Glegg
said, or sister Pullet either; but at least they would not be able to
say, if the thing turned out ill, that Bessy had fallen in with her
husband’s folly without letting her own friends know a word about it.
“Mr Tulliver,” she said, interrupting her husband in his talk with Mr
Deane, “it’s time now to tell the children’s aunts and uncles what
you’re thinking of doing with Tom, isn’t it?”
“Very well,” said Mr Tulliver, rather sharply, “I’ve no objections to
tell anybody what I mean to do with him. I’ve settled,” he added,
looking toward Mr Glegg and Mr Deane,—“I’ve settled to send him to a Mr
Stelling, a parson, down at King’s Lorton, there,—an uncommon clever
fellow, I understand, as’ll put him up to most things.”
There was a rustling demonstration of surprise in the company, such as
you may have observed in a country congregation when they hear an
allusion to their week-day affairs from the pulpit. It was equally
astonishing to the aunts and uncles to find a parson introduced into Mr
Tulliver’s family arrangements. As for uncle Pullet, he could hardly
have been more thoroughly obfuscated if Mr Tulliver had said that he
was going to send Tom to the Lord Chancellor; for uncle Pullet belonged
to that extinct class of British yeoman who, dressed in good
broadcloth, paid high rates and taxes, went to church, and ate a
particularly good dinner on Sunday, without dreaming that the British
constitution in Church and State had a traceable origin any more than
the solar system and the fixed stars.
It is melancholy, but true, that Mr Pullet had the most confused idea
of a bishop as a sort of a baronet, who might or might not be a
clergyman; and as the rector of his own parish was a man of high family
and fortune, the idea that a clergyman could be a schoolmaster was too
remote from Mr Pullet’s experience to be readily conceivable. I know it
is difficult for people in these instructed times to believe in uncle
Pullet’s ignorance; but let them reflect on the remarkable results of a
great natural faculty under favouring circumstances. And uncle Pullet
had a great natural faculty for ignorance. He was the first to give
utterance to his astonishment.
“Why, what can you be going to send him to a parson for?” he said, with
an amazed twinkling in his eyes, looking at Mr Glegg and Mr Deane, to
see if they showed any signs of comprehension.
“Why, because the parsons are the best schoolmasters, by what I can
make out,” said poor Mr Tulliver, who, in the maze of this puzzling
world, laid hold of any clue with great readiness and tenacity. “Jacobs
at th’ academy’s no parson, and he’s done very bad by the boy; and I
made up my mind, if I send him to school again, it should be to
somebody different to Jacobs. And this Mr Stelling, by what I can make
out, is the sort o’ man I want. And I mean my boy to go to him at
Midsummer,” he concluded, in a tone of decision, tapping his snuff-box
and taking a pinch.
“You’ll have to pay a swinging half-yearly bill, then, eh, Tulliver?
The clergymen have highish notions, in general,” said Mr Deane, taking
snuff vigorously, as he always did when wishing to maintain a neutral
position.
“What! do you think the parson’ll teach him to know a good sample o’
wheat when he sees it, neighbour Tulliver?” said Mr Glegg, who was fond
of his jest, and having retired from business, felt that it was not
only allowable but becoming in him to take a playful view of things.
“Why, you see, I’ve got a plan i’ my head about Tom,” said Mr Tulliver,
pausing after that statement and lifting up his glass.
“Well, if I may be allowed to speak, and it’s seldom as I am,” said Mrs
Glegg, with a tone of bitter meaning, “I should like to know what good
is to come to the boy by bringin’ him up above his fortin.”
“Why,” said Mr Tulliver, not looking at Mrs Glegg, but at the male part
of his audience, “you see, I’ve made up my mind not to bring Tom up to
my own business. I’ve had my thoughts about it all along, and I made up
my mind by what I saw with Garnett and _his_ son. I mean to put him to
some business as he can go into without capital, and I want to give him
an eddication as he’ll be even wi’ the lawyers and folks, and put me up
to a notion now an’ then.”
Mrs Glegg emitted a long sort of guttural sound with closed lips, that
smiled in mingled pity and scorn.
“It ’ud be a fine deal better for some people,” she said, after that
introductory note, “if they’d let the lawyers alone.”
“Is he at the head of a grammar school, then, this clergyman, such as
that at Market Bewley?” said Mr Deane.
“No, nothing of that,” said Mr Tulliver. “He won’t take more than two
or three pupils, and so he’ll have the more time to attend to ’em, you
know.”
“Ah, and get his eddication done the sooner; they can’t learn much at a
time when there’s so many of ’em,” said uncle Pullet, feeling that he
was getting quite an insight into this difficult matter.
“But he’ll want the more pay, I doubt,” said Mr Glegg.
“Ay, ay, a cool hundred a year, that’s all,” said Mr Tulliver, with
some pride at his own spirited course. “But then, you know, it’s an
investment; Tom’s eddication ’ull be so much capital to him.”
“Ay, there’s something in that,” said Mr Glegg. “Well well, neighbour
Tulliver, you may be right, you may be right:
‘When land is gone and money’s spent,
Then learning is most excellent.’
“I remember seeing those two lines wrote on a window at Buxton. But us
that have got no learning had better keep our money, eh, neighbour
Pullet?” Mr Glegg rubbed his knees, and looked very pleasant.
“Mr Glegg, I wonder _at_ you,” said his wife. “It’s very unbecoming in
a man o’ your age and belongings.”
“What’s unbecoming, Mrs G.?” said Mr Glegg, winking pleasantly at the
company. “My new blue coat as I’ve got on?”
“I pity your weakness, Mr Glegg. I say it’s unbecoming to be making a
joke when you see your own kin going headlongs to ruin.”
“If you mean me by that,” said Mr Tulliver, considerably nettled, “you
needn’t trouble yourself to fret about me. I can manage my own affairs
without troubling other folks.”
“Bless me!” said Mr Deane, judiciously introducing a new idea, “why,
now I come to think of it, somebody said Wakem was going to send _his_
son—the deformed lad—to a clergyman, didn’t they, Susan?” (appealing to
his wife).
“I can give no account of it, I’m sure,” said Mrs Deane, closing her
lips very tightly again. Mrs Deane was not a woman to take part in a
scene where missiles were flying.
“Well,” said Mr Tulliver, speaking all the more cheerfully, that Mrs
Glegg might see he didn’t mind her, “if Wakem thinks o’ sending his son
to a clergyman, depend on it I shall make no mistake i’ sending Tom to
one. Wakem’s as big a scoundrel as Old Harry ever made, but he knows
the length of every man’s foot he’s got to deal with. Ay, ay, tell me
who’s Wakem’s butcher, and I’ll tell you where to get your meat.”
“But lawyer Wakem’s son’s got a hump-back,” said Mrs Pullet, who felt
as if the whole business had a funereal aspect; “it’s more nat’ral to
send _him_ to a clergyman.”
“Yes,” said Mr Glegg, interpreting Mrs Pullet’s observation with
erroneous plausibility, “you must consider that, neighbour Tulliver;
Wakem’s son isn’t likely to follow any business. Wakem ’ull make a
gentleman of him, poor fellow.”
“Mr Glegg,” said Mrs G., in a tone which implied that her indignation
would fizz and ooze a little, though she was determined to keep it
corked up, “you’d far better hold your tongue. Mr Tulliver doesn’t want
to know your opinion nor mine either. There’s folks in the world as
know better than everybody else.”
“Why, I should think that’s you, if we’re to trust your own tale,” said
Mr Tulliver, beginning to boil up again.
“Oh, _I_ say nothing,” said Mrs Glegg, sarcastically. “My advice has
never been asked, and I don’t give it.”
“It’ll be the first time, then,” said Mr Tulliver. “It’s the only thing
you’re over-ready at giving.”
“I’ve been over-ready at lending, then, if I haven’t been over-ready at
giving,” said Mrs Glegg. “There’s folks I’ve lent money to, as perhaps
I shall repent o’ lending money to kin.”
“Come, come, come,” said Mr Glegg, soothingly. But Mr Tulliver was not
to be hindered of his retort.
“You’ve got a bond for it, I reckon,” he said; “and you’ve had your
five per cent, kin or no kin.”
“Sister,” said Mrs Tulliver, pleadingly, “drink your wine, and let me
give you some almonds and raisins.”
“Bessy, I’m sorry for you,” said Mrs Glegg, very much with the feeling
of a cur that seizes the opportunity of diverting his bark toward the
man who carries no stick. “It’s poor work talking o’ almonds and
raisins.”
“Lors, sister Glegg, don’t be so quarrelsome,” said Mrs Pullet,
beginning to cry a little. “You may be struck with a fit, getting so
red in the face after dinner, and we are but just out o’ mourning, all
of us,—and all wi’ gowns craped alike and just put by; it’s very bad
among sisters.”
“I should think it _is_ bad,” said Mrs Glegg. “Things are come to a
fine pass when one sister invites the other to her house o’ purpose to
quarrel with her and abuse her.”
“Softly, softly, Jane; be reasonable, be reasonable,” said Mr Glegg.
But while he was speaking, Mr Tulliver, who had by no means said enough
to satisfy his anger, burst out again.
“Who wants to quarrel with you?” he said. “It’s you as can’t let people
alone, but must be gnawing at ’em forever. _I_ should never want to
quarrel with any woman if she kept her place.”
“My place, indeed!” said Mrs Glegg, getting rather more shrill.
“There’s your betters, Mr Tulliver, as are dead and in their grave,
treated me with a different sort o’ respect to what you do; _though_
I’ve got a husband as’ll sit by and see me abused by them as ’ud never
ha’ had the chance if there hadn’t been them in our family as married
worse than they might ha’ done.”
“If you talk o’ that,” said Mr Tulliver, “my family’s as good as yours,
and better, for it hasn’t got a damned ill-tempered woman in it!”
“Well,” said Mrs Glegg, rising from her chair, “I don’t know whether
you think it’s a fine thing to sit by and hear me swore at, Mr Glegg;
but I’m not going to stay a minute longer in this house. You can stay
behind, and come home with the gig, and I’ll walk home.”
“Dear heart, dear heart!” said Mr Glegg in a melancholy tone, as he
followed his wife out of the room.
“Mr Tulliver, how could you talk so?” said Mrs Tulliver, with the tears
in her eyes.
“Let her go,” said Mr Tulliver, too hot to be damped by any amount of
tears. “Let her go, and the sooner the better; she won’t be trying to
domineer over _me_ again in a hurry.”
“Sister Pullet,” said Mrs Tulliver, helplessly, “do you think it ’ud be
any use for you to go after her and try to pacify her?”
“Better not, better not,” said Mr Deane. “You’ll make it up another
day.”
“Then, sisters, shall we go and look at the children?” said Mrs
Tulliver, drying her eyes.
No proposition could have been more seasonable. Mr Tulliver felt very
much as if the air had been cleared of obtrusive flies now the women
were out of the room. There were few things he liked better than a chat
with Mr Deane, whose close application to business allowed the pleasure
very rarely. Mr Deane, he considered, was the “knowingest” man of his
acquaintance, and he had besides a ready causticity of tongue that made
an agreeable supplement to Mr Tulliver’s own tendency that way, which
had remained in rather an inarticulate condition. And now the women
were gone, they could carry on their serious talk without frivolous
interruption. They could exchange their views concerning the Duke of
Wellington, whose conduct in the Catholic Question had thrown such an
entirely new light on his character; and speak slightingly of his
conduct at the battle of Waterloo, which he would never have won if
there hadn’t been a great many Englishmen at his back, not to speak of
Blucher and the Prussians, who, as Mr Tulliver had heard from a person
of particular knowledge in that matter, had come up in the very nick of
time; though here there was a slight dissidence, Mr Deane remarking
that he was not disposed to give much credit to the Prussians,—the
build of their vessels, together with the unsatisfactory character of
transactions in Dantzic beer, inclining him to form rather a low view
of Prussian pluck generally. Rather beaten on this ground, Mr Tulliver
proceeded to express his fears that the country could never again be
what it used to be; but Mr Deane, attached to a firm of which the
returns were on the increase, naturally took a more lively view of the
present, and had some details to give concerning the state of the
imports, especially in hides and spelter, which soothed Mr Tulliver’s
imagination by throwing into more distant perspective the period when
the country would become utterly the prey of Papists and Radicals, and
there would be no more chance for honest men.
Uncle Pullet sat by and listened with twinkling eyes to these high
matters. He didn’t understand politics himself,—thought they were a
natural gift,—but by what he could make out, this Duke of Wellington
was no better than he should be.
Chapter VIII.
Mr Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side
“Suppose sister Glegg should call her money in; it ’ud be very awkward
for you to have to raise five hundred pounds now,” said Mrs Tulliver to
her husband that evening, as she took a plaintive review of the day.
Mrs Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she
retained in all the freshness of her early married life a facility of
saying things which drove him in the opposite direction to the one she
desired. Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way,
as a patriarchal goldfish apparently retains to the last its youthful
illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling
glass. Mrs Tulliver was an amiable fish of this kind, and after running
her head against the same resisting medium for thirteen years would go
at it again to-day with undulled alacrity.
This observation of hers tended directly to convince Mr Tulliver that
it would not be at all awkward for him to raise five hundred pounds;
and when Mrs Tulliver became rather pressing to know _how_ he would
raise it without mortgaging the mill and the house which he had said he
never _would_ mortgage, since nowadays people were none so ready to
lend money without security, Mr Tulliver, getting warm, declared that
Mrs Glegg might do as she liked about calling in her money, he should
pay it in whether or not. He was not going to be beholden to his wife’s
sisters. When a man had married into a family where there was a whole
litter of women, he might have plenty to put up with if he chose. But
Mr Tulliver did _not_ choose.
Mrs Tulliver cried a little in a trickling, quiet way as she put on her
nightcap; but presently sank into a comfortable sleep, lulled by the
thought that she would talk everything over with her sister Pullet
to-morrow, when she was to take the children to Garum Firs to tea. Not
that she looked forward to any distinct issue from that talk; but it
seemed impossible that past events should be so obstinate as to remain
unmodified when they were complained against.
Her husband lay awake rather longer, for he too was thinking of a visit
he would pay on the morrow; and his ideas on the subject were not of so
vague and soothing a kind as those of his amiable partner.
Mr Tulliver, when under the influence of a strong feeling, had a
promptitude in action that may seem inconsistent with that painful
sense of the complicated, puzzling nature of human affairs under which
his more dispassionate deliberations were conducted; but it is really
not improbable that there was a direct relation between these
apparently contradictory phenomena, since I have observed that for
getting a strong impression that a skein is tangled there is nothing
like snatching hastily at a single thread. It was owing to this
promptitude that Mr Tulliver was on horseback soon after dinner the
next day (he was not dyspeptic) on his way to Basset to see his sister
Moss and her husband. For having made up his mind irrevocably that he
would pay Mrs Glegg her loan of five hundred pounds, it naturally
occurred to him that he had a promissory note for three hundred pounds
lent to his brother-in-law Moss; and if the said brother-in-law could
manage to pay in the money within a given time, it would go far to
lessen the fallacious air of inconvenience which Mr Tulliver’s spirited
step might have worn in the eyes of weak people who require to know
precisely _how_ a thing is to be done before they are strongly
confident that it will be easy.
For Mr Tulliver was in a position neither new nor striking, but, like
other everyday things, sure to have a cumulative effect that will be
felt in the long run: he was held to be a much more substantial man
than he really was. And as we are all apt to believe what the world
believes about us, it was his habit to think of failure and ruin with
the same sort of remote pity with which a spare, long-necked man hears
that his plethoric short-necked neighbour is stricken with apoplexy. He
had been always used to hear pleasant jokes about his advantages as a
man who worked his own mill, and owned a pretty bit of land; and these
jokes naturally kept up his sense that he was a man of considerable
substance. They gave a pleasant flavour to his glass on a market-day,
and if it had not been for the recurrence of half-yearly payments, Mr
Tulliver would really have forgotten that there was a mortgage of two
thousand pounds on his very desirable freehold. That was not altogether
his own fault, since one of the thousand pounds was his sister’s
fortune, which he had to pay on her marriage; and a man who has
neighbours that _will_ go to law with him is not likely to pay off his
mortgages, especially if he enjoys the good opinion of acquaintances
who want to borrow a hundred pounds on security too lofty to be
represented by parchment. Our friend Mr Tulliver had a good-natured
fibre in him, and did not like to give harsh refusals even to his
sister, who had not only come in to the world in that superfluous way
characteristic of sisters, creating a necessity for mortgages, but had
quite thrown herself away in marriage, and had crowned her mistakes by
having an eighth baby. On this point Mr Tulliver was conscious of being
a little weak; but he apologised to himself by saying that poor Gritty
had been a good-looking wench before she married Moss; he would
sometimes say this even with a slight tremulousness in his voice. But
this morning he was in a mood more becoming a man of business, and in
the course of his ride along the Basset lanes, with their deep
ruts,—lying so far away from a market-town that the labour of drawing
produce and manure was enough to take away the best part of the profits
on such poor land as that parish was made of,—he got up a due amount of
irritation against Moss as a man without capital, who, if murrain and
blight were abroad, was sure to have his share of them, and who, the
more you tried to help him out of the mud, would sink the further in.
It would do him good rather than harm, now, if he were obliged to raise
this three hundred pounds; it would make him look about him better, and
not act so foolishly about his wool this year as he did the last; in
fact, Mr Tulliver had been too easy with his brother-in-law, and
because he had let the interest run on for two years, Moss was likely
enough to think that he should never be troubled about the principal.
But Mr Tulliver was determined not to encourage such shuffling people
any longer; and a ride along the Basset lanes was not likely to
enervate a man’s resolution by softening his temper. The deep-trodden
hoof-marks, made in the muddiest days of winter, gave him a shake now
and then which suggested a rash but stimulating snarl at the father of
lawyers, who, whether by means of his hoof or otherwise, had doubtless
something to do with this state of the roads; and the abundance of foul
land and neglected fences that met his eye, though they made no part of
his brother Moss’s farm, strongly contributed to his dissatisfaction
with that unlucky agriculturist. If this wasn’t Moss’s fallow, it might
have been; Basset was all alike; it was a beggarly parish, in Mr
Tulliver’s opinion, and his opinion was certainly not groundless.
Basset had a poor soil, poor roads, a poor non-resident landlord, a
poor non-resident vicar, and rather less than half a curate, also poor.
If any one strongly impressed with the power of the human mind to
triumph over circumstances will contend that the parishioners of Basset
might nevertheless have been a very superior class of people, I have
nothing to urge against that abstract proposition; I only know that, in
point of fact, the Basset mind was in strict keeping with its
circumstances. The muddy lanes, green or clayey, that seemed to the
unaccustomed eye to lead nowhere but into each other, did really lead,
with patience, to a distant high-road; but there were many feet in
Basset which they led more frequently to a centre of dissipation,
spoken of formerly as the “Markis o’ Granby,” but among intimates as
“Dickison’s.” A large low room with a sanded floor; a cold scent of
tobacco, modified by undetected beer-dregs; Mr Dickison leaning against
the door-post with a melancholy pimpled face, looking as irrelevant to
the daylight as a last night’s guttered candle,—all this may not seem a
very seductive form of temptation; but the majority of men in Basset
found it fatally alluring when encountered on their road toward four
o’clock on a wintry afternoon; and if any wife in Basset wished to
indicate that her husband was not a pleasure-seeking man, she could
hardly do it more emphatically than by saying that he didn’t spend a
shilling at Dickison’s from one Whitsuntide to another. Mrs Moss had
said so of _her_ husband more than once, when her brother was in a mood
to find fault with him, as he certainly was to-day. And nothing could
be less pacifying to Mr Tulliver than the behaviour of the farmyard
gate, which he no sooner attempted to push open with his riding-stick
than it acted as gates without the upper hinge are known to do, to the
peril of shins, whether equine or human. He was about to get down and
lead his horse through the damp dirt of the hollow farmyard, shadowed
drearily by the large half-timbered buildings, up to the long line of
tumble-down dwelling-houses standing on a raised causeway; but the
timely appearance of a cowboy saved him that frustration of a plan he
had determined on,—namely, not to get down from his horse during this
visit. If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak
from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the
command of a distant horizon. Mrs Moss heard the sound of the horse’s
feet, and, when her brother rode up, was already outside the kitchen
door, with a half-weary smile on her face, and a black-eyed baby in her
arms. Mrs Moss’s face bore a faded resemblance to her brother’s; baby’s
little fat hand, pressed against her cheek, seemed to show more
strikingly that the cheek was faded.
“Brother, I’m glad to see you,” she said, in an affectionate tone. “I
didn’t look for you to-day. How do you do?”
“Oh, pretty well, Mrs Moss, pretty well,” answered the brother, with
cool deliberation, as if it were rather too forward of her to ask that
question. She knew at once that her brother was not in a good humour;
he never called her Mrs Moss except when he was angry, and when they
were in company. But she thought it was in the order of nature that
people who were poorly off should be snubbed. Mrs Moss did not take her
stand on the equality of the human race; she was a patient, prolific,
loving-hearted woman.
“Your husband isn’t in the house, I suppose?” added Mr Tulliver after a
grave pause, during which four children had run out, like chickens
whose mother has been suddenly in eclipse behind the hen-coop.
“No,” said Mrs Moss, “but he’s only in the potato-field yonders.
Georgy, run to the Far Close in a minute, and tell father your uncle’s
come. You’ll get down, brother, won’t you, and take something?”
“No, no; I can’t get down. I must be going home again directly,” said
Mr Tulliver, looking at the distance.
“And how’s Mrs Tulliver and the children?” said Mrs Moss, humbly, not
daring to press her invitation.
“Oh, pretty well. Tom’s going to a new school at Midsummer,—a deal of
expense to me. It’s bad work for me, lying out o’ my money.”
“I wish you’d be so good as let the children come and see their cousins
some day. My little uns want to see their cousin Maggie so as never
was. And me her godmother, and so fond of her; there’s nobody ’ud make
a bigger fuss with her, according to what they’ve got. And I know she
likes to come, for she’s a loving child, and how quick and clever she
is, to be sure!”
If Mrs Moss had been one of the most astute women in the world, instead
of being one of the simplest, she could have thought of nothing more
likely to propitiate her brother than this praise of Maggie. He seldom
found any one volunteering praise of “the little wench”; it was usually
left entirely to himself to insist on her merits. But Maggie always
appeared in the most amiable light at her aunt Moss’s; it was her
Alsatia, where she was out of the reach of law,—if she upset anything,
dirtied her shoes, or tore her frock, these things were matters of
course at her aunt Moss’s. In spite of himself, Mr Tulliver’s eyes got
milder, and he did not look away from his sister as he said,—
“Ay; she’s fonder o’ you than o’ the other aunts, I think. She takes
after our family: not a bit of her mother’s in her.”
“Moss says she’s just like what I used to be,” said Mrs Moss, “though I
was never so quick and fond o’ the books. But I think my Lizzy’s like
her; _she’s_ sharp. Come here, Lizzy, my dear, and let your uncle see
you; he hardly knows you, you grow so fast.”
Lizzy, a black-eyed child of seven, looked very shy when her mother
drew her forward, for the small Mosses were much in awe of their uncle
from Dorlcote Mill. She was inferior enough to Maggie in fire and
strength of expression to make the resemblance between the two entirely
flattering to Mr Tulliver’s fatherly love.
“Ay, they’re a bit alike,” he said, looking kindly at the little figure
in the soiled pinafore. “They both take after our mother. You’ve got
enough o’ gells, Gritty,” he added, in a tone half compassionate, half
reproachful.
“Four of ’em, bless ’em!” said Mrs Moss, with a sigh, stroking Lizzy’s
hair on each side of her forehead; “as many as there’s boys. They’ve
got a brother apiece.”
“Ah, but they must turn out and fend for themselves,” said Mr Tulliver,
feeling that his severity was relaxing and trying to brace it by
throwing out a wholesome hint “They mustn’t look to hanging on their
brothers.”
“No; but I hope their brothers ’ull love the poor things, and remember
they came o’ one father and mother; the lads ’ull never be the poorer
for that,” said Mrs Moss, flashing out with hurried timidity, like a
half-smothered fire.
Mr Tulliver gave his horse a little stroke on the flank, then checked
it, and said angrily, “Stand still with you!” much to the astonishment
of that innocent animal.
“And the more there is of ’em, the more they must love one another,”
Mrs Moss went on, looking at her children with a didactic purpose. But
she turned toward her brother again to say, “Not but what I hope your
boy ’ull allays be good to his sister, though there’s but two of ’em,
like you and me, brother.”
The arrow went straight to Mr Tulliver’s heart. He had not a rapid
imagination, but the thought of Maggie was very near to him, and he was
not long in seeing his relation to his own sister side by side with
Tom’s relation to Maggie. Would the little wench ever be poorly off,
and Tom rather hard upon her?
“Ay, ay, Gritty,” said the miller, with a new softness in his tone;
“but I’ve allays done what I could for you,” he added, as if
vindicating himself from a reproach.
“I’m not denying that, brother, and I’m noways ungrateful,” said poor
Mrs Moss, too fagged by toil and children to have strength left for any
pride. “But here’s the father. What a while you’ve been, Moss!”
“While, do you call it?” said Mr Moss, feeling out of breath and
injured. “I’ve been running all the way. Won’t you ’light, Mr
Tulliver?”
“Well, I’ll just get down and have a bit o’ talk with you in the
garden,” said Mr Tulliver, thinking that he should be more likely to
show a due spirit of resolve if his sister were not present.
He got down, and passed with Mr Moss into the garden, toward an old
yew-tree arbour, while his sister stood tapping her baby on the back
and looking wistfully after them.
Their entrance into the yew-tree arbour surprised several fowls that
were recreating themselves by scratching deep holes in the dusty
ground, and at once took flight with much pother and cackling. Mr
Tulliver sat down on the bench, and tapping the ground curiously here
and there with his stick, as if he suspected some hollowness, opened
the conversation by observing, with something like a snarl in his
tone,—
“Why, you’ve got wheat again in that Corner Close, I see; and never a
bit o’ dressing on it. You’ll do no good with it this year.”
Mr Moss, who, when he married Miss Tulliver, had been regarded as the
buck of Basset, now wore a beard nearly a week old, and had the
depressed, unexpectant air of a machine-horse. He answered in a
patient-grumbling tone, “Why, poor farmers like me must do as they can;
they must leave it to them as have got money to play with, to put half
as much into the ground as they mean to get out of it.”
“I don’t know who should have money to play with, if it isn’t them as
can borrow money without paying interest,” said Mr Tulliver, who wished
to get into a slight quarrel; it was the most natural and easy
introduction to calling in money.
“I know I’m behind with the interest,” said Mr Moss, “but I was so
unlucky wi’ the wool last year; and what with the Missis being laid up
so, things have gone awk’arder nor usual.”
“Ay,” snarled Mr Tulliver, “there’s folks as things ’ull allays go
awk’ard with; empty sacks ’ull never stand upright.”
“Well, I don’t know what fault you’ve got to find wi’ me, Mr Tulliver,”
said Mr Moss, deprecatingly; “I know there isn’t a day-labourer works
harder.”
“What’s the use o’ that,” said Mr Tulliver, sharply, “when a man
marries, and’s got no capital to work his farm but his wife’s bit o’
fortin? I was against it from the first; but you’d neither of you
listen to me. And I can’t lie out o’ my money any longer, for I’ve got
to pay five hundred o’ Mrs Glegg’s, and there’ll be Tom an expense to
me. I should find myself short, even saying I’d got back all as is my
own. You must look about and see how you can pay me the three hundred
pound.”
“Well, if that’s what you mean,” said Mr Moss, looking blankly before
him, “we’d better be sold up, and ha’ done with it; I must part wi’
every head o’ stock I’ve got, to pay you and the landlord too.”
Poor relations are undeniably irritating,—their existence is so
entirely uncalled for on our part, and they are almost always very
faulty people. Mr Tulliver had succeeded in getting quite as much
irritated with Mr Moss as he had desired, and he was able to say
angrily, rising from his seat,—
“Well, you must do as you can. _I_ can’t find money for everybody else
as well as myself. I must look to my own business and my own family. I
can’t lie out o’ my money any longer. You must raise it as quick as you
can.”
Mr Tulliver walked abruptly out of the arbour as he uttered the last
sentence, and, without looking round at Mr Moss, went on to the kitchen
door, where the eldest boy was holding his horse, and his sister was
waiting in a state of wondering alarm, which was not without its
alleviations, for baby was making pleasant gurgling sounds, and
performing a great deal of finger practice on the faded face. Mrs Moss
had eight children, but could never overcome her regret that the twins
had not lived. Mr Moss thought their removal was not without its
consolations. “Won’t you come in, brother?” she said, looking anxiously
at her husband, who was walking slowly up, while Mr Tulliver had his
foot already in the stirrup.
“No, no; good-by,” said he, turning his horse’s head, and riding away.
No man could feel more resolute till he got outside the yard gate, and
a little way along the deep-rutted lane; but before he reached the next
turning, which would take him out of sight of the dilapidated
farm-buildings, he appeared to be smitten by some sudden thought. He
checked his horse, and made it stand still in the same spot for two or
three minutes, during which he turned his head from side to side in a
melancholy way, as if he were looking at some painful object on more
sides than one. Evidently, after his fit of promptitude, Mr Tulliver
was relapsing into the sense that this is a puzzling world. He turned
his horse, and rode slowly back, giving vent to the climax of feeling
which had determined this movement by saying aloud, as he struck his
horse, “Poor little wench! she’ll have nobody but Tom, belike, when I’m
gone.”
Mr Tulliver’s return into the yard was descried by several young
Mosses, who immediately ran in with the exciting news to their mother,
so that Mrs Moss was again on the door-step when her brother rode up.
She had been crying, but was rocking baby to sleep in her arms now, and
made no ostentatious show of sorrow as her brother looked at her, but
merely said:
“The father’s gone to the field, again, if you want him, brother.”
“No, Gritty, no,” said Mr Tulliver, in a gentle tone. “Don’t you
fret,—that’s all,—I’ll make a shift without the money a bit, only you
must be as clever and contriving as you can.”
Mrs Moss’s tears came again at this unexpected kindness, and she could
say nothing.
“Come, come!—the little wench shall come and see you. I’ll bring her
and Tom some day before he goes to school. You mustn’t fret. I’ll
allays be a good brother to you.”
“Thank you for that word, brother,” said Mrs Moss, drying her tears;
then turning to Lizzy, she said, “Run now, and fetch the coloured egg
for cousin Maggie.” Lizzy ran in, and quickly reappeared with a small
paper parcel.
“It’s boiled hard, brother, and coloured with thrums, very pretty; it
was done o’ purpose for Maggie. Will you please to carry it in your
pocket?”
“Ay, ay,” said Mr Tulliver, putting it carefully in his side pocket.
“Good-by.”
And so the respectable miller returned along the Basset lanes rather
more puzzled than before as to ways and means, but still with the sense
of a danger escaped. It had come across his mind that if he were hard
upon his sister, it might somehow tend to make Tom hard upon Maggie at
some distant day, when her father was no longer there to take her part;
for simple people, like our friend Mr Tulliver, are apt to clothe
unimpeachable feelings in erroneous ideas, and this was his confused
way of explaining to himself that his love and anxiety for “the little
wench” had given him a new sensibility toward his sister.
Chapter IX.
To Garum Firs
While the possible troubles of Maggie’s future were occupying her
father’s mind, she herself was tasting only the bitterness of the
present. Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no
memories of outlived sorrow.
The fact was, the day had begun ill with Maggie. The pleasure of having
Lucy to look at, and the prospect of the afternoon visit to Garum Firs,
where she would hear uncle Pullet’s musical box, had been marred as
early as eleven o’clock by the advent of the hair-dresser from St
Ogg’s, who had spoken in the severest terms of the condition in which
he had found her hair, holding up one jagged lock after another and
saying, “See here! tut, tut, tut!” in a tone of mingled disgust and
pity, which to Maggie’s imagination was equivalent to the strongest
expression of public opinion. Mr Rappit, the hair-dresser, with his
well-anointed coronal locks tending wavily upward, like the simulated
pyramid of flame on a monumental urn, seemed to her at that moment the
most formidable of her contemporaries, into whose street at St Ogg’s
she would carefully refrain from entering through the rest of her life.
Moreover, the preparation for a visit being always a serious affair in
the Dodson family, Martha was enjoined to have Mrs Tulliver’s room
ready an hour earlier than usual, that the laying out of the best
clothes might not be deferred till the last moment, as was sometimes
the case in families of lax views, where the ribbon-strings were never
rolled up, where there was little or no wrapping in silver paper, and
where the sense that the Sunday clothes could be got at quite easily
produced no shock to the mind. Already, at twelve o’clock, Mrs Tulliver
had on her visiting costume, with a protective apparatus of brown
holland, as if she had been a piece of satin furniture in danger of
flies; Maggie was frowning and twisting her shoulders, that she might
if possible shrink away from the prickliest of tuckers, while her
mother was remonstrating, “Don’t, Maggie, my dear; don’t make yourself
so ugly!” and Tom’s cheeks were looking particularly brilliant as a
relief to his best blue suit, which he wore with becoming calmness,
having, after a little wrangling, effected what was always the one
point of interest to him in his toilet: he had transferred all the
contents of his everyday pockets to those actually in wear.
As for Lucy, she was just as pretty and neat as she had been yesterday;
no accidents ever happened to her clothes, and she was never
uncomfortable in them, so that she looked with wondering pity at
Maggie, pouting and writhing under the exasperating tucker. Maggie
would certainly have torn it off, if she had not been checked by the
remembrance of her recent humiliation about her hair; as it was, she
confined herself to fretting and twisting, and behaving peevishly about
the card-houses which they were allowed to build till dinner, as a
suitable amusement for boys and girls in their best clothes. Tom could
build perfect pyramids of houses; but Maggie’s would never bear the
laying on the roof. It was always so with the things that Maggie made;
and Tom had deduced the conclusion that no girls could ever make
anything. But it happened that Lucy proved wonderfully clever at
building; she handled the cards so lightly, and moved so gently, that
Tom condescended to admire her houses as well as his own, the more
readily because she had asked him to teach her. Maggie, too, would have
admired Lucy’s houses, and would have given up her own unsuccessful
building to contemplate them, without ill temper, if her tucker had not
made her peevish, and if Tom had not inconsiderately laughed when her
houses fell, and told her she was “a stupid.”
“Don’t laugh at me, Tom!” she burst out angrily; “I’m not a stupid. I
know a great many things you don’t.”
“Oh, I dare say, Miss Spitfire! I’d never be such a cross thing as you,
making faces like that. Lucy doesn’t do so. I like Lucy better than
you; _I_ wish Lucy was _my_ sister.”
“Then it’s very wicked and cruel of you to wish so,” said Maggie,
starting up hurriedly from her place on the floor, and upsetting Tom’s
wonderful pagoda. She really did not mean it, but the circumstantial
evidence was against her, and Tom turned white with anger, but said
nothing; he would have struck her, only he knew it was cowardly to
strike a girl, and Tom Tulliver was quite determined he would never do
anything cowardly.
Maggie stood in dismay and terror, while Tom got up from the floor and
walked away, pale, from the scattered ruins of his pagoda, and Lucy
looked on mutely, like a kitten pausing from its lapping.
“Oh, Tom,” said Maggie, at last, going half-way toward him, “I didn’t
mean to knock it down, indeed, indeed I didn’t.”
Tom took no notice of her, but took, instead, two or three hard peas
out of his pocket, and shot them with his thumbnail against the window,
vaguely at first, but presently with the distinct aim of hitting a
superannuated blue-bottle which was exposing its imbecility in the
spring sunshine, clearly against the views of Nature, who had provided
Tom and the peas for the speedy destruction of this weak individual.
Thus the morning had been made heavy to Maggie, and Tom’s persistent
coldness to her all through their walk spoiled the fresh air and
sunshine for her. He called Lucy to look at the half-built bird’s nest
without caring to show it Maggie, and peeled a willow switch for Lucy
and himself, without offering one to Maggie. Lucy had said, “Maggie,
shouldn’t _you_ like one?” but Tom was deaf.
Still, the sight of the peacock opportunely spreading his tail on the
stackyard wall, just as they reached Garum Firs, was enough to divert
the mind temporarily from personal grievances. And this was only the
beginning of beautiful sights at Garum Firs. All the farmyard life was
wonderful there,—bantams, speckled and top-knotted; Friesland hens,
with their feathers all turned the wrong way; Guinea-fowls that flew
and screamed and dropped their pretty spotted feathers; pouter-pigeons
and a tame magpie; nay, a goat, and a wonderful brindled dog, half
mastiff, half bull-dog, as large as a lion. Then there were white
railings and white gates all about, and glittering weathercocks of
various design, and garden-walks paved with pebbles in beautiful
patterns,—nothing was quite common at Garum Firs; and Tom thought that
the unusual size of the toads there was simply due to the general
unusualness which characterised uncle Pullet’s possessions as a
gentleman farmer. Toads who paid rent were naturally leaner. As for the
house, it was not less remarkable; it had a receding centre, and two
wings with battlemented turrets, and was covered with glittering white
stucco.
Uncle Pullet had seen the expected party approaching from the window,
and made haste to unbar and unchain the front door, kept always in this
fortified condition from fear of tramps, who might be supposed to know
of the glass case of stuffed birds in the hall, and to contemplate
rushing in and carrying it away on their heads. Aunt Pullet, too,
appeared at the doorway, and as soon as her sister was within hearing
said, “Stop the children, for God’s sake! Bessy; don’t let ’em come up
the door-steps; Sally’s bringing the old mat and the duster, to rub
their shoes.”
Mrs Pullet’s front-door mats were by no means intended to wipe shoes
on; the very scraper had a deputy to do its dirty work. Tom rebelled
particularly against this shoewiping, which he always considered in the
light of an indignity to his sex. He felt it as the beginning of the
disagreeables incident to a visit at aunt Pullet’s, where he had once
been compelled to sit with towels wrapped round his boots; a fact which
may serve to correct the too hasty conclusion that a visit to Garum
Firs must have been a great treat to a young gentleman fond of
animals,—fond, that is, of throwing stones at them.
The next disagreeable was confined to his feminine companions; it was
the mounting of the polished oak stairs, which had very handsome
carpets rolled up and laid by in a spare bedroom, so that the ascent of
these glossy steps might have served, in barbarous times, as a trial by
ordeal from which none but the most spotless virtue could have come off
with unbroken limbs. Sophy’s weakness about these polished stairs was
always a subject of bitter remonstrance on Mrs Glegg’s part; but Mrs
Tulliver ventured on no comment, only thinking to herself it was a
mercy when she and the children were safe on the landing.
“Mrs Gray has sent home my new bonnet, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet, in a
pathetic tone, as Mrs Tulliver adjusted her cap.
“Has she, sister?” said Mrs Tulliver, with an air of much interest.
“And how do you like it?”
“It’s apt to make a mess with clothes, taking ’em out and putting ’em
in again,” said Mrs Pullet, drawing a bunch of keys from her pocket and
looking at them earnestly, “but it ’ud be a pity for you to go away
without seeing it. There’s no knowing what may happen.”
Mrs Pullet shook her head slowly at this last serious consideration,
which determined her to single out a particular key.
“I’m afraid it’ll be troublesome to you getting it out, sister,” said
Mrs Tulliver; “but I _should_ like to see what sort of a crown she’s
made you.”
Mrs Pullet rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one wing of a very
bright wardrobe, where you may have hastily supposed she would find a
new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition could only have arisen from
a too superficial acquaintance with the habits of the Dodson family. In
this wardrobe Mrs Pullet was seeking something small enough to be
hidden among layers of linen,—it was a door-key.
“You must come with me into the best room,” said Mrs Pullet.
“May the children come too, sister?” inquired Mrs Tulliver, who saw
that Maggie and Lucy were looking rather eager.
“Well,” said aunt Pullet, reflectively, “it’ll perhaps be safer for ’em
to come; they’ll be touching something if we leave ’em behind.”
So they went in procession along the bright and slippery corridor,
dimly lighted by the semi-lunar top of the window which rose above the
closed shutter; it was really quite solemn. Aunt Pullet paused and
unlocked a door which opened on something still more solemn than the
passage,—a darkened room, in which the outer light, entering feebly,
showed what looked like the corpses of furniture in white shrouds.
Everything that was not shrouded stood with its legs upward. Lucy laid
hold of Maggie’s frock, and Maggie’s heart beat rapidly.
Aunt Pullet half-opened the shutter and then unlocked the wardrobe,
with a melancholy deliberateness which was quite in keeping with the
funereal solemnity of the scene. The delicious scent of rose-leaves
that issued from the wardrobe made the process of taking out sheet
after sheet of silver paper quite pleasant to assist at, though the
sight of the bonnet at last was an anticlimax to Maggie, who would have
preferred something more strikingly preternatural. But few things could
have been more impressive to Mrs Tulliver. She looked all round it in
silence for some moments, and then said emphatically, “Well, sister,
I’ll never speak against the full crowns again!”
It was a great concession, and Mrs Pullet felt it; she felt something
was due to it.
“You’d like to see it on, sister?” she said sadly. “I’ll open the
shutter a bit further.”
“Well, if you don’t mind taking off your cap, sister,” said Mrs
Tulliver.
Mrs Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown silk scalp with a
jutting promontory of curls which was common to the more mature and
judicious women of those times, and placing the bonnet on her head,
turned slowly round, like a draper’s lay-figure, that Mrs Tulliver
might miss no point of view.
“I’ve sometimes thought there’s a loop too much o’ ribbon on this left
side, sister; what do you think?” said Mrs Pullet.
Mrs Tulliver looked earnestly at the point indicated, and turned her
head on one side. “Well, I think it’s best as it is; if you meddled
with it, sister, you might repent.”
“That’s true,” said aunt Pullet, taking off the bonnet and looking at
it contemplatively.
“How much might she charge you for that bonnet, sister?” said Mrs
Tulliver, whose mind was actively engaged on the possibility of getting
a humble imitation of this _chef-d’œuvre_ made from a piece of silk she
had at home.
Mrs Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her head, and then whispered,
“Pullet pays for it; he said I was to have the best bonnet at Garum
Church, let the next best be whose it would.”
She began slowly to adjust the trimmings, in preparation for returning
it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts seemed to have taken
a melancholy turn, for she shook her head.
“Ah,” she said at last, “I may never wear it twice, sister; who knows?”
“Don’t talk o’ that sister,” answered Mrs Tulliver. “I hope you’ll have
your health this summer.”
“Ah! but there may come a death in the family, as there did soon after
I had my green satin bonnet. Cousin Abbott may go, and we can’t think
o’ wearing crape less nor half a year for him.”
“That _would_ be unlucky,” said Mrs Tulliver, entering thoroughly into
the possibility of an inopportune decease. “There’s never so much
pleasure i’ wearing a bonnet the second year, especially when the
crowns are so chancy,—never two summers alike.”
“Ah, it’s the way i’ this world,” said Mrs Pullet, returning the bonnet
to the wardrobe and locking it up. She maintained a silence
characterised by head-shaking, until they had all issued from the
solemn chamber and were in her own room again. Then, beginning to cry,
she said, “Sister, if you should never see that bonnet again till I’m
dead and gone, you’ll remember I showed it you this day.”
Mrs Tulliver felt that she ought to be affected, but she was a woman of
sparse tears, stout and healthy; she couldn’t cry so much as her sister
Pullet did, and had often felt her deficiency at funerals. Her effort
to bring tears into her eyes issued in an odd contraction of her face.
Maggie, looking on attentively, felt that there was some painful
mystery about her aunt’s bonnet which she was considered too young to
understand; indignantly conscious, all the while, that she could have
understood that, as well as everything else, if she had been taken into
confidence.
When they went down, uncle Pullet observed, with some acumen, that he
reckoned the missis had been showing her bonnet,—that was what had made
them so long upstairs. With Tom the interval had seemed still longer,
for he had been seated in irksome constraint on the edge of a sofa
directly opposite his uncle Pullet, who regarded him with twinkling
gray eyes, and occasionally addressed him as “Young sir.”
“Well, young sir, what do you learn at school?” was a standing question
with uncle Pullet; whereupon Tom always looked sheepish, rubbed his
hands across his face, and answered, “I don’t know.” It was altogether
so embarrassing to be seated _tête-à-tête_ with uncle Pullet, that Tom
could not even look at the prints on the walls, or the flycages, or the
wonderful flower-pots; he saw nothing but his uncle’s gaiters. Not that
Tom was in awe of his uncle’s mental superiority; indeed, he had made
up his mind that he didn’t want to be a gentleman farmer, because he
shouldn’t like to be such a thin-legged, silly fellow as his uncle
Pullet,—a molly-coddle, in fact. A boy’s sheepishness is by no means a
sign of overmastering reverence; and while you are making encouraging
advances to him under the idea that he is overwhelmed by a sense of
your age and wisdom, ten to one he is thinking you extremely queer. The
only consolation I can suggest to you is, that the Greek boys probably
thought the same of Aristotle. It is only when you have mastered a
restive horse, or thrashed a drayman, or have got a gun in your hand,
that these shy juniors feel you to be a truly admirable and enviable
character. At least, I am quite sure of Tom Tulliver’s sentiments on
these points. In very tender years, when he still wore a lace border
under his outdoor cap, he was often observed peeping through the bars
of a gate and making minatory gestures with his small forefinger while
he scolded the sheep with an inarticulate burr, intended to strike
terror into their astonished minds; indicating thus early that desire
for mastery over the inferior animals, wild and domestic, including
cockchafers, neighbours’ dogs, and small sisters, which in all ages has
been an attribute of so much promise for the fortunes of our race. Now,
Mr Pullet never rode anything taller than a low pony, and was the least
predatory of men, considering firearms dangerous, as apt to go off of
themselves by nobody’s particular desire. So that Tom was not without
strong reasons when, in confidential talk with a chum, he had described
uncle Pullet as a nincompoop, taking care at the same time to observe
that he was a very “rich fellow.”
The only alleviating circumstance in a _tête-à-tête_ with uncle Pullet
was that he kept a variety of lozenges and peppermint-drops about his
person, and when at a loss for conversation, he filled up the void by
proposing a mutual solace of this kind.
“Do you like peppermints, young sir?” required only a tacit answer when
it was accompanied by a presentation of the article in question.
The appearance of the little girls suggested to uncle Pullet the
further solace of small sweet-cakes, of which he also kept a stock
under lock and key for his own private eating on wet days; but the
three children had no sooner got the tempting delicacy between their
fingers, than aunt Pullet desired them to abstain from eating it till
the tray and the plates came, since with those crisp cakes they would
make the floor “all over” crumbs. Lucy didn’t mind that much, for the
cake was so pretty, she thought it was rather a pity to eat it; but
Tom, watching his opportunity while the elders were talking, hastily
stowed it in his mouth at two bites, and chewed it furtively. As for
Maggie, becoming fascinated, as usual, by a print of Ulysses and
Nausicaa, which uncle Pullet had bought as a “pretty Scripture thing,”
she presently let fall her cake, and in an unlucky movement crushed it
beneath her foot,—a source of so much agitation to aunt Pullet and
conscious disgrace to Maggie, that she began to despair of hearing the
musical snuff-box to-day, till, after some reflection, it occurred to
her that Lucy was in high favour enough to venture on asking for a
tune. So she whispered to Lucy; and Lucy, who always did what she was
desired to do, went up quietly to her uncle’s knee, and blushing all
over her neck while she fingered her necklace, said, “Will you please
play us a tune, uncle?”
Lucy thought it was by reason of some exceptional talent in uncle
Pullet that the snuff-box played such beautiful tunes, and indeed the
thing was viewed in that light by the majority of his neighbours in
Garum. Mr Pullet had _bought_ the box, to begin with, and he understood
winding it up, and knew which tune it was going to play beforehand;
altogether the possession of this unique “piece of music” was a proof
that Mr Pullet’s character was not of that entire nullity which might
otherwise have been attributed to it. But uncle Pullet, when entreated
to exhibit his accomplishment, never depreciated it by a too ready
consent. “We’ll see about it,” was the answer he always gave, carefully
abstaining from any sign of compliance till a suitable number of
minutes had passed. Uncle Pullet had a programme for all great social
occasions, and in this way fenced himself in from much painful
confusion and perplexing freedom of will.
Perhaps the suspense did heighten Maggie’s enjoyment when the fairy
tune began; for the first time she quite forgot that she had a load on
her mind, that Tom was angry with her; and by the time “Hush, ye pretty
warbling choir,” had been played, her face wore that bright look of
happiness, while she sat immovable with her hands clasped, which
sometimes comforted her mother with the sense that Maggie could look
pretty now and then, in spite of her brown skin. But when the magic
music ceased, she jumped up, and running toward Tom, put her arm round
his neck and said, “Oh, Tom, isn’t it pretty?”
Lest you should think it showed a revolting insensibility in Tom that
he felt any new anger toward Maggie for this uncalled-for and, to him,
inexplicable caress, I must tell you that he had his glass of cowslip
wine in his hand, and that she jerked him so as to make him spill half
of it. He must have been an extreme milksop not to say angrily, “Look
there, now!” especially when his resentment was sanctioned, as it was,
by general disapprobation of Maggie’s behaviour.
“Why don’t you sit still, Maggie?” her mother said peevishly.
“Little gells mustn’t come to see me if they behave in that way,” said
aunt Pullet.
“Why, you’re too rough, little miss,” said uncle Pullet.
Poor Maggie sat down again, with the music all chased out of her soul,
and the seven small demons all in again.
Mrs Tulliver, foreseeing nothing but misbehaviour while the children
remained indoors, took an early opportunity of suggesting that, now
they were rested after their walk, they might go and play out of doors;
and aunt Pullet gave permission, only enjoining them not to go off the
paved walks in the garden, and if they wanted to see the poultry fed,
to view them from a distance on the horse-block; a restriction which
had been imposed ever since Tom had been found guilty of running after
the peacock, with an illusory idea that fright would make one of its
feathers drop off.
Mrs Tulliver’s thoughts had been temporarily diverted from the quarrel
with Mrs Glegg by millinery and maternal cares, but now the great theme
of the bonnet was thrown into perspective, and the children were out of
the way, yesterday’s anxieties recurred.
“It weighs on my mind so as never was,” she said, by way of opening the
subject, “sister Glegg’s leaving the house in that way. I’m sure I’d no
wish t’ offend a sister.”
“Ah,” said aunt Pullet, “there’s no accounting for what Jane ’ull do. I
wouldn’t speak of it out o’ the family, if it wasn’t to Dr Turnbull;
but it’s my belief Jane lives too low. I’ve said so to Pullet often and
often, and he knows it.”
“Why, you said so last Monday was a week, when we came away from
drinking tea with ’em,” said Mr Pullet, beginning to nurse his knee and
shelter it with his pocket handkerchief, as was his way when the
conversation took an interesting turn.
“Very like I did,” said Mrs Pullet, “for you remember when I said
things, better than I can remember myself. He’s got a wonderful memory,
Pullet has,” she continued, looking pathetically at her sister. “I
should be poorly off if he was to have a stroke, for he always
remembers when I’ve got to take my doctor’s stuff; and I’m taking three
sorts now.”
“There’s the ‘pills as before’ every other night, and the new drops at
eleven and four, and the ’fervescing mixture ‘when agreeable,’”
rehearsed Mr Pullet, with a punctuation determined by a lozenge on his
tongue.
“Ah, perhaps it ’ud be better for sister Glegg if _she’d_ go to the
doctor sometimes, instead o’ chewing Turkey rhubarb whenever there’s
anything the matter with her,” said Mrs Tulliver, who naturally saw the
wide subject of medicine chiefly in relation to Mrs Glegg.
“It’s dreadful to think on,” said aunt Pullet, raising her hands and
letting them fall again, “people playing with their own insides in that
way! And it’s flying i’ the face o’ Providence; for what are the
doctors for, if we aren’t to call ’em in? And when folks have got the
money to pay for a doctor, it isn’t respectable, as I’ve told Jane many
a time. I’m ashamed of acquaintance knowing it.”
“Well, _we’ve_ no call to be ashamed,” said Mr Pullet, “for Doctor
Turnbull hasn’t got such another patient as you i’ this parish, now old
Mrs Sutton’s gone.”
“Pullet keeps all my physic-bottles, did you know, Bessy?” said Mrs
Pullet. “He won’t have one sold. He says it’s nothing but right folks
should see ’em when I’m gone. They fill two o’ the long store-room
shelves a’ready; but,” she added, beginning to cry a little, “it’s well
if they ever fill three. I may go before I’ve made up the dozen o’
these last sizes. The pill-boxes are in the closet in my room,—you’ll
remember that, sister,—but there’s nothing to show for the boluses, if
it isn’t the bills.”
“Don’t talk o’ your going, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver; “I should have
nobody to stand between me and sister Glegg if you was gone. And
there’s nobody but you can get her to make it up with Mr Tulliver, for
sister Deane’s never o’ my side, and if she was, it’s not to be looked
for as she can speak like them as have got an independent fortin.”
“Well, your husband _is_ awk’ard, you know, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet,
good-naturedly ready to use her deep depression on her sister’s account
as well as her own. “He’s never behaved quite so pretty to our family
as he should do, and the children take after him,—the boy’s very
mischievous, and runs away from his aunts and uncles, and the gell’s
rude and brown. It’s your bad luck, and I’m sorry for you, Bessy; for
you was allays my favourite sister, and we allays liked the same
patterns.”
“I know Tulliver’s hasty, and says odd things,” said Mrs Tulliver,
wiping away one small tear from the corner of her eye; “but I’m sure
he’s never been the man, since he married me, to object to my making
the friends o’ my side o’ the family welcome to the house.”
“_I_ don’t want to make the worst of you, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet,
compassionately, “for I doubt you’ll have trouble enough without that;
and your husband’s got that poor sister and her children hanging on
him,—and so given to lawing, they say. I doubt he’ll leave you poorly
off when he dies. Not as I’d have it said out o’ the family.”
This view of her position was naturally far from cheering to Mrs
Tulliver. Her imagination was not easily acted on, but she could not
help thinking that her case was a hard one, since it appeared that
other people thought it hard.
“I’m sure, sister, I can’t help myself,” she said, urged by the fear
lest her anticipated misfortunes might be held retributive, to take
comprehensive review of her past conduct. “There’s no woman strives
more for her children; and I’m sure at scouring-time this Lady-day as
I’ve had all the bedhangings taken down I did as much as the two gells
put together; and there’s the last elder-flower wine I’ve
made—beautiful! I allays offer it along with the sherry, though sister
Glegg will have it I’m so extravagant; and as for liking to have my
clothes tidy, and not go a fright about the house, there’s nobody in
the parish can say anything against me in respect o’ backbiting and
making mischief, for I don’t wish anybody any harm; and nobody loses by
sending me a porkpie, for my pies are fit to show with the best o’ my
neighbours’; and the linen’s so in order as if I was to die to-morrow I
shouldn’t be ashamed. A woman can do no more nor she can.”
“But it’s all o’ no use, you know, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet, holding her
head on one side, and fixing her eyes pathetically on her sister, “if
your husband makes away with his money. Not but what if you was sold
up, and other folks bought your furniture, it’s a comfort to think as
you’ve kept it well rubbed. And there’s the linen, with your maiden
mark on, might go all over the country. It ’ud be a sad pity for our
family.” Mrs Pullet shook her head slowly.
“But what can I do, sister?” said Mrs Tulliver. “Mr Tulliver’s not a
man to be dictated to,—not if I was to go to the parson and get by
heart what I should tell my husband for the best. And I’m sure I don’t
pretend to know anything about putting out money and all that. I could
never see into men’s business as sister Glegg does.”
“Well, you’re like me in that, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet; “and I think it
’ud be a deal more becoming o’ Jane if she’d have that pier-glass
rubbed oftener,—there was ever so many spots on it last week,—instead
o’ dictating to folks as have more comings in than she ever had, and
telling ’em what they’re to do with their money. But Jane and me were
allays contrairy; she _would_ have striped things, and I like spots.
You like a spot too, Bessy; we allays hung together i’ that.”
“Yes, Sophy,” said Mrs Tulliver, “I remember our having a blue ground
with a white spot both alike,—I’ve got a bit in a bed-quilt now; and if
you would but go and see sister Glegg, and persuade her to make it up
with Tulliver, I should take it very kind of you. You was allays a good
sister to me.”
“But the right thing ’ud be for Tulliver to go and make it up with her
himself, and say he was sorry for speaking so rash. If he’s borrowed
money of her, he shouldn’t be above that,” said Mrs Pullet, whose
partiality did not blind her to principles; she did not forget what was
due to people of independent fortune.
“It’s no use talking o’ that,” said poor Mrs Tulliver, almost
peevishly. “If I was to go down on my bare knees on the gravel to
Tulliver, he’d never humble himself.”
“Well, you can’t expect me to persuade _Jane_ to beg pardon,” said Mrs
Pullet. “Her temper’s beyond everything; it’s well if it doesn’t carry
her off her mind, though there never _was_ any of our family went to a
madhouse.”
“I’m not thinking of her begging pardon,” said Mrs Tulliver. “But if
she’d just take no notice, and not call her money in; as it’s not so
much for one sister to ask of another; time ’ud mend things, and
Tulliver ’ud forget all about it, and they’d be friends again.”
Mrs Tulliver, you perceive, was not aware of her husband’s irrevocable
determination to pay in the five hundred pounds; at least such a
determination exceeded her powers of belief.
“Well, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet, mournfully, “_I_ don’t want to help you
on to ruin. I won’t be behindhand i’ doing you a good turn, if it is to
be done. And I don’t like it said among acquaintance as we’ve got
quarrels in the family. I shall tell Jane that; and I don’t mind
driving to Jane’s tomorrow, if Pullet doesn’t mind. What do you say, Mr
Pullet?”
“I’ve no objections,” said Mr Pullet, who was perfectly contented with
any course the quarrel might take, so that Mr Tulliver did not apply to
_him_ for money. Mr Pullet was nervous about his investments, and did
not see how a man could have any security for his money unless he
turned it into land.
After a little further discussion as to whether it would not be better
for Mrs Tulliver to accompany them on a visit to sister Glegg, Mrs
Pullet, observing that it was tea-time, turned to reach from a drawer a
delicate damask napkin, which she pinned before her in the fashion of
an apron. The door did, in fact, soon open, but instead of the
tea-tray, Sally introduced an object so startling that both Mrs Pullet
and Mrs Tulliver gave a scream, causing uncle Pullet to swallow his
lozenge—for the fifth time in his life, as he afterward noted.
Chapter X.
Maggie Behaves Worse Than She Expected
The startling object which thus made an epoch for uncle Pullet was no
other than little Lucy, with one side of her person, from her small
foot to her bonnet-crown, wet and discoloured with mud, holding out two
tiny blackened hands, and making a very piteous face. To account for
this unprecedented apparition in aunt Pullet’s parlour, we must return
to the moment when the three children went to play out of doors, and
the small demons who had taken possession of Maggie’s soul at an early
period of the day had returned in all the greater force after a
temporary absence. All the disagreeable recollections of the morning
were thick upon her, when Tom, whose displeasure toward her had been
considerably refreshed by her foolish trick of causing him to upset his
cowslip wine, said, “Here, Lucy, you come along with me,” and walked
off to the area where the toads were, as if there were no Maggie in
existence. Seeing this, Maggie lingered at a distance, looking like a
small Medusa with her snakes cropped. Lucy was naturally pleased that
cousin Tom was so good to her, and it was very amusing to see him
tickling a fat toad with a piece of string when the toad was safe down
the area, with an iron grating over him. Still Lucy wished Maggie to
enjoy the spectacle also, especially as she would doubtless find a name
for the toad, and say what had been his past history; for Lucy had a
delighted semi-belief in Maggie’s stories about the live things they
came upon by accident,—how Mrs Earwig had a wash at home, and one of
her children had fallen into the hot copper, for which reason she was
running so fast to fetch the doctor. Tom had a profound contempt for
this nonsense of Maggie’s, smashing the earwig at once as a superfluous
yet easy means of proving the entire unreality of such a story; but
Lucy, for the life of her, could not help fancying there was something
in it, and at all events thought it was very pretty make-believe. So
now the desire to know the history of a very portly toad, added to her
habitual affectionateness, made her run back to Maggie and say, “Oh,
there is such a big, funny toad, Maggie! Do come and see!”
Maggie said nothing, but turned away from her with a deeper frown. As
long as Tom seemed to prefer Lucy to her, Lucy made part of his
unkindness. Maggie would have thought a little while ago that she could
never be cross with pretty little Lucy, any more than she could be
cruel to a little white mouse; but then, Tom had always been quite
indifferent to Lucy before, and it had been left to Maggie to pet and
make much of her. As it was, she was actually beginning to think that
she should like to make Lucy cry by slapping or pinching her,
especially as it might vex Tom, whom it was of no use to slap, even if
she dared, because he didn’t mind it. And if Lucy hadn’t been there,
Maggie was sure he would have got friends with her sooner.
Tickling a fat toad who is not highly sensitive is an amusement that it
is possible to exhaust, and Tom by and by began to look round for some
other mode of passing the time. But in so prim a garden, where they
were not to go off the paved walks, there was not a great choice of
sport. The only great pleasure such a restriction suggested was the
pleasure of breaking it, and Tom began to meditate an insurrectionary
visit to the pond, about a field’s length beyond the garden.
“I say, Lucy,” he began, nodding his head up and down with great
significance, as he coiled up his string again, “what do you think I
mean to do?”
“What, Tom?” said Lucy, with curiosity.
“I mean to go to the pond and look at the pike. You may go with me if
you like,” said the young sultan.
“Oh, Tom, _dare_ you?” said Lucy. “Aunt said we mustn’t go out of the
garden.”
“Oh, I shall go out at the other end of the garden,” said Tom. “Nobody
’ull see us. Besides, I don’t care if they do,—I’ll run off home.”
“But _I_ couldn’t run,” said Lucy, who had never before been exposed to
such severe temptation.
“Oh, never mind; they won’t be cross with _you_,” said Tom. “You say I
took you.”
Tom walked along, and Lucy trotted by his side, timidly enjoying the
rare treat of doing something naughty,—excited also by the mention of
that celebrity, the pike, about which she was quite uncertain whether
it was a fish or a fowl.
Maggie saw them leaving the garden, and could not resist the impulse to
follow. Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their
objects than love, and that Tom and Lucy should do or see anything of
which she was ignorant would have been an intolerable idea to Maggie.
So she kept a few yards behind them, unobserved by Tom, who was
presently absorbed in watching for the pike,—a highly interesting
monster; he was said to be so very old, so very large, and to have such
a remarkable appetite. The pike, like other celebrities, did not show
when he was watched for, but Tom caught sight of something in rapid
movement in the water, which attracted him to another spot on the brink
of the pond.
“Here, Lucy!” he said in a loud whisper, “come here! take care! keep on
the grass!—don’t step where the cows have been!” he added, pointing to
a peninsula of dry grass, with trodden mud on each side of it; for
Tom’s contemptuous conception of a girl included the attribute of being
unfit to walk in dirty places.
Lucy came carefully as she was bidden, and bent down to look at what
seemed a golden arrow-head darting through the water. It was a
water-snake, Tom told her; and Lucy at last could see the serpentine
wave of its body, very much wondering that a snake could swim. Maggie
had drawn nearer and nearer; she _must_ see it too, though it was
bitter to her, like everything else, since Tom did not care about her
seeing it. At last she was close by Lucy; and Tom, who had been aware
of her approach, but would not notice it till he was obliged, turned
round and said,—
“Now, get away, Maggie; there’s no room for you on the grass here.
Nobody asked _you_ to come.”
There were passions at war in Maggie at that moment to have made a
tragedy, if tragedies were made by passion only; but the essential τι
μέγεθος which was present in the passion was wanting to the action; the
utmost Maggie could do, with a fierce thrust of her small brown arm,
was to push poor little pink-and-white Lucy into the cow-trodden mud.
Then Tom could not restrain himself, and gave Maggie two smart slaps on
the arm as he ran to pick up Lucy, who lay crying helplessly. Maggie
retreated to the roots of a tree a few yards off, and looked on
impenitently. Usually her repentance came quickly after one rash deed,
but now Tom and Lucy had made her so miserable, she was glad to spoil
their happiness,—glad to make everybody uncomfortable. Why should she
be sorry? Tom was very slow to forgive _her_, however sorry she might
have been.
“I shall tell mother, you know, Miss Mag,” said Tom, loudly and
emphatically, as soon as Lucy was up and ready to walk away. It was not
Tom’s practice to “tell,” but here justice clearly demanded that Maggie
should be visited with the utmost punishment; not that Tom had learned
to put his views in that abstract form; he never mentioned “justice,”
and had no idea that his desire to punish might be called by that fine
name. Lucy was too entirely absorbed by the evil that had befallen
her,—the spoiling of her pretty best clothes, and the discomfort of
being wet and dirty,—to think much of the cause, which was entirely
mysterious to her. She could never have guessed what she had done to
make Maggie angry with her; but she felt that Maggie was very unkind
and disagreeable, and made no magnanimous entreaties to Tom that he
would not “tell,” only running along by his side and crying piteously,
while Maggie sat on the roots of the tree and looked after them with
her small Medusa face.
“Sally,” said Tom, when they reached the kitchen door, and Sally looked
at them in speechless amaze, with a piece of bread-and-butter in her
mouth and a toasting-fork in her hand,—“Sally, tell mother it was
Maggie pushed Lucy into the mud.”
“But Lors ha’ massy, how did you get near such mud as that?” said
Sally, making a wry face, as she stooped down and examined the _corpus
delicti_.
Tom’s imagination had not been rapid and capacious enough to include
this question among the foreseen consequences, but it was no sooner put
than he foresaw whither it tended, and that Maggie would not be
considered the only culprit in the case. He walked quietly away from
the kitchen door, leaving Sally to that pleasure of guessing which
active minds notoriously prefer to ready-made knowledge.
Sally, as you are aware, lost no time in presenting Lucy at the parlour
door, for to have so dirty an object introduced into the house at Garum
Firs was too great a weight to be sustained by a single mind.
“Goodness gracious!” aunt Pullet exclaimed, after preluding by an
inarticulate scream; “keep her at the door, Sally! Don’t bring her off
the oil-cloth, whatever you do.”
“Why, she’s tumbled into some nasty mud,” said Mrs Tulliver, going up
to Lucy to examine into the amount of damage to clothes for which she
felt herself responsible to her sister Deane.
“If you please, ’um, it was Miss Maggie as pushed her in,” said Sally;
“Master Tom’s been and said so, and they must ha’ been to the pond, for
it’s only there they could ha’ got into such dirt.”
“There it is, Bessy; it’s what I’ve been telling you,” said Mrs Pullet,
in a tone of prophetic sadness; “it’s your children,—there’s no knowing
what they’ll come to.”
Mrs Tulliver was mute, feeling herself a truly wretched mother. As
usual, the thought pressed upon her that people would think she had
done something wicked to deserve her maternal troubles, while Mrs
Pullet began to give elaborate directions to Sally how to guard the
premises from serious injury in the course of removing the dirt.
Meantime tea was to be brought in by the cook, and the two naughty
children were to have theirs in an ignominious manner in the kitchen.
Mrs Tulliver went out to speak to these naughty children, supposing
them to be close at hand; but it was not until after some search that
she found Tom leaning with rather a hardened, careless air against the
white paling of the poultry-yard, and lowering his piece of string on
the other side as a means of exasperating the turkey-cock.
“Tom, you naughty boy, where’s your sister?” said Mrs Tulliver, in a
distressed voice.
“I don’t know,” said Tom; his eagerness for justice on Maggie had
diminished since he had seen clearly that it could hardly be brought
about without the injustice of some blame on his own conduct.
“Why, where did you leave her?” said the mother, looking round.
“Sitting under the tree, against the pond,” said Tom, apparently
indifferent to everything but the string and the turkey-cock.
“Then go and fetch her in this minute, you naughty boy. And how could
you think o’ going to the pond, and taking your sister where there was
dirt? You know she’ll do mischief if there’s mischief to be done.”
It was Mrs Tulliver’s way, if she blamed Tom, to refer his
misdemeanour, somehow or other, to Maggie.
The idea of Maggie sitting alone by the pond roused an habitual fear in
Mrs Tulliver’s mind, and she mounted the horse-block to satisfy herself
by a sight of that fatal child, while Tom walked—not very quickly—on
his way toward her.
“They’re such children for the water, mine are,” she said aloud,
without reflecting that there was no one to hear her; “they’ll be
brought in dead and drownded some day. I wish that river was far
enough.”
But when she not only failed to discern Maggie, but presently saw Tom
returning from the pool alone, this hovering fear entered and took
complete possession of her, and she hurried to meet him.
“Maggie’s nowhere about the pond, mother,” said Tom; “she’s gone away.”
You may conceive the terrified search for Maggie, and the difficulty of
convincing her mother that she was not in the pond. Mrs Pullet observed
that the child might come to a worse end if she lived, there was no
knowing; and Mr Pullet, confused and overwhelmed by this revolutionary
aspect of things,—the tea deferred and the poultry alarmed by the
unusual running to and fro,—took up his spud as an instrument of
search, and reached down a key to unlock the goose-pen, as a likely
place for Maggie to lie concealed in.
Tom, after a while, started the idea that Maggie was gone home (without
thinking it necessary to state that it was what he should have done
himself under the circumstances), and the suggestion was seized as a
comfort by his mother.
“Sister, for goodness’ sake let ’em put the horse in the carriage and
take me home; we shall perhaps find her on the road. Lucy can’t walk in
her dirty clothes,” she said, looking at that innocent victim, who was
wrapped up in a shawl, and sitting with naked feet on the sofa.
Aunt Pullet was quite willing to take the shortest means of restoring
her premises to order and quiet, and it was not long before Mrs
Tulliver was in the chaise, looking anxiously at the most distant point
before her. What the father would say if Maggie was lost, was a
question that predominated over every other.
Chapter XI.
Maggie Tries to Run away from Her Shadow
Maggie’s intentions, as usual, were on a larger scale than Tom
imagined. The resolution that gathered in her mind, after Tom and Lucy
had walked away, was not so simple as that of going home. No! she would
run away and go to the gypsies, and Tom should never see her any more.
That was by no means a new idea to Maggie; she had been so often told
she was like a gypsy, and “half wild,” that when she was miserable it
seemed to her the only way of escaping opprobrium, and being entirely
in harmony with circumstances, would be to live in a little brown tent
on the commons; the gypsies, she considered, would gladly receive her
and pay her much respect on account of her superior knowledge. She had
once mentioned her views on this point to Tom and suggested that he
should stain his face brown, and they should run away together; but Tom
rejected the scheme with contempt, observing that gypsies were thieves,
and hardly got anything to eat and had nothing to drive but a donkey.
To-day however, Maggie thought her misery had reached a pitch at which
gypsydom was her refuge, and she rose from her seat on the roots of the
tree with the sense that this was a great crisis in her life; she would
run straight away till she came to Dunlow Common, where there would
certainly be gypsies; and cruel Tom, and the rest of her relations who
found fault with her, should never see her any more. She thought of her
father as she ran along, but she reconciled herself to the idea of
parting with him, by determining that she would secretly send him a
letter by a small gypsy, who would run away without telling where she
was, and just let him know that she was well and happy, and always
loved him very much.
Maggie soon got out of breath with running, but by the time Tom got to
the pond again she was at the distance of three long fields, and was on
the edge of the lane leading to the highroad. She stopped to pant a
little, reflecting that running away was not a pleasant thing until one
had got quite to the common where the gypsies were, but her resolution
had not abated; she presently passed through the gate into the lane,
not knowing where it would lead her, for it was not this way that they
came from Dorlcote Mill to Garum Firs, and she felt all the safer for
that, because there was no chance of her being overtaken. But she was
soon aware, not without trembling, that there were two men coming along
the lane in front of her; she had not thought of meeting strangers, she
had been too much occupied with the idea of her friends coming after
her. The formidable strangers were two shabby-looking men with flushed
faces, one of them carrying a bundle on a stick over his shoulder; but
to her surprise, while she was dreading their disapprobation as a
runaway, the man with the bundle stopped, and in a half-whining,
half-coaxing tone asked her if she had a copper to give a poor man.
Maggie had a sixpence in her pocket,—her uncle Glegg’s present,—which
she immediately drew out and gave this poor man with a polite smile,
hoping he would feel very kindly toward her as a generous person.
“That’s the only money I’ve got,” she said apologetically. “Thank you,
little miss,” said the man, in a less respectful and grateful tone than
Maggie anticipated, and she even observed that he smiled and winked at
his companion. She walked on hurriedly, but was aware that the two men
were standing still, probably to look after her, and she presently
heard them laughing loudly. Suddenly it occurred to her that they might
think she was an idiot; Tom had said that her cropped hair made her
look like an idiot, and it was too painful an idea to be readily
forgotten. Besides, she had no sleeves on,—only a cape and bonnet. It
was clear that she was not likely to make a favourable impression on
passengers, and she thought she would turn into the fields again, but
not on the same side of the lane as before, lest they should still be
uncle Pullet’s fields. She turned through the first gate that was not
locked, and felt a delightful sense of privacy in creeping along by the
hedgerows, after her recent humiliating encounter. She was used to
wandering about the fields by herself, and was less timid there than on
the highroad. Sometimes she had to climb over high gates, but that was
a small evil; she was getting out of reach very fast, and she should
probably soon come within sight of Dunlow Common, or at least of some
other common, for she had heard her father say that you couldn’t go
very far without coming to a common. She hoped so, for she was getting
rather tired and hungry, and until she reached the gypsies there was no
definite prospect of bread and butter. It was still broad daylight, for
aunt Pullet, retaining the early habits of the Dodson family, took tea
at half-past four by the sun, and at five by the kitchen clock; so,
though it was nearly an hour since Maggie started, there was no
gathering gloom on the fields to remind her that the night would come.
Still, it seemed to her that she had been walking a very great distance
indeed, and it was really surprising that the common did not come
within sight. Hitherto she had been in the rich parish of Garum, where
was a great deal of pasture-land, and she had only seen one labourer at
a distance. That was fortunate in some respects, as labourers might be
too ignorant to understand the propriety of her wanting to go to Dunlow
Common; yet it would have been better if she could have met some one
who would tell her the way without wanting to know anything about her
private business. At last, however, the green fields came to an end,
and Maggie found herself looking through the bars of a gate into a lane
with a wide margin of grass on each side of it. She had never seen such
a wide lane before, and, without her knowing why, it gave her the
impression that the common could not be far off; perhaps it was because
she saw a donkey with a log to his foot feeding on the grassy margin,
for she had seen a donkey with that pitiable encumbrance on Dunlow
Common when she had been across it in her father’s gig. She crept
through the bars of the gate and walked on with new spirit, though not
without haunting images of Apollyon, and a highwayman with a pistol,
and a blinking dwarf in yellow with a mouth from ear to ear, and other
miscellaneous dangers. For poor little Maggie had at once the timidity
of an active imagination and the daring that comes from overmastering
impulse. She had rushed into the adventure of seeking her unknown
kindred, the gypsies; and now she was in this strange lane, she hardly
dared look on one side of her, lest she should see the diabolical
blacksmith in his leathern apron grinning at her with arms akimbo. It
was not without a leaping of the heart that she caught sight of a small
pair of bare legs sticking up, feet uppermost, by the side of a
hillock; they seemed something hideously preternatural,—a diabolical
kind of fungus; for she was too much agitated at the first glance to
see the ragged clothes and the dark shaggy head attached to them. It
was a boy asleep, and Maggie trotted along faster and more lightly,
lest she should wake him; it did not occur to her that he was one of
her friends the gypsies, who in all probability would have very genial
manners. But the fact was so, for at the next bend in the lane Maggie
actually saw the little semicircular black tent with the blue smoke
rising before it, which was to be her refuge from all the blighting
obloquy that had pursued her in civilised life. She even saw a tall
female figure by the column of smoke, doubtless the gypsy-mother, who
provided the tea and other groceries; it was astonishing to herself
that she did not feel more delighted. But it was startling to find the
gypsies in a lane, after all, and not on a common; indeed, it was
rather disappointing; for a mysterious illimitable common, where there
were sand-pits to hide in, and one was out of everybody’s reach, had
always made part of Maggie’s picture of gypsy life. She went on,
however, and thought with some comfort that gypsies most likely knew
nothing about idiots, so there was no danger of their falling into the
mistake of setting her down at the first glance as an idiot. It was
plain she had attracted attention; for the tall figure, who proved to
be a young woman with a baby on her arm, walked slowly to meet her.
Maggie looked up in the new face rather tremblingly as it approached,
and was reassured by the thought that her aunt Pullet and the rest were
right when they called her a gypsy; for this face, with the bright dark
eyes and the long hair, was really something like what she used to see
in the glass before she cut her hair off.
“My little lady, where are you going to?” the gypsy said, in a tone of
coaxing deference.
It was delightful, and just what Maggie expected; the gypsies saw at
once that she was a little lady, and were prepared to treat her
accordingly.
“Not any farther,” said Maggie, feeling as if she were saying what she
had rehearsed in a dream. “I’m come to stay with _you_, please.”
“That’s pretty; come, then. Why, what a nice little lady you are, to be
sure!” said the gypsy, taking her by the hand. Maggie thought her very
agreeable, but wished she had not been so dirty.
There was quite a group round the fire when she reached it. An old
gypsy woman was seated on the ground nursing her knees, and
occasionally poking a skewer into the round kettle that sent forth an
odorous steam; two small shock-headed children were lying prone and
resting on their elbows something like small sphinxes; and a placid
donkey was bending his head over a tall girl, who, lying on her back,
was scratching his nose and indulging him with a bite of excellent
stolen hay. The slanting sunlight fell kindly upon them, and the scene
was really very pretty and comfortable, Maggie thought, only she hoped
they would soon set out the tea-cups. Everything would be quite
charming when she had taught the gypsies to use a washing-basin, and to
feel an interest in books. It was a little confusing, though, that the
young woman began to speak to the old one in a language which Maggie
did not understand, while the tall girl, who was feeding the donkey,
sat up and stared at her without offering any salutation. At last the
old woman said,—
“What! my pretty lady, are you come to stay with us? Sit ye down and
tell us where you come from.”
It was just like a story; Maggie liked to be called pretty lady and
treated in this way. She sat down and said,—
“I’m come from home because I’m unhappy, and I mean to be a gypsy. I’ll
live with you if you like, and I can teach you a great many things.”
“Such a clever little lady,” said the woman with the baby sitting down
by Maggie, and allowing baby to crawl; “and such a pretty bonnet and
frock,” she added, taking off Maggie’s bonnet and looking at it while
she made an observation to the old woman, in the unknown language. The
tall girl snatched the bonnet and put it on her own head hind-foremost
with a grin; but Maggie was determined not to show any weakness on this
subject, as if she were susceptible about her bonnet.
“I don’t want to wear a bonnet,” she said; “I’d rather wear a red
handkerchief, like yours” (looking at her friend by her side). “My hair
was quite long till yesterday, when I cut it off; but I dare say it
will grow again very soon,” she added apologetically, thinking it
probable the gypsies had a strong prejudice in favour of long hair. And
Maggie had forgotten even her hunger at that moment in the desire to
conciliate gypsy opinion.
“Oh, what a nice little lady!—and rich, I’m sure,” said the old woman.
“Didn’t you live in a beautiful house at home?”
“Yes, my home is pretty, and I’m very fond of the river, where we go
fishing, but I’m often very unhappy. I should have liked to bring my
books with me, but I came away in a hurry, you know. But I can tell you
almost everything there is in my books, I’ve read them so many times,
and that will amuse you. And I can tell you something about Geography
too,—that’s about the world we live in,—very useful and interesting.
Did you ever hear about Columbus?”
Maggie’s eyes had begun to sparkle and her cheeks to flush,—she was
really beginning to instruct the gypsies, and gaining great influence
over them. The gypsies themselves were not without amazement at this
talk, though their attention was divided by the contents of Maggie’s
pocket, which the friend at her right hand had by this time emptied
without attracting her notice.
“Is that where you live, my little lady?” said the old woman, at the
mention of Columbus.
“Oh, no!” said Maggie, with some pity; “Columbus was a very wonderful
man, who found out half the world, and they put chains on him and
treated him very badly, you know; it’s in my Catechism of Geography,
but perhaps it’s rather too long to tell before tea—_I want my tea
so_.”
The last words burst from Maggie, in spite of herself, with a sudden
drop from patronizing instruction to simple peevishness.
“Why, she’s hungry, poor little lady,” said the younger woman. “Give
her some o’ the cold victual. You’ve been walking a good way, I’ll be
bound, my dear. Where’s your home?”
“It’s Dorlcote Mill, a good way off,” said Maggie. “My father is Mr
Tulliver, but we mustn’t let him know where I am, else he’ll fetch me
home again. Where does the queen of the gypsies live?”
“What! do you want to go to her, my little lady?” said the younger
woman. The tall girl meanwhile was constantly staring at Maggie and
grinning. Her manners were certainly not agreeable.
“No,” said Maggie, “I’m only thinking that if she isn’t a very good
queen you might be glad when she died, and you could choose another. If
I was a queen, I’d be a very good queen, and kind to everybody.”
“Here’s a bit o’ nice victual, then,” said the old woman, handing to
Maggie a lump of dry bread, which she had taken from a bag of scraps,
and a piece of cold bacon.
“Thank you,’ said Maggie, looking at the food without taking it; “but
will you give me some bread-and-butter and tea instead? I don’t like
bacon.”
“We’ve got no tea nor butter,” said the old woman, with something like
a scowl, as if she were getting tired of coaxing.
“Oh, a little bread and treacle would do,” said Maggie.
“We han’t got no treacle,” said the old woman, crossly, whereupon there
followed a sharp dialogue between the two women in their unknown
tongue, and one of the small sphinxes snatched at the bread-and-bacon,
and began to eat it. At this moment the tall girl, who had gone a few
yards off, came back, and said something which produced a strong
effect. The old woman, seeming to forget Maggie’s hunger, poked the
skewer into the pot with new vigor, and the younger crept under the
tent and reached out some platters and spoons. Maggie trembled a
little, and was afraid the tears would come into her eyes. Meanwhile
the tall girl gave a shrill cry, and presently came running up the boy
whom Maggie had passed as he was sleeping,—a rough urchin about the age
of Tom. He stared at Maggie, and there ensued much incomprehensible
chattering. She felt very lonely, and was quite sure she should begin
to cry before long; the gypsies didn’t seem to mind her at all, and she
felt quite weak among them. But the springing tears were checked by new
terror, when two men came up, whose approach had been the cause of the
sudden excitement. The elder of the two carried a bag, which he flung
down, addressing the women in a loud and scolding tone, which they
answered by a shower of treble sauciness; while a black cur ran barking
up to Maggie, and threw her into a tremor that only found a new cause
in the curses with which the younger man called the dog off, and gave
him a rap with a great stick he held in his hand.
Maggie felt that it was impossible she should ever be queen of these
people, or ever communicate to them amusing and useful knowledge.
Both the men now seemed to be inquiring about Maggie, for they looked
at her, and the tone of the conversation became of that pacific kind
which implies curiosity on one side and the power of satisfying it on
the other. At last the younger woman said in her previous deferential,
coaxing tone,—
“This nice little lady’s come to live with us; aren’t you glad?”
“Ay, very glad,” said the younger man, who was looking at Maggie’s
silver thimble and other small matters that had been taken from her
pocket. He returned them all except the thimble to the younger woman,
with some observation, and she immediately restored them to Maggie’s
pocket, while the men seated themselves, and began to attack the
contents of the kettle,—a stew of meat and potatoes,—which had been
taken off the fire and turned out into a yellow platter.
Maggie began to think that Tom must be right about the gypsies; they
must certainly be thieves, unless the man meant to return her thimble
by and by. She would willingly have given it to him, for she was not at
all attached to her thimble; but the idea that she was among thieves
prevented her from feeling any comfort in the revival of deference and
attention toward her; all thieves, except Robin Hood, were wicked
people. The women saw she was frightened.
“We’ve got nothing nice for a lady to eat,” said the old woman, in her
coaxing tone. “And she’s so hungry, sweet little lady.”
“Here, my dear, try if you can eat a bit o’ this,” said the younger
woman, handing some of the stew on a brown dish with an iron spoon to
Maggie, who, remembering that the old woman had seemed angry with her
for not liking the bread-and-bacon, dared not refuse the stew, though
fear had chased away her appetite. If her father would but come by in
the gig and take her up! Or even if Jack the Giantkiller, or Mr
Greatheart, or St George who slew the dragon on the half-pennies, would
happen to pass that way! But Maggie thought with a sinking heart that
these heroes were never seen in the neighbourhood of St Ogg’s; nothing
very wonderful ever came there.
Maggie Tulliver, you perceive, was by no means that well trained,
well-informed young person that a small female of eight or nine
necessarily is in these days; she had only been to school a year at St
Ogg’s, and had so few books that she sometimes read the dictionary; so
that in travelling over her small mind you would have found the most
unexpected ignorance as well as unexpected knowledge. She could have
informed you that there was such a word as “polygamy,” and being also
acquainted with “polysyllable,” she had deduced the conclusion that
“poly” mean “many”; but she had had no idea that gypsies were not well
supplied with groceries, and her thoughts generally were the oddest
mixture of clear-eyed acumen and blind dreams.
Her ideas about the gypsies had undergone a rapid modification in the
last five minutes. From having considered them very respectful
companions, amenable to instruction, she had begun to think that they
meant perhaps to kill her as soon as it was dark, and cut up her body
for gradual cooking; the suspicion crossed her that the fierce-eyed old
man was in fact the Devil, who might drop that transparent disguise at
any moment, and turn either into the grinning blacksmith, or else a
fiery-eyed monster with dragon’s wings. It was no use trying to eat the
stew, and yet the thing she most dreaded was to offend the gypsies, by
betraying her extremely unfavourable opinion of them; and she wondered,
with a keenness of interest that no theologian could have exceeded,
whether, if the Devil were really present, he would know her thoughts.
“What! you don’t like the smell of it, my dear,” said the young woman,
observing that Maggie did not even take a spoonful of the stew. “Try a
bit, come.”
“No, thank you,” said Maggie, summoning all her force for a desperate
effort, and trying to smile in a friendly way. “I haven’t time, I
think; it seems getting darker. I think I must go home now, and come
again another day, and then I can bring you a basket with some
jam-tarts and things.”
Maggie rose from her seat as she threw out this illusory prospect,
devoutly hoping that Apollyon was gullible; but her hope sank when the
old gypsy-woman said, “Stop a bit, stop a bit, little lady; we’ll take
you home, all safe, when we’ve done supper; you shall ride home, like a
lady.”
Maggie sat down again, with little faith in this promise, though she
presently saw the tall girl putting a bridle on the donkey, and
throwing a couple of bags on his back.
“Now, then, little missis,” said the younger man, rising, and leading
the donkey forward, “tell us where you live; what’s the name o’ the
place?”
“Dorlcote Mill is my home,” said Maggie, eagerly. “My father is Mr
Tulliver; he lives there.”
“What! a big mill a little way this side o’ St Ogg’s?”
“Yes,” said Maggie. “Is it far off? I think I should like to walk
there, if you please.”
“No, no, it’ll be getting dark, we must make haste. And the donkey’ll
carry you as nice as can be; you’ll see.”
He lifted Maggie as he spoke, and set her on the donkey. She felt
relieved that it was not the old man who seemed to be going with her,
but she had only a trembling hope that she was really going home.
“Here’s your pretty bonnet,” said the younger woman, putting that
recently despised but now welcome article of costume on Maggie’s head;
“and you’ll say we’ve been very good to you, won’t you? and what a nice
little lady we said you was.”
“Oh yes, thank you,” said Maggie, “I’m very much obliged to you. But I
wish you’d go with me too.” She thought anything was better than going
with one of the dreadful men alone; it would be more cheerful to be
murdered by a larger party.
“Ah, you’re fondest o’ _me_, aren’t you?” said the woman. “But I can’t
go; you’ll go too fast for me.”
It now appeared that the man also was to be seated on the donkey,
holding Maggie before him, and she was as incapable of remonstrating
against this arrangement as the donkey himself, though no nightmare had
ever seemed to her more horrible. When the woman had patted her on the
back, and said “Good-by,” the donkey, at a strong hint from the man’s
stick, set off at a rapid walk along the lane toward the point Maggie
had come from an hour ago, while the tall girl and the rough urchin,
also furnished with sticks, obligingly escorted them for the first
hundred yards, with much screaming and thwacking.
Not Leonore, in that preternatural midnight excursion with her phantom
lover, was more terrified than poor Maggie in this entirely natural
ride on a short-paced donkey, with a gypsy behind her, who considered
that he was earning half a crown. The red light of the setting sun
seemed to have a portentous meaning, with which the alarming bray of
the second donkey with the log on its foot must surely have some
connection. Two low thatched cottages—the only houses they passed in
this lane—seemed to add to its dreariness; they had no windows to speak
of, and the doors were closed; it was probable that they were
inhabitated by witches, and it was a relief to find that the donkey did
not stop there.
At last—oh, sight of joy!—this lane, the longest in the world, was
coming to an end, was opening on a broad highroad, where there was
actually a coach passing! And there was a finger-post at the
corner,—she had surely seen that finger-post before,—“To St Ogg’s, 2
miles.” The gypsy really meant to take her home, then; he was probably
a good man, after all, and might have been rather hurt at the thought
that she didn’t like coming with him alone. This idea became stronger
as she felt more and more certain that she knew the road quite well,
and she was considering how she might open a conversation with the
injured gypsy, and not only gratify his feelings but efface the
impression of her cowardice, when, as they reached a cross-road, Maggie
caught sight of some one coming on a white-faced horse.
“Oh, stop, stop!” she cried out. “There’s my father! Oh, father,
father!”
The sudden joy was almost painful, and before her father reached her,
she was sobbing. Great was Mr Tulliver’s wonder, for he had made a
round from Basset, and had not yet been home.
“Why, what’s the meaning o’ this?” he said, checking his horse, while
Maggie slipped from the donkey and ran to her father’s stirrup.
“The little miss lost herself, I reckon,” said the gypsy. “She’d come
to our tent at the far end o’ Dunlow Lane, and I was bringing her where
she said her home was. It’s a good way to come after being on the tramp
all day.”
“Oh yes, father, he’s been very good to bring me home,” said Maggie,—“a
very kind, good man!”
“Here, then, my man,” said Mr Tulliver, taking out five shillings.
“It’s the best day’s work _you_ ever did. I couldn’t afford to lose the
little wench; here, lift her up before me.”
“Why, Maggie, how’s this, how’s this?” he said, as they rode along,
while she laid her head against her father and sobbed. “How came you to
be rambling about and lose yourself?”
“Oh, father,” sobbed Maggie, “I ran away because I was so unhappy; Tom
was so angry with me. I couldn’t bear it.”
“Pooh, pooh,” said Mr Tulliver, soothingly, “you mustn’t think o’
running away from father. What ’ud father do without his little wench?”
“Oh no, I never will again, father—never.”
Mr Tulliver spoke his mind very strongly when he reached home that
evening; and the effect was seen in the remarkable fact that Maggie
never heard one reproach from her mother, or one taunt from Tom, about
this foolish business of her running away to the gypsies. Maggie was
rather awe-stricken by this unusual treatment, and sometimes thought
that her conduct had been too wicked to be alluded to.
Chapter XII.
Mr and Mrs Glegg at Home
In order to see Mr and Mrs Glegg at home, we must enter the town of St
Ogg’s,—that venerable town with the red fluted roofs and the broad
warehouse gables, where the black ships unlade themselves of their
burthens from the far north, and carry away, in exchange, the precious
inland products, the well-crushed cheese and the soft fleeces which my
refined readers have doubtless become acquainted with through the
medium of the best classic pastorals.
It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation
and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the
winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of
its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up
and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from
the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp
on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and
looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land. It is a town
“familiar with forgotten years.” The shadow of the Saxon hero-king
still walks there fitfully, reviewing the scenes of his youth and
love-time, and is met by the gloomier shadow of the dreadful heathen
Dane, who was stabbed in the midst of his warriors by the sword of an
invisible avenger, and who rises on autumn evenings like a white mist
from his tumulus on the hill, and hovers in the court of the old hall
by the river-side, the spot where he was thus miraculously slain in the
days before the old hall was built. It was the Normans who began to
build that fine old hall, which is, like the town, telling of the
thoughts and hands of widely sundered generations; but it is all so old
that we look with loving pardon at its inconsistencies, and are well
content that they who built the stone oriel, and they who built the
Gothic façade and towers of finest small brickwork with the trefoil
ornament, and the windows and battlements defined with stone, did not
sacrilegiously pull down the ancient half-timbered body with its
oak-roofed banqueting-hall.
But older even than this old hall is perhaps the bit of wall now built
into the belfry of the parish church, and said to be a remnant of the
original chapel dedicated to St Ogg, the patron saint of this ancient
town, of whose history I possess several manuscript versions. I incline
to the briefest, since, if it should not be wholly true, it is at least
likely to contain the least falsehood. “Ogg the son of Beorl,” says my
private hagiographer, “was a boatman who gained a scanty living by
ferrying passengers across the river Floss. And it came to pass, one
evening when the winds were high, that there sat moaning by the brink
of the river a woman with a child in her arms; and she was clad in
rags, and had a worn and withered look, and she craved to be rowed
across the river. And the men thereabout questioned her, and said,
‘Wherefore dost thou desire to cross the river? Tarry till the morning,
and take shelter here for the night; so shalt thou be wise and not
foolish.’ Still she went on to mourn and crave. But Ogg the son of
Beorl came up and said, ‘I will ferry thee across; it is enough that
thy heart needs it.’ And he ferried her across. And it came to pass,
when she stepped ashore, that her rags were turned into robes of
flowing white, and her face became bright with exceeding beauty, and
there was a glory around it, so that she shed a light on the water like
the moon in its brightness. And she said, ‘Ogg, the son of Beorl, thou
art blessed in that thou didst not question and wrangle with the
heart’s need, but wast smitten with pity, and didst straightway relieve
the same. And from henceforth whoso steps into thy boat shall be in no
peril from the storm; and whenever it puts forth to the rescue, it
shall save the lives both of men and beasts.’ And when the floods came,
many were saved by reason of that blessing on the boat. But when Ogg
the son of Beorl died, behold, in the parting of his soul, the boat
loosed itself from its moorings, and was floated with the ebbing tide
in great swiftness to the ocean, and was seen no more. Yet it was
witnessed in the floods of aftertime, that at the coming on of
eventide, Ogg the son of Beorl was always seen with his boat upon the
wide-spreading waters, and the Blessed Virgin sat in the prow, shedding
a light around as of the moon in its brightness, so that the rowers in
the gathering darkness took heart and pulled anew.”
This legend, one sees, reflects from a far-off time the visitation of
the floods, which, even when they left human life untouched, were
widely fatal to the helpless cattle, and swept as sudden death over all
smaller living things. But the town knew worse troubles even than the
floods,—troubles of the civil wars, when it was a continual
fighting-place, where first Puritans thanked God for the blood of the
Loyalists, and then Loyalists thanked God for the blood of the
Puritans. Many honest citizens lost all their possessions for
conscience’ sake in those times, and went forth beggared from their
native town. Doubtless there are many houses standing now on which
those honest citizens turned their backs in sorrow,—quaint-gabled
houses looking on the river, jammed between newer warehouses, and
penetrated by surprising passages, which turn and turn at sharp angles
till they lead you out on a muddy strand overflowed continually by the
rushing tide. Everywhere the brick houses have a mellow look, and in
Mrs Glegg’s day there was no incongruous new-fashioned smartness, no
plate-glass in shop-windows, no fresh stucco-facing or other fallacious
attempt to make fine old red St Ogg’s wear the air of a town that
sprang up yesterday. The shop-windows were small and unpretending; for
the farmers’ wives and daughters who came to do their shopping on
market-days were not to be withdrawn from their regular well-known
shops; and the tradesmen had no wares intended for customers who would
go on their way and be seen no more. Ah! even Mrs Glegg’s day seems far
back in the past now, separated from us by changes that widen the
years. War and the rumor of war had then died out from the minds of
men, and if they were ever thought of by the farmers in drab
greatcoats, who shook the grain out of their sample-bags and buzzed
over it in the full market-place, it was as a state of things that
belonged to a past golden age when prices were high. Surely the time
was gone forever when the broad river could bring up unwelcome ships;
Russia was only the place where the linseed came from,—the more the
better,—making grist for the great vertical millstones with their
scythe-like arms, roaring and grinding and carefully sweeping as if an
informing soul were in them. The Catholics, bad harvests, and the
mysterious fluctuations of trade were the three evils mankind had to
fear; even the floods had not been great of late years. The mind of St
Ogg’s did not look extensively before or after. It inherited a long
past without thinking of it, and had no eyes for the spirits that walk
the streets. Since the centuries when St Ogg with his boat and the
Virgin Mother at the prow had been seen on the wide water, so many
memories had been left behind, and had gradually vanished like the
receding hilltops! And the present time was like the level plain where
men lose their belief in volcanoes and earthquakes, thinking to-morrow
will be as yesterday, and the giant forces that used to shake the earth
are forever laid to sleep. The days were gone when people could be
greatly wrought upon by their faith, still less change it; the
Catholics were formidable because they would lay hold of government and
property, and burn men alive; not because any sane and honest
parishioner of St Ogg’s could be brought to believe in the Pope. One
aged person remembered how a rude multitude had been swayed when John
Wesley preached in the cattle-market; but for a long while it had not
been expected of preachers that they should shake the souls of men. An
occasional burst of fervor in Dissenting pulpits on the subject of
infant baptism was the only symptom of a zeal unsuited to sober times
when men had done with change. Protestantism sat at ease, unmindful of
schisms, careless of proselytism: Dissent was an inheritance along with
a superior pew and a business connection; and Churchmanship only
wondered contemptuously at Dissent as a foolish habit that clung
greatly to families in the grocery and chandlering lines, though not
incompatible with prosperous wholesale dealing. But with the Catholic
Question had come a slight wind of controversy to break the calm: the
elderly rector had become occasionally historical and argumentative;
and Mr Spray, the Independent minister, had begun to preach political
sermons, in which he distinguished with much subtlety between his
fervent belief in the right of the Catholics to the franchise and his
fervent belief in their eternal perdition. Most of Mr Spray’s hearers,
however, were incapable of following his subtleties, and many
old-fashioned Dissenters were much pained by his “siding with the
Catholics”; while others thought he had better let politics alone.
Public spirit was not held in high esteem at St Ogg’s, and men who
busied themselves with political questions were regarded with some
suspicion, as dangerous characters; they were usually persons who had
little or no business of their own to manage, or, if they had, were
likely enough to become insolvent.
This was the general aspect of things at St Ogg’s in Mrs Glegg’s day,
and at that particular period in her family history when she had had
her quarrel with Mr Tulliver. It was a time when ignorance was much
more comfortable than at present, and was received with all the honours
in very good society, without being obliged to dress itself in an
elaborate costume of knowledge; a time when cheap periodicals were not,
and when country surgeons never thought of asking their female patients
if they were fond of reading, but simply took it for granted that they
preferred gossip; a time when ladies in rich silk gowns wore large
pockets, in which they carried a mutton-bone to secure them against
cramp. Mrs Glegg carried such a bone, which she had inherited from her
grandmother with a brocaded gown that would stand up empty, like a suit
of armor, and a silver-headed walking-stick; for the Dodson family had
been respectable for many generations.
Mrs Glegg had both a front and a back parlour in her excellent house at
St Ogg’s, so that she had two points of view from which she could
observe the weakness of her fellow-beings, and reinforce her
thankfulness for her own exceptional strength of mind. From her front
window she could look down the Tofton Road, leading out of St Ogg’s,
and note the growing tendency to “gadding about” in the wives of men
not retired from business, together with a practice of wearing woven
cotton stockings, which opened a dreary prospect for the coming
generation; and from her back windows she could look down the pleasant
garden and orchard which stretched to the river, and observe the folly
of Mr Glegg in spending his time among “them flowers and vegetables.”
For Mr Glegg, having retired from active business as a wool-stapler for
the purpose of enjoying himself through the rest of his life, had found
this last occupation so much more severe than his business, that he had
been driven into amateur hard labour as a dissipation, and habitually
relaxed by doing the work of two ordinary gardeners. The economizing of
a gardener’s wages might perhaps have induced Mrs Glegg to wink at this
folly, if it were possible for a healthy female mind even to simulate
respect for a husband’s hobby. But it is well known that this conjugal
complacency belongs only to the weaker portion of the sex, who are
scarcely alive to the responsibilities of a wife as a constituted check
on her husband’s pleasures, which are hardly ever of a rational or
commendable kind.
Mr Glegg on his side, too, had a double source of mental occupation,
which gave every promise of being inexhaustible. On the one hand, he
surprised himself by his discoveries in natural history, finding that
his piece of garden-ground contained wonderful caterpillars, slugs, and
insects, which, so far as he had heard, had never before attracted
human observation; and he noticed remarkable coincidences between these
zoological phenomena and the great events of that time,—as, for
example, that before the burning of York Minster there had been
mysterious serpentine marks on the leaves of the rose-trees, together
with an unusual prevalence of slugs, which he had been puzzled to know
the meaning of, until it flashed upon him with this melancholy
conflagration. (Mr Glegg had an unusual amount of mental activity,
which, when disengaged from the wool business, naturally made itself a
pathway in other directions.) And his second subject of meditation was
the “contrairiness” of the female mind, as typically exhibited in Mrs
Glegg. That a creature made—in a genealogical sense—out of a man’s rib,
and in this particular case maintained in the highest respectability
without any trouble of her own, should be normally in a state of
contradiction to the blandest propositions and even to the most
accommodating concessions, was a mystery in the scheme of things to
which he had often in vain sought a clew in the early chapters of
Genesis. Mr Glegg had chosen the eldest Miss Dodson as a handsome
embodiment of female prudence and thrift, and being himself of a
money-getting, money-keeping turn, had calculated on much conjugal
harmony. But in that curious compound, the feminine character, it may
easily happen that the flavour is unpleasant in spite of excellent
ingredients; and a fine systematic stinginess may be accompanied with a
seasoning that quite spoils its relish. Now, good Mr Glegg himself was
stingy in the most amiable manner; his neighbours called him “near,”
which always means that the person in question is a lovable skinflint.
If you expressed a preference for cheese-parings, Mr Glegg would
remember to save them for you, with a good-natured delight in
gratifying your palate, and he was given to pet all animals which
required no appreciable keep. There was no humbug or hypocrisy about Mr
Glegg; his eyes would have watered with true feeling over the sale of a
widow’s furniture, which a five-pound note from his side pocket would
have prevented; but a donation of five pounds to a person “in a small
way of life” would have seemed to him a mad kind of lavishness rather
than “charity,” which had always presented itself to him as a
contribution of small aids, not a neutralizing of misfortune. And Mr
Glegg was just as fond of saving other people’s money as his own; he
would have ridden as far round to avoid a turnpike when his expenses
were to be paid for him, as when they were to come out of his own
pocket, and was quite zealous in trying to induce indifferent
acquaintances to adopt a cheap substitute for blacking. This
inalienable habit of saving, as an end in itself, belonged to the
industrious men of business of a former generation, who made their
fortunes slowly, almost as the tracking of the fox belongs to the
harrier,—it constituted them a “race,” which is nearly lost in these
days of rapid money-getting, when lavishness comes close on the back of
want. In old-fashioned times an “independence” was hardly ever made
without a little miserliness as a condition, and you would have found
that quality in every provincial district, combined with characters as
various as the fruits from which we can extract acid. The true
Harpagons were always marked and exceptional characters; not so the
worthy tax-payers, who, having once pinched from real necessity,
retained even in the midst of their comfortable retirement, with their
wallfruit and wine-bins, the habit of regarding life as an ingenious
process of nibbling out one’s livelihood without leaving any
perceptible deficit, and who would have been as immediately prompted to
give up a newly taxed luxury when they had had their clear five hundred
a year, as when they had only five hundred pounds of capital. Mr Glegg
was one of these men, found so impracticable by chancellors of the
exchequer; and knowing this, you will be the better able to understand
why he had not swerved from the conviction that he had made an eligible
marriage, in spite of the too pungent seasoning that nature had given
to the eldest Miss Dodson’s virtues. A man with an affectionate
disposition, who finds a wife to concur with his fundamental idea of
life, easily comes to persuade himself that no other woman would have
suited him so well, and does a little daily snapping and quarrelling
without any sense of alienation. Mr Glegg, being of a reflective turn,
and no longer occupied with wool, had much wondering meditation on the
peculiar constitution of the female mind as unfolded to him in his
domestic life; and yet he thought Mrs Glegg’s household ways a model
for her sex. It struck him as a pitiable irregularity in other women if
they did not roll up their table-napkins with the same tightness and
emphasis as Mrs Glegg did, if their pastry had a less leathery
consistence, and their damson cheese a less venerable hardness than
hers; nay, even the peculiar combination of grocery and druglike odors
in Mrs Glegg’s private cupboard impressed him as the only right thing
in the way of cupboard smells. I am not sure that he would not have
longed for the quarrelling again, if it had ceased for an entire week;
and it is certain that an acquiescent, mild wife would have left his
meditations comparatively jejune and barren of mystery.
Mr Glegg’s unmistakable kind-heartedness was shown in this, that it
pained him more to see his wife at variance with others,—even with
Dolly, the servant,—than to be in a state of cavil with her himself;
and the quarrel between her and Mr Tulliver vexed him so much that it
quite nullified the pleasure he would otherwise have had in the state
of his early cabbages, as he walked in his garden before breakfast the
next morning. Still, he went in to breakfast with some slight hope
that, now Mrs Glegg had “slept upon it,” her anger might be subdued
enough to give way to her usually strong sense of family decorum. She
had been used to boast that there had never been any of those deadly
quarrels among the Dodsons which had disgraced other families; that no
Dodson had ever been “cut off with a shilling,” and no cousin of the
Dodsons disowned; as, indeed, why should they be? For they had no
cousins who had not money out at use, or some houses of their own, at
the very least.
There was one evening-cloud which had always disappeared from Mrs
Glegg’s brow when she sat at the breakfast-table. It was her fuzzy
front of curls; for as she occupied herself in household matters in the
morning it would have been a mere extravagance to put on anything so
superfluous to the making of leathery pastry as a fuzzy curled front.
By half-past ten decorum demanded the front; until then Mrs Glegg could
economise it, and society would never be any the wiser. But the absence
of that cloud only left it more apparent that the cloud of severity
remained; and Mr Glegg, perceiving this, as he sat down to his
milkporridge, which it was his old frugal habit to stem his morning
hunger with, prudently resolved to leave the first remark to Mrs Glegg,
lest, to so delicate an article as a lady’s temper, the slightest touch
should do mischief. People who seem to enjoy their ill temper have a
way of keeping it in fine condition by inflicting privations on
themselves. That was Mrs Glegg’s way. She made her tea weaker than
usual this morning, and declined butter. It was a hard case that a
vigorous mood for quarrelling, so highly capable of using an
opportunity, should not meet with a single remark from Mr Glegg on
which to exercise itself. But by and by it appeared that his silence
would answer the purpose, for he heard himself apostrophised at last in
that tone peculiar to the wife of one’s bosom.
“Well, Mr Glegg! it’s a poor return I get for making you the wife I’ve
made you all these years. If this is the way I’m to be treated, I’d
better ha’ known it before my poor father died, and then, when I’d
wanted a home, I should ha’ gone elsewhere, as the choice was offered
me.”
Mr Glegg paused from his porridge and looked up, not with any new
amazement, but simply with that quiet, habitual wonder with which we
regard constant mysteries.
“Why, Mrs G., what have I done now?”
“Done now, Mr Glegg? _done now?_—I’m sorry for you.”
Not seeing his way to any pertinent answer, Mr Glegg reverted to his
porridge.
“There’s husbands in the world,” continued Mrs Glegg, after a pause,
“as ’ud have known how to do something different to siding with
everybody else against their own wives. Perhaps I’m wrong and you can
teach me better. But I’ve allays heard as it’s the husband’s place to
stand by the wife, instead o’ rejoicing and triumphing when folks
insult her.”
“Now, what call have you to say that?” said Mr Glegg, rather warmly,
for though a kind man, he was not as meek as Moses. “When did I rejoice
or triumph over you?”
“There’s ways o’ doing things worse than speaking out plain, Mr Glegg.
I’d sooner you’d tell me to my face as you make light of me, than try
to make out as everybody’s in the right but me, and come to your
breakfast in the morning, as I’ve hardly slept an hour this night, and
sulk at me as if I was the dirt under your feet.”
“Sulk at you?” said Mr Glegg, in a tone of angry facetiousness. “You’re
like a tipsy man as thinks everybody’s had too much but himself.”
“Don’t lower yourself with using coarse language to _me_, Mr Glegg! It
makes you look very small, though you can’t see yourself,” said Mrs
Glegg, in a tone of energetic compassion. “A man in your place should
set an example, and talk more sensible.”
“Yes; but will you listen to sense?” retorted Mr Glegg, sharply. “The
best sense I can talk to you is what I said last night,—as you’re i’
the wrong to think o’ calling in your money, when it’s safe enough if
you’d let it alone, all because of a bit of a tiff, and I was in hopes
you’d ha’ altered your mind this morning. But if you’d like to call it
in, don’t do it in a hurry now, and breed more enmity in the family,
but wait till there’s a pretty mortgage to be had without any trouble.
You’d have to set the lawyer to work now to find an investment, and
make no end o’ expense.”
Mrs Glegg felt there was really something in this, but she tossed her
head and emitted a guttural interjection to indicate that her silence
was only an armistice, not a peace. And, in fact hostilities soon broke
out again.
“I’ll thank you for my cup o’ tea, now, Mrs G.,” said Mr Glegg, seeing
that she did not proceed to give it him as usual, when he had finished
his porridge. She lifted the teapot with a slight toss of the head, and
said,—
“I’m glad to hear you’ll _thank_ me, Mr Glegg. It’s little thanks _I_
get for what I do for folks i’ this world. Though there’s never a woman
o’ _your_ side o’ the family, Mr Glegg, as is fit to stand up with me,
and I’d say it if I was on my dying bed. Not but what I’ve allays
conducted myself civil to your kin, and there isn’t one of ’em can say
the contrary, though my equils they aren’t, and nobody shall make me
say it.”
“You’d better leave finding fault wi’ my kin till you’ve left off
quarrelling with your own, Mrs G.,” said Mr Glegg, with angry sarcasm.
“I’ll trouble you for the milk-jug.”
“That’s as false a word as ever you spoke, Mr Glegg,” said the lady,
pouring out the milk with unusual profuseness, as much as to say, if he
wanted milk he should have it with a vengeance. “And you know it’s
false. I’m not the woman to quarrel with my own kin; _you_ may, for
I’ve known you to do it.”
“Why, what did you call it yesterday, then, leaving your sister’s house
in a tantrum?”
“I’d no quarrel wi’ my sister, Mr Glegg, and it’s false to say it. Mr
Tulliver’s none o’ my blood, and it was him quarrelled with me, and
drove me out o’ the house. But perhaps you’d have had me stay and be
swore at, Mr Glegg; perhaps you was vexed not to hear more abuse and
foul language poured out upo’ your own wife. But, let me tell you, it’s
_your_ disgrace.”
“Did ever anybody hear the like i’ this parish?” said Mr Glegg, getting
hot. “A woman, with everything provided for her, and allowed to keep
her own money the same as if it was settled on her, and with a gig new
stuffed and lined at no end o’ expense, and provided for when I die
beyond anything she could expect—to go on i’ this way, biting and
snapping like a mad dog! It’s beyond everything, as God A ’mighty
should ha’ made women _so_.” (These last words were uttered in a tone
of sorrowful agitation. Mr Glegg pushed his tea from him, and tapped
the table with both his hands.)
“Well, Mr Glegg, if those are your feelings, it’s best they should be
known,” said Mrs Glegg, taking off her napkin, and folding it in an
excited manner. “But if you talk o’ my being provided for beyond what I
could expect, I beg leave to tell you as I’d a right to expect a many
things as I don’t find. And as to my being like a mad dog, it’s well if
you’re not cried shame on by the county for your treatment of me, for
it’s what I can’t bear, and I won’t bear——”
Here Mrs Glegg’s voice intimated that she was going to cry, and
breaking off from speech, she rang the bell violently.
“Sally,” she said, rising from her chair, and speaking in rather a
choked voice, “light a fire up-stairs, and put the blinds down. Mr
Glegg, you’ll please to order what you’d like for dinner. I shall have
gruel.”
Mrs Glegg walked across the room to the small book-case, and took down
Baxter’s “Saints’ Everlasting Rest,” which she carried with her
up-stairs. It was the book she was accustomed to lay open before her on
special occasions,—on wet Sunday mornings, or when she heard of a death
in the family, or when, as in this case, her quarrel with Mr Glegg had
been set an octave higher than usual.
But Mrs Glegg carried something else up-stairs with her, which,
together with the “Saints’ Rest” and the gruel, may have had some
influence in gradually calming her feelings, and making it possible for
her to endure existence on the ground-floor, shortly before tea-time.
This was, partly, Mr Glegg’s suggestion that she would do well to let
her five hundred lie still until a good investment turned up; and,
further, his parenthetic hint at his handsome provision for her in case
of his death. Mr Glegg, like all men of his stamp, was extremely
reticent about his will; and Mrs Glegg, in her gloomier moments, had
forebodings that, like other husbands of whom she had heard, he might
cherish the mean project of heightening her grief at his death by
leaving her poorly off, in which case she was firmly resolved that she
would have scarcely any weeper on her bonnet, and would cry no more
than if he had been a second husband. But if he had really shown her
any testamentary tenderness, it would be affecting to think of him,
poor man, when he was gone; and even his foolish fuss about the flowers
and garden-stuff, and his insistence on the subject of snails, would be
touching when it was once fairly at an end. To survive Mr Glegg, and
talk eulogistically of him as a man who might have his weaknesses, but
who had done the right thing by her, not-withstanding his numerous poor
relations; to have sums of interest coming in more frequently, and
secrete it in various corners, baffling to the most ingenious of
thieves (for, to Mrs Glegg’s mind, banks and strong-boxes would have
nullified the pleasure of property; she might as well have taken her
food in capsules); finally, to be looked up to by her own family and
the neighbourhood, so as no woman can ever hope to be who has not the
præterite and present dignity comprised in being a “widow well
left,”—all this made a flattering and conciliatory view of the future.
So that when good Mr Glegg, restored to good humour by much hoeing, and
moved by the sight of his wife’s empty chair, with her knitting rolled
up in the corner, went up-stairs to her, and observed that the bell had
been tolling for poor Mr Morton, Mrs Glegg answered magnanimously,
quite as if she had been an uninjured woman: “Ah! then, there’ll be a
good business for somebody to take to.”
Baxter had been open at least eight hours by this time, for it was
nearly five o’clock; and if people are to quarrel often, it follows as
a corollary that their quarrels cannot be protracted beyond certain
limits.
Mr and Mrs Glegg talked quite amicably about the Tullivers that
evening. Mr Glegg went the length of admitting that Tulliver was a sad
man for getting into hot water, and was like enough to run through his
property; and Mrs Glegg, meeting this acknowledgment half-way, declared
that it was beneath her to take notice of such a man’s conduct, and
that, for her sister’s sake, she would let him keep the five hundred a
while longer, for when she put it out on a mortgage she should only get
four per cent.
Chapter XIII.
Mr Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life
Owing to this new adjustment of Mrs Glegg’s thoughts, Mrs Pullet found
her task of mediation the next day surprisingly easy. Mrs Glegg, indeed
checked her rather sharply for thinking it would be necessary to tell
her elder sister what was the right mode of behaviour in family
matters. Mrs Pullet’s argument, that it would look ill in the
neighbourhood if people should have it in their power to say that there
was a quarrel in the family, was particularly offensive. If the family
name never suffered except through Mrs Glegg, Mrs Pullet might lay her
head on her pillow in perfect confidence.
“It’s not to be expected, I suppose,” observed Mrs Glegg, by way of
winding up the subject, “as I shall go to the mill again before Bessy
comes to see me, or as I shall go and fall down o’ my knees to Mr
Tulliver, and ask his pardon for showing him favours; but I shall bear
no malice, and when Mr Tulliver speaks civil to me, I’ll speak civil to
him. Nobody has any call to tell me what’s becoming.”
Finding it unnecessary to plead for the Tullivers, it was natural that
aunt Pullet should relax a little in her anxiety for them, and recur to
the annoyance she had suffered yesterday from the offspring of that
apparently ill-fated house. Mrs Glegg heard a circumstantial narrative,
to which Mr Pullet’s remarkable memory furnished some items; and while
aunt Pullet pitied poor Bessy’s bad luck with her children, and
expressed a half-formed project of paying for Maggie’s being sent to a
distant boarding-school, which would not prevent her being so brown,
but might tend to subdue some other vices in her, aunt Glegg blamed
Bessy for her weakness, and appealed to all witnesses who should be
living when the Tulliver children had turned out ill, that she, Mrs
Glegg, had always said how it would be from the very first, observing
that it was wonderful to herself how all her words came true.
“Then I may call and tell Bessy you’ll bear no malice, and everything
be as it was before?” Mrs Pullet said, just before parting.
“Yes, you may, Sophy,” said Mrs Glegg; “you may tell Mr Tulliver, and
Bessy too, as I’m not going to behave ill because folks behave ill to
me; I know it’s my place, as the eldest, to set an example in every
respect, and I do it. Nobody can say different of me, if they’ll keep
to the truth.”
Mrs Glegg being in this state of satisfaction in her own lofty
magnanimity, I leave you to judge what effect was produced on her by
the reception of a short letter from Mr Tulliver that very evening,
after Mrs Pullet’s departure, informing her that she needn’t trouble
her mind about her five hundred pounds, for it should be paid back to
her in the course of the next month at farthest, together with the
interest due thereon until the time of payment. And furthermore, that
Mr Tulliver had no wish to behave uncivilly to Mrs Glegg, and she was
welcome to his house whenever she liked to come, but he desired no
favours from her, either for himself or his children.
It was poor Mrs Tulliver who had hastened this catastrophe, entirely
through that irrepressible hopefulness of hers which led her to expect
that similar causes may at any time produce different results. It had
very often occurred in her experience that Mr Tulliver had done
something because other people had said he was not able to do it, or
had pitied him for his supposed inability, or in any other way piqued
his pride; still, she thought to-day, if she told him when he came in
to tea that sister Pullet was gone to try and make everything up with
sister Glegg, so that he needn’t think about paying in the money, it
would give a cheerful effect to the meal. Mr Tulliver had never
slackened in his resolve to raise the money, but now he at once
determined to write a letter to Mrs Glegg, which should cut off all
possibility of mistake. Mrs Pullet gone to beg and pray for _him_
indeed! Mr Tulliver did not willingly write a letter, and found the
relation between spoken and written language, briefly known as
spelling, one of the most puzzling things in this puzzling world.
Nevertheless, like all fervid writing, the task was done in less time
than usual, and if the spelling differed from Mrs Glegg’s,—why, she
belonged, like himself, to a generation with whom spelling was a matter
of private judgment.
Mrs Glegg did not alter her will in consequence of this letter, and cut
off the Tulliver children from their sixth and seventh share in her
thousand pounds; for she had her principles. No one must be able to say
of her when she was dead that she had not divided her money with
perfect fairness among her own kin. In the matter of wills, personal
qualities were subordinate to the great fundamental fact of blood; and
to be determined in the distribution of your property by caprice, and
not make your legacies bear a direct ratio to degrees of kinship, was a
prospective disgrace that would have embittered her life. This had
always been a principle in the Dodson family; it was one form of that
sense of honour and rectitude which was a proud tradition in such
families,—a tradition which has been the salt of our provincial
society.
But though the letter could not shake Mrs Glegg’s principles, it made
the family breach much more difficult to mend; and as to the effect it
produced on Mrs Glegg’s opinion of Mr Tulliver, she begged to be
understood from that time forth that she had nothing whatever to say
about him; his state of mind, apparently, was too corrupt for her to
contemplate it for a moment. It was not until the evening before Tom
went to school, at the beginning of August, that Mrs Glegg paid a visit
to her sister Tulliver, sitting in her gig all the while, and showing
her displeasure by markedly abstaining from all advice and criticism;
for, as she observed to her sister Deane, “Bessy must bear the
consequence o’ having such a husband, though I’m sorry for her,” and
Mrs Deane agreed that Bessy was pitiable.
That evening Tom observed to Maggie: “Oh my! Maggie, aunt Glegg’s
beginning to come again; I’m glad I’m going to school. _You’ll_ catch
it all now!”
Maggie was already so full of sorrow at the thought of Tom’s going away
from her, that this playful exultation of his seemed very unkind, and
she cried herself to sleep that night.
Mr Tulliver’s prompt procedure entailed on him further promptitude in
finding the convenient person who was desirous of lending five hundred
pounds on bond. “It must be no client of Wakem’s,” he said to himself;
and yet at the end of a fortnight it turned out to the contrary; not
because Mr Tulliver’s will was feeble, but because external fact was
stronger. Wakem’s client was the only convenient person to be found. Mr
Tulliver had a destiny as well as Œdipus, and in this case he might
plead, like Œdipus, that his deed was inflicted on him rather than
committed by him.
BOOK SECOND.
SCHOOL-TIME.
Chapter I.
Tom’s “First Half”
Tom Tulliver’s sufferings during the first quarter he was at King’s
Lorton, under the distinguished care of the Rev. Walter Stelling, were
rather severe. At Mr Jacob’s academy life had not presented itself to
him as a difficult problem; there were plenty of fellows to play with,
and Tom being good at all active games,—fighting especially,—had that
precedence among them which appeared to him inseparable from the
personality of Tom Tulliver. Mr Jacobs himself, familiarly known as Old
Goggles, from his habit of wearing spectacles, imposed no painful awe;
and if it was the property of snuffy old hypocrites like him to write
like copperplate and surround their signatures with arabesques, to
spell without forethought, and to spout “my name is Norval” without
bungling, Tom, for his part, was glad he was not in danger of those
mean accomplishments. He was not going to be a snuffy schoolmaster, he,
but a substantial man, like his father, who used to go hunting when he
was younger, and rode a capital black mare,—as pretty a bit of
horse-flesh as ever you saw; Tom had heard what her points were a
hundred times. _He_ meant to go hunting too, and to be generally
respected. When people were grown up, he considered, nobody inquired
about their writing and spelling; when he was a man, he should be
master of everything, and do just as he liked. It had been very
difficult for him to reconcile himself to the idea that his school-time
was to be prolonged and that he was not to be brought up to his
father’s business, which he had always thought extremely pleasant; for
it was nothing but riding about, giving orders, and going to market;
and he thought that a clergyman would give him a great many Scripture
lessons, and probably make him learn the Gospel and Epistle on a
Sunday, as well as the Collect. But in the absence of specific
information, it was impossible for him to imagine that school and a
schoolmaster would be something entirely different from the academy of
Mr Jacobs. So, not to be at a deficiency, in case of his finding genial
companions, he had taken care to carry with him a small box of
percussion-caps; not that there was anything particular to be done with
them, but they would serve to impress strange boys with a sense of his
familiarity with guns. Thus poor Tom, though he saw very clearly
through Maggie’s illusions, was not without illusions of his own, which
were to be cruelly dissipated by his enlarged experience at King’s
Lorton.
He had not been there a fortnight before it was evident to him that
life, complicated not only with the Latin grammar but with a new
standard of English pronunciation, was a very difficult business, made
all the more obscure by a thick mist of bashfulness. Tom, as you have
observed, was never an exception among boys for ease of address; but
the difficulty of enunciating a monosyllable in reply to Mr or Mrs
Stelling was so great, that he even dreaded to be asked at table
whether he would have more pudding. As to the percussion-caps, he had
almost resolved, in the bitterness of his heart, that he would throw
them into a neighbouring pond; for not only was he the solitary pupil,
but he began even to have a certain scepticism about guns, and a
general sense that his theory of life was undermined. For Mr Stelling
thought nothing of guns, or horses either, apparently; and yet it was
impossible for Tom to despise Mr Stelling as he had despised Old
Goggles. If there were anything that was not thoroughly genuine about
Mr Stelling, it lay quite beyond Tom’s power to detect it; it is only
by a wide comparison of facts that the wisest full-grown man can
distinguish well-rolled barrels from mere supernal thunder.
Mr Stelling was a well-sized, broad-chested man, not yet thirty, with
flaxen hair standing erect, and large lightish-gray eyes, which were
always very wide open; he had a sonorous bass voice, and an air of
defiant self-confidence inclining to brazenness. He had entered on his
career with great vigor, and intended to make a considerable impression
on his fellow-men. The Rev. Walter Stelling was not a man who would
remain among the “inferior clergy” all his life. He had a true British
determination to push his way in the world,—as a schoolmaster, in the
first place, for there were capital masterships of grammar-schools to
be had, and Mr Stelling meant to have one of them; but as a preacher
also, for he meant always to preach in a striking manner, so as to have
his congregation swelled by admirers from neighbouring parishes, and to
produce a great sensation whenever he took occasional duty for a
brother clergyman of minor gifts. The style of preaching he had chosen
was the extemporaneous, which was held little short of the miraculous
in rural parishes like King’s Lorton. Some passages of Massillon and
Bourdaloue, which he knew by heart, were really very effective when
rolled out in Mr Stelling’s deepest tones; but as comparatively feeble
appeals of his own were delivered in the same loud and impressive
manner, they were often thought quite as striking by his hearers. Mr
Stelling’s doctrine was of no particular school; if anything, it had a
tinge of evangelicalism, for that was “the telling thing” just then in
the diocese to which King’s Lorton belonged. In short, Mr Stelling was
a man who meant to rise in his profession, and to rise by merit,
clearly, since he had no interest beyond what might be promised by a
problematic relationship to a great lawyer who had not yet become Lord
Chancellor. A clergyman who has such vigorous intentions naturally gets
a little into debt at starting; it is not to be expected that he will
live in the meagre style of a man who means to be a poor curate all his
life; and if the few hundreds Mr Timpson advanced toward his daughter’s
fortune did not suffice for the purchase of handsome furniture,
together with a stock of wine, a grand piano, and the laying out of a
superior flower-garden, it followed in the most rigorous manner, either
that these things must be procured by some other means, or else that
the Rev. Mr Stelling must go without them, which last alternative would
be an absurd procrastination of the fruits of success, where success
was certain. Mr Stelling was so broad-chested and resolute that he felt
equal to anything; he would become celebrated by shaking the
consciences of his hearers, and he would by and by edit a Greek play,
and invent several new readings. He had not yet selected the play, for
having been married little more than two years, his leisure time had
been much occupied with attentions to Mrs Stelling; but he had told
that fine woman what he meant to do some day, and she felt great
confidence in her husband, as a man who understood everything of that
sort.
But the immediate step to future success was to bring on Tom Tulliver
during this first half-year; for, by a singular coincidence, there had
been some negotiation concerning another pupil from the same
neighbourhood and it might further a decision in Mr Stelling’s favour,
if it were understood that young Tulliver, who, Mr Stelling observed in
conjugal privacy, was rather a rough cub, had made prodigious progress
in a short time. It was on this ground that he was severe with Tom
about his lessons; he was clearly a boy whose powers would never be
developed through the medium of the Latin grammar, without the
application of some sternness. Not that Mr Stelling was a
harsh-tempered or unkind man; quite the contrary. He was jocose with
Tom at table, and corrected his provincialisms and his deportment in
the most playful manner; but poor Tom was only the more cowed and
confused by this double novelty, for he had never been used to jokes at
all like Mr Stelling’s; and for the first time in his life he had a
painful sense that he was all wrong somehow. When Mr Stelling said, as
the roast-beef was being uncovered, “Now, Tulliver! which would you
rather decline, roast-beef or the Latin for it?” Tom, to whom in his
coolest moments a pun would have been a hard nut, was thrown into a
state of embarrassed alarm that made everything dim to him except the
feeling that he would rather not have anything to do with Latin; of
course he answered, “Roast-beef,” whereupon there followed much
laughter and some practical joking with the plates, from which Tom
gathered that he had in some mysterious way refused beef, and, in fact,
made himself appear “a silly.” If he could have seen a fellow-pupil
undergo these painful operations and survive them in good spirits, he
might sooner have taken them as a matter of course. But there are two
expensive forms of education, either of which a parent may procure for
his son by sending him as solitary pupil to a clergyman: one is the
enjoyment of the reverend gentleman’s undivided neglect; the other is
the endurance of the reverend gentleman’s undivided attention. It was
the latter privilege for which Mr Tulliver paid a high price in Tom’s
initiatory months at King’s Lorton.
That respectable miller and maltster had left Tom behind, and driven
homeward in a state of great mental satisfaction. He considered that it
was a happy moment for him when he had thought of asking Riley’s advice
about a tutor for Tom. Mr Stelling’s eyes were so wide open, and he
talked in such an off-hand, matter-of-fact way, answering every
difficult, slow remark of Mr Tulliver’s with, “I see, my good sir, I
see”; “To be sure, to be sure”; “You want your son to be a man who will
make his way in the world,”—that Mr Tulliver was delighted to find in
him a clergyman whose knowledge was so applicable to the everyday
affairs of this life. Except Counsellor Wylde, whom he had heard at the
last sessions, Mr Tulliver thought the Rev. Mr Stelling was the
shrewdest fellow he had ever met with,—not unlike Wylde, in fact; he
had the same way of sticking his thumbs in the armholes of his
waistcoat. Mr Tulliver was not by any means an exception in mistaking
brazenness for shrewdness; most laymen thought Stelling shrewd, and a
man of remarkable powers generally; it was chiefly by his clerical
brethren that he was considered rather a dull fellow. But he told Mr
Tulliver several stories about “Swing” and incendiarism, and asked his
advice about feeding pigs in so thoroughly secular and judicious a
manner, with so much polished glibness of tongue, that the miller
thought, here was the very thing he wanted for Tom. He had no doubt
this first-rate man was acquainted with every branch of information,
and knew exactly what Tom must learn in order to become a match for the
lawyers, which poor Mr Tulliver himself did _not_ know, and so was
necessarily thrown for self-direction on this wide kind of inference.
It is hardly fair to laugh at him, for I have known much more highly
instructed persons than he make inferences quite as wide, and not at
all wiser.
As for Mrs Tulliver, finding that Mrs Stelling’s views as to the airing
of linen and the frequent recurrence of hunger in a growing boy
entirely coincided with her own; moreover, that Mrs Stelling, though so
young a woman, and only anticipating her second confinement, had gone
through very nearly the same experience as herself with regard to the
behaviour and fundamental character of the monthly nurse,—she expressed
great contentment to her husband, when they drove away, at leaving Tom
with a woman who, in spite of her youth, seemed quite sensible and
motherly, and asked advice as prettily as could be.
“They must be very well off, though,” said Mrs Tulliver, “for
everything’s as nice as can be all over the house, and that watered
silk she had on cost a pretty penny. Sister Pullet has got one like
it.”
“Ah,” said Mr Tulliver, “he’s got some income besides the curacy, I
reckon. Perhaps her father allows ’em something. There’s Tom ’ull be
another hundred to him, and not much trouble either, by his own
account; he says teaching comes natural to him. That’s wonderful, now,”
added Mr Tulliver, turning his head on one side, and giving his horse a
meditative tickling on the flank.
Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally to Mr Stelling, that he
set about it with that uniformity of method and independence of
circumstances which distinguish the actions of animals understood to be
under the immediate teaching of nature. Mr Broderip’s amiable beaver,
as that charming naturalist tells us, busied himself as earnestly in
constructing a dam, in a room up three pair of stairs in London, as if
he had been laying his foundation in a stream or lake in Upper Canada.
It was “Binny’s” function to build; the absence of water or of possible
progeny was an accident for which he was not accountable. With the same
unerring instinct Mr Stelling set to work at his natural method of
instilling the Eton Grammar and Euclid into the mind of Tom Tulliver.
This, he considered, was the only basis of solid instruction; all other
means of education were mere charlatanism, and could produce nothing
better than smatterers. Fixed on this firm basis, a man might observe
the display of various or special knowledge made by irregularly
educated people with a pitying smile; all that sort of thing was very
well, but it was impossible these people could form sound opinions. In
holding this conviction Mr Stelling was not biassed, as some tutors
have been, by the excessive accuracy or extent of his own scholarship;
and as to his views about Euclid, no opinion could have been freer from
personal partiality. Mr Stelling was very far from being led astray by
enthusiasm, either religious or intellectual; on the other hand, he had
no secret belief that everything was humbug. He thought religion was a
very excellent thing, and Aristotle a great authority, and deaneries
and prebends useful institutions, and Great Britain the providential
bulwark of Protestantism, and faith in the unseen a great support to
afflicted minds; he believed in all these things, as a Swiss
hotel-keeper believes in the beauty of the scenery around him, and in
the pleasure it gives to artistic visitors. And in the same way Mr
Stelling believed in his method of education; he had no doubt that he
was doing the very best thing for Mr Tulliver’s boy. Of course, when
the miller talked of “mapping” and “summing” in a vague and diffident
manner, Mr Stelling had set his mind at rest by an assurance that he
understood what was wanted; for how was it possible the good man could
form any reasonable judgment about the matter? Mr Stelling’s duty was
to teach the lad in the only right way,—indeed he knew no other; he had
not wasted his time in the acquirement of anything abnormal.
He very soon set down poor Tom as a thoroughly stupid lad; for though
by hard labour he could get particular declensions into his brain,
anything so abstract as the relation between cases and terminations
could by no means get such a lodgment there as to enable him to
recognise a chance genitive or dative. This struck Mr Stelling as
something more than natural stupidity; he suspected obstinacy, or at
any rate indifference, and lectured Tom severely on his want of
thorough application. “You feel no interest in what you’re doing, sir,”
Mr Stelling would say, and the reproach was painfully true. Tom had
never found any difficulty in discerning a pointer from a setter, when
once he had been told the distinction, and his perceptive powers were
not at all deficient. I fancy they were quite as strong as those of the
Rev. Mr Stelling; for Tom could predict with accuracy what number of
horses were cantering behind him, he could throw a stone right into the
centre of a given ripple, he could guess to a fraction how many lengths
of his stick it would take to reach across the playground, and could
draw almost perfect squares on his slate without any measurement. But
Mr Stelling took no note of these things; he only observed that Tom’s
faculties failed him before the abstractions hideously symbolised to
him in the pages of the Eton Grammar, and that he was in a state
bordering on idiocy with regard to the demonstration that two given
triangles must be equal, though he could discern with great promptitude
and certainty the fact that they _were_ equal. Whence Mr Stelling
concluded that Tom’s brain, being peculiarly impervious to etymology
and demonstrations, was peculiarly in need of being ploughed and
harrowed by these patent implements; it was his favourite metaphor,
that the classics and geometry constituted that culture of the mind
which prepared it for the reception of any subsequent crop. I say
nothing against Mr Stelling’s theory; if we are to have one regimen for
all minds, his seems to me as good as any other. I only know it turned
out as uncomfortably for Tom Tulliver as if he had been plied with
cheese in order to remedy a gastric weakness which prevented him from
digesting it. It is astonishing what a different result one gets by
changing the metaphor! Once call the brain an intellectual stomach, and
one’s ingenious conception of the classics and geometry as ploughs and
harrows seems to settle nothing. But then it is open to some one else
to follow great authorities, and call the mind a sheet of white paper
or a mirror, in which case one’s knowledge of the digestive process
becomes quite irrelevant. It was doubtless an ingenious idea to call
the camel the ship of the desert, but it would hardly lead one far in
training that useful beast. O Aristotle! if you had had the advantage
of being “the freshest modern” instead of the greatest ancient, would
you not have mingled your praise of metaphorical speech, as a sign of
high intelligence, with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows
itself in speech without metaphor,—that we can so seldom declare what a
thing is, except by saying it is something else?
Tom Tulliver, being abundant in no form of speech, did not use any
metaphor to declare his views as to the nature of Latin; he never
called it an instrument of torture; and it was not until he had got on
some way in the next half-year, and in the Delectus, that he was
advanced enough to call it a “bore” and “beastly stuff.” At present, in
relation to this demand that he should learn Latin declensions and
conjugations, Tom was in a state of as blank unimaginativeness
concerning the cause and tendency of his sufferings, as if he had been
an innocent shrewmouse imprisoned in the split trunk of an ash-tree in
order to cure lameness in cattle. It is doubtless almost incredible to
instructed minds of the present day that a boy of twelve, not belonging
strictly to “the masses,” who are now understood to have the monopoly
of mental darkness, should have had no distinct idea how there came to
be such a thing as Latin on this earth; yet so it was with Tom. It
would have taken a long while to make conceivable to him that there
ever existed a people who bought and sold sheep and oxen, and
transacted the everyday affairs of life, through the medium of this
language; and still longer to make him understand why he should be
called upon to learn it, when its connection with those affairs had
become entirely latent. So far as Tom had gained any acquaintance with
the Romans at Mr Jacob’s academy, his knowledge was strictly correct,
but it went no farther than the fact that they were “in the New
Testament”; and Mr Stelling was not the man to enfeeble and emasculate
his pupil’s mind by simplifying and explaining, or to reduce the tonic
effect of etymology by mixing it with smattering, extraneous
information, such as is given to girls.
Yet, strange to say, under this vigorous treatment Tom became more like
a girl than he had ever been in his life before. He had a large share
of pride, which had hitherto found itself very comfortable in the
world, despising Old Goggles, and reposing in the sense of unquestioned
rights; but now this same pride met with nothing but bruises and
crushings. Tom was too clear-sighted not to be aware that Mr Stelling’s
standard of things was quite different, was certainly something higher
in the eyes of the world than that of the people he had been living
amongst, and that, brought in contact with it, he, Tom Tulliver,
appeared uncouth and stupid; he was by no means indifferent to this,
and his pride got into an uneasy condition which quite nullified his
boyish self-satisfaction, and gave him something of the girl’s
susceptibility. He was of a very firm, not to say obstinate, disposition,
but there was no brute-like rebellion and recklessness in his nature;
the human sensibilities predominated, and if it had occurred to him
that he could enable himself to show some quickness at his lessons, and
so acquire Mr Stelling’s approbation, by standing on one leg for an
inconvenient length of time, or rapping his head moderately against the
wall, or any voluntary action of that sort, he would certainly have
tried it. But no; Tom had never heard that these measures would
brighten the understanding, or strengthen the verbal memory; and he was
not given to hypothesis and experiment. It did occur to him that he
could perhaps get some help by praying for it; but as the prayers he
said every evening were forms learned by heart, he rather shrank from
the novelty and irregularity of introducing an extempore passage on a
topic of petition for which he was not aware of any precedent. But one
day, when he had broken down, for the fifth time, in the supines of the
third conjugation, and Mr Stelling, convinced that this must be
carelessness, since it transcended the bounds of possible stupidity,
had lectured him very seriously, pointing out that if he failed to
seize the present golden opportunity of learning supines, he would have
to regret it when he became a man,—Tom, more miserable than usual,
determined to try his sole resource; and that evening, after his usual
form of prayer for his parents and “little sister” (he had begun to
pray for Maggie when she was a baby), and that he might be able always
to keep God’s commandments, he added, in the same low whisper, “and
please to make me always remember my Latin.” He paused a little to
consider how he should pray about Euclid—whether he should ask to see
what it meant, or whether there was any other mental state which would
be more applicable to the case. But at last he added: “And make Mr
Stelling say I sha’n’t do Euclid any more. Amen.”
The fact that he got through his supines without mistake the next day,
encouraged him to persevere in this appendix to his prayers, and
neutralised any scepticism that might have arisen from Mr Stelling’s
continued demand for Euclid. But his faith broke down under the
apparent absence of all help when he got into the irregular verbs. It
seemed clear that Tom’s despair under the caprices of the present tense
did not constitute a _nodus_ worthy of interference, and since this was
the climax of his difficulties, where was the use of praying for help
any longer? He made up his mind to this conclusion in one of his dull,
lonely evenings, which he spent in the study, preparing his lessons for
the morrow. His eyes were apt to get dim over the page, though he hated
crying, and was ashamed of it; he couldn’t help thinking with some
affection even of Spouncer, whom he used to fight and quarrel with; he
would have felt at home with Spouncer, and in a condition of
superiority. And then the mill, and the river, and Yap pricking up his
ears, ready to obey the least sign when Tom said, “Hoigh!” would all
come before him in a sort of calenture, when his fingers played
absently in his pocket with his great knife and his coil of whipcord,
and other relics of the past.
Tom, as I said, had never been so much like a girl in his life before,
and at that epoch of irregular verbs his spirit was further depressed
by a new means of mental development which had been thought of for him
out of school hours. Mrs Stelling had lately had her second baby, and
as nothing could be more salutary for a boy than to feel himself
useful, Mrs Stelling considered she was doing Tom a service by setting
him to watch the little cherub Laura while the nurse was occupied with
the sickly baby. It was quite a pretty employment for Tom to take
little Laura out in the sunniest hour of the autumn day; it would help
to make him feel that Lorton Parsonage was a home for him, and that he
was one of the family. The little cherub Laura, not being an
accomplished walker at present, had a ribbon fastened round her waist,
by which Tom held her as if she had been a little dog during the
minutes in which she chose to walk; but as these were rare, he was for
the most part carrying this fine child round and round the garden,
within sight of Mrs Stelling’s window, according to orders. If any one
considers this unfair and even oppressive toward Tom, I beg him to
consider that there are feminine virtues which are with difficulty
combined, even if they are not incompatible. When the wife of a poor
curate contrives, under all her disadvantages, to dress extremely well,
and to have a style of coiffure which requires that her nurse shall
occasionally officiate as lady’s-maid; when, moreover, her
dinner-parties and her drawing-room show that effort at elegance and
completeness of appointment to which ordinary women might imagine a
large income necessary, it would be unreasonable to expect of her that
she should employ a second nurse, or even act as a nurse herself. Mr
Stelling knew better; he saw that his wife did wonders already, and was
proud of her. It was certainly not the best thing in the world for
young Tulliver’s gait to carry a heavy child, but he had plenty of
exercise in long walks with himself, and next half-year Mr Stelling
would see about having a drilling-master. Among the many means whereby
Mr Stelling intended to be more fortunate than the bulk of his
fellow-men, he had entirely given up that of having his own way in his
own house. What then? He had married “as kind a little soul as ever
breathed,” according to Mr Riley, who had been acquainted with Mrs
Stelling’s blond ringlets and smiling demeanour throughout her maiden
life, and on the strength of that knowledge would have been ready any
day to pronounce that whatever domestic differences might arise in her
married life must be entirely Mr Stelling’s fault.
If Tom had had a worse disposition, he would certainly have hated the
little cherub Laura, but he was too kind-hearted a lad for that; there
was too much in him of the fibre that turns to true manliness, and to
protecting pity for the weak. I am afraid he hated Mrs Stelling, and
contracted a lasting dislike to pale blond ringlets and broad plaits,
as directly associated with haughtiness of manner, and a frequent
reference to other people’s “duty.” But he couldn’t help playing with
little Laura, and liking to amuse her; he even sacrificed his
percussion-caps for her sake, in despair of their ever serving a
greater purpose,—thinking the small flash and bang would delight her,
and thereby drawing down on himself a rebuke from Mrs Stelling for
teaching her child to play with fire. Laura was a sort of
playfellow—and oh, how Tom longed for playfellows! In his secret heart
he yearned to have Maggie with him, and was almost ready to dote on her
exasperating acts of forgetfulness; though, when he was at home, he
always represented it as a great favour on his part to let Maggie trot
by his side on his pleasure excursions.
And before this dreary half-year was ended, Maggie actually came. Mrs
Stelling had given a general invitation for the little girl to come and
stay with her brother; so when Mr Tulliver drove over to King’s Lorton
late in October, Maggie came too, with the sense that she was taking a
great journey, and beginning to see the world. It was Mr Tulliver’s
first visit to see Tom, for the lad must learn not to think too much
about home.
“Well, my lad,” he said to Tom, when Mr Stelling had left the room to
announce the arrival to his wife, and Maggie had begun to kiss Tom
freely, “you look rarely! School agrees with you.”
Tom wished he had looked rather ill.
“I don’t think I _am_ well, father,” said Tom; “I wish you’d ask Mr
Stelling not to let me do Euclid; it brings on the toothache, I think.”
(The toothache was the only malady to which Tom had ever been subject.)
“Euclid, my lad,—why, what’s that?” said Mr Tulliver.
“Oh, I don’t know; it’s definitions, and axioms, and triangles, and
things. It’s a book I’ve got to learn in—there’s no sense in it.”
“Go, go!” said Mr Tulliver, reprovingly; “you mustn’t say so. You must
learn what your master tells you. He knows what it’s right for you to
learn.”
“_I’ll_ help you now, Tom,” said Maggie, with a little air of
patronizing consolation. “I’m come to stay ever so long, if Mrs
Stelling asks me. I’ve brought my box and my pinafores, haven’t I,
father?”
“_You_ help me, you silly little thing!” said Tom, in such high spirits
at this announcement that he quite enjoyed the idea of confounding
Maggie by showing her a page of Euclid. “I should like to see you doing
one of _my_ lessons! Why, I learn Latin too! Girls never learn such
things. They’re too silly.”
“I know what Latin is very well,” said Maggie, confidently, “Latin’s a
language. There are Latin words in the Dictionary. There’s bonus, a
gift.”
“Now, you’re just wrong there, Miss Maggie!” said Tom, secretly
astonished. “You think you’re very wise! But ‘bonus’ means ‘good,’ as
it happens,—bonus, bona, bonum.”
“Well, that’s no reason why it shouldn’t mean ‘gift,’” said Maggie,
stoutly. “It may mean several things; almost every word does. There’s
‘lawn,’—it means the grass-plot, as well as the stuff pocket
handkerchiefs are made of.”
“Well done, little ’un,” said Mr Tulliver, laughing, while Tom felt
rather disgusted with Maggie’s knowingness, though beyond measure
cheerful at the thought that she was going to stay with him. Her
conceit would soon be overawed by the actual inspection of his books.
Mrs Stelling, in her pressing invitation, did not mention a longer time
than a week for Maggie’s stay; but Mr Stelling, who took her between
his knees, and asked her where she stole her dark eyes from, insisted
that she must stay a fortnight. Maggie thought Mr Stelling was a
charming man, and Mr Tulliver was quite proud to leave his little wench
where she would have an opportunity of showing her cleverness to
appreciating strangers. So it was agreed that she should not be fetched
home till the end of the fortnight.
“Now, then, come with me into the study, Maggie,” said Tom, as their
father drove away. “What do you shake and toss your head now for, you
silly?” he continued; for though her hair was now under a new
dispensation, and was brushed smoothly behind her ears, she seemed
still in imagination to be tossing it out of her eyes. “It makes you
look as if you were crazy.”
“Oh, I can’t help it,” said Maggie, impatiently. “Don’t tease me, Tom.
Oh, what books!” she exclaimed, as she saw the bookcases in the study.
“How I should like to have as many books as that!”
“Why, you couldn’t read one of ’em,” said Tom, triumphantly. “They’re
all Latin.”
“No, they aren’t,” said Maggie. “I can read the back of this,—‘History
of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.’”
“Well, what does that mean? _You_ don’t know,” said Tom, wagging his
head.
“But I could soon find out,” said Maggie, scornfully.
“Why, how?”
“I should look inside, and see what it was about.”
“You’d better not, Miss Maggie,” said Tom, seeing her hand on the
volume. “Mr Stelling lets nobody touch his books without leave, and _I_
shall catch it, if you take it out.”
“Oh, very well. Let me see all _your_ books, then,” said Maggie,
turning to throw her arms round Tom’s neck, and rub his cheek with her
small round nose.
Tom, in the gladness of his heart at having dear old Maggie to dispute
with and crow over again, seized her round the waist, and began to jump
with her round the large library table. Away they jumped with more and
more vigor, till Maggie’s hair flew from behind her ears, and twirled
about like an animated mop. But the revolutions round the table became
more and more irregular in their sweep, till at last reaching Mr
Stelling’s reading stand, they sent it thundering down with its heavy
lexicons to the floor. Happily it was the ground-floor, and the study
was a one-storied wing to the house, so that the downfall made no
alarming resonance, though Tom stood dizzy and aghast for a few
minutes, dreading the appearance of Mr or Mrs Stelling.
“Oh, I say, Maggie,” said Tom at last, lifting up the stand, “we must
keep quiet here, you know. If we break anything Mrs Stelling’ll make us
cry peccavi.”
“What’s that?” said Maggie.
“Oh, it’s the Latin for a good scolding,” said Tom, not without some
pride in his knowledge.
“Is she a cross woman?” said Maggie.
“I believe you!” said Tom, with an emphatic nod.
“I think all women are crosser than men,” said Maggie. “Aunt Glegg’s a
great deal crosser than uncle Glegg, and mother scolds me more than
father does.”
“Well, _you’ll_ be a woman some day,” said Tom, “so _you_ needn’t
talk.”
“But I shall be a _clever_ woman,” said Maggie, with a toss.
“Oh, I dare say, and a nasty conceited thing. Everybody’ll hate you.”
“But you oughtn’t to hate me, Tom; it’ll be very wicked of you, for I
shall be your sister.”
“Yes, but if you’re a nasty disagreeable thing I _shall_ hate you.”
“Oh, but, Tom, you won’t! I sha’n’t be disagreeable. I shall be very
good to you, and I shall be good to everybody. You won’t hate me
really, will you, Tom?”
“Oh, bother! never mind! Come, it’s time for me to learn my lessons.
See here! what I’ve got to do,” said Tom, drawing Maggie toward him and
showing her his theorem, while she pushed her hair behind her ears, and
prepared herself to prove her capability of helping him in Euclid. She
began to read with full confidence in her own powers, but presently,
becoming quite bewildered, her face flushed with irritation. It was
unavoidable; she must confess her incompetency, and she was not fond of
humiliation.
“It’s nonsense!” she said, “and very ugly stuff; nobody need want to
make it out.”
“Ah, there, now, Miss Maggie!” said Tom, drawing the book away, and
wagging his head at her, “You see you’re not so clever as you thought
you were.”
“Oh,” said Maggie, pouting, “I dare say I could make it out, if I’d
learned what goes before, as you have.”
“But that’s what you just couldn’t, Miss Wisdom,” said Tom. “For it’s
all the harder when you know what goes before; for then you’ve got to
say what definition 3 is, and what axiom V. is. But get along with you
now; I must go on with this. Here’s the Latin Grammar. See what you can
make of that.”
Maggie found the Latin Grammar quite soothing after her mathematical
mortification; for she delighted in new words, and quickly found that
there was an English Key at the end, which would make her very wise
about Latin, at slight expense. She presently made up her mind to skip
the rules in the Syntax, the examples became so absorbing. These
mysterious sentences, snatched from an unknown context,—like strange
horns of beasts, and leaves of unknown plants, brought from some
far-off region,—gave boundless scope to her imagination, and were all
the more fascinating because they were in a peculiar tongue of their
own, which she could learn to interpret. It was really very
interesting, the Latin Grammar that Tom had said no girls could learn;
and she was proud because she found it interesting. The most
fragmentary examples were her favourites. _Mors omnibus est communis_
would have been jejune, only she liked to know the Latin; but the
fortunate gentleman whom every one congratulated because he had a son
“endowed with _such_ a disposition” afforded her a great deal of
pleasant conjecture, and she was quite lost in the “thick grove
penetrable by no star,” when Tom called out,—
“Now, then, Magsie, give us the Grammar!”
“Oh, Tom, it’s such a pretty book!” she said, as she jumped out of the
large arm-chair to give it him; “it’s much prettier than the
Dictionary. I could learn Latin very soon. I don’t think it’s at all
hard.”
“Oh, I know what you’ve been doing,” said Tom; “you’ve been reading the
English at the end. Any donkey can do that.”
Tom seized the book and opened it with a determined and business-like
air, as much as to say that he had a lesson to learn which no donkeys
would find themselves equal to. Maggie, rather piqued, turned to the
bookcases to amuse herself with puzzling out the titles.
Presently Tom called to her: “Here, Magsie, come and hear if I can say
this. Stand at that end of the table, where Mr Stelling sits when he
hears me.”
Maggie obeyed, and took the open book.
“Where do you begin, Tom?”
“Oh, I begin at _’Appellativa arborum,’_ because I say all over again
what I’ve been learning this week.”
Tom sailed along pretty well for three lines; and Maggie was beginning
to forget her office of prompter in speculating as to what _mas_ could
mean, which came twice over, when he stuck fast at _Sunt etiam
volucrum_.
“Don’t tell me, Maggie; _Sunt etiam volucrum_—_Sunt etiam volucrum_—_ut
ostrea, cetus_——”
“No,” said Maggie, opening her mouth and shaking her head.
“_Sunt etiam volucrum_,” said Tom, very slowly, as if the next words
might be expected to come sooner when he gave them this strong hint
that they were waited for.
“C, e, u,” said Maggie, getting impatient.
“Oh, I know—hold your tongue,” said Tom. “_Ceu passer, hirundo;
Ferarum_—_ferarum_——” Tom took his pencil and made several hard dots
with it on his book-cover—“_ferarum_——”
“Oh dear, oh dear, Tom,” said Maggie, “what a time you are! _Ut_——”
“_Ut ostrea_——”
“No, no,” said Maggie, “_ut tigris_——”
“Oh yes, now I can do,” said Tom; “it was _tigris, vulpes_, I’d
forgotten: _ut tigris, volupes; et Piscium_.”
With some further stammering and repetition, Tom got through the next
few lines.
“Now, then,” he said, “the next is what I’ve just learned for
to-morrow. Give me hold of the book a minute.”
After some whispered gabbling, assisted by the beating of his fist on
the table, Tom returned the book.
“_Mascula nomina in a_,” he began.
“No, Tom,” said Maggie, “that doesn’t come next. It’s _Nomen non
creskens genittivo_——”
“_Creskens genittivo!_” exclaimed Tom, with a derisive laugh, for Tom
had learned this omitted passage for his yesterday’s lesson, and a
young gentleman does not require an intimate or extensive acquaintance
with Latin before he can feel the pitiable absurdity of a false
quantity. “_Creskens genittivo!_ What a little silly you are, Maggie!”
“Well, you needn’t laugh, Tom, for you didn’t remember it at all. I’m
sure it’s spelt so; how was I to know?”
“Phee-e-e-h! I told you girls couldn’t learn Latin. It’s _Nomen non
crescens genitivo_.”
“Very well, then,” said Maggie, pouting. “I can say that as well as you
can. And you don’t mind your stops. For you ought to stop twice as long
at a semicolon as you do at a comma, and you make the longest stops
where there ought to be no stop at all.”
“Oh, well, don’t chatter. Let me go on.”
They were presently fetched to spend the rest of the evening in the
drawing-room, and Maggie became so animated with Mr Stelling, who, she
felt sure, admired her cleverness, that Tom was rather amazed and
alarmed at her audacity. But she was suddenly subdued by Mr Stelling’s
alluding to a little girl of whom he had heard that she once ran away
to the gypsies.
“What a very odd little girl that must be!” said Mrs Stelling, meaning
to be playful; but a playfulness that turned on her supposed oddity was
not at all to Maggie’s taste. She feared that Mr Stelling, after all,
did not think much of her, and went to bed in rather low spirits. Mrs
Stelling, she felt, looked at her as if she thought her hair was very
ugly because it hung down straight behind.
Nevertheless it was a very happy fortnight to Maggie, this visit to
Tom. She was allowed to be in the study while he had his lessons, and
in her various readings got very deep into the examples in the Latin
Grammar. The astronomer who hated women generally caused her so much
puzzling speculation that she one day asked Mr Stelling if all
astronomers hated women, or whether it was only this particular
astronomer. But forestalling his answer, she said,—
“I suppose it’s all astronomers; because, you know, they live up in
high towers, and if the women came there they might talk and hinder
them from looking at the stars.”
Mr Stelling liked her prattle immensely, and they were on the best
terms. She told Tom she should like to go to school to Mr Stelling, as
he did, and learn just the same things. She knew she could do Euclid,
for she had looked into it again, and she saw what A B C meant; they
were the names of the lines.
“I’m sure you couldn’t do it, now,” said Tom; “and I’ll just ask Mr
Stelling if you could.”
“I don’t mind,” said the little conceited minx, “I’ll ask him myself.”
“Mr Stelling,” she said, that same evening when they were in the
drawing-room, “couldn’t I do Euclid, and all Tom’s lessons, if you were
to teach me instead of him?”
“No, you couldn’t,” said Tom, indignantly. “Girls can’t do Euclid; can
they, sir?”
“They can pick up a little of everything, I dare say,” said Mr
Stelling. “They’ve a great deal of superficial cleverness; but they
couldn’t go far into anything. They’re quick and shallow.”
Tom, delighted with this verdict, telegraphed his triumph by wagging
his head at Maggie, behind Mr Stelling’s chair. As for Maggie, she had
hardly ever been so mortified. She had been so proud to be called
“quick” all her little life, and now it appeared that this quickness
was the brand of inferiority. It would have been better to be slow,
like Tom.
“Ha, ha! Miss Maggie!” said Tom, when they were alone; “you see it’s
not such a fine thing to be quick. You’ll never go far into anything,
you know.”
And Maggie was so oppressed by this dreadful destiny that she had no
spirit for a retort.
But when this small apparatus of shallow quickness was fetched away in
the gig by Luke, and the study was once more quite lonely for Tom, he
missed her grievously. He had really been brighter, and had got through
his lessons better, since she had been there; and she had asked Mr
Stelling so many questions about the Roman Empire, and whether there
really ever was a man who said, in Latin, “I would not buy it for a
farthing or a rotten nut,” or whether that had only been turned into
Latin, that Tom had actually come to a dim understanding of the fact
that there had once been people upon the earth who were so fortunate as
to know Latin without learning it through the medium of the Eton
Grammar. This luminous idea was a great addition to his historical
acquirements during this half-year, which were otherwise confined to an
epitomised history of the Jews.
But the dreary half-year _did_ come to an end. How glad Tom was to see
the last yellow leaves fluttering before the cold wind! The dark
afternoons and the first December snow seemed to him far livelier than
the August sunshine; and that he might make himself the surer about the
flight of the days that were carrying him homeward, he stuck twenty-one
sticks deep in a corner of the garden, when he was three weeks from the
holidays, and pulled one up every day with a great wrench, throwing it
to a distance with a vigor of will which would have carried it to
limbo, if it had been in the nature of sticks to travel so far.
But it was worth purchasing, even at the heavy price of the Latin
Grammar, the happiness of seeing the bright light in the parlour at
home, as the gig passed noiselessly over the snow-covered bridge; the
happiness of passing from the cold air to the warmth and the kisses and
the smiles of that familiar hearth, where the pattern of the rug and
the grate and the fire-irons were “first ideas” that it was no more
possible to criticise than the solidity and extension of matter. There
is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were
born, where objects became dear to us before we had known the labour of
choice, and where the outer world seemed only an extension of our own
personality; we accepted and loved it as we accepted our own sense of
existence and our own limbs. Very commonplace, even ugly, that
furniture of our early home might look if it were put up to auction; an
improved taste in upholstery scorns it; and is not the striving after
something better and better in our surroundings the grand
characteristic that distinguishes man from the brute, or, to satisfy a
scrupulous accuracy of definition, that distinguishes the British man
from the foreign brute? But heaven knows where that striving might lead
us, if our affections had not a trick of twining round those old
inferior things; if the loves and sanctities of our life had no deep
immovable roots in memory. One’s delight in an elderberry bush
overhanging the confused leafage of a hedgerow bank, as a more
gladdening sight than the finest cistus or fuchsia spreading itself on
the softest undulating turf, is an entirely unjustifiable preference to
a nursery-gardener, or to any of those regulated minds who are free
from the weakness of any attachment that does not rest on a
demonstrable superiority of qualities. And there is no better reason
for preferring this elderberry bush than that it stirs an early memory;
that it is no novelty in my life, speaking to me merely through my
present sensibilities to form and colour, but the long companion of my
existence, that wove itself into my joys when joys were vivid.
Chapter II.
The Christmas Holidays
Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his
duty that year in the noblest fashion, and had set off his rich gifts
of warmth and colour with all the heightening contrast of frost and
snow.
Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undulations softer than the
limbs of infancy; it lay with the neatliest finished border on every
sloping roof, making the dark-red gables stand out with a new depth of
colour; it weighed heavily on the laurels and fir-trees, till it fell
from them with a shuddering sound; it clothed the rough turnip-field
with whiteness, and made the sheep look like dark blotches; the gates
were all blocked up with the sloping drifts, and here and there a
disregarded four-footed beast stood as if petrified “in unrecumbent
sadness”; there was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one
still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river
that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow. But old Christmas
smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on the outdoor world, for he
meant to light up home with new brightness, to deepen all the richness
of indoor colour, and give a keener edge of delight to the warm
fragrance of food; he meant to prepare a sweet imprisonment that would
strengthen the primitive fellowship of kindred, and make the sunshine
of familiar human faces as welcome as the hidden day-star. His kindness
fell but hardly on the homeless,—fell but hardly on the homes where the
hearth was not very warm, and where the food had little fragrance;
where the human faces had had no sunshine in them, but rather the
leaden, blank-eyed gaze of unexpectant want. But the fine old season
meant well; and if he has not learned the secret how to bless men
impartially, it is because his father Time, with ever-unrelenting
purpose, still hides that secret in his own mighty, slow-beating heart.
And yet this Christmas day, in spite of Tom’s fresh delight in home,
was not, he thought, somehow or other, quite so happy as it had always
been before. The red berries were just as abundant on the holly, and he
and Maggie had dressed all the windows and mantlepieces and
picture-frames on Christmas eve with as much taste as ever, wedding the
thick-set scarlet clusters with branches of the black-berried ivy.
There had been singing under the windows after midnight,—supernatural
singing, Maggie always felt, in spite of Tom’s contemptuous insistence
that the singers were old Patch, the parish clerk, and the rest of the
church choir; she trembled with awe when their carolling broke in upon
her dreams, and the image of men in fustian clothes was always thrust
away by the vision of angels resting on the parted cloud. The midnight
chant had helped as usual to lift the morning above the level of common
days; and then there were the smell of hot toast and ale from the
kitchen, at the breakfast hour; the favourite anthem, the green boughs,
and the short sermon gave the appropriate festal character to the
church-going; and aunt and uncle Moss, with all their seven children,
were looking like so many reflectors of the bright parlour-fire, when
the church-goers came back, stamping the snow from their feet. The
plum-pudding was of the same handsome roundness as ever, and came in
with the symbolic blue flames around it, as if it had been heroically
snatched from the nether fires, into which it had been thrown by
dyspeptic Puritans; the dessert was as splendid as ever, with its
golden oranges, brown nuts, and the crystalline light and dark of
apple-jelly and damson cheese; in all these things Christmas was as it
had always been since Tom could remember; it was only distinguished, if
by anything, by superior sliding and snowballs.
Christmas was cheery, but not so Mr Tulliver. He was irate and defiant;
and Tom, though he espoused his father’s quarrels and shared his
father’s sense of injury, was not without some of the feeling that
oppressed Maggie when Mr Tulliver got louder and more angry in
narration and assertion with the increased leisure of dessert. The
attention that Tom might have concentrated on his nuts and wine was
distracted by a sense that there were rascally enemies in the world,
and that the business of grown-up life could hardly be conducted
without a good deal of quarrelling. Now, Tom was not fond of
quarrelling, unless it could soon be put an end to by a fair stand-up
fight with an adversary whom he had every chance of thrashing; and his
father’s irritable talk made him uncomfortable, though he never
accounted to himself for the feeling, or conceived the notion that his
father was faulty in this respect.
The particular embodiment of the evil principle now exciting Mr
Tulliver’s determined resistance was Mr Pivart, who, having lands
higher up the Ripple, was taking measures for their irrigation, which
either were, or would be, or were bound to be (on the principle that
water was water), an infringement on Mr Tulliver’s legitimate share of
water-power. Dix, who had a mill on the stream, was a feeble auxiliary
of Old Harry compared with Pivart. Dix had been brought to his senses
by arbitration, and Wakem’s advice had not carried _him_ far. No; Dix,
Mr Tulliver considered, had been as good as nowhere in point of law;
and in the intensity of his indignation against Pivart, his contempt
for a baffled adversary like Dix began to wear the air of a friendly
attachment. He had no male audience to-day except Mr Moss, who knew
nothing, as he said, of the “natur’ o’ mills,” and could only assent to
Mr Tulliver’s arguments on the _a priori_ ground of family relationship
and monetary obligation; but Mr Tulliver did not talk with the futile
intention of convincing his audience, he talked to relieve himself;
while good Mr Moss made strong efforts to keep his eyes wide open, in
spite of the sleepiness which an unusually good dinner produced in his
hard-worked frame. Mrs Moss, more alive to the subject, and interested
in everything that affected her brother, listened and put in a word as
often as maternal preoccupations allowed.
“Why, Pivart’s a new name hereabout, brother, isn’t it?” she said; “he
didn’t own the land in father’s time, nor yours either, before I was
married.”
“New name? Yes, I should think it _is_ a new name,” said Mr Tulliver,
with angry emphasis. “Dorlcote Mill’s been in our family a hundred year
and better, and nobody ever heard of a Pivart meddling with the river,
till this fellow came and bought Bincome’s farm out of hand, before
anybody else could so much as say ‘snap.’ But I’ll _Pivart_ him!” added
Mr Tulliver, lifting his glass with a sense that he had defined his
resolution in an unmistakable manner.
“You won’t be forced to go to law with him, I hope, brother?” said Mrs
Moss, with some anxiety.
“I don’t know what I shall be forced to; but I know what I shall force
_him_ to, with his dikes and erigations, if there’s any law to be
brought to bear o’ the right side. I know well enough who’s at the
bottom of it; he’s got Wakem to back him and egg him on. I know Wakem
tells him the law can’t touch him for it, but there’s folks can handle
the law besides Wakem. It takes a big raskil to beat him; but there’s
bigger to be found, as know more o’ th’ ins and outs o’ the law, else
how came Wakem to lose Brumley’s suit for him?”
Mr Tulliver was a strictly honest man, and proud of being honest, but
he considered that in law the ends of justice could only be achieved by
employing a stronger knave to frustrate a weaker. Law was a sort of
cock-fight, in which it was the business of injured honesty to get a
game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs.
“Gore’s no fool; you needn’t tell me that,” he observed presently, in a
pugnacious tone, as if poor Gritty had been urging that lawyer’s
capabilities; “but, you see, he isn’t up to the law as Wakem is. And
water’s a very particular thing; you can’t pick it up with a pitchfork.
That’s why it’s been nuts to Old Harry and the lawyers. It’s plain
enough what’s the rights and the wrongs of water, if you look at it
straight-forrard; for a river’s a river, and if you’ve got a mill, you
must have water to turn it; and it’s no use telling me Pivart’s
erigation and nonsense won’t stop my wheel; I know what belongs to
water better than that. Talk to me o’ what th’ engineers say! I say
it’s common sense, as Pivart’s dikes must do me an injury. But if
that’s their engineering, I’ll put Tom to it by-and-by, and he shall
see if he can’t find a bit more sense in th’ engineering business than
what _that_ comes to.”
Tom, looking round with some anxiety at this announcement of his
prospects, unthinkingly withdrew a small rattle he was amusing baby
Moss with, whereupon she, being a baby that knew her own mind with
remarkable clearness, instantaneously expressed her sentiments in a
piercing yell, and was not to be appeased even by the restoration of
the rattle, feeling apparently that the original wrong of having it
taken from her remained in all its force. Mrs Moss hurried away with
her into another room, and expressed to Mrs Tulliver, who accompanied
her, the conviction that the dear child had good reasons for crying;
implying that if it was supposed to be the rattle that baby clamored
for, she was a misunderstood baby. The thoroughly justifiable yell
being quieted, Mrs Moss looked at her sister-in-law and said,—
“I’m sorry to see brother so put out about this water work.”
“It’s your brother’s way, Mrs Moss; I’d never anything o’ that sort
before I was married,” said Mrs Tulliver, with a half-implied reproach.
She always spoke of her husband as “your brother” to Mrs Moss in any
case when his line of conduct was not matter of pure admiration.
Amiable Mrs Tulliver, who was never angry in her life, had yet her mild
share of that spirit without which she could hardly have been at once a
Dodson and a woman. Being always on the defensive toward her own
sisters, it was natural that she should be keenly conscious of her
superiority, even as the weakest Dodson, over a husband’s sister, who,
besides being poorly off, and inclined to “hang on” her brother, had
the good-natured submissiveness of a large, easy-tempered, untidy,
prolific woman, with affection enough in her not only for her own
husband and abundant children, but for any number of collateral
relations.
“I hope and pray he won’t go to law,” said Mrs Moss, “for there’s never
any knowing where that’ll end. And the right doesn’t allays win. This
Mr Pivart’s a rich man, by what I can make out, and the rich mostly get
things their own way.”
“As to that,” said Mrs Tulliver, stroking her dress down, “I’ve seen
what riches are in my own family; for my sisters have got husbands as
can afford to do pretty much what they like. But I think sometimes I
shall be drove off my head with the talk about this law and erigation;
and my sisters lay all the fault to me, for they don’t know what it is
to marry a man like your brother; how should they? Sister Pullet has
her own way from morning till night.”
“Well,” said Mrs Moss, “I don’t think I should like my husband if he
hadn’t got any wits of his own, and I had to find head-piece for him.
It’s a deal easier to do what pleases one’s husband, than to be
puzzling what else one should do.”
“If people come to talk o’ doing what pleases their husbands,” said Mrs
Tulliver, with a faint imitation of her sister Glegg, “I’m sure your
brother might have waited a long while before he’d have found a wife
that ’ud have let him have his say in everything, as I do. It’s nothing
but law and erigation now, from when we first get up in the morning
till we go to bed at night; and I never contradict him; I only say,
‘Well, Mr Tulliver, do as you like; but whativer you do, don’t go to
law.”
Mrs Tulliver, as we have seen, was not without influence over her
husband. No woman is; she can always incline him to do either what she
wishes, or the reverse; and on the composite impulses that were
threatening to hurry Mr Tulliver into “law,” Mrs Tulliver’s monotonous
pleading had doubtless its share of force; it might even be comparable
to that proverbial feather which has the credit or discredit of
breaking the camel’s back; though, on a strictly impartial view, the
blame ought rather to lie with the previous weight of feathers which
had already placed the back in such imminent peril that an otherwise
innocent feather could not settle on it without mischief. Not that Mrs
Tulliver’s feeble beseeching could have had this feather’s weight in
virtue of her single personality; but whenever she departed from entire
assent to her husband, he saw in her the representative of the Dodson
family; and it was a guiding principle with Mr Tulliver to let the
Dodsons know that they were not to domineer over _him_, or—more
specifically—that a male Tulliver was far more than equal to four
female Dodsons, even though one of them was Mrs Glegg.
But not even a direct argument from that typical Dodson female herself
against his going to law could have heightened his disposition toward
it so much as the mere thought of Wakem, continually freshened by the
sight of the too able attorney on market-days. Wakem, to his certain
knowledge, was (metaphorically speaking) at the bottom of Pivart’s
irrigation; Wakem had tried to make Dix stand out, and go to law about
the dam; it was unquestionably Wakem who had caused Mr Tulliver to lose
the suit about the right of road and the bridge that made a
thoroughfare of his land for every vagabond who preferred an
opportunity of damaging private property to walking like an honest man
along the highroad; all lawyers were more or less rascals, but Wakem’s
rascality was of that peculiarly aggravated kind which placed itself in
opposition to that form of right embodied in Mr Tulliver’s interests
and opinions. And as an extra touch of bitterness, the injured miller
had recently, in borrowing the five hundred pounds, been obliged to
carry a little business to Wakem’s office on his own account. A
hook-nosed glib fellow! as cool as a cucumber,—always looking so sure
of his game! And it was vexatious that Lawyer Gore was not more like
him, but was a bald, round-featured man, with bland manners and fat
hands; a game-cock that you would be rash to bet upon against Wakem.
Gore was a sly fellow. His weakness did not lie on the side of
scrupulosity; but the largest amount of winking, however significant,
is not equivalent to seeing through a stone wall; and confident as Mr
Tulliver was in his principle that water was water, and in the direct
inference that Pivart had not a leg to stand on in this affair of
irrigation, he had an uncomfortable suspicion that Wakem had more law
to show against this (rationally) irrefragable inference than Gore
could show for it. But then, if they went to law, there was a chance
for Mr Tulliver to employ Counsellor Wylde on his side, instead of
having that admirable bully against him; and the prospect of seeing a
witness of Wakem’s made to perspire and become confounded, as Mr
Tulliver’s witness had once been, was alluring to the love of
retributive justice.
Much rumination had Mr Tulliver on these puzzling subjects during his
rides on the gray horse; much turning of the head from side to side, as
the scales dipped alternately; but the probable result was still out of
sight, only to be reached through much hot argument and iteration in
domestic and social life. That initial stage of the dispute which
consisted in the narration of the case and the enforcement of Mr
Tulliver’s views concerning it throughout the entire circle of his
connections would necessarily take time; and at the beginning of
February, when Tom was going to school again, there were scarcely any
new items to be detected in his father’s statement of the case against
Pivart, or any more specific indication of the measures he was bent on
taking against that rash contravener of the principle that water was
water. Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of
progress, and Mr Tulliver’s heat was certainly more and more palpable.
If there had been no new evidence on any other point, there had been
new evidence that Pivart was as “thick as mud” with Wakem.
“Father,” said Tom, one evening near the end of the holidays, “uncle
Glegg says Lawyer Wakem _is_ going to send his son to Mr Stelling. It
isn’t true, what they said about his going to be sent to France. You
won’t like me to go to school with Wakem’s son, shall you?”
“It’s no matter for that, my boy,” said Mr Tulliver; “don’t you learn
anything bad of him, that’s all. The lad’s a poor deformed creatur, and
takes after his mother in the face; I think there isn’t much of his
father in him. It’s a sign Wakem thinks high o’ Mr Sterling, as he
sends his son to him, and Wakem knows meal from bran.”
Mr Tulliver in his heart was rather proud of the fact that his son was
to have the same advantages as Wakem’s; but Tom was not at all easy on
the point. It would have been much clearer if the lawyer’s son had not
been deformed, for then Tom would have had the prospect of pitching
into him with all that freedom which is derived from a high moral
sanction.
Chapter III.
The New Schoolfellow
It was a cold, wet January day on which Tom went back to school; a day
quite in keeping with this severe phase of his destiny. If he had not
carried in his pocket a parcel of sugar-candy and a small Dutch doll
for little Laura, there would have been no ray of expected pleasure to
enliven the general gloom. But he liked to think how Laura would put
out her lips and her tiny hands for the bits of sugarcandy; and to give
the greater keenness to these pleasures of imagination, he took out the
parcel, made a small hole in the paper, and bit off a crystal or two,
which had so solacing an effect under the confined prospect and damp
odors of the gig-umbrella, that he repeated the process more than once
on his way.
“Well, Tulliver, we’re glad to see you again,” said Mr Stelling,
heartily. “Take off your wrappings and come into the study till dinner.
You’ll find a bright fire there, and a new companion.”
Tom felt in an uncomfortable flutter as he took off his woollen
comforter and other wrappings. He had seen Philip Wakem at St Ogg’s,
but had always turned his eyes away from him as quickly as possible. He
would have disliked having a deformed boy for his companion, even if
Philip had not been the son of a bad man. And Tom did not see how a bad
man’s son could be very good. His own father was a good man, and he
would readily have fought any one who said the contrary. He was in a
state of mingled embarrassment and defiance as he followed Mr Stelling
to the study.
“Here is a new companion for you to shake hands with, Tulliver,” said
that gentleman on entering the study,—“Master Philip Wakem. I shall
leave you to make acquaintance by yourselves. You already know
something of each other, I imagine; for you are neighbours at home.”
Tom looked confused and awkward, while Philip rose and glanced at him
timidly. Tom did not like to go up and put out his hand, and he was not
prepared to say, “How do you do?” on so short a notice.
Mr Stelling wisely turned away, and closed the door behind him; boys’
shyness only wears off in the absence of their elders.
Philip was at once too proud and too timid to walk toward Tom. He
thought, or rather felt, that Tom had an aversion to looking at him;
every one, almost, disliked looking at him; and his deformity was more
conspicuous when he walked. So they remained without shaking hands or
even speaking, while Tom went to the fire and warmed himself, every now
and then casting furtive glances at Philip, who seemed to be drawing
absently first one object and then another on a piece of paper he had
before him. He had seated himself again, and as he drew, was thinking
what he could say to Tom, and trying to overcome his own repugnance to
making the first advances.
Tom began to look oftener and longer at Philip’s face, for he could see
it without noticing the hump, and it was really not a disagreeable
face,—very old-looking, Tom thought. He wondered how much older Philip
was than himself. An anatomist—even a mere physiognomist—would have
seen that the deformity of Philip’s spine was not a congenital hump,
but the result of an accident in infancy; but you do not expect from
Tom any acquaintance with such distinctions; to him, Philip was simply
a humpback. He had a vague notion that the deformity of Wakem’s son had
some relation to the lawyer’s rascality, of which he had so often heard
his father talk with hot emphasis; and he felt, too, a half-admitted
fear of him as probably a spiteful fellow, who, not being able to fight
you, had cunning ways of doing you a mischief by the sly. There was a
humpbacked tailor in the neighbourhood of Mr Jacobs’s academy, who was
considered a very unamiable character, and was much hooted after by
public-spirited boys solely on the ground of his unsatisfactory moral
qualities; so that Tom was not without a basis of fact to go upon.
Still, no face could be more unlike that ugly tailor’s than this
melancholy boy’s face,—the brown hair round it waved and curled at the
ends like a girl’s: Tom thought that truly pitiable. This Wakem was a
pale, puny fellow, and it was quite clear he would not be able to play
at anything worth speaking of; but he handled his pencil in an enviable
manner, and was apparently making one thing after another without any
trouble. What was he drawing? Tom was quite warm now, and wanted
something new to be going forward. It was certainly more agreeable to
have an ill-natured humpback as a companion than to stand looking out
of the study window at the rain, and kicking his foot against the
washboard in solitude; something would happen every day,—“a quarrel or
something”; and Tom thought he should rather like to show Philip that
he had better not try his spiteful tricks on _him_. He suddenly walked
across the hearth and looked over Philip’s paper.
“Why, that’s a donkey with panniers, and a spaniel, and partridges in
the corn!” he exclaimed, his tongue being completely loosed by surprise
and admiration. “Oh my buttons! I wish I could draw like that. I’m to
learn drawing this half; I wonder if I shall learn to make dogs and
donkeys!”
“Oh, you can do them without learning,” said Philip; “I never learned
drawing.”
“Never learned?” said Tom, in amazement. “Why, when I make dogs and
horses, and those things, the heads and the legs won’t come right;
though I can see how they ought to be very well. I can make houses, and
all sorts of chimneys,—chimneys going all down the wall,—and windows in
the roof, and all that. But I dare say I could do dogs and horses if I
was to try more,” he added, reflecting that Philip might falsely
suppose that he was going to “knock under,” if he were too frank about
the imperfection of his accomplishments.
“Oh, yes,” said Philip, “it’s very easy. You’ve only to look well at
things, and draw them over and over again. What you do wrong once, you
can alter the next time.”
“But haven’t you been taught _any_thing?” said Tom, beginning to have a
puzzled suspicion that Philip’s crooked back might be the source of
remarkable faculties. “I thought you’d been to school a long while.”
“Yes,” said Philip, smiling; “I’ve been taught Latin and Greek and
mathematics, and writing and such things.”
“Oh, but I say, you don’t like Latin, though, do you?” said Tom,
lowering his voice confidentially.
“Pretty well; I don’t care much about it,” said Philip.
“Ah, but perhaps you haven’t got into the _Propria quæ maribus_,” said
Tom, nodding his head sideways, as much as to say, “that was the test;
it was easy talking till you came to _that_.”
Philip felt some bitter complacency in the promising stupidity of this
well-made, active-looking boy; but made polite by his own extreme
sensitiveness, as well as by his desire to conciliate, he checked his
inclination to laugh, and said quietly,—
“I’ve done with the grammar; I don’t learn that any more.”
“Then you won’t have the same lessons as I shall?” said Tom, with a
sense of disappointment.
“No; but I dare say I can help you. I shall be very glad to help you if
I can.”
Tom did not say “Thank you,” for he was quite absorbed in the thought
that Wakem’s son did not seem so spiteful a fellow as might have been
expected.
“I say,” he said presently, “do you love your father?”
“Yes,” said Philip, colouring deeply; “don’t you love yours?”
“Oh yes—I only wanted to know,” said Tom, rather ashamed of himself,
now he saw Philip colouring and looking uncomfortable. He found much
difficulty in adjusting his attitude of mind toward the son of Lawyer
Wakem, and it had occurred to him that if Philip disliked his father,
that fact might go some way toward clearing up his perplexity.
“Shall you learn drawing now?” he said, by way of changing the subject.
“No,” said Philip. “My father wishes me to give all my time to other
things now.”
“What! Latin and Euclid, and those things?” said Tom.
“Yes,” said Philip, who had left off using his pencil, and was resting
his head on one hand, while Tom was learning forward on both elbows,
and looking with increasing admiration at the dog and the donkey.
“And you don’t mind that?” said Tom, with strong curiosity.
“No; I like to know what everybody else knows. I can study what I like
by-and-by.”
“I can’t think why anybody should learn Latin,” said Tom. “It’s no
good.”
“It’s part of the education of a gentleman,” said Philip. “All
gentlemen learn the same things.”
“What! do you think Sir John Crake, the master of the harriers, knows
Latin?” said Tom, who had often thought he should like to resemble Sir
John Crake.
“He learned it when he was a boy, of course,” said Philip. “But I dare
say he’s forgotten it.”
“Oh, well, I can do that, then,” said Tom, not with any epigrammatic
intention, but with serious satisfaction at the idea that, as far as
Latin was concerned, there was no hindrance to his resembling Sir John
Crake. “Only you’re obliged to remember it while you’re at school, else
you’ve got to learn ever so many lines of ‘Speaker.’ Mr Stelling’s very
particular—did you know? He’ll have you up ten times if you say ‘nam’
for ‘jam,’—he won’t let you go a letter wrong, _I_ can tell you.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Philip, unable to choke a laugh; “I can
remember things easily. And there are some lessons I’m very fond of.
I’m very fond of Greek history, and everything about the Greeks. I
should like to have been a Greek and fought the Persians, and then have
come home and have written tragedies, or else have been listened to by
everybody for my wisdom, like Socrates, and have died a grand death.”
(Philip, you perceive, was not without a wish to impress the well-made
barbarian with a sense of his mental superiority.)
“Why, were the Greeks great fighters?” said Tom, who saw a vista in
this direction. “Is there anything like David and Goliath and Samson in
the Greek history? Those are the only bits I like in the history of the
Jews.”
“Oh, there are very fine stories of that sort about the Greeks,—about
the heroes of early times who killed the wild beasts, as Samson did.
And in the Odyssey—that’s a beautiful poem—there’s a more wonderful
giant than Goliath,—Polypheme, who had only one eye in the middle of
his forehead; and Ulysses, a little fellow, but very wise and cunning,
got a red-hot pine-tree and stuck it into this one eye, and made him
roar like a thousand bulls.”
“Oh, what fun!” said Tom, jumping away from the table, and stamping
first with one leg and then the other. “I say, can you tell me all
about those stories? Because I sha’n’t learn Greek, you know. Shall I?”
he added, pausing in his stamping with a sudden alarm, lest the
contrary might be possible. “Does every gentleman learn Greek? Will Mr
Stelling make me begin with it, do you think?”
“No, I should think not, very likely not,” said Philip. “But you may
read those stories without knowing Greek. I’ve got them in English.”
“Oh, but I don’t like reading; I’d sooner have you tell them me. But
only the fighting ones, you know. My sister Maggie is always wanting to
tell me stories, but they’re stupid things. Girls’ stories always are.
Can you tell a good many fighting stories?”
“Oh yes,” said Philip; “lots of them, besides the Greek stories. I can
tell you about Richard Cœur-de-Lion and Saladin, and about William
Wallace and Robert Bruce and James Douglas,—I know no end.”
“You’re older than I am, aren’t you?” said Tom.
“Why, how old are _you?_ I’m fifteen.”
“I’m only going in fourteen,” said Tom. “But I thrashed all the fellows
at Jacob’s—that’s where I was before I came here. And I beat ’em all at
bandy and climbing. And I wish Mr Stelling would let us go fishing. _I_
could show you how to fish. You _could_ fish, couldn’t you? It’s only
standing, and sitting still, you know.”
Tom, in his turn, wished to make the balance dip in his favour. This
hunchback must not suppose that his acquaintance with fighting stories
put him on a par with an actual fighting hero, like Tom Tulliver.
Philip winced under this allusion to his unfitness for active sports,
and he answered almost peevishly,—
“I can’t bear fishing. I think people look like fools sitting watching
a line hour after hour, or else throwing and throwing, and catching
nothing.”
“Ah, but you wouldn’t say they looked like fools when they landed a big
pike, I can tell you,” said Tom, who had never caught anything that was
“big” in his life, but whose imagination was on the stretch with
indignant zeal for the honour of sport. Wakem’s son, it was plain, had
his disagreeable points, and must be kept in due check. Happily for the
harmony of this first interview, they were now called to dinner, and
Philip was not allowed to develop farther his unsound views on the
subject of fishing. But Tom said to himself, that was just what he
should have expected from a hunchback.
Chapter IV.
“The Young Idea”
The alterations of feeling in that first dialogue between Tom and
Philip continued to mark their intercourse even after many weeks of
schoolboy intimacy. Tom never quite lost the feeling that Philip, being
the son of a “rascal,” was his natural enemy; never thoroughly overcame
his repulsion to Philip’s deformity. He was a boy who adhered
tenaciously to impressions once received; as with all minds in which
mere perception predominates over thought and emotion, the external
remained to him rigidly what it was in the first instance. But then it
was impossible not to like Philip’s company when he was in a good
humour; he could help one so well in one’s Latin exercises, which Tom
regarded as a kind of puzzle that could only be found out by a lucky
chance; and he could tell such wonderful fighting stories about Hal of
the Wynd, for example, and other heroes who were especial favourites
with Tom, because they laid about them with heavy strokes. He had small
opinion of Saladin, whose cimeter could cut a cushion in two in an
instant; who wanted to cut cushions? That was a stupid story, and he
didn’t care to hear it again. But when Robert Bruce, on the black pony,
rose in his stirrups, and lifting his good battle-axe, cracked at once
the helmet and the skull of the too hasty knight at Bannockburn, then
Tom felt all the exaltation of sympathy, and if he had had a cocoanut
at hand, he would have cracked it at once with the poker. Philip in his
happier moods indulged Tom to the top of his bent, heightening the
crash and bang and fury of every fight with all the artillery of
epithets and similes at his command. But he was not always in a good
humour or happy mood. The slight spurt of peevish susceptibility which
had escaped him in their first interview was a symptom of a perpetually
recurring mental ailment, half of it nervous irritability, half of it
the heart-bitterness produced by the sense of his deformity. In these
fits of susceptibility every glance seemed to him to be charged either
with offensive pity or with ill-repressed disgust; at the very least it
was an indifferent glance, and Philip felt indifference as a child of
the south feels the chill air of a northern spring. Poor Tom’s
blundering patronage when they were out of doors together would
sometimes make him turn upon the well-meaning lad quite savagely; and
his eyes, usually sad and quiet, would flash with anything but playful
lightning. No wonder Tom retained his suspicions of the humpback.
But Philip’s self-taught skill in drawing was another link between
them; for Tom found, to his disgust, that his new drawing-master gave
him no dogs and donkeys to draw, but brooks and rustic bridges and
ruins, all with a general softness of black-lead surface, indicating
that nature, if anything, was rather satiny; and as Tom’s feeling for
the picturesque in landscape was at present quite latent, it is not
surprising that Mr Goodrich’s productions seemed to him an
uninteresting form of art. Mr Tulliver, having a vague intention that
Tom should be put to some business which included the drawing out of
plans and maps, had complained to Mr Riley, when he saw him at Mudport,
that Tom seemed to be learning nothing of that sort; whereupon that
obliging adviser had suggested that Tom should have drawing-lessons. Mr
Tulliver must not mind paying extra for drawing; let Tom be made a good
draughtsman, and he would be able to turn his pencil to any purpose. So
it was ordered that Tom should have drawing-lessons; and whom should Mr
Stelling have selected as a master if not Mr Goodrich, who was
considered quite at the head of his profession within a circuit of
twelve miles round King’s Lorton? By which means Tom learned to make an
extremely fine point to his pencil, and to represent landscape with a
“broad generality,” which, doubtless from a narrow tendency in his mind
to details, he thought extremely dull.
All this, you remember, happened in those dark ages when there were no
schools of design; before schoolmasters were invariably men of
scrupulous integrity, and before the clergy were all men of enlarged
minds and varied culture. In those less favoured days, it is no fable
that there were other clergymen besides Mr Stelling who had narrow
intellects and large wants, and whose income, by a logical confusion to
which Fortune, being a female as well as blindfold, is peculiarly
liable, was proportioned not to their wants but to their intellect,
with which income has clearly no inherent relation. The problem these
gentlemen had to solve was to readjust the proportion between their
wants and their income; and since wants are not easily starved to
death, the simpler method appeared to be to raise their income. There
was but one way of doing this; any of those low callings in which men
are obliged to do good work at a low price were forbidden to clergymen;
was it their fault if their only resource was to turn out very poor
work at a high price? Besides, how should Mr Stelling be expected to
know that education was a delicate and difficult business, any more
than an animal endowed with a power of boring a hole through a rock
should be expected to have wide views of excavation? Mr Stelling’s
faculties had been early trained to boring in a straight line, and he
had no faculty to spare. But among Tom’s contemporaries, whose fathers
cast their sons on clerical instruction to find them ignorant after
many days, there were many far less lucky than Tom Tulliver. Education
was almost entirely a matter of luck—usually of ill-luck—in those
distant days. The state of mind in which you take a billiard-cue or a
dice-box in your hand is one of sober certainty compared with that of
old-fashioned fathers, like Mr Tulliver, when they selected a school or
a tutor for their sons. Excellent men, who had been forced all their
lives to spell on an impromptu-phonetic system, and having carried on a
successful business in spite of this disadvantage, had acquired money
enough to give their sons a better start in life than they had had
themselves, must necessarily take their chance as to the conscience and
the competence of the schoolmaster whose circular fell in their way,
and appeared to promise so much more than they would ever have thought
of asking for, including the return of linen, fork, and spoon. It was
happy for them if some ambitious draper of their acquaintance had not
brought up his son to the Church, and if that young gentleman, at the
age of four-and-twenty, had not closed his college dissipations by an
imprudent marriage; otherwise, these innocent fathers, desirous of
doing the best for their offspring, could only escape the draper’s son
by happening to be on the foundation of a grammar-school as yet
unvisited by commissioners, where two or three boys could have, all to
themselves, the advantages of a large and lofty building, together with
a head-master, toothless, dim-eyed and deaf, whose erudite
indistinctness and inattention were engrossed by them at the rate of
three hundred pounds a-head,—a ripe scholar, doubtless, when first
appointed; but all ripeness beneath the sun has a further stage less
esteemed in the market.
Tom Tulliver, then, compared with many other British youths of his time
who have since had to scramble through life with some fragments of more
or less relevant knowledge, and a great deal of strictly relevant
ignorance, was not so very unlucky. Mr Stelling was a broad-chested,
healthy man, with the bearing of a gentleman, a conviction that a
growing boy required a sufficiency of beef, and a certain hearty
kindness in him that made him like to see Tom looking well and enjoying
his dinner; not a man of refined conscience, or with any deep sense of
the infinite issues belonging to everyday duties, not quite competent
to his high offices; but incompetent gentlemen must live, and without
private fortune it is difficult to see how they could all live
genteelly if they had nothing to do with education or government.
Besides, it was the fault of Tom’s mental constitution that his
faculties could not be nourished on the sort of knowledge Mr Stelling
had to communicate. A boy born with a deficient power of apprehending
signs and abstractions must suffer the penalty of his congenital
deficiency, just as if he had been born with one leg shorter than the
other. A method of education sanctioned by the long practice of our
venerable ancestors was not to give way before the exceptional dulness
of a boy who was merely living at the time then present. And Mr
Stelling was convinced that a boy so stupid at signs and abstractions
must be stupid at everything else, even if that reverend gentleman
could have taught him everything else. It was the practice of our
venerable ancestors to apply that ingenious instrument the thumb-screw,
and to tighten and tighten it in order to elicit non-existent facts;
they had a fixed opinion to begin with, that the facts were existent,
and what had they to do but to tighten the thumb-screw? In like manner,
Mr Stelling had a fixed opinion that all boys with any capacity could
learn what it was the only regular thing to teach; if they were slow,
the thumb-screw must be tightened,—the exercises must be insisted on
with increased severity, and a page of Virgil be awarded as a penalty,
to encourage and stimulate a too languid inclination to Latin verse.
The thumb-screw was a little relaxed, however, during this second
half-year. Philip was so advanced in his studies, and so apt, that Mr
Stelling could obtain credit by his facility, which required little
help, much more easily than by the troublesome process of overcoming
Tom’s dulness. Gentlemen with broad chests and ambitious intentions do
sometimes disappoint their friends by failing to carry the world before
them. Perhaps it is that high achievements demand some other unusual
qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes; perhaps it is
that these stalwart gentlemen are rather indolent, their _divinæ
particulum auræ_ being obstructed from soaring by a too hearty
appetite. Some reason or other there was why Mr Stelling deferred the
execution of many spirited projects,—why he did not begin the editing
of his Greek play, or any other work of scholarship, in his leisure
hours, but, after turning the key of his private study with much
resolution, sat down to one of Theodore Hook’s novels. Tom was
gradually allowed to shuffle through his lessons with less rigor, and
having Philip to help him, he was able to make some show of having
applied his mind in a confused and blundering way, without being
cross-examined into a betrayal that his mind had been entirely neutral
in the matter. He thought school much more bearable under this
modification of circumstances; and he went on contentedly enough,
picking up a promiscuous education chiefly from things that were not
intended as education at all. What was understood to be his education
was simply the practice of reading, writing, and spelling, carried on
by an elaborate appliance of unintelligible ideas, and by much failure
in the effort to learn by rote.
Nevertheless, there was a visible improvement in Tom under this
training; perhaps because he was not a boy in the abstract, existing
solely to illustrate the evils of a mistaken education, but a boy made
of flesh and blood, with dispositions not entirely at the mercy of
circumstances.
There was a great improvement in his bearing, for example; and some
credit on this score was due to Mr Poulter, the village schoolmaster,
who, being an old Peninsular soldier, was employed to drill Tom,—a
source of high mutual pleasure. Mr Poulter, who was understood by the
company at the Black Swan to have once struck terror into the hearts of
the French, was no longer personally formidable. He had rather a
shrunken appearance, and was tremulous in the mornings, not from age,
but from the extreme perversity of the King’s Lorton boys, which
nothing but gin could enable him to sustain with any firmness. Still,
he carried himself with martial erectness, had his clothes scrupulously
brushed, and his trousers tightly strapped; and on the Wednesday and
Saturday afternoons, when he came to Tom, he was always inspired with
gin and old memories, which gave him an exceptionally spirited air, as
of a superannuated charger who hears the drum. The drilling-lessons
were always protracted by episodes of warlike narrative, much more
interesting to Tom than Philip’s stories out of the Iliad; for there
were no cannon in the Iliad, and besides, Tom had felt some disgust on
learning that Hector and Achilles might possibly never have existed.
But the Duke of Wellington was really alive, and Bony had not been long
dead; therefore Mr Poulter’s reminiscences of the Peninsular War were
removed from all suspicion of being mythical. Mr Poulter, it appeared,
had been a conspicuous figure at Talavera, and had contributed not a
little to the peculiar terror with which his regiment of infantry was
regarded by the enemy. On afternoons when his memory was more
stimulated than usual, he remembered that the Duke of Wellington had
(in strict privacy, lest jealousies should be awakened) expressed his
esteem for that fine fellow Poulter. The very surgeon who attended him
in the hospital after he had received his gunshot-wound had been
profoundly impressed with the superiority of Mr Poulter’s flesh,—no
other flesh would have healed in anything like the same time. On less
personal matters connected with the important warfare in which he had
been engaged, Mr Poulter was more reticent, only taking care not to
give the weight of his authority to any loose notions concerning
military history. Any one who pretended to a knowledge of what occurred
at the siege of Badajos was especially an object of silent pity to Mr
Poulter; he wished that prating person had been run down, and had the
breath trampled out of him at the first go-off, as he himself had,—he
might talk about the siege of Badajos then! Tom did not escape
irritating his drilling-master occasionally, by his curiosity
concerning other military matters than Mr Poulter’s personal
experience.
“And General Wolfe, Mr Poulter,—wasn’t he a wonderful fighter?” said
Tom, who held the notion that all the martial heroes commemorated on
the public-house signs were engaged in the war with Bony.
“Not at all!” said Mr Poulter, contemptuously. “Nothing o’ the sort!
Heads up!” he added, in a tone of stern command, which delighted Tom,
and made him feel as if he were a regiment in his own person.
“No, no!” Mr Poulter would continue, on coming to a pause in his
discipline; “they’d better not talk to me about General Wolfe. He did
nothing but die of his wound; that’s a poor haction, I consider. Any
other man ’ud have died o’ the wounds I’ve had. One of my sword-cuts
’ud ha’ killed a fellow like General Wolfe.”
“Mr Poulter,” Tom would say, at any allusion to the sword, “I wish
you’d bring your sword and do the sword-exercise!”
For a long while Mr Poulter only shook his head in a significant manner
at this request, and smiled patronizingly, as Jupiter may have done
when Semele urged her too ambitious request. But one afternoon, when a
sudden shower of heavy rain had detained Mr Poulter twenty minutes
longer than usual at the Black Swan, the sword was brought,—just for
Tom to look at.
“And this is the real sword you fought with in all the battles, Mr
Poulter?” said Tom, handling the hilt. “Has it ever cut a Frenchman’s
head off?”
“Head off? Ah! and would, if he’d had three heads.”
“But you had a gun and bayonet besides?” said Tom. “_I_ should like the
gun and bayonet best, because you could shoot ’em first and spear ’em
after. Bang! Ps-s-s-s!” Tom gave the requisite pantomime to indicate
the double enjoyment of pulling the trigger and thrusting the spear.
“Ah, but the sword’s the thing when you come to close fighting,” said
Mr Poulter, involuntarily falling in with Tom’s enthusiasm, and drawing
the sword so suddenly that Tom leaped back with much agility.
“Oh, but, Mr Poulter, if you’re going to do the exercise,” said Tom, a
little conscious that he had not stood his ground as became an
Englishman, “let me go and call Philip. He’ll like to see you, you
know.”
“What! the humpbacked lad?” said Mr Poulter, contemptuously; “what’s
the use of _his_ looking on?”
“Oh, but he knows a great deal about fighting,” said Tom, “and how they
used to fight with bows and arrows, and battle-axes.”
“Let him come, then. I’ll show him something different from his bows
and arrows,” said Mr Poulter, coughing and drawing himself up, while he
gave a little preliminary play to his wrist.
Tom ran in to Philip, who was enjoying his afternoon’s holiday at the
piano, in the drawing-room, picking out tunes for himself and singing
them. He was supremely happy, perched like an amorphous bundle on the
high stool, with his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on the opposite
cornice, and his lips wide open, sending forth, with all his might,
impromptu syllables to a tune of Arne’s which had hit his fancy.
“Come, Philip,” said Tom, bursting in; “don’t stay roaring ‘la la’
there; come and see old Poulter do his sword-exercise in the
carriage-house!”
The jar of this interruption, the discord of Tom’s tones coming across
the notes to which Philip was vibrating in soul and body, would have
been enough to unhinge his temper, even if there had been no question
of Poulter the drilling-master; and Tom, in the hurry of seizing
something to say to prevent Mr Poulter from thinking he was afraid of
the sword when he sprang away from it, had alighted on this proposition
to fetch Philip, though he knew well enough that Philip hated to hear
him mention his drilling-lessons. Tom would never have done so
inconsiderate a thing except under the severe stress of his personal
pride.
Philip shuddered visibly as he paused from his music. Then turning red,
he said, with violent passion,—
“Get away, you lumbering idiot! Don’t come bellowing at me; you’re not
fit to speak to anything but a cart-horse!”
It was not the first time Philip had been made angry by him, but Tom
had never before been assailed with verbal missiles that he understood
so well.
“I’m fit to speak to something better than you, you poor-spirited imp!”
said Tom, lighting up immediately at Philip’s fire. “You know I won’t
hit you, because you’re no better than a girl. But I’m an honest man’s
son, and _your_ father’s a rogue; everybody says so!”
Tom flung out of the room, and slammed the door after him, made
strangely heedless by his anger; for to slam doors within the hearing
of Mrs Stelling, who was probably not far off, was an offence only to
be wiped out by twenty lines of Virgil. In fact, that lady did
presently descend from her room, in double wonder at the noise and the
subsequent cessation of Philip’s music. She found him sitting in a heap
on the hassock, and crying bitterly.
“What’s the matter, Wakem? what was that noise about? Who slammed the
door?”
Philip looked up, and hastily dried his eyes. “It was Tulliver who came
in—to ask me to go out with him.”
“And what are you in trouble about?” said Mrs Stelling.
Philip was not her favourite of the two pupils; he was less obliging
than Tom, who was made useful in many ways. Still, his father paid more
than Mr Tulliver did, and she meant him to feel that she behaved
exceedingly well to him. Philip, however, met her advances toward a
good understanding very much as a caressed mollusk meets an invitation
to show himself out of his shell. Mrs Stelling was not a loving,
tender-hearted woman; she was a woman whose skirt sat well, who
adjusted her waist and patted her curls with a preoccupied air when she
inquired after your welfare. These things, doubtless, represent a great
social power, but it is not the power of love; and no other power could
win Philip from his personal reserve.
He said, in answer to her question, “My toothache came on, and made me
hysterical again.”
This had been the fact once, and Philip was glad of the recollection;
it was like an inspiration to enable him to excuse his crying. He had
to accept eau-de-Cologne and to refuse creosote in consequence; but
that was easy.
Meanwhile Tom, who had for the first time sent a poisoned arrow into
Philip’s heart, had returned to the carriage-house, where he found Mr
Poulter, with a fixed and earnest eye, wasting the perfections of his
sword-exercise on probably observant but inappreciative rats. But Mr
Poulter was a host in himself; that is to say, he admired himself more
than a whole army of spectators could have admired him. He took no
notice of Tom’s return, being too entirely absorbed in the cut and
thrust,—the solemn one, two, three, four; and Tom, not without a slight
feeling of alarm at Mr Poulter’s fixed eye and hungry-looking sword,
which seemed impatient for something else to cut besides the air,
admired the performance from as great a distance as possible. It was
not until Mr Poulter paused and wiped the perspiration from his
forehead, that Tom felt the full charm of the sword-exercise, and
wished it to be repeated.
“Mr Poulter,” said Tom, when the sword was being finally sheathed, “I
wish you’d lend me your sword a little while to keep.”
“No no, young gentleman,” said Mr Poulter, shaking his head decidedly;
“you might do yourself some mischief with it.”
“No, I’m sure I wouldn’t; I’m sure I’d take care and not hurt myself. I
shouldn’t take it out of the sheath much, but I could ground arms with
it, and all that.”
“No, no, it won’t do, I tell you; it won’t do,” said Mr Poulter,
preparing to depart. “What ’ud Mr Stelling say to me?”
“Oh, I say, do, Mr Poulter! I’d give you my five-shilling piece if
you’d let me keep the sword a week. Look here!” said Tom, reaching out
the attractively large round of silver. The young dog calculated the
effect as well as if he had been a philosopher.
“Well,” said Mr Poulter, with still deeper gravity, “you must keep it
out of sight, you know.”
“Oh yes, I’ll keep it under the bed,” said Tom, eagerly, “or else at
the bottom of my large box.”
“And let me see, now, whether you can draw it out of the sheath without
hurting yourself.” That process having been gone through more than
once, Mr Poulter felt that he had acted with scrupulous
conscientiousness, and said, “Well, now, Master Tulliver, if I take the
crown-piece, it is to make sure as you’ll do no mischief with the
sword.”
“Oh no, indeed, Mr Poulter,” said Tom, delightedly handing him the
crown-piece, and grasping the sword, which, he thought, might have been
lighter with advantage.
“But if Mr Stelling catches you carrying it in?” said Mr Poulter,
pocketing the crown-piece provisionally while he raised this new doubt.
“Oh, he always keeps in his upstairs study on Saturday afternoon,” said
Tom, who disliked anything sneaking, but was not disinclined to a
little stratagem in a worthy cause. So he carried off the sword in
triumph mixed with dread—dread that he might encounter Mr or Mrs
Stelling—to his bedroom, where, after some consideration, he hid it in
the closet behind some hanging clothes. That night he fell asleep in
the thought that he would astonish Maggie with it when she came,—tie it
round his waist with his red comforter, and make her believe that the
sword was his own, and that he was going to be a soldier. There was
nobody but Maggie who would be silly enough to believe him, or whom he
dared allow to know he had a sword; and Maggie was really coming next
week to see Tom, before she went to a boarding-school with Lucy.
If you think a lad of thirteen would not have been so childish, you
must be an exceptionally wise man, who, although you are devoted to a
civil calling, requiring you to look bland rather than formidable, yet
never, since you had a beard, threw yourself into a martial attitude,
and frowned before the looking-glass. It is doubtful whether our
soldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at home
who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic
spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a “public.”
Chapter V.
Maggie’s Second Visit
This last breach between the two lads was not readily mended, and for
some time they spoke to each other no more than was necessary. Their
natural antipathy of temperament made resentment an easy passage to
hatred, and in Philip the transition seemed to have begun; there was no
malignity in his disposition, but there was a susceptibility that made
him peculiarly liable to a strong sense of repulsion. The ox—we may
venture to assert it on the authority of a great classic—is not given
to use his teeth as an instrument of attack, and Tom was an excellent
bovine lad, who ran at questionable objects in a truly ingenious bovine
manner; but he had blundered on Philip’s tenderest point, and had
caused him as much acute pain as if he had studied the means with the
nicest precision and the most envenomed spite. Tom saw no reason why
they should not make up this quarrel as they had done many others, by
behaving as if nothing had happened; for though he had never before
said to Philip that his father was a rogue, this idea had so habitually
made part of his feeling as to the relation between himself and his
dubious schoolfellow, whom he could neither like nor dislike, that the
mere utterance did not make such an epoch to him as it did to Philip.
And he had a right to say so when Philip hectored over _him_, and
called him names. But perceiving that his first advances toward amity
were not met, he relapsed into his least favourable disposition toward
Philip, and resolved never to appeal to him either about drawing or
exercise again. They were only so far civil to each other as was
necessary to prevent their state of feud from being observed by Mr
Stelling, who would have “put down” such nonsense with great vigor.
When Maggie came, however, she could not help looking with growing
interest at the new schoolfellow, although he was the son of that
wicked Lawyer Wakem, who made her father so angry. She had arrived in
the middle of school-hours, and had sat by while Philip went through
his lessons with Mr Stelling. Tom, some weeks ago, had sent her word
that Philip knew no end of stories,—not stupid stories like hers; and
she was convinced now from her own observation that he must be very
clever; she hoped he would think _her_ rather clever too, when she came
to talk to him. Maggie, moreover, had rather a tenderness for deformed
things; she preferred the wry-necked lambs, because it seemed to her
that the lambs which were quite strong and well made wouldn’t mind so
much about being petted; and she was especially fond of petting objects
that would think it very delightful to be petted by her. She loved Tom
very dearly, but she often wished that he _cared_ more about her loving
him.
“I think Philip Wakem seems a nice boy, Tom,” she said, when they went
out of the study together into the garden, to pass the interval before
dinner. “He couldn’t choose his father, you know; and I’ve read of very
bad men who had good sons, as well as good parents who had bad
children. And if Philip is good, I think we ought to be the more sorry
for him because his father is not a good man. _You_ like him, don’t
you?”
“Oh, he’s a queer fellow,” said Tom, curtly, “and he’s as sulky as can
be with me, because I told him his father was a rogue. And I’d a right
to tell him so, for it was true; and _he_ began it, with calling me
names. But you stop here by yourself a bit, Maggie, will you? I’ve got
something I want to do upstairs.”
“Can’t I go too?” said Maggie, who in this first day of meeting again
loved Tom’s shadow.
“No, it’s something I’ll tell you about by-and-by, not yet,” said Tom,
skipping away.
In the afternoon the boys were at their books in the study, preparing
the morrow’s lessons that they might have a holiday in the evening in
honour of Maggie’s arrival. Tom was hanging over his Latin grammar,
moving his lips inaudibly like a strict but impatient Catholic
repeating his tale of paternosters; and Philip, at the other end of the
room, was busy with two volumes, with a look of contented diligence
that excited Maggie’s curiosity; he did not look at all as if he were
learning a lesson. She sat on a low stool at nearly a right angle with
the two boys, watching first one and then the other; and Philip,
looking off his book once toward the fire-place, caught the pair of
questioning dark eyes fixed upon him. He thought this sister of
Tulliver’s seemed a nice little thing, quite unlike her brother; he
wished _he_ had a little sister. What was it, he wondered, that made
Maggie’s dark eyes remind him of the stories about princesses being
turned into animals? I think it was that her eyes were full of
unsatisfied intelligence, and unsatisfied beseeching affection.
“I say, Magsie,” said Tom at last, shutting his books and putting them
away with the energy and decision of a perfect master in the art of
leaving off, “I’ve done my lessons now. Come upstairs with me.”
“What is it?” said Maggie, when they were outside the door, a slight
suspicion crossing her mind as she remembered Tom’s preliminary visit
upstairs. “It isn’t a trick you’re going to play me, now?”
“No, no, Maggie,” said Tom, in his most coaxing tone; “It’s something
you’ll like _ever so_.”
He put his arm round her neck, and she put hers round his waist, and
twined together in this way, they went upstairs.
“I say, Magsie, you must not tell anybody, you know,” said Tom, “else I
shall get fifty lines.”
“Is it alive?” said Maggie, whose imagination had settled for the
moment on the idea that Tom kept a ferret clandestinely.
“Oh, I sha’n’t tell you,” said he. “Now you go into that corner and
hide your face, while I reach it out,” he added, as he locked the
bedroom door behind them. “I’ll tell you when to turn round. You
mustn’t squeal out, you know.”
“Oh, but if you frighten me, I shall,” said Maggie, beginning to look
rather serious.
“You won’t be frightened, you silly thing,” said Tom. “Go and hide your
face, and mind you don’t peep.”
“Of course I sha’n’t peep,” said Maggie, disdainfully; and she buried
her face in the pillow like a person of strict honour.
But Tom looked round warily as he walked to the closet; then he stepped
into the narrow space, and almost closed the door. Maggie kept her face
buried without the aid of principle, for in that dream-suggestive
attitude she had soon forgotten where she was, and her thoughts were
busy with the poor deformed boy, who was so clever, when Tom called
out, “Now then, Magsie!”
Nothing but long meditation and preconcerted arrangement of effects
could have enabled Tom to present so striking a figure as he did to
Maggie when she looked up. Dissatisfied with the pacific aspect of a
face which had no more than the faintest hint of flaxen eyebrow,
together with a pair of amiable blue-gray eyes and round pink cheeks
that refused to look formidable, let him frown as he would before the
looking-glass (Philip had once told him of a man who had a horseshoe
frown, and Tom had tried with all his frowning might to make a
horseshoe on his forehead), he had had recourse to that unfailing
source of the terrible, burnt cork, and had made himself a pair of
black eyebrows that met in a satisfactory manner over his nose, and
were matched by a less carefully adjusted blackness about the chin. He
had wound a red handkerchief round his cloth cap to give it the air of
a turban, and his red comforter across his breast as a scarf,—an amount
of red which, with the tremendous frown on his brow, and the decision
with which he grasped the sword, as he held it with its point resting
on the ground, would suffice to convey an approximate idea of his
fierce and bloodthirsty disposition.
Maggie looked bewildered for a moment, and Tom enjoyed that moment
keenly; but in the next she laughed, clapped her hands together, and
said, “Oh, Tom, you’ve made yourself like Bluebeard at the show.”
It was clear she had not been struck with the presence of the sword,—it
was not unsheathed. Her frivolous mind required a more direct appeal to
its sense of the terrible, and Tom prepared for his master-stroke.
Frowning with a double amount of intention, if not of corrugation, he
(carefully) drew the sword from its sheath, and pointed it at Maggie.
“Oh, Tom, please don’t!” exclaimed Maggie, in a tone of suppressed
dread, shrinking away from him into the opposite corner. “I _shall_
scream—I’m sure I shall! Oh, don’t I wish I’d never come upstairs!”
The corners of Tom’s mouth showed an inclination to a smile of
complacency that was immediately checked as inconsistent with the
severity of a great warrior. Slowly he let down the scabbard on the
floor, lest it should make too much noise, and then said sternly,—
“I’m the Duke of Wellington! March!” stamping forward with the right
leg a little bent, and the sword still pointing toward Maggie, who,
trembling, and with tear-filled eyes, got upon the bed, as the only
means of widening the space between them.
Tom, happy in this spectator of his military performances, even though
the spectator was only Maggie, proceeded, with the utmost exertion of
his force, to such an exhibition of the cut and thrust as would
necessarily be expected of the Duke of Wellington.
“Tom, I _will not_ bear it, I _will_ scream,” said Maggie, at the first
movement of the sword. “You’ll hurt yourself; you’ll cut your head
off!”
“One—two,” said Tom, resolutely, though at “two” his wrist trembled a
little. “Three” came more slowly, and with it the sword swung downward,
and Maggie gave a loud shriek. The sword had fallen, with its edge on
Tom’s foot, and in a moment after he had fallen too. Maggie leaped from
the bed, still shrieking, and immediately there was a rush of footsteps
toward the room. Mr Stelling, from his upstairs study, was the first to
enter. He found both the children on the floor. Tom had fainted, and
Maggie was shaking him by the collar of his jacket, screaming, with
wild eyes. She thought he was dead, poor child! and yet she shook him,
as if that would bring him back to life. In another minute she was
sobbing with joy because Tom opened his eyes. She couldn’t sorrow yet
that he had hurt his foot; it seemed as if all happiness lay in his
being alive.
Chapter VI.
A Love-Scene
Poor Tom bore his severe pain heroically, and was resolute in not
“telling” of Mr Poulter more than was unavoidable; the five-shilling
piece remained a secret even to Maggie. But there was a terrible dread
weighing on his mind, so terrible that he dared not even ask the
question which might bring the fatal “yes”; he dared not ask the
surgeon or Mr Stelling, “Shall I be lame, Sir?” He mastered himself so
as not to cry out at the pain; but when his foot had been dressed, and
he was left alone with Maggie seated by his bedside, the children
sobbed together, with their heads laid on the same pillow. Tom was
thinking of himself walking about on crutches, like the wheelwright’s
son; and Maggie, who did not guess what was in his mind, sobbed for
company. It had not occurred to the surgeon or to Mr Stelling to
anticipate this dread in Tom’s mind, and to reassure him by hopeful
words. But Philip watched the surgeon out of the house, and waylaid Mr
Stelling to ask the very question that Tom had not dared to ask for
himself.
“I beg your pardon, sir,—but does Mr Askern say Tulliver will be lame?”
“Oh, no; oh, no,” said Mr Stelling, “not permanently; only for a little
while.”
“Did he tell Tulliver so, sir, do you think?”
“No; nothing was said to him on the subject.”
“Then may I go and tell him, sir?”
“Yes, to be sure; now you mention it, I dare say he may be troubling
about that. Go to his bedroom, but be very quiet at present.”
It had been Philip’s first thought when he heard of the accident,—“Will
Tulliver be lame? It will be very hard for him if he is”; and Tom’s
hitherto unforgiven offences were washed out by that pity. Philip felt
that they were no longer in a state of repulsion, but were being drawn
into a common current of suffering and sad privation. His imagination
did not dwell on the outward calamity and its future effect on Tom’s
life, but it made vividly present to him the probable state of Tom’s
feeling. Philip had only lived fourteen years, but those years had,
most of them, been steeped in the sense of a lot irremediably hard.
“Mr Askern says you’ll soon be all right again, Tulliver, did you
know?” he said rather timidly, as he stepped gently up to Tom’s bed.
“I’ve just been to ask Mr Stelling, and he says you’ll walk as well as
ever again by-and-day.”
Tom looked up with that momentary stopping of the breath which comes
with a sudden joy; then he gave a long sigh, and turned his blue-gray
eyes straight on Philip’s face, as he had not done for a fortnight or
more. As for Maggie, this intimation of a possibility she had not
thought of before affected her as a new trouble; the bare idea of Tom’s
being always lame overpowered the assurance that such a misfortune was
not likely to befall him, and she clung to him and cried afresh.
“Don’t be a little silly, Magsie,” said Tom, tenderly, feeling very
brave now. “I shall soon get well.”
“Good-by, Tulliver,” said Philip, putting out his small, delicate hand,
which Tom clasped immediately with his more substantial fingers.
“I say,” said Tom, “ask Mr Stelling to let you come and sit with me
sometimes, till I get up again, Wakem; and tell me about Robert Bruce,
you know.”
After that, Philip spent all his time out of school-hours with Tom and
Maggie. Tom liked to hear fighting stories as much as ever, but he
insisted strongly on the fact that those great fighters who did so many
wonderful things and came off unhurt, wore excellent armor from head to
foot, which made fighting easy work, he considered. He should not have
hurt his foot if he had had an iron shoe on. He listened with great
interest to a new story of Philip’s about a man who had a very bad
wound in his foot, and cried out so dreadfully with the pain that his
friends could bear with him no longer, but put him ashore on a desert
island, with nothing but some wonderful poisoned arrows to kill animals
with for food.
“I didn’t roar out a bit, you know,” Tom said, “and I dare say my foot
was as bad as his. It’s cowardly to roar.”
But Maggie would have it that when anything hurt you very much, it was
quite permissible to cry out, and it was cruel of people not to bear
it. She wanted to know if Philoctetes had a sister, and why _she_
didn’t go with him on the desert island and take care of him.
One day, soon after Philip had told this story, he and Maggie were in
the study alone together while Tom’s foot was being dressed. Philip was
at his books, and Maggie, after sauntering idly round the room, not
caring to do anything in particular, because she would soon go to Tom
again, went and leaned on the table near Philip to see what he was
doing, for they were quite old friends now, and perfectly at home with
each other.
“What are you reading about in Greek?” she said. “It’s poetry, I can
see that, because the lines are so short.”
“It’s about Philoctetes, the lame man I was telling you of yesterday,”
he answered, resting his head on his hand, and looking at her as if he
were not at all sorry to be interrupted. Maggie, in her absent way,
continued to lean forward, resting on her arms and moving her feet
about, while her dark eyes got more and more fixed and vacant, as if
she had quite forgotten Philip and his book.
“Maggie,” said Philip, after a minute or two, still leaning on his
elbow and looking at her, “if you had had a brother like me, do you
think you should have loved him as well as Tom?”
Maggie started a little on being roused from her reverie, and said,
“What?” Philip repeated his question.
“Oh, yes, better,” she answered immediately. “No, not better; because I
don’t think I _could_ love you better than Tom. But I should be so
sorry,—_so sorry_ for you.”
Philip coloured; he had meant to imply, would she love him as well in
spite of his deformity, and yet when she alluded to it so plainly, he
winced under her pity. Maggie, young as she was, felt her mistake.
Hitherto she had instinctively behaved as if she were quite unconscious
of Philip’s deformity; her own keen sensitiveness and experience under
family criticism sufficed to teach her this as well as if she had been
directed by the most finished breeding.
“But you are so very clever, Philip, and you can play and sing,” she
added quickly. “I wish you _were_ my brother. I’m very fond of you. And
you would stay at home with me when Tom went out, and you would teach
me everything; wouldn’t you,—Greek and everything?”
“But you’ll go away soon, and go to school, Maggie,” said Philip, “and
then you’ll forget all about me, and not care for me any more. And then
I shall see you when you’re grown up, and you’ll hardly take any notice
of me.”
“Oh, no, I sha’n’t forget you, I’m sure,” said Maggie, shaking her head
very seriously. “I never forget anything, and I think about everybody
when I’m away from them. I think about poor Yap; he’s got a lump in his
throat, and Luke says he’ll die. Only don’t you tell Tom, because it
will vex him so. You never saw Yap; he’s a queer little dog,—nobody
cares about him but Tom and me.”
“Do you care as much about me as you do about Yap, Maggie?” said
Philip, smiling rather sadly.
“Oh, yes, I should think so,” said Maggie, laughing.
“I’m very fond of _you_, Maggie; I shall never forget _you_,” said
Philip, “and when I’m very unhappy, I shall always think of you, and
wish I had a sister with dark eyes, just like yours.”
“Why do you like my eyes?” said Maggie, well pleased. She had never
heard any one but her father speak of her eyes as if they had merit.
“I don’t know,” said Philip. “They’re not like any other eyes. They
seem trying to speak,—trying to speak kindly. I don’t like other people
to look at me much, but I like you to look at me, Maggie.”
“Why, I think you’re fonder of me than Tom is,” said Maggie, rather
sorrowfully. Then, wondering how she could convince Philip that she
could like him just as well, although he was crooked, she said:
“Should you like me to kiss you, as I do Tom? I will, if you like.”
“Yes, very much; nobody kisses me.”
Maggie put her arm round his neck and kissed him quite earnestly.
“There now,” she said, “I shall always remember you, and kiss you when
I see you again, if it’s ever so long. But I’ll go now, because I think
Mr Askern’s done with Tom’s foot.”
When their father came the second time, Maggie said to him, “Oh,
father, Philip Wakem is so very good to Tom; he is such a clever boy,
and I _do_ love him. And you love him too, Tom, don’t you? _Say_ you
love him,” she added entreatingly.
Tom coloured a little as he looked at his father, and said: “I sha’n’t
be friends with him when I leave school, father; but we’ve made it up
now, since my foot has been bad, and he’s taught me to play at
draughts, and I can beat him.”
“Well, well,” said Mr Tulliver, “if he’s good to you, try and make him
amends, and be good to _him_. He’s a poor crooked creature, and takes
after his dead mother. But don’t you be getting too thick with him;
he’s got his father’s blood in him too. Ay, ay, the gray colt may
chance to kick like his black sire.”
The jarring natures of the two boys effected what Mr Tulliver’s
admonition alone might have failed to effect; in spite of Philip’s new
kindness, and Tom’s answering regard in this time of his trouble, they
never became close friends. When Maggie was gone, and when Tom
by-and-by began to walk about as usual, the friendly warmth that had
been kindled by pity and gratitude died out by degrees, and left them
in their old relation to each other. Philip was often peevish and
contemptuous; and Tom’s more specific and kindly impressions gradually
melted into the old background of suspicion and dislike toward him as a
queer fellow, a humpback, and the son of a rogue. If boys and men are
to be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be
made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the
heat dies out.
Chapter VII.
The Golden Gates Are Passed
So Tom went on even to the fifth half-year—till he was turned
sixteen—at King’s Lorton, while Maggie was growing with a rapidity
which her aunts considered highly reprehensible, at Miss Firniss’s
boarding-school in the ancient town of Laceham on the Floss, with
cousin Lucy for her companion. In her early letters to Tom she had
always sent her love to Philip, and asked many questions about him,
which were answered by brief sentences about Tom’s toothache, and a
turf-house which he was helping to build in the garden, with other
items of that kind. She was pained to hear Tom say in the holidays that
Philip was as queer as ever again, and often cross. They were no longer
very good friends, she perceived; and when she reminded Tom that he
ought always to love Philip for being so good to him when his foot was
bad, he answered: “Well, it isn’t my fault; _I_ don’t do anything to
him.” She hardly ever saw Philip during the remainder of their
school-life; in the Midsummer holidays he was always away at the
seaside, and at Christmas she could only meet him at long intervals in
the street of St Ogg’s. When they did meet, she remembered her promise
to kiss him, but, as a young lady who had been at a boarding-school,
she knew now that such a greeting was out of the question, and Philip
would not expect it. The promise was void, like so many other sweet,
illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden
before the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms grew side
by side with the ripening peach,—impossible to be fulfilled when the
golden gates had been passed.
But when their father was actually engaged in the long-threatened
lawsuit, and Wakem, as the agent at once of Pivart and Old Harry, was
acting against him, even Maggie felt, with some sadness, that they were
not likely ever to have any intimacy with Philip again; the very name
of Wakem made her father angry, and she had once heard him say that if
that crook-backed son lived to inherit his father’s ill-gotten gains,
there would be a curse upon him. “Have as little to do with him at
school as you can, my lad,” he said to Tom; and the command was obeyed
the more easily because Mr Sterling by this time had two additional
pupils; for though this gentleman’s rise in the world was not of that
meteor-like rapidity which the admirers of his extemporaneous eloquence
had expected for a preacher whose voice demanded so wide a sphere, he
had yet enough of growing prosperity to enable him to increase his
expenditure in continued disproportion to his income.
As for Tom’s school course, it went on with mill-like monotony, his
mind continuing to move with a slow, half-stifled pulse in a medium of
uninteresting or unintelligible ideas. But each vacation he brought
home larger and larger drawings with the satiny rendering of landscape,
and water-colours in vivid greens, together with manuscript books full
of exercises and problems, in which the handwriting was all the finer
because he gave his whole mind to it. Each vacation he brought home a
new book or two, indicating his progress through different stages of
history, Christian doctrine, and Latin literature; and that passage was
not entirely without results, besides the possession of the books.
Tom’s ear and tongue had become accustomed to a great many words and
phrases which are understood to be signs of an educated condition; and
though he had never really applied his mind to any one of his lessons,
the lessons had left a deposit of vague, fragmentary, ineffectual
notions. Mr Tulliver, seeing signs of acquirement beyond the reach of
his own criticism, thought it was probably all right with Tom’s
education; he observed, indeed, that there were no maps, and not enough
“summing”; but he made no formal complaint to Mr Stelling. It was a
puzzling business, this schooling; and if he took Tom away, where could
he send him with better effect?
By the time Tom had reached his last quarter at King’s Lorton, the
years had made striking changes in him since the day we saw him
returning from Mr Jacobs’s academy. He was a tall youth now, carrying
himself without the least awkwardness, and speaking without more
shyness than was a becoming symptom of blended diffidence and pride; he
wore his tail-coat and his stand-up collars, and watched the down on
his lip with eager impatience, looking every day at his virgin razor,
with which he had provided himself in the last holidays. Philip had
already left,—at the autumn quarter,—that he might go to the south for
the winter, for the sake of his health; and this change helped to give
Tom the unsettled, exultant feeling that usually belongs to the last
months before leaving school. This quarter, too, there was some hope of
his father’s lawsuit being decided; _that_ made the prospect of home
more entirely pleasurable. For Tom, who had gathered his view of the
case from his father’s conversation, had no doubt that Pivart would be
beaten.
Tom had not heard anything from home for some weeks,—a fact which did
not surprise him, for his father and mother were not apt to manifest
their affection in unnecessary letters,—when, to his great surprise, on
the morning of a dark, cold day near the end of November, he was told,
soon after entering the study at nine o’clock, that his sister was in
the drawing-room. It was Mrs Stelling who had come into the study to
tell him, and she left him to enter the drawing-room alone.
Maggie, too, was tall now, with braided and coiled hair; she was almost
as tall as Tom, though she was only thirteen; and she really looked
older than he did at that moment. She had thrown off her bonnet, her
heavy braids were pushed back from her forehead, as if it would not
bear that extra load, and her young face had a strangely worn look, as
her eyes turned anxiously toward the door. When Tom entered she did not
speak, but only went up to him, put her arms round his neck, and kissed
him earnestly. He was used to various moods of hers, and felt no alarm
at the unusual seriousness of her greeting.
“Why, how is it you’re come so early this cold morning, Maggie? Did you
come in the gig?” said Tom, as she backed toward the sofa, and drew him
to her side.
“No, I came by the coach. I’ve walked from the turnpike.”
“But how is it you’re not at school? The holidays have not begun yet?”
“Father wanted me at home,” said Maggie, with a slight trembling of the
lip. “I came home three or four days ago.”
“Isn’t my father well?” said Tom, rather anxiously.
“Not quite,” said Maggie. “He’s very unhappy, Tom. The lawsuit is
ended, and I came to tell you because I thought it would be better for
you to know it before you came home, and I didn’t like only to send you
a letter.”
“My father hasn’t lost?” said Tom, hastily, springing from the sofa,
and standing before Maggie with his hands suddenly thrust into his
pockets.
“Yes, dear Tom,” said Maggie, looking up at him with trembling.
Tom was silent a minute or two, with his eyes fixed on the floor. Then
he said:
“My father will have to pay a good deal of money, then?”
“Yes,” said Maggie, rather faintly.
“Well, it can’t be helped,” said Tom, bravely, not translating the loss
of a large sum of money into any tangible results. “But my father’s
very much vexed, I dare say?” he added, looking at Maggie, and thinking
that her agitated face was only part of her girlish way of taking
things.
“Yes,” said Maggie, again faintly. Then, urged to fuller speech by
Tom’s freedom from apprehension, she said loudly and rapidly, as if the
words _would_ burst from her: “Oh, Tom, he will lose the mill and the
land and everything; he will have nothing left.”
Tom’s eyes flashed out one look of surprise at her, before he turned
pale, and trembled visibly. He said nothing, but sat down on the sofa
again, looking vaguely out of the opposite window.
Anxiety about the future had never entered Tom’s mind. His father had
always ridden a good horse, kept a good house, and had the cheerful,
confident air of a man who has plenty of property to fall back upon.
Tom had never dreamed that his father would “fail”; _that_ was a form
of misfortune which he had always heard spoken of as a deep disgrace,
and disgrace was an idea that he could not associate with any of his
relations, least of all with his father. A proud sense of family
respectability was part of the very air Tom had been born and brought
up in. He knew there were people in St Ogg’s who made a show without
money to support it, and he had always heard such people spoken of by
his own friends with contempt and reprobation. He had a strong belief,
which was a lifelong habit, and required no definite evidence to rest
on, that his father could spend a great deal of money if he chose; and
since his education at Mr Stelling’s had given him a more expensive
view of life, he had often thought that when he got older he would make
a figure in the world, with his horse and dogs and saddle, and other
accoutrements of a fine young man, and show himself equal to any of his
contemporaries at St Ogg’s, who might consider themselves a grade above
him in society because their fathers were professional men, or had
large oil-mills. As to the prognostics and headshaking of his aunts and
uncles, they had never produced the least effect on him, except to make
him think that aunts and uncles were disagreeable society; he had heard
them find fault in much the same way as long as he could remember. His
father knew better than they did.
The down had come on Tom’s lip, yet his thoughts and expectations had
been hitherto only the reproduction, in changed forms, of the boyish
dreams in which he had lived three years ago. He was awakened now with
a violent shock.
Maggie was frightened at Tom’s pale, trembling silence. There was
something else to tell him,—something worse. She threw her arms round
him at last, and said, with a half sob:
“Oh, Tom—dear, dear Tom, don’t fret too much; try and bear it well.”
Tom turned his cheek passively to meet her entreating kisses, and there
gathered a moisture in his eyes, which he just rubbed away with his
hand. The action seemed to rouse him, for he shook himself and said: “I
shall go home, with you, Maggie. Didn’t my father say I was to go?”
“No, Tom, father didn’t wish it,” said Maggie, her anxiety about _his_
feeling helping her to master her agitation. What _would_ he do when
she told him all? “But mother wants you to come,—poor mother!—she cries
so. Oh, Tom, it’s very dreadful at home.”
Maggie’s lips grew whiter, and she began to tremble almost as Tom had
done. The two poor things clung closer to each other, both
trembling,—the one at an unshapen fear, the other at the image of a
terrible certainty. When Maggie spoke, it was hardly above a whisper.
“And—and—poor father——”
Maggie could not utter it. But the suspense was intolerable to Tom. A
vague idea of going to prison, as a consequence of debt, was the shape
his fears had begun to take.
“Where’s my father?” he said impatiently. “_Tell_ me, Maggie.”
“He’s at home,” said Maggie, finding it easier to reply to that
question. “But,” she added, after a pause, “not himself—he fell off his
horse. He has known nobody but me ever since—he seems to have lost his
senses. O father, father——”
With these last words, Maggie’s sobs burst forth with the more violence
for the previous struggle against them. Tom felt that pressure of the
heart which forbids tears; he had no distinct vision of their troubles
as Maggie had, who had been at home; he only felt the crushing weight
of what seemed unmitigated misfortune. He tightened his arm almost
convulsively round Maggie as she sobbed, but his face looked rigid and
tearless, his eyes blank,—as if a black curtain of cloud had suddenly
fallen on his path.
But Maggie soon checked herself abruptly; a single thought had acted on
her like a startling sound.
“We must set out, Tom, we must not stay. Father will miss me; we must
be at the turnpike at ten to meet the coach.” She said this with hasty
decision, rubbing her eyes, and rising to seize her bonnet.
Tom at once felt the same impulse, and rose too. “Wait a minute,
Maggie,” he said. “I must speak to Mr Stelling, and then we’ll go.”
He thought he must go to the study where the pupils were; but on his
way he met Mr Stelling, who had heard from his wife that Maggie
appeared to be in trouble when she asked for her brother, and now that
he thought the brother and sister had been alone long enough, was
coming to inquire and offer his sympathy.
“Please, sir, I must go home,” Tom said abruptly, as he met Mr Stelling
in the passage. “I must go back with my sister directly. My father’s
lost his lawsuit—he’s lost all his property—and he’s very ill.”
Mr Stelling felt like a kind-hearted man; he foresaw a probable money
loss for himself, but this had no appreciable share in his feeling,
while he looked with grave pity at the brother and sister for whom
youth and sorrow had begun together. When he knew how Maggie had come,
and how eager she was to get home again, he hurried their departure,
only whispering something to Mrs Stelling, who had followed him, and
who immediately left the room.
Tom and Maggie were standing on the door-step, ready to set out, when
Mrs Stelling came with a little basket, which she hung on Maggie’s arm,
saying: “Do remember to eat something on the way, dear.” Maggie’s heart
went out toward this woman whom she had never liked, and she kissed her
silently. It was the first sign within the poor child of that new sense
which is the gift of sorrow,—that susceptibility to the bare offices of
humanity which raises them into a bond of loving fellowship, as to
haggard men among the ice-bergs the mere presence of an ordinary
comrade stirs the deep fountains of affection.
Mr Stelling put his hand on Tom’s shoulder and said: “God bless you, my
boy; let me know how you get on.” Then he pressed Maggie’s hand; but
there were no audible good-byes. Tom had so often thought how joyful he
should be the day he left school “for good”! And now his school years
seemed like a holiday that had come to an end.
The two slight youthful figures soon grew indistinct on the distant
road,—were soon lost behind the projecting hedgerow.
They had gone forth together into their life of sorrow, and they would
never more see the sunshine undimmed by remembered cares. They had
entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood
had forever closed behind them.
BOOK THIRD
THE DOWNFALL.
Chapter I.
What Had Happened at Home
When Mr Tulliver first knew the fact that the lawsuit was decided
against him, and that Pivart and Wakem were triumphant, every one who
happened to observe him at the time thought that, for so confident and
hot-tempered a man, he bore the blow remarkably well. He thought so
himself; he thought he was going to show that if Wakem or anybody else
considered him crushed, they would find themselves mistaken. He could
not refuse to see that the costs of this protracted suit would take
more than he possessed to pay them; but he appeared to himself to be
full of expedients by which he could ward off any results but such as
were tolerable, and could avoid the appearance of breaking down in the
world. All the obstinacy and defiance of his nature, driven out of
their old channel, found a vent for themselves in the immediate
formation of plans by which he would meet his difficulties, and remain
Mr Tulliver of Dorlcote Mill in spite of them. There was such a rush of
projects in his brain, that it was no wonder his face was flushed when
he came away from his talk with his attorney, Mr Gore, and mounted his
horse to ride home from Lindum. There was Furley, who held the mortgage
on the land,—a reasonable fellow, who would see his own interest, Mr
Tulliver was convinced, and who would be glad not only to purchase the
whole estate, including the mill and homestead, but would accept Mr
Tulliver as tenant, and be willing to advance money to be repaid with
high interest out of the profits of the business, which would be made
over to him, Mr Tulliver only taking enough barely to maintain himself
and his family. Who would neglect such a profitable investment?
Certainly not Furley, for Mr Tulliver had determined that Furley should
meet his plans with the utmost alacrity; and there are men whoses
brains have not yet been dangerously heated by the loss of a lawsuit,
who are apt to see in their own interest or desires a motive for other
men’s actions. There was no doubt (in the miller’s mind) that Furley
would do just what was desirable; and if he did—why, things would not
be so very much worse. Mr Tulliver and his family must live more
meagrely and humbly, but it would only be till the profits of the
business had paid off Furley’s advances, and that might be while Mr
Tulliver had still a good many years of life before him. It was clear
that the costs of the suit could be paid without his being obliged to
turn out of his old place, and look like a ruined man. It was certainly
an awkward moment in his affairs. There was that suretyship for poor
Riley, who had died suddenly last April, and left his friend saddled
with a debt of two hundred and fifty pounds,—a fact which had helped to
make Mr Tulliver’s banking book less pleasant reading than a man might
desire toward Christmas. Well! he had never been one of those
poor-spirited sneaks who would refuse to give a helping hand to a
fellow-traveller in this puzzling world. The really vexatious business
was the fact that some months ago the creditor who had lent him the
five hundred pounds to repay Mrs Glegg had become uneasy about his
money (set on by Wakem, of course), and Mr Tulliver, still confident
that he should gain his suit, and finding it eminently inconvenient to
raise the said sum until that desirable issue had taken place, had
rashly acceded to the demand that he should give a bill of sale on his
household furniture and some other effects, as security in lieu of the
bond. It was all one, he had said to himself; he should soon pay off
the money, and there was no harm in giving that security any more than
another. But now the consequences of this bill of sale occurred to him
in a new light, and he remembered that the time was close at hand when
it would be enforced unless the money were repaid. Two months ago he
would have declared stoutly that he would never be beholden to his
wife’s friends; but now he told himself as stoutly that it was nothing
but right and natural that Bessy should go to the Pullets and explain
the thing to them; they would hardly let Bessy’s furniture be sold, and
it might be security to Pullet if he advanced the money,—there would,
after all, be no gift or favour in the matter. Mr Tulliver would never
have asked for anything from so poor-spirited a fellow for himself, but
Bessy might do so if she liked.
It is precisely the proudest and most obstinate men who are the most
liable to shift their position and contradict themselves in this sudden
manner; everything is easier to them than to face the simple fact that
they have been thoroughly defeated, and must begin life anew. And Mr
Tulliver, you perceive, though nothing more than a superior miller and
maltster, was as proud and obstinate as if he had been a very lofty
personage, in whom such dispositions might be a source of that
conspicuous, far-echoing tragedy, which sweeps the stage in regal
robes, and makes the dullest chronicler sublime. The pride and
obstinacy of millers and other insignificant people, whom you pass
unnoticingly on the road every day, have their tragedy too; but it is
of that unwept, hidden sort that goes on from generation to generation,
and leaves no record,—such tragedy, perhaps, as lies in the conflicts
of young souls, hungry for joy, under a lot made suddenly hard to them,
under the dreariness of a home where the morning brings no promise with
it, and where the unexpectant discontent of worn and disappointed
parents weighs on the children like a damp, thick air, in which all the
functions of life are depressed; or such tragedy as lies in the slow or
sudden death that follows on a bruised passion, though it may be a
death that finds only a parish funeral. There are certain animals to
which tenacity of position is a law of life,—they can never flourish
again, after a single wrench: and there are certain human beings to
whom predominance is a law of life,—they can only sustain humiliation
so long as they can refuse to believe in it, and, in their own
conception, predominate still.
Mr Tulliver was still predominating, in his own imagination, as he
approached St Ogg’s, through which he had to pass on his way homeward.
But what was it that suggested to him, as he saw the Laceham coach
entering the town, to follow it to the coach-office, and get the clerk
there to write a letter, requiring Maggie to come home the very next
day? Mr Tulliver’s own hand shook too much under his excitement for him
to write himself, and he wanted the letter to be given to the coachman
to deliver at Miss Firniss’s school in the morning. There was a craving
which he would not account for to himself, to have Maggie near him,
without delay,—she must come back by the coach to-morrow.
To Mrs Tulliver, when he got home, he would admit no difficulties, and
scolded down her burst of grief on hearing that the lawsuit was lost,
by angry assertions that there was nothing to grieve about. He said
nothing to her that night about the bill of sale and the application to
Mrs Pullet, for he had kept her in ignorance of the nature of that
transaction, and had explained the necessity for taking an inventory of
the goods as a matter connected with his will. The possession of a wife
conspicuously one’s inferior in intellect is, like other high
privileges, attended with a few inconveniences, and, among the rest,
with the occasional necessity for using a little deception.
The next day Mr Tulliver was again on horseback in the afternoon, on
his way to Mr Gore’s office at St Ogg’s. Gore was to have seen Furley
in the morning, and to have sounded him in relation to Mr Tulliver’s
affairs. But he had not gone half-way when he met a clerk from Mr
Gore’s office, who was bringing a letter to Mr Tulliver. Mr Gore had
been prevented by a sudden call of business from waiting at his office
to see Mr Tulliver, according to appointment, but would be at his
office at eleven to-morrow morning, and meanwhile had sent some
important information by letter.
“Oh!” said Mr Tulliver, taking the letter, but not opening it. “Then
tell Gore I’ll see him to-morrow at eleven”; and he turned his horse.
The clerk, struck with Mr Tulliver’s glistening, excited glance, looked
after him for a few moments, and then rode away. The reading of a
letter was not the affair of an instant to Mr Tulliver; he took in the
sense of a statement very slowly through the medium of written or even
printed characters; so he had put the letter in his pocket, thinking he
would open it in his armchair at home. But by-and-by it occurred to him
that there might be something in the letter Mrs Tulliver must not know
about, and if so, it would be better to keep it out of her sight
altogether. He stopped his horse, took out the letter, and read it. It
was only a short letter; the substance was, that Mr Gore had
ascertained, on secret, but sure authority, that Furley had been lately
much straitened for money, and had parted with his securities,—among
the rest, the mortgage on Mr Tulliver’s property, which he had
transferred to——Wakem.
In half an hour after this Mr Tulliver’s own wagoner found him lying by
the roadside insensible, with an open letter near him, and his gray
horse snuffing uneasily about him.
When Maggie reached home that evening, in obedience to her father’s
call, he was no longer insensible. About an hour before he had become
conscious, and after vague, vacant looks around him, had muttered
something about “a letter,” which he presently repeated impatiently. At
the instance of Mr Turnbull, the medical man, Gore’s letter was brought
and laid on the bed, and the previous impatience seemed to be allayed.
The stricken man lay for some time with his eyes fixed on the letter,
as if he were trying to knit up his thoughts by its help. But presently
a new wave of memory seemed to have come and swept the other away; he
turned his eyes from the letter to the door, and after looking
uneasily, as if striving to see something his eyes were too dim for, he
said, “The little wench.”
He repeated the words impatiently from time to time, appearing entirely
unconscious of everything except this one importunate want, and giving
no sign of knowing his wife or any one else; and poor Mrs Tulliver, her
feeble faculties almost paralyzed by this sudden accumulation of
troubles, went backward and forward to the gate to see if the Laceham
coach were coming, though it was not yet time.
But it came at last, and set down the poor anxious girl, no longer the
“little wench,” except to her father’s fond memory.
“Oh, mother, what is the matter?” Maggie said, with pale lips, as her
mother came toward her crying. She didn’t think her father was ill,
because the letter had come at his dictation from the office at St
Ogg’s.
But Mr Turnbull came now to meet her; a medical man is the good angel
of the troubled house, and Maggie ran toward the kind old friend, whom
she remembered as long as she could remember anything, with a
trembling, questioning look.
“Don’t alarm yourself too much, my dear,” he said, taking her hand.
“Your father has had a sudden attack, and has not quite recovered his
memory. But he has been asking for you, and it will do him good to see
you. Keep as quiet as you can; take off your things, and come upstairs
with me.”
Maggie obeyed, with that terrible beating of the heart which makes
existence seem simply a painful pulsation. The very quietness with
which Mr Turnbull spoke had frightened her susceptible imagination. Her
father’s eyes were still turned uneasily toward the door when she
entered and met the strange, yearning, helpless look that had been
seeking her in vain. With a sudden flash and movement, he raised
himself in the bed; she rushed toward him, and clasped him with
agonised kisses.
Poor child! it was very early for her to know one of those supreme
moments in life when all we have hoped or delighted in, all we can
dread or endure, falls away from our regard as insignificant; is lost,
like a trivial memory, in that simple, primitive love which knits us to
the beings who have been nearest to us, in their times of helplessness
or of anguish.
But that flash of recognition had been too great a strain on the
father’s bruised, enfeebled powers. He sank back again in renewed
insensibility and rigidity, which lasted for many hours, and was only
broken by a flickering return of consciousness, in which he took
passively everything that was given to him, and seemed to have a sort
of infantine satisfaction in Maggie’s near presence,—such satisfaction
as a baby has when it is returned to the nurse’s lap.
Mrs Tulliver sent for her sisters, and there was much wailing and
lifting up of hands below stairs. Both uncles and aunts saw that the
ruin of Bessy and her family was as complete as they had ever foreboded
it, and there was a general family sense that a judgment had fallen on
Mr Tulliver, which it would be an impiety to counteract by too much
kindness. But Maggie heard little of this, scarcely ever leaving her
father’s bedside, where she sat opposite him with her hand on his. Mrs
Tulliver wanted to have Tom fetched home, and seemed to be thinking
more of her boy even than of her husband; but the aunts and uncles
opposed this. Tom was better at school, since Mr Turnbull said there
was no immediate danger, he believed. But at the end of the second day,
when Maggie had become more accustomed to her father’s fits of
insensibility, and to the expectation that he would revive from them,
the thought of Tom had become urgent with _her_ too; and when her
mother sate crying at night and saying, “My poor lad—it’s nothing but
right he should come home,” Maggie said, “Let me go for him, and tell
him, mother; I’ll go to-morrow morning if father doesn’t know me and
want me. It would be so hard for Tom to come home and not know anything
about it beforehand.”
And the next morning Maggie went, as we have seen. Sitting on the coach
on their way home, the brother and sister talked to each other in sad,
interrupted whispers.
“They say Mr Wakem has got a mortgage or something on the land, Tom,”
said Maggie. “It was the letter with that news in it that made father
ill, they think.”
“I believe that scoundrel’s been planning all along to ruin my father,”
said Tom, leaping from the vaguest impressions to a definite
conclusion. “I’ll make him feel for it when I’m a man. Mind you never
speak to Philip again.”
“Oh, Tom!” said Maggie, in a tone of sad remonstrance; but she had no
spirit to dispute anything then, still less to vex Tom by opposing him.
Chapter II.
Mrs Tulliver’s Teraphim, or Household Gods
When the coach set down Tom and Maggie, it was five hours since she had
started from home, and she was thinking with some trembling that her
father had perhaps missed her, and asked for “the little wench” in
vain. She thought of no other change that might have happened.
She hurried along the gravel-walk and entered the house before Tom; but
in the entrance she was startled by a strong smell of tobacco. The
parlour door was ajar; that was where the smell came from. It was very
strange; could any visitor be smoking at a time like this? Was her
mother there? If so, she must be told that Tom was come. Maggie, after
this pause of surprise, was only in the act of opening the door when
Tom came up, and they both looked into the parlour together.
There was a coarse, dingy man, of whose face Tom had some vague
recollection, sitting in his father’s chair, smoking, with a jug and
glass beside him.
The truth flashed on Tom’s mind in an instant. To “have the bailiff in
the house,” and “to be sold up,” were phrases which he had been used
to, even as a little boy; they were part of the disgrace and misery of
“failing,” of losing all one’s money, and being ruined,—sinking into
the condition of poor working people. It seemed only natural this
should happen, since his father had lost all his property, and he
thought of no more special cause for this particular form of misfortune
than the loss of the lawsuit. But the immediate presence of this
disgrace was so much keener an experience to Tom than the worst form of
apprehension, that he felt at this moment as if his real trouble had
only just begun: it was a touch on the irritated nerve compared with
its spontaneous dull aching.
“How do you do, sir?” said the man, taking the pipe out of his mouth,
with rough, embarrassed civility. The two young startled faces made him
a little uncomfortable.
But Tom turned away hastily without speaking; the sight was too
hateful. Maggie had not understood the appearance of this stranger, as
Tom had. She followed him, whispering: “Who can it be, Tom? What is the
matter?” Then, with a sudden undefined dread lest this stranger might
have something to do with a change in her father, she rushed upstairs,
checking herself at the bedroom door to throw off her bonnet, and enter
on tiptoe. All was silent there; her father was lying, heedless of
everything around him, with his eyes closed as when she had left him. A
servant was there, but not her mother.
“Where’s my mother?” she whispered. The servant did not know.
Maggie hastened out, and said to Tom; “Father is lying quiet; let us go
and look for my mother. I wonder where she is.”
Mrs Tulliver was not downstairs, not in any of the bedrooms. There was
but one room below the attic which Maggie had left unsearched; it was
the storeroom, where her mother kept all her linen and all the precious
“best things” that were only unwrapped and brought out on special
occasions.
Tom, preceding Maggie, as they returned along the passage, opened the
door of this room, and immediately said, “Mother!”
Mrs Tulliver was seated there with all her laid-up treasures. One of
the linen chests was open; the silver teapot was unwrapped from its
many folds of paper, and the best china was laid out on the top of the
closed linen-chest; spoons and skewers and ladles were spread in rows
on the shelves; and the poor woman was shaking her head and weeping,
with a bitter tension of the mouth, over the mark, “Elizabeth Dodson,”
on the corner of some tablecloths she held in her lap.
She dropped them, and started up as Tom spoke.
“Oh, my boy, my boy!” she said, clasping him round the neck. “To think
as I should live to see this day! We’re ruined—everything’s going to be
sold up—to think as your father should ha’ married me to bring me to
this! We’ve got nothing—we shall be beggars—we must go to the
workhouse——”
She kissed him, then seated herself again, and took another tablecloth
on her lap, unfolding it a little way to look at the pattern, while the
children stood by in mute wretchedness, their minds quite filled for
the moment with the words “beggars” and “workhouse.”
“To think o’ these cloths as I spun myself,” she went on, lifting
things out and turning them over with an excitement all the more
strange and piteous because the stout blond woman was usually so
passive,—if she had been ruffled before, it was at the surface
merely,—“and Job Haxey wove ’em, and brought the piece home on his
back, as I remember standing at the door and seeing him come, before I
ever thought o’ marrying your father! And the pattern as I chose
myself, and bleached so beautiful, and I marked ’em so as nobody ever
saw such marking,—they must cut the cloth to get it out, for it’s a
particular stitch. And they’re all to be sold, and go into strange
people’s houses, and perhaps be cut with the knives, and wore out
before I’m dead. You’ll never have one of ’em, my boy,” she said,
looking up at Tom with her eyes full of tears, “and I meant ’em for
you. I wanted you to have all o’ this pattern. Maggie could have had
the large check—it never shows so well when the dishes are on it.”
Tom was touched to the quick, but there was an angry reaction
immediately. His face flushed as he said:
“But will my aunts let them be sold, mother? Do they know about it?
They’ll never let your linen go, will they? Haven’t you sent to them?”
“Yes, I sent Luke directly they’d put the bailies in, and your aunt
Pullet’s been—and, oh dear, oh dear, she cries so and says your
father’s disgraced my family and made it the talk o’ the country; and
she’ll buy the spotted cloths for herself, because she’s never had so
many as she wanted o’ that pattern, and they sha’n’t go to strangers,
but she’s got more checks a’ready nor she can do with.” (Here Mrs
Tulliver began to lay back the tablecloths in the chest, folding and
stroking them automatically.) “And your uncle Glegg’s been too, and he
says things must be bought in for us to lie down on, but he must talk
to your aunt; and they’re all coming to consult. But I know they’ll
none of ’em take my chany,” she added, turning toward the cups and
saucers, “for they all found fault with ’em when I bought ’em, ’cause
o’ the small gold sprig all over ’em, between the flowers. But there’s
none of ’em got better chany, not even your aunt Pullet herself; and I
bought it wi’ my own money as I’d saved ever since I was turned
fifteen; and the silver teapot, too,—your father never paid for ’em.
And to think as he should ha’ married me, and brought me to this.”
Mrs Tulliver burst out crying afresh, and she sobbed with her
handkerchief at her eyes a few moments, but then removing it, she said
in a deprecating way, still half sobbing, as if she were called upon to
speak before she could command her voice,—
“And I _did_ say to him times and times, ‘Whativer you do, don’t go to
law,’ and what more could I do? I’ve had to sit by while my own
fortin’s been spent, and what should ha’ been my children’s, too.
You’ll have niver a penny, my boy—but it isn’t your poor mother’s
fault.”
She put out one arm toward Tom, looking up at him piteously with her
helpless, childish blue eyes. The poor lad went to her and kissed her,
and she clung to him. For the first time Tom thought of his father with
some reproach. His natural inclination to blame, hitherto kept entirely
in abeyance toward his father by the predisposition to think him always
right, simply on the ground that he was Tom Tulliver’s father, was
turned into this new channel by his mother’s plaints; and with his
indignation against Wakem there began to mingle some indignation of
another sort. Perhaps his father might have helped bringing them all
down in the world, and making people talk of them with contempt, but no
one should talk long of Tom Tulliver with contempt.
The natural strength and firmness of his nature was beginning to assert
itself, urged by the double stimulus of resentment against his aunts,
and the sense that he must behave like a man and take care of his
mother.
“Don’t fret, mother,” he said tenderly. “I shall soon be able to get
money; I’ll get a situation of some sort.”
“Bless you, my boy!” said Mrs Tulliver, a little soothed. Then, looking
round sadly, “But I shouldn’t ha’ minded so much if we could ha’ kept
the things wi’ my name on ’em.”
Maggie had witnessed this scene with gathering anger. The implied
reproaches against her father—her father, who was lying there in a sort
of living death—neutralised all her pity for griefs about tablecloths
and china; and her anger on her father’s account was heightened by some
egoistic resentment at Tom’s silent concurrence with her mother in
shutting her out from the common calamity. She had become almost
indifferent to her mother’s habitual depreciation of her, but she was
keenly alive to any sanction of it, however passive, that she might
suspect in Tom. Poor Maggie was by no means made up of unalloyed
devotedness, but put forth large claims for herself where she loved
strongly. She burst out at last in an agitated, almost violent tone:
“Mother, how can you talk so; as if you cared only for things with
_your_ name on, and not for what has my father’s name too; and to care
about anything but dear father himself!—when he’s lying there, and may
never speak to us again. Tom, you ought to say so too; you ought not to
let any one find fault with my father.”
Maggie, almost choked with mingled grief and anger, left the room, and
took her old place on her father’s bed. Her heart went out to him with
a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame
him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed all her life, and nothing
had come of it but evil tempers.
Her father had always defended and excused her, and her loving
remembrance of his tenderness was a force within her that would enable
her to do or bear anything for his sake.
Tom was a little shocked at Maggie’s outburst,—telling _him_ as well as
his mother what it was right to do! She ought to have learned better
than have those hectoring, assuming manners, by this time. But he
presently went into his father’s room, and the sight there touched him
in a way that effaced the slighter impressions of the previous hour.
When Maggie saw how he was moved, she went to him and put her arm round
his neck as he sat by the bed, and the two children forgot everything
else in the sense that they had one father and one sorrow.
Chapter III.
The Family Council
It was at eleven o’clock the next morning that the aunts and uncles
came to hold their consultation. The fire was lighted in the large
parlour, and poor Mrs Tulliver, with a confused impression that it was
a great occasion, like a funeral, unbagged the bell-rope tassels, and
unpinned the curtains, adjusting them in proper folds, looking round
and shaking her head sadly at the polished tops and legs of the tables,
which sister Pullet herself could not accuse of insufficient
brightness.
Mr Deane was not coming, he was away on business; but Mrs Deane
appeared punctually in that handsome new gig with the head to it, and
the livery-servant driving it, which had thrown so clear a light on
several traits in her character to some of her female friends in St
Ogg’s. Mr Deane had been advancing in the world as rapidly as Mr
Tulliver had been going down in it; and in Mrs Deane’s house the Dodson
linen and plate were beginning to hold quite a subordinate position, as
a mere supplement to the handsomer articles of the same kind, purchased
in recent years,—a change which had caused an occasional coolness in
the sisterly intercourse between her and Mrs Glegg, who felt that Susan
was getting “like the rest,” and there would soon be little of the true
Dodson spirit surviving except in herself, and, it might be hoped, in
those nephews who supported the Dodson name on the family land, far
away in the Wolds.
People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those
immediately under our own eyes; and it seems superfluous, when we
consider the remote geographical position of the Ethiopians, and how
very little the Greeks had to do with them, to inquire further why
Homer calls them “blameless.”
Mrs Deane was the first to arrive; and when she had taken her seat in
the large parlour, Mrs Tulliver came down to her with her comely face a
little distorted, nearly as it would have been if she had been crying.
She was not a woman who could shed abundant tears, except in moments
when the prospect of losing her furniture became unusually vivid, but
she felt how unfitting it was to be quite calm under present
circumstances.
“Oh, sister, what a world this is!” she exclaimed as she entered; “what
trouble, oh dear!”
Mrs Deane was a thin-lipped woman, who made small well-considered
speeches on peculiar occasions, repeating them afterward to her
husband, and asking him if she had not spoken very properly.
“Yes, sister,” she said deliberately, “this is a changing world, and we
don’t know to-day what may happen tomorrow. But it’s right to be
prepared for all things, and if trouble’s sent, to remember as it isn’t
sent without a cause. I’m very sorry for you as a sister, and if the
doctor orders jelly for Mr Tulliver, I hope you’ll let me know. I’ll
send it willingly; for it is but right he should have proper attendance
while he’s ill.”
“Thank you, Susan,” said Mrs Tulliver, rather faintly, withdrawing her
fat hand from her sister’s thin one. “But there’s been no talk o’ jelly
yet.” Then after a moment’s pause she added, “There’s a dozen o’ cut
jelly-glasses upstairs—I shall never put jelly into ’em no more.”
Her voice was rather agitated as she uttered the last words, but the
sound of wheels diverted her thoughts. Mr and Mrs Glegg were come, and
were almost immediately followed by Mr and Mrs Pullet.
Mrs Pullet entered crying, as a compendious mode, at all times, of
expressing what were her views of life in general, and what, in brief,
were the opinions she held concerning the particular case before her.
Mrs Glegg had on her fuzziest front, and garments which appeared to
have had a recent resurrection from rather a creasy form of burial; a
costume selected with the high moral purpose of instilling perfect
humility into Bessy and her children.
“Mrs G., won’t you come nearer the fire?” said her husband, unwilling
to take the more comfortable seat without offering it to her.
“You see I’ve seated myself here, Mr Glegg,” returned this superior
woman; “_you_ can roast yourself, if you like.”
“Well,” said Mr Glegg, seating himself good-humouredly, “and how’s the
poor man upstairs?”
“Dr Turnbull thought him a deal better this morning,” said Mrs
Tulliver; “he took more notice, and spoke to me; but he’s never known
Tom yet,—looks at the poor lad as if he was a stranger, though he said
something once about Tom and the pony. The doctor says his memory’s
gone a long way back, and he doesn’t know Tom because he’s thinking of
him when he was little. Eh dear, eh dear!”
“I doubt it’s the water got on his brain,” said aunt Pullet, turning
round from adjusting her cap in a melancholy way at the pier-glass.
“It’s much if he ever gets up again; and if he does, he’ll most like be
childish, as Mr Carr was, poor man! They fed him with a spoon as if
he’d been a babby for three year. He’d quite lost the use of his limbs;
but then he’d got a Bath chair, and somebody to draw him; and that’s
what you won’t have, I doubt, Bessy.”
“Sister Pullet,” said Mrs Glegg, severely, “if I understand right,
we’ve come together this morning to advise and consult about what’s to
be done in this disgrace as has fallen upon the family, and not to talk
o’ people as don’t belong to us. Mr Carr was none of our blood, nor
noways connected with us, as I’ve ever heared.”
“Sister Glegg,” said Mrs Pullet, in a pleading tone, drawing on her
gloves again, and stroking the fingers in an agitated manner, “if
you’ve got anything disrespectful to say o’ Mr Carr, I do beg of you as
you won’t say it to me. _I_ know what he was,” she added, with a sigh;
“his breath was short to that degree as you could hear him two rooms
off.”
“Sophy!” said Mrs Glegg, with indignant disgust, “you _do_ talk o’
people’s complaints till it’s quite undecent. But I say again, as I
said before, I didn’t come away from home to talk about acquaintances,
whether they’d short breath or long. If we aren’t come together for one
to hear what the other ’ull do to save a sister and her children from
the parish, _I_ shall go back. _One_ can’t act without the other, I
suppose; it isn’t to be expected as _I_ should do everything.”
“Well, Jane,” said Mrs Pullet, “I don’t see as you’ve been so very
forrard at doing. So far as I know, this is the first time as here
you’ve been, since it’s been known as the bailiff’s in the house; and I
was here yesterday, and looked at all Bessy’s linen and things, and I
told her I’d buy in the spotted tablecloths. I couldn’t speak fairer;
for as for the teapot as she doesn’t want to go out o’ the family, it
stands to sense I can’t do with two silver teapots, not if it _hadn’t_
a straight spout, but the spotted damask I was allays fond on.”
“I wish it could be managed so as my teapot and chany and the best
castors needn’t be put up for sale,” said poor Mrs Tulliver,
beseechingly, “and the sugar-tongs the first things ever I bought.”
“But that can’t be helped, you know,” said Mr Glegg. “If one o’ the
family chooses to buy ’em in, they can, but one thing must be bid for
as well as another.”
“And it isn’t to be looked for,” said uncle Pullet, with unwonted
independence of idea, “as your own family should pay more for things
nor they’ll fetch. They may go for an old song by auction.”
“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Mrs Tulliver, “to think o’ my chany being sold
i’ that way, and I bought it when I was married, just as you did yours,
Jane and Sophy; and I know you didn’t like mine, because o’ the sprig,
but I was fond of it; and there’s never been a bit broke, for I’ve
washed it myself; and there’s the tulips on the cups, and the roses, as
anybody might go and look at ’em for pleasure. You wouldn’t like _your_
chany to go for an old song and be broke to pieces, though yours has
got no colour in it, Jane,—it’s all white and fluted, and didn’t cost
so much as mine. And there’s the castors, sister Deane, I can’t think
but you’d like to have the castors, for I’ve heard you say they’re
pretty.”
“Well, I’ve no objection to buy some of the best things,” said Mrs
Deane, rather loftily; “we can do with extra things in our house.”
“Best things!” exclaimed Mrs Glegg, with severity, which had gathered
intensity from her long silence. “It drives me past patience to hear
you all talking o’ best things, and buying in this, that, and the
other, such as silver and chany. You must bring your mind to your
circumstances, Bessy, and not be thinking o’ silver and chany; but
whether you shall get so much as a flock-bed to lie on, and a blanket
to cover you, and a stool to sit on. You must remember, if you get ’em,
it’ll be because your friends have bought ’em for you, for you’re
dependent upon _them_ for everything; for your husband lies there
helpless, and hasn’t got a penny i’ the world to call his own. And it’s
for your own good I say this, for it’s right you should feel what your
state is, and what disgrace your husband’s brought on your own family,
as you’ve got to look to for everything, and be humble in your mind.”
Mrs Glegg paused, for speaking with much energy for the good of others
is naturally exhausting.
Mrs Tulliver, always borne down by the family predominance of sister
Jane, who had made her wear the yoke of a younger sister in very tender
years, said pleadingly:
“I’m sure, sister, I’ve never asked anybody to do anything, only buy
things as it ’ud be a pleasure to ’em to have, so as they mightn’t go
and be spoiled i’ strange houses. I never asked anybody to buy the
things in for me and my children; though there’s the linen I spun, and
I thought when Tom was born,—I thought one o’ the first things when he
was lying i’ the cradle, as all the things I’d bought wi’ my own money,
and been so careful of, ’ud go to him. But I’ve said nothing as I
wanted my sisters to pay their money for me. What my husband has done
for _his_ sister’s unknown, and we should ha’ been better off this day
if it hadn’t been as he’s lent money and never asked for it again.”
“Come, come,” said Mr Glegg, kindly, “don’t let us make things too
dark. What’s done can’t be undone. We shall make a shift among us to
buy what’s sufficient for you; though, as Mrs G. says, they must be
useful, plain things. We mustn’t be thinking o’ what’s unnecessary. A
table, and a chair or two, and kitchen things, and a good bed, and
such-like. Why, I’ve seen the day when I shouldn’t ha’ known myself if
I’d lain on sacking i’stead o’ the floor. We get a deal o’ useless
things about us, only because we’ve got the money to spend.”
“Mr Glegg,” said Mrs G., “if you’ll be kind enough to let me speak,
i’stead o’ taking the words out o’ my mouth,—I was going to say, Bessy,
as it’s fine talking for you to say as you’ve never asked us to buy
anything for you; let me tell you, you _ought_ to have asked us. Pray,
how are you to be purvided for, if your own family don’t help you? You
must go to the parish, if they didn’t. And you ought to know that, and
keep it in mind, and ask us humble to do what we can for you, i’stead
o’ saying, and making a boast, as you’ve never asked us for anything.”
“You talked o’ the Mosses, and what Mr Tulliver’s done for ’em,” said
uncle Pullet, who became unusually suggestive where advances of money
were concerned. “Haven’t _they_ been anear you? They ought to do
something as well as other folks; and if he’s lent ’em money, they
ought to be made to pay it back.”
“Yes, to be sure,” said Mrs Deane; “I’ve been thinking so. How is it Mr
and Mrs Moss aren’t here to meet us? It is but right they should do
their share.”
“Oh, dear!” said Mrs Tulliver, “I never sent ’em word about Mr
Tulliver, and they live so back’ard among the lanes at Basset, they
niver hear anything only when Mr Moss comes to market. But I niver gave
’em a thought. I wonder Maggie didn’t, though, for she was allays so
fond of her aunt Moss.”
“Why don’t your children come in, Bessy?” said Mrs Pullet, at the
mention of Maggie. “They should hear what their aunts and uncles have
got to say; and Maggie,—when it’s me as have paid for half her
schooling, she ought to think more of her aunt Pullet than of aunt
Moss. I may go off sudden when I get home to-day; there’s no telling.”
“If I’d had _my_ way,” said Mrs Glegg, “the children ’ud ha’ been in
the room from the first. It’s time they knew who they’ve to look to,
and it’s right as _somebody_ should talk to ’em, and let ’em know their
condition i’ life, and what they’re come down to, and make ’em feel as
they’ve got to suffer for their father’s faults.”
“Well, I’ll go and fetch ’em, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver, resignedly.
She was quite crushed now, and thought of the treasures in the
storeroom with no other feeling than blank despair.
She went upstairs to fetch Tom and Maggie, who were both in their
father’s room, and was on her way down again, when the sight of the
storeroom door suggested a new thought to her. She went toward it, and
left the children to go down by themselves.
The aunts and uncles appeared to have been in warm discussion when the
brother and sister entered,—both with shrinking reluctance; for though
Tom, with a practical sagacity which had been roused into activity by
the strong stimulus of the new emotions he had undergone since
yesterday, had been turning over in his mind a plan which he meant to
propose to one of his aunts or uncles, he felt by no means amicably
toward them, and dreaded meeting them all at once as he would have
dreaded a large dose of concentrated physic, which was but just
endurable in small draughts. As for Maggie, she was peculiarly
depressed this morning; she had been called up, after brief rest, at
three o’clock, and had that strange dreamy weariness which comes from
watching in a sick-room through the chill hours of early twilight and
breaking day,—in which the outside day-light life seems to have no
importance, and to be a mere margin to the hours in the darkened
chamber. Their entrance interrupted the conversation. The shaking of
hands was a melancholy and silent ceremony, till uncle Pullet observed,
as Tom approached him:
“Well, young sir, we’ve been talking as we should want your pen and
ink; you can write rarely now, after all your schooling, I should
think.”
“Ay, ay,” said uncle Glegg, with admonition which he meant to be kind,
“we must look to see the good of all this schooling, as your father’s
sunk so much money in, now,—
‘When land is gone and money’s spent,
Then learning is most excellent.’
Now’s the time, Tom, to let us see the good o’ your learning. Let us
see whether you can do better than I can, as have made my fortin
without it. But I began wi’ doing with little, you see; I could live on
a basin o’ porridge and a crust o’ bread-and-cheese. But I doubt high
living and high learning ’ull make it harder for you, young man, nor it
was for me.”
“But he must do it,” interposed aunt Glegg, energetically, “whether
it’s hard or no. He hasn’t got to consider what’s hard; he must
consider as he isn’t to trusten to his friends to keep him in idleness
and luxury; he’s got to bear the fruits of his father’s misconduct, and
bring his mind to fare hard and to work hard. And he must be humble and
grateful to his aunts and uncles for what they’re doing for his mother
and father, as must be turned out into the streets and go to the
workhouse if they didn’t help ’em. And his sister, too,” continued Mrs
Glegg, looking severely at Maggie, who had sat down on the sofa by her
aunt Deane, drawn to her by the sense that she was Lucy’s mother, “she
must make up her mind to be humble and work; for there’ll be no
servants to wait on her any more,—she must remember that. She must do
the work o’ the house, and she must respect and love her aunts as have
done so much for her, and saved their money to leave to their nepheys
and nieces.”
Tom was still standing before the table in the centre of the group.
There was a heightened colour in his face, and he was very far from
looking humbled, but he was preparing to say, in a respectful tone,
something he had previously meditated, when the door opened and his
mother re-entered.
Poor Mrs Tulliver had in her hands a small tray, on which she had
placed her silver teapot, a specimen teacup and saucer, the castors,
and sugar-tongs.
“See here, sister,” she said, looking at Mrs Deane, as she set the tray
on the table, “I thought, perhaps, if you looked at the teapot
again,—it’s a good while since you saw it,—you might like the pattern
better; it makes beautiful tea, and there’s a stand and everything; you
might use it for every day, or else lay it by for Lucy when she goes to
housekeeping. I should be so loath for ’em to buy it at the Golden
Lion,” said the poor woman, her heart swelling, and the tears
coming,—“my teapot as I bought when I was married, and to think of its
being scratched, and set before the travellers and folks, and my
letters on it,—see here, E. D.,—and everybody to see ’em.”
“Ah, dear, dear!” said aunt Pullet, shaking her head with deep sadness,
“it’s very bad,—to think o’ the family initials going about
everywhere—it niver was so before; you’re a very unlucky sister, Bessy.
But what’s the use o’ buying the teapot, when there’s the linen and
spoons and everything to go, and some of ’em with your full name,—and
when it’s got that straight spout, too.”
“As to disgrace o’ the family,” said Mrs Glegg, “that can’t be helped
wi’ buying teapots. The disgrace is, for one o’ the family to ha’
married a man as has brought her to beggary. The disgrace is, as
they’re to be sold up. We can’t hinder the country from knowing that.”
Maggie had started up from the sofa at the allusion to her father, but
Tom saw her action and flushed face in time to prevent her from
speaking. “Be quiet, Maggie,” he said authoritatively, pushing her
aside. It was a remarkable manifestation of self-command and practical
judgment in a lad of fifteen, that when his aunt Glegg ceased, he began
to speak in a quiet and respectful manner, though with a good deal of
trembling in his voice; for his mother’s words had cut him to the
quick.
“Then, aunt,” he said, looking straight at Mrs Glegg, “if you think
it’s a disgrace to the family that we should be sold up, wouldn’t it be
better to prevent it altogether? And if you and aunt Pullet,” he
continued, looking at the latter, “think of leaving any money to me and
Maggie, wouldn’t it be better to give it now, and pay the debt we’re
going to be sold up for, and save my mother from parting with her
furniture?”
There was silence for a few moments, for every one, including Maggie,
was astonished at Tom’s sudden manliness of tone. Uncle Glegg was the
first to speak.
“Ay, ay, young man, come now! You show some notion o’ things. But
there’s the interest, you must remember; your aunts get five per cent
on their money, and they’d lose that if they advanced it; you haven’t
thought o’ that.”
“I could work and pay that every year,” said Tom, promptly. “I’d do
anything to save my mother from parting with her things.”
“Well done!” said uncle Glegg, admiringly. He had been drawing Tom out,
rather than reflecting on the practicability of his proposal. But he
had produced the unfortunate result of irritating his wife.
“Yes, Mr Glegg!” said that lady, with angry sarcasm. “It’s pleasant
work for you to be giving my money away, as you’ve pretended to leave
at my own disposal. And my money, as was my own father’s gift, and not
yours, Mr Glegg; and I’ve saved it, and added to it myself, and had
more to put out almost every year, and it’s to go and be sunk in other
folks’ furniture, and encourage ’em in luxury and extravagance as
they’ve no means of supporting; and I’m to alter my will, or have a
codicil made, and leave two or three hundred less behind me when I
die,—me as have allays done right and been careful, and the eldest o’
the family; and my money’s to go and be squandered on them as have had
the same chance as me, only they’ve been wicked and wasteful. Sister
Pullet, _you_ may do as you like, and you may let your husband rob you
back again o’ the money he’s given you, but that isn’t _my_ sperrit.”
“La, Jane, how fiery you are!” said Mrs Pullet. “I’m sure you’ll have
the blood in your head, and have to be cupped. I’m sorry for Bessy and
her children,—I’m sure I think of ’em o’ nights dreadful, for I sleep
very bad wi’ this new medicine,—but it’s no use for me to think o’
doing anything, if you won’t meet me half-way.”
“Why, there’s this to be considered,” said Mr Glegg. “It’s no use to
pay off this debt and save the furniture, when there’s all the law
debts behind, as ’ud take every shilling, and more than could be made
out o’ land and stock, for I’ve made that out from Lawyer Gore. We’d
need save our money to keep the poor man with, instead o’ spending it
on furniture as he can neither eat nor drink. You _will_ be so hasty,
Jane, as if I didn’t know what was reasonable.”
“Then speak accordingly, Mr Glegg!” said his wife, with slow, loud
emphasis, bending her head toward him significantly.
Tom’s countenance had fallen during this conversation, and his lip
quivered; but he was determined not to give way. He would behave like a
man. Maggie, on the contrary, after her momentary delight in Tom’s
speech, had relapsed into her state of trembling indignation. Her
mother had been standing close by Tom’s side, and had been clinging to
his arm ever since he had last spoken; Maggie suddenly started up and
stood in front of them, her eyes flashing like the eyes of a young
lioness.
“Why do you come, then,” she burst out, “talking and interfering with
us and scolding us, if you don’t mean to do anything to help my poor
mother—your own sister,—if you’ve no feeling for her when she’s in
trouble, and won’t part with anything, though you would never miss it,
to save her from pain? Keep away from us then, and don’t come to find
fault with my father,—he was better than any of you; he was kind,—he
would have helped _you_, if you had been in trouble. Tom and I don’t
ever want to have any of your money, if you won’t help my mother. We’d
rather not have it! We’ll do without you.”
Maggie, having hurled her defiance at aunts and uncles in this way,
stood still, with her large dark eyes glaring at them, as if she were
ready to await all consequences.
Mrs Tulliver was frightened; there was something portentous in this mad
outbreak; she did not see how life could go on after it. Tom was vexed;
it was no _use_ to talk so. The aunts were silent with surprise for
some moments. At length, in a case of aberration such as this, comment
presented itself as more expedient than any answer.
“You haven’t seen the end o’ your trouble wi’ that child, Bessy,” said
Mrs Pullet; “she’s beyond everything for boldness and unthankfulness.
It’s dreadful. I might ha’ let alone paying for her schooling, for
she’s worse nor ever.”
“It’s no more than what I’ve allays said,” followed Mrs Glegg. “Other
folks may be surprised, but I’m not. I’ve said over and over
again,—years ago I’ve said,—‘Mark my words; that child ’ull come to no
good; there isn’t a bit of our family in her.’ And as for her having so
much schooling, I never thought well o’ that. I’d my reasons when I
said _I_ wouldn’t pay anything toward it.”
“Come, come,” said Mr Glegg, “let’s waste no more time in
talking,—let’s go to business. Tom, now, get the pen and ink——”
While Mr Glegg was speaking, a tall dark figure was seen hurrying past
the window.
“Why, there’s Mrs Moss,” said Mrs Tulliver. “The bad news must ha’
reached her, then”; and she went out to open the door, Maggie eagerly
following her.
“That’s fortunate,” said Mrs Glegg. “She can agree to the list o’
things to be bought in. It’s but right she should do her share when
it’s her own brother.”
Mrs Moss was in too much agitation to resist Mrs Tulliver’s movement,
as she drew her into the parlour automatically, without reflecting that
it was hardly kind to take her among so many persons in the first
painful moment of arrival. The tall, worn, dark-haired woman was a
strong contrast to the Dodson sisters as she entered in her shabby
dress, with her shawl and bonnet looking as if they had been hastily
huddled on, and with that entire absence of self-consciousness which
belongs to keenly felt trouble. Maggie was clinging to her arm; and Mrs
Moss seemed to notice no one else except Tom, whom she went straight up
to and took by the hand.
“Oh, my dear children,” she burst out, “you’ve no call to think well o’
me; I’m a poor aunt to you, for I’m one o’ them as take all and give
nothing. How’s my poor brother?”
“Mr Turnbull thinks he’ll get better,” said Maggie. “Sit down, aunt
Gritty. Don’t fret.”
“Oh, my sweet child, I feel torn i’ two,” said Mrs Moss, allowing
Maggie to lead her to the sofa, but still not seeming to notice the
presence of the rest. “We’ve three hundred pounds o’ my brother’s
money, and now he wants it, and you all want it, poor things!—and yet
we must be sold up to pay it, and there’s my poor children,—eight of
’em, and the little un of all can’t speak plain. And I feel as if I was
a robber. But I’m sure I’d no thought as my brother——”
The poor woman was interrupted by a rising sob.
“Three hundred pounds! oh dear, dear,” said Mrs Tulliver, who, when she
had said that her husband had done “unknown” things for his sister, had
not had any particular sum in her mind, and felt a wife’s irritation at
having been kept in the dark.
“What madness, to be sure!” said Mrs Glegg. “A man with a family! He’d
no right to lend his money i’ that way; and without security, I’ll be
bound, if the truth was known.”
Mrs Glegg’s voice had arrested Mrs Moss’s attention, and looking up,
she said:
“Yes, there _was_ security; my husband gave a note for it. We’re not
that sort o’ people, neither of us, as ’ud rob my brother’s children;
and we looked to paying back the money, when the times got a bit
better.”
“Well, but now,” said Mr Glegg, gently, “hasn’t your husband no way o’
raising this money? Because it ’ud be a little fortin, like, for these
folks, if we can do without Tulliver’s being made a bankrupt. Your
husband’s got stock; it is but right he should raise the money, as it
seems to me,—not but what I’m sorry for you, Mrs Moss.”
“Oh, sir, you don’t know what bad luck my husband’s had with his stock.
The farm’s suffering so as never was for want o’ stock; and we’ve sold
all the wheat, and we’re behind with our rent,—not but what we’d like
to do what’s right, and I’d sit up and work half the night, if it ’ud
be any good; but there’s them poor children,—four of ’em such little
uns——”
“Don’t cry so, aunt; don’t fret,” whispered Maggie, who had kept hold
of Mrs Moss’s hand.
“Did Mr Tulliver let you have the money all at once?” said Mrs
Tulliver, still lost in the conception of things which had been “going
on” without her knowledge.
“No; at twice,” said Mrs Moss, rubbing her eyes and making an effort to
restrain her tears. “The last was after my bad illness four years ago,
as everything went wrong, and there was a new note made then. What with
illness and bad luck, I’ve been nothing but cumber all my life.”
“Yes, Mrs Moss,” said Mrs Glegg, with decision, “yours is a very
unlucky family; the more’s the pity for _my_ sister.”
“I set off in the cart as soon as ever I heard o’ what had happened,”
said Mrs Moss, looking at Mrs Tulliver. “I should never ha’ stayed away
all this while, if you’d thought well to let me know. And it isn’t as
I’m thinking all about ourselves, and nothing about my brother, only
the money was so on my mind, I couldn’t help speaking about it. And my
husband and me desire to do the right thing, sir,” she added, looking
at Mr Glegg, “and we’ll make shift and pay the money, come what will,
if that’s all my brother’s got to trust to. We’ve been used to trouble,
and don’t look for much else. It’s only the thought o’ my poor children
pulls me i’ two.”
“Why, there’s this to be thought on, Mrs Moss,” said Mr Glegg, “and
it’s right to warn you,—if Tulliver’s made a bankrupt, and he’s got a
note-of-hand of your husband’s for three hundred pounds, you’ll be
obliged to pay it; th’ assignees ’ull come on you for it.”
“Oh dear, oh dear!” said Mrs Tulliver, thinking of the bankruptcy, and
not of Mrs Moss’s concern in it. Poor Mrs Moss herself listened in
trembling submission, while Maggie looked with bewildered distress at
Tom to see if _he_ showed any signs of understanding this trouble, and
caring about poor aunt Moss. Tom was only looking thoughtful, with his
eyes on the tablecloth.
“And if he isn’t made bankrupt,” continued Mr Glegg, “as I said before,
three hundred pounds ’ud be a little fortin for him, poor man. We don’t
know but what he may be partly helpless, if he ever gets up again. I’m
very sorry if it goes hard with you, Mrs Moss, but my opinion is,
looking at it one way, it’ll be right for you to raise the money; and
looking at it th’ other way, you’ll be obliged to pay it. You won’t
think ill o’ me for speaking the truth.”
“Uncle,” said Tom, looking up suddenly from his meditative view of the
tablecloth, “I don’t think it would be right for my aunt Moss to pay
the money if it would be against my father’s will for her to pay it;
would it?”
Mr Glegg looked surprised for a moment or two before he said: “Why, no,
perhaps not, Tom; but then he’d ha’ destroyed the note, you know. We
must look for the note. What makes you think it ’ud be against his
will?”
“Why,” said Tom, colouring, but trying to speak firmly, in spite of a
boyish tremor, “I remember quite well, before I went to school to Mr
Stelling, my father said to me one night, when we were sitting by the
fire together, and no one else was in the room——”
Tom hesitated a little, and then went on.
“He said something to me about Maggie, and then he said: ‘I’ve always
been good to my sister, though she married against my will, and I’ve
lent Moss money; but I shall never think of distressing him to pay it;
I’d rather lose it. My children must not mind being the poorer for
that.’ And now my father’s ill, and not able to speak for himself, I
shouldn’t like anything to be done contrary to what he said to me.”
“Well, but then, my boy,” said Uncle Glegg, whose good feeling led him
to enter into Tom’s wish, but who could not at once shake off his
habitual abhorrence of such recklessness as destroying securities, or
alienating anything important enough to make an appreciable difference
in a man’s property, “we should have to make away wi’ the note, you
know, if we’re to guard against what may happen, supposing your
father’s made bankrupt——”
“Mr Glegg,” interrupted his wife, severely, “mind what you’re saying.
You’re putting yourself very forrard in other folks’s business. If you
speak rash, don’t say it was my fault.”
“That’s such a thing as I never heared of before,” said uncle Pullet,
who had been making haste with his lozenge in order to express his
amazement,—“making away with a note! I should think anybody could set
the constable on you for it.”
“Well, but,” said Mrs Tulliver, “if the note’s worth all that money,
why can’t we pay it away, and save my things from going away? We’ve no
call to meddle with your uncle and aunt Moss, Tom, if you think your
father ’ud be angry when he gets well.”
Mrs Tulliver had not studied the question of exchange, and was
straining her mind after original ideas on the subject.
“Pooh, pooh, pooh! you women don’t understand these things,” said uncle
Glegg. “There’s no way o’ making it safe for Mr and Mrs Moss but
destroying the note.”
“Then I hope you’ll help me do it, uncle,” said Tom, earnestly. “If my
father shouldn’t get well, I should be very unhappy to think anything
had been done against his will that I could hinder. And I’m sure he
meant me to remember what he said that evening. I ought to obey my
father’s wish about his property.”
Even Mrs Glegg could not withhold her approval from Tom’s words; she
felt that the Dodson blood was certainly speaking in him, though, if
his father had been a Dodson, there would never have been this wicked
alienation of money. Maggie would hardly have restrained herself from
leaping on Tom’s neck, if her aunt Moss had not prevented her by
herself rising and taking Tom’s hand, while she said, with rather a
choked voice:
“You’ll never be the poorer for this, my dear boy, if there’s a God
above; and if the money’s wanted for your father, Moss and me ’ull pay
it, the same as if there was ever such security. We’ll do as we’d be
done by; for if my children have got no other luck, they’ve got an
honest father and mother.”
“Well,” said Mr Glegg, who had been meditating after Tom’s words, “we
shouldn’t be doing any wrong by the creditors, supposing your father
_was_ bankrupt. I’ve been thinking o’ that, for I’ve been a creditor
myself, and seen no end o’ cheating. If he meant to give your aunt the
money before ever he got into this sad work o’ lawing, it’s the same as
if he’d made away with the note himself; for he’d made up his mind to
be that much poorer. But there’s a deal o’ things to be considered,
young man,” Mr Glegg added, looking admonishingly at Tom, “when you
come to money business, and you may be taking one man’s dinner away to
make another man’s breakfast. You don’t understand that, I doubt?”
“Yes, I do,” said Tom, decidedly. “I know if I owe money to one man,
I’ve no right to give it to another. But if my father had made up his
mind to give my aunt the money before he was in debt, he had a right to
do it.”
“Well done, young man! I didn’t think you’d been so sharp,” said uncle
Glegg, with much candor. “But perhaps your father _did_ make away with
the note. Let us go and see if we can find it in the chest.”
“It’s in my father’s room. Let us go too, aunt Gritty,” whispered
Maggie.
Chapter IV.
A Vanishing Gleam
Mr Tulliver, even between the fits of spasmodic rigidity which had
recurred at intervals ever since he had been found fallen from his
horse, was usually in so apathetic a condition that the exits and
entrances into his room were not felt to be of great importance. He had
lain so still, with his eyes closed, all this morning, that Maggie told
her aunt Moss she must not expect her father to take any notice of
them.
They entered very quietly, and Mrs Moss took her seat near the head of
the bed, while Maggie sat in her old place on the bed, and put her hand
on her father’s without causing any change in his face.
Mr Glegg and Tom had also entered, treading softly, and were busy
selecting the key of the old oak chest from the bunch which Tom had
brought from his father’s bureau. They succeeded in opening the
chest,—which stood opposite the foot of Mr Tulliver’s bed,—and propping
the lid with the iron holder, without much noise.
“There’s a tin box,” whispered Mr Glegg; “he’d most like put a small
thing like a note in there. Lift it out, Tom; but I’ll just lift up
these deeds,—they’re the deeds o’ the house and mill, I suppose,—and
see what there is under ’em.”
Mr Glegg had lifted out the parchments, and had fortunately drawn back
a little, when the iron holder gave way, and the heavy lid fell with a
loud bang that resounded over the house.
Perhaps there was something in that sound more than the mere fact of
the strong vibration that produced the instantaneous effect on the
frame of the prostrate man, and for the time completely shook off the
obstruction of paralysis. The chest had belonged to his father and his
father’s father, and it had always been rather a solemn business to
visit it. All long-known objects, even a mere window fastening or a
particular door-latch, have sounds which are a sort of recognised voice
to us,—a voice that will thrill and awaken, when it has been used to
touch deep-lying fibres. In the same moment, when all the eyes in the
room were turned upon him, he started up and looked at the chest, the
parchments in Mr Glegg’s hand, and Tom holding the tin box, with a
glance of perfect consciousness and recognition.
“What are you going to do with those deeds?” he said, in his ordinary
tone of sharp questioning whenever he was irritated. “Come here, Tom.
What do you do, going to my chest?”
Tom obeyed, with some trembling; it was the first time his father had
recognised him. But instead of saying anything more to him, his father
continued to look with a growing distinctness of suspicion at Mr Glegg
and the deeds.
“What’s been happening, then?” he said sharply. “What are you meddling
with my deeds for? Is Wakem laying hold of everything? Why don’t you
tell me what you’ve been a-doing?” he added impatiently, as Mr Glegg
advanced to the foot of the bed before speaking.
“No, no, friend Tulliver,” said Mr Glegg, in a soothing tone. “Nobody’s
getting hold of anything as yet. We only came to look and see what was
in the chest. You’ve been ill, you know, and we’ve had to look after
things a bit. But let’s hope you’ll soon be well enough to attend to
everything yourself.”
Mr Tulliver looked around him meditatively, at Tom, at Mr Glegg, and at
Maggie; then suddenly appearing aware that some one was seated by his
side at the head of the bed he turned sharply round and saw his sister.
“Eh, Gritty!” he said, in the half-sad, affectionate tone in which he
had been wont to speak to her. “What! you’re there, are you? How could
you manage to leave the children?”
“Oh, brother!” said good Mrs Moss, too impulsive to be prudent, “I’m
thankful I’m come now to see you yourself again; I thought you’d never
know us any more.”
“What! have I had a stroke?” said Mr Tulliver, anxiously, looking at Mr
Glegg.
“A fall from your horse—shook you a bit,—that’s all, I think,” said Mr
Glegg. “But you’ll soon get over it, let’s hope.”
Mr Tulliver fixed his eyes on the bed-clothes, and remained silent for
two or three minutes. A new shadow came over his face. He looked up at
Maggie first, and said in a lower tone, “You got the letter, then, my
wench?”
“Yes, father,” she said, kissing him with a full heart. She felt as if
her father were come back to her from the dead, and her yearning to
show him how she had always loved him could be fulfilled.
“Where’s your mother?” he said, so preoccupied that he received the
kiss as passively as some quiet animal might have received it.
“She’s downstairs with my aunts, father. Shall I fetch her?”
“Ay, ay; poor Bessy!” and his eyes turned toward Tom as Maggie left the
room.
“You’ll have to take care of ’em both if I die, you know, Tom. You’ll
be badly off, I doubt. But you must see and pay everybody. And
mind,—there’s fifty pound o’ Luke’s as I put into the business,—he gave
me a bit at a time, and he’s got nothing to show for it. You must pay
him first thing.”
Uncle Glegg involuntarily shook his head, and looked more concerned
than ever, but Tom said firmly:
“Yes, father. And haven’t you a note from my uncle Moss for three
hundred pounds? We came to look for that. What do you wish to be done
about it, father?”
“Ah! I’m glad you thought o’ that, my lad,” said Mr Tulliver. “I allays
meant to be easy about that money, because o’ your aunt. You mustn’t
mind losing the money, if they can’t pay it,—and it’s like enough they
can’t. The note’s in that box, mind! I allays meant to be good to you,
Gritty,” said Mr Tulliver, turning to his sister; “but you know you
aggravated me when you would have Moss.”
At this moment Maggie re-entered with her mother, who came in much
agitated by the news that her husband was quite himself again.
“Well, Bessy,” he said, as she kissed him, “you must forgive me if
you’re worse off than you ever expected to be.
But it’s the fault o’ the law,—it’s none o’ mine,” he added angrily.
“It’s the fault o’ raskills. Tom, you mind this: if ever you’ve got the
chance, you make Wakem smart. If you don’t, you’re a good-for-nothing
son. You might horse-whip him, but he’d set the law on you,—the law’s
made to take care o’ raskills.”
Mr Tulliver was getting excited, and an alarming flush was on his face.
Mr Glegg wanted to say something soothing, but he was prevented by Mr
Tulliver’s speaking again to his wife. “They’ll make a shift to pay
everything, Bessy,” he said, “and yet leave you your furniture; and
your sisters’ll do something for you—and Tom’ll grow up—though what
he’s to be I don’t know—I’ve done what I could—I’ve given him a
eddication—and there’s the little wench, she’ll get married—but it’s a
poor tale——”
The sanative effect of the strong vibration was exhausted, and with the
last words the poor man fell again, rigid and insensible. Though this
was only a recurrence of what had happened before, it struck all
present as if it had been death, not only from its contrast with the
completeness of the revival, but because his words had all had
reference to the possibility that his death was near. But with poor
Tulliver death was not to be a leap; it was to be a long descent under
thickening shadows.
Mr Turnbull was sent for; but when he heard what had passed, he said
this complete restoration, though only temporary, was a hopeful sign,
proving that there was no permanent lesion to prevent ultimate
recovery.
Among the threads of the past which the stricken man had gathered up,
he had omitted the bill of sale; the flash of memory had only lit up
prominent ideas, and he sank into forgetfulness again with half his
humiliation unlearned.
But Tom was clear upon two points,—that his uncle Moss’s note must be
destroyed; and that Luke’s money must be paid, if in no other way, out
of his own and Maggie’s money now in the savings bank. There were
subjects, you perceive, on which Tom was much quicker than on the
niceties of classical construction, or the relations of a mathematical
demonstration.
Chapter V.
Tom Applies His Knife to the Oyster
The next day, at ten o’clock, Tom was on his way to St Ogg’s, to see
his uncle Deane, who was to come home last night, his aunt had said;
and Tom had made up his mind that his uncle Deane was the right person
to ask for advice about getting some employment. He was in a great way
of business; he had not the narrow notions of uncle Glegg; and he had
risen in the world on a scale of advancement which accorded with Tom’s
ambition.
It was a dark, chill, misty morning, likely to end in rain,—one of
those mornings when even happy people take refuge in their hopes. And
Tom was very unhappy; he felt the humiliation as well as the
prospective hardships of his lot with all the keenness of a proud
nature; and with all his resolute dutifulness toward his father there
mingled an irrepressible indignation against him which gave misfortune
the less endurable aspect of a wrong. Since these were the consequences
of going to law, his father was really blamable, as his aunts and
uncles had always said he was; and it was a significant indication of
Tom’s character, that though he thought his aunts ought to do something
more for his mother, he felt nothing like Maggie’s violent resentment
against them for showing no eager tenderness and generosity. There were
no impulses in Tom that led him to expect what did not present itself
to him as a right to be demanded. Why should people give away their
money plentifully to those who had not taken care of their own money?
Tom saw some justice in severity; and all the more, because he had
confidence in himself that he should never deserve that just severity.
It was very hard upon him that he should be put at this disadvantage in
life by his father’s want of prudence; but he was not going to complain
and to find fault with people because they did not make everything easy
for him. He would ask no one to help him, more than to give him work
and pay him for it. Poor Tom was not without his hopes to take refuge
in under the chill damp imprisonment of the December fog, which seemed
only like a part of his home troubles. At sixteen, the mind that has
the strongest affinity for fact cannot escape illusion and
self-flattery; and Tom, in sketching his future, had no other guide in
arranging his facts than the suggestions of his own brave
self-reliance. Both Mr Glegg and Mr Deane, he knew, had been very poor
once; he did not want to save money slowly and retire on a moderate
fortune like his uncle Glegg, but he would be like his uncle Deane—get
a situation in some great house of business and rise fast. He had
scarcely seen anything of his uncle Deane for the last three years—the
two families had been getting wider apart; but for this very reason Tom
was the more hopeful about applying to him. His uncle Glegg, he felt
sure, would never encourage any spirited project, but he had a vague
imposing idea of the resources at his uncle Deane’s command. He had
heard his father say, long ago, how Deane had made himself so valuable
to Guest & Co. that they were glad enough to offer him a share in the
business; that was what Tom resolved _he_ would do. It was intolerable
to think of being poor and looked down upon all one’s life. He would
provide for his mother and sister, and make every one say that he was a
man of high character. He leaped over the years in this way, and, in
the haste of strong purpose and strong desire, did not see how they
would be made up of slow days, hours, and minutes.
By the time he had crossed the stone bridge over the Floss and was
entering St Ogg’s, he was thinking that he would buy his father’s mill
and land again when he was rich enough, and improve the house and live
there; he should prefer it to any smarter, newer place, and he could
keep as many horses and dogs as he liked.
Walking along the street with a firm, rapid step, at this point in his
reverie he was startled by some one who had crossed without his notice,
and who said to him in a rough, familiar voice:
“Why, Master Tom, how’s your father this morning?” It was a publican of
St Ogg’s, one of his father’s customers.
Tom disliked being spoken to just then; but he said civilly, “He’s
still very ill, thank you.”
“Ay, it’s been a sore chance for you, young man, hasn’t it,—this
lawsuit turning out against him?” said the publican, with a confused,
beery idea of being good-natured.
Tom reddened and passed on; he would have felt it like the handling of
a bruise, even if there had been the most polite and delicate reference
to his position.
“That’s Tulliver’s son,” said the publican to a grocer standing on the
adjacent door-step.
“Ah!” said the grocer, “I thought I knew his features. He takes after
his mother’s family; she was a Dodson. He’s a fine, straight youth;
what’s he been brought up to?”
“Oh! to turn up his nose at his father’s customers, and be a fine
gentleman,—not much else, I think.”
Tom, roused from his dream of the future to a thorough consciousness of
the present, made all the greater haste to reach the warehouse offices
of Guest & Co., where he expected to find his uncle Deane. But this was
Mr Deane’s morning at the bank, a clerk told him, and with some
contempt for his ignorance; Mr Deane was not to be found in River
Street on a Thursday morning.
At the bank Tom was admitted into the private room where his uncle was,
immediately after sending in his name. Mr Deane was auditing accounts;
but he looked up as Tom entered, and putting out his hand, said, “Well,
Tom, nothing fresh the matter at home, I hope? How’s your father?”
“Much the same, thank you, uncle,” said Tom, feeling nervous. “But I
want to speak to you, please, when you’re at liberty.”
“Sit down, sit down,” said Mr Deane, relapsing into his accounts, in
which he and the managing-clerk remained so absorbed for the next
half-hour that Tom began to wonder whether he should have to sit in
this way till the bank closed,—there seemed so little tendency toward a
conclusion in the quiet, monotonous procedure of these sleek,
prosperous men of business. Would his uncle give him a place in the
bank? It would be very dull, prosy work, he thought, writing there
forever to the loud ticking of a timepiece. He preferred some other way
of getting rich. But at last there was a change; his uncle took a pen
and wrote something with a flourish at the end.
“You’ll just step up to Torry’s now, Mr Spence, will you?” said Mr
Deane, and the clock suddenly became less loud and deliberate in Tom’s
ears.
“Well, Tom,” said Mr Deane, when they were alone, turning his
substantial person a little in his chair, and taking out his snuff-box;
“what’s the business, my boy; what’s the business?” Mr Deane, who had
heard from his wife what had passed the day before, thought Tom was
come to appeal to him for some means of averting the sale.
“I hope you’ll excuse me for troubling you, uncle,” said Tom,
colouring, but speaking in a tone which, though, tremulous, had a
certain proud independence in it; “but I thought you were the best
person to advise me what to do.”
“Ah!” said Mr Deane, reserving his pinch of snuff, and looking at Tom
with new attention, “let us hear.”
“I want to get a situation, uncle, so that I may earn some money,” said
Tom, who never fell into circumlocution.
“A situation?” said Mr Deane, and then took his pinch of snuff with
elaborate justice to each nostril. Tom thought snuff-taking a most
provoking habit.
“Why, let me see, how old are you?” said Mr Deane, as he threw himself
backward again.
“Sixteen; I mean, I am going in seventeen,” said Tom, hoping his uncle
noticed how much beard he had.
“Let me see; your father had some notion of making you an engineer, I
think?”
“But I don’t think I could get any money at that for a long while,
could I?”
“That’s true; but people don’t get much money at anything, my boy, when
they’re only sixteen. You’ve had a good deal of schooling, however; I
suppose you’re pretty well up in accounts, eh? You understand book
keeping?”
“No,” said Tom, rather falteringly. “I was in Practice. But Mr Stelling
says I write a good hand, uncle. That’s my writing,” added Tom, laying
on the table a copy of the list he had made yesterday.
“Ah! that’s good, that’s good. But, you see, the best hand in the
world’ll not get you a better place than a copying-clerk’s, if you know
nothing of book-keeping,—nothing of accounts. And a copying-clerk’s a
cheap article. But what have you been learning at school, then?”
Mr Deane had not occupied himself with methods of education, and had no
precise conception of what went forward in expensive schools.
“We learned Latin,” said Tom, pausing a little between each item, as if
he were turning over the books in his school-desk to assist his
memory,—“a good deal of Latin; and the last year I did Themes, one week
in Latin and one in English; and Greek and Roman history; and Euclid;
and I began Algebra, but I left it off again; and we had one day every
week for Arithmetic. Then I used to have drawing-lessons; and there
were several other books we either read or learned out of,—English
Poetry, and Horæ Paulinæ and Blair’s Rhetoric, the last half.”
Mr Deane tapped his snuff-box again and screwed up his mouth; he felt
in the position of many estimable persons when they had read the New
Tariff, and found how many commodities were imported of which they knew
nothing; like a cautious man of business, he was not going to speak
rashly of a raw material in which he had had no experience. But the
presumption was, that if it had been good for anything, so successful a
man as himself would hardly have been ignorant of it.
About Latin he had an opinion, and thought that in case of another war,
since people would no longer wear hair-powder, it would be well to put
a tax upon Latin, as a luxury much run upon by the higher classes, and
not telling at all on the ship-owning department. But, for what he
knew, the Horæ Paulinæ might be something less neutral. On the whole,
this list of acquirements gave him a sort of repulsion toward poor Tom.
“Well,” he said at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone, “you’ve had
three years at these things,—you must be pretty strong in ’em. Hadn’t
you better take up some line where they’ll come in handy?”
Tom coloured, and burst out, with new energy:
“I’d rather not have any employment of that sort, uncle. I don’t like
Latin and those things. I don’t know what I could do with them unless I
went as usher in a school; and I don’t know them well enough for that!
besides, I would as soon carry a pair of panniers. I don’t want to be
that sort of person. I should like to enter into some business where I
can get on,—a manly business, where I should have to look after things,
and get credit for what I did. And I shall want to keep my mother and
sister.”
“Ah, young gentleman,” said Mr Deane, with that tendency to repress
youthful hopes which stout and successful men of fifty find one of
their easiest duties, “that’s sooner said than done,—sooner said than
done.”
“But didn’t _you_ get on in that way, uncle?” said Tom, a little
irritated that Mr Deane did not enter more rapidly into his views. “I
mean, didn’t you rise from one place to another through your abilities
and good conduct?”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Mr Deane, spreading himself in his chair a little,
and entering with great readiness into a retrospect of his own career.
“But I’ll tell you how I got on. It wasn’t by getting astride a stick
and thinking it would turn into a horse if I sat on it long enough. I
kept my eyes and ears open, sir, and I wasn’t too fond of my own back,
and I made my master’s interest my own. Why, with only looking into
what went on in the mill, I found out how there was a waste of five
hundred a-year that might be hindered. Why, sir, I hadn’t more
schooling to begin with than a charity boy; but I saw pretty soon that
I couldn’t get on far enough without mastering accounts, and I learned
’em between working hours, after I’d been unlading. Look here.” Mr
Deane opened a book and pointed to the page. “I write a good hand
enough, and I’ll match anybody at all sorts of reckoning by the head;
and I got it all by hard work, and paid for it out of my own
earnings,—often out of my own dinner and supper. And I looked into the
nature of all the things we had to do in the business, and picked up
knowledge as I went about my work, and turned it over in my head. Why,
I’m no mechanic,—I never pretended to be—but I’ve thought of a thing or
two that the mechanics never thought of, and it’s made a fine
difference in our returns. And there isn’t an article shipped or
unshipped at our wharf but I know the quality of it. If I got places,
sir, it was because I made myself fit for ’em. If you want to slip into
a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself; that’s where it is.”
Mr Deane tapped his box again. He had been led on by pure enthusiasm in
his subject, and had really forgotten what bearing this retrospective
survey had on his listener. He had found occasion for saying the same
thing more than once before, and was not distinctly aware that he had
not his port-wine before him.
“Well, uncle,” said Tom, with a slight complaint in his tone, “that’s
what I should like to do. Can’t _I_ get on in the same way?”
“In the same way?” said Mr Deane, eyeing Tom with quiet deliberation.
“There go two or three questions to that, Master Tom. That depends on
what sort of material you are, to begin with, and whether you’ve been
put into the right mill. But I’ll tell you what it is. Your poor father
went the wrong way to work in giving you an education. It wasn’t my
business, and I didn’t interfere; but it is as I thought it would be.
You’ve had a sort of learning that’s all very well for a young fellow
like our Mr Stephen Guest, who’ll have nothing to do but sign checks
all his life, and may as well have Latin inside his head as any other
sort of stuffing.”
“But, uncle,” said Tom, earnestly, “I don’t see why the Latin need
hinder me from getting on in business. I shall soon forget it all; it
makes no difference to me. I had to do my lessons at school, but I
always thought they’d never be of any use to me afterward; I didn’t
care about them.”
“Ay, ay, that’s all very well,” said Mr Deane; “but it doesn’t alter
what I was going to say. Your Latin and rigmarole may soon dry off you,
but you’ll be but a bare stick after that. Besides, it’s whitened your
hands and taken the rough work out of you. And what do you know? Why,
you know nothing about book-keeping, to begin with, and not so much of
reckoning as a common shopman. You’ll have to begin at a low round of
the ladder, let me tell you, if you mean to get on in life. It’s no use
forgetting the education your father’s been paying for, if you don’t
give yourself a new un.”
Tom bit his lips hard; he felt as if the tears were rising, and he
would rather die than let them.
“You want me to help you to a situation,” Mr Deane went on; “well, I’ve
no fault to find with that. I’m willing to do something for you. But
you youngsters nowadays think you’re to begin with living well and
working easy; you’ve no notion of running afoot before you get
horseback. Now, you must remember what you are,—you’re a lad of
sixteen, trained to nothing particular. There’s heaps of your sort,
like so many pebbles, made to fit in nowhere. Well, you might be
apprenticed to some business,—a chemist’s and druggist’s perhaps; your
Latin might come in a bit there——”
Tom was going to speak, but Mr Deane put up his hand and said:
“Stop! hear what I’ve got to say. You don’t want to be a ’prentice,—I
know, I know,—you want to make more haste, and you don’t want to stand
behind a counter. But if you’re a copying-clerk, you’ll have to stand
behind a desk, and stare at your ink and paper all day; there isn’t
much out-look there, and you won’t be much wiser at the end of the year
than at the beginning. The world isn’t made of pen, ink, and paper, and
if you’re to get on in the world, young man, you must know what the
world’s made of. Now the best chance for you ’ud be to have a place on
a wharf, or in a warehouse, where you’d learn the smell of things, but
you wouldn’t like that, I’ll be bound; you’d have to stand cold and
wet, and be shouldered about by rough fellows. You’re too fine a
gentleman for that.”
Mr Deane paused and looked hard at Tom, who certainly felt some inward
struggle before he could reply.
“I would rather do what will be best for me in the end, sir; I would
put up with what was disagreeable.”
“That’s well, if you can carry it out. But you must remember it isn’t
only laying hold of a rope, you must go on pulling. It’s the mistake
you lads make that have got nothing either in your brains or your
pocket, to think you’ve got a better start in the world if you stick
yourselves in a place where you can keep your coats clean, and have the
shopwenches take you for fine gentlemen. That wasn’t the way _I_
started, young man; when I was sixteen, my jacket smelt of tar, and I
wasn’t afraid of handling cheeses. That’s the reason I can wear good
broadcloth now, and have my legs under the same table with the heads of
the best firms in St Ogg’s.”
Uncle Deane tapped his box, and seemed to expand a little under his
waistcoat and gold chain, as he squared his shoulders in the chair.
“Is there any place at liberty that you know of now, uncle, that I
should do for? I should like to set to work at once,” said Tom, with a
slight tremor in his voice.
“Stop a bit, stop a bit; we mustn’t be in too great a hurry. You must
bear in mind, if I put you in a place you’re a bit young for, because
you happen to be my nephew, I shall be responsible for you. And there’s
no better reason, you know, than your being my nephew; because it
remains to be seen whether you’re good for anything.”
“I hope I shall never do you any discredit, uncle,” said Tom, hurt, as
all boys are at the statement of the unpleasant truth that people feel
no ground for trusting them. “I care about my own credit too much for
that.”
“Well done, Tom, well done! That’s the right spirit, and I never refuse
to help anybody if they’ve a mind to do themselves justice. There’s a
young man of two-and-twenty I’ve got my eye on now. I shall do what I
can for that young man; he’s got some pith in him. But then, you see,
he’s made good use of his time,—a first-rate calculator,—can tell you
the cubic contents of anything in no time, and put me up the other day
to a new market for Swedish bark; he’s uncommonly knowing in
manufactures, that young fellow.”
“I’d better set about learning book-keeping, hadn’t I, uncle?” said
Tom, anxious to prove his readiness to exert himself.
“Yes, yes, you can’t do amiss there. But—Ah, Spence, you’re back again.
Well Tom, there’s nothing more to be said just now, I think, and I must
go to business again. Good-by. Remember me to your mother.”
Mr Deane put out his hand, with an air of friendly dismissal, and Tom
had not courage to ask another question, especially in the presence of
Mr Spence. So he went out again into the cold damp air. He had to call
at his uncle Glegg’s about the money in the Savings Bank, and by the
time he set out again the mist had thickened, and he could not see very
far before him; but going along River Street again, he was startled,
when he was within two yards of the projecting side of a shop-window,
by the words “Dorlcote Mill” in large letters on a hand-bill, placed as
if on purpose to stare at him. It was the catalogue of the sale to take
place the next week; it was a reason for hurrying faster out of the
town.
Poor Tom formed no visions of the distant future as he made his way
homeward; he only felt that the present was very hard. It seemed a
wrong toward him that his uncle Deane had no confidence in him,—did not
see at once that he should acquit himself well, which Tom himself was
as certain of as of the daylight. Apparently he, Tom Tulliver, was
likely to be held of small account in the world; and for the first time
he felt a sinking of heart under the sense that he really was very
ignorant, and could do very little. Who was that enviable young man
that could tell the cubic contents of things in no time, and make
suggestions about Swedish bark! Tom had been used to be so entirely
satisfied with himself, in spite of his breaking down in a
demonstration, and construing _nunc illas promite vires_ as “now
promise those men”; but now he suddenly felt at a disadvantage, because
he knew less than some one else knew. There must be a world of things
connected with that Swedish bark, which, if he only knew them, might
have helped him to get on. It would have been much easier to make a
figure with a spirited horse and a new saddle.
Two hours ago, as Tom was walking to St Ogg’s, he saw the distant
future before him as he might have seen a tempting stretch of smooth
sandy beach beyond a belt of flinty shingles; he was on the grassy bank
then, and thought the shingles might soon be passed. But now his feet
were on the sharp stones; the belt of shingles had widened, and the
stretch of sand had dwindled into narrowness.
“What did my Uncle Deane say, Tom?” said Maggie, putting her arm
through Tom’s as he was warming himself rather drearily by the kitchen
fire. “Did he say he would give you a situation?”
“No, he didn’t say that. He didn’t quite promise me anything; he seemed
to think I couldn’t have a very good situation. I’m too young.”
“But didn’t he speak kindly, Tom?”
“Kindly? Pooh! what’s the use of talking about that? I wouldn’t care
about his speaking kindly, if I could get a situation. But it’s such a
nuisance and bother; I’ve been at school all this while learning Latin
and things,—not a bit of good to me,—and now my uncle says I must set
about learning book-keeping and calculation, and those things. He seems
to make out I’m good for nothing.”
Tom’s mouth twitched with a bitter expression as he looked at the fire.
“Oh, what a pity we haven’t got Dominie Sampson!” said Maggie, who
couldn’t help mingling some gayety with their sadness. “If he had
taught me book-keeping by double entry and after the Italian method, as
he did Lucy Bertram, I could teach you, Tom.”
“_You_ teach! Yes, I dare say. That’s always the tone you take,” said
Tom.
“Dear Tom, I was only joking,” said Maggie, putting her cheek against
his coat-sleeve.
“But it’s always the same, Maggie,” said Tom, with the little frown he
put on when he was about to be justifiably severe. “You’re always
setting yourself up above me and every one else, and I’ve wanted to
tell you about it several times. You ought not to have spoken as you
did to my uncles and aunts; you should leave it to me to take care of
my mother and you, and not put yourself forward. You think you know
better than any one, but you’re almost always wrong. I can judge much
better than you can.”
Poor Tom! he had just come from being lectured and made to feel his
inferiority; the reaction of his strong, self-asserting nature must
take place somehow; and here was a case in which he could justly show
himself dominant. Maggie’s cheek flushed and her lip quivered with
conflicting resentment and affection, and a certain awe as well as
admiration of Tom’s firmer and more effective character. She did not
answer immediately; very angry words rose to her lips, but they were
driven back again, and she said at last:
“You often think I’m conceited, Tom, when I don’t mean what I say at
all in that way. I don’t mean to put myself above you; I know you
behaved better than I did yesterday. But you are always so harsh to me,
Tom.”
With the last words the resentment was rising again.
“No, I’m not harsh,” said Tom, with severe decision. “I’m always kind
to you, and so I shall be; I shall always take care of you. But you
must mind what I say.”
Their mother came in now, and Maggie rushed away, that her burst of
tears, which she felt must come, might not happen till she was safe
upstairs. They were very bitter tears; everybody in the world seemed so
hard and unkind to Maggie; there was no indulgence, no fondness, such
as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own
thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or
tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not
show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was
not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where people
behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did
not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there
for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother’s
narrow griefs, perhaps of her father’s heart-cutting childish
dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth,
when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no
superadded life in the life of others; though we who looked on think
lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future
lightened the blind sufferer’s present.
Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair
pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dull
walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a
creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful
and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy
music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind,
unconscious yearning for something that would link together the
wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a
sense of home in it.
No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the
inward, that painful collisions come of it.
Chapter VI.
Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a
Pocket-Knife
In that dark time of December, the sale of the household furniture
lasted beyond the middle of the second day. Mr Tulliver, who had begun,
in his intervals of consciousness, to manifest an irritability which
often appeared to have as a direct effect the recurrence of spasmodic
rigidity and insensibility, had lain in this living death throughout
the critical hours when the noise of the sale came nearest to his
chamber. Mr Turnbull had decided that it would be a less risk to let
him remain where he was than to remove him to Luke’s cottage,—a plan
which the good Luke had proposed to Mrs Tulliver, thinking it would be
very bad if the master were “to waken up” at the noise of the sale; and
the wife and children had sat imprisoned in the silent chamber,
watching the large prostrate figure on the bed, and trembling lest the
blank face should suddenly show some response to the sounds which fell
on their own ears with such obstinate, painful repetition.
But it was over at last, that time of importunate certainty and
eye-straining suspense. The sharp sound of a voice, almost as metallic
as the rap that followed it, had ceased; the tramping of footsteps on
the gravel had died out. Mrs Tulliver’s blond face seemed aged ten
years by the last thirty hours; the poor woman’s mind had been busy
divining when her favourite things were being knocked down by the
terrible hammer; her heart had been fluttering at the thought that
first one thing and then another had gone to be identified as hers in
the hateful publicity of the Golden Lion; and all the while she had to
sit and make no sign of this inward agitation. Such things bring lines
in well-rounded faces, and broaden the streaks of white among the hairs
that once looked as if they had been dipped in pure sunshine. Already,
at three o’clock, Kezia, the good-hearted, bad-tempered housemaid, who
regarded all people that came to the sale as her personal enemies, the
dirt on whose feet was of a peculiarly vile quality, had begun to scrub
and swill with an energy much assisted by a continual low muttering
against “folks as came to buy up other folk’s things,” and made light
of “scrazing” the tops of mahogany tables over which better folks than
themselves had had to—suffer a waste of tissue through evaporation. She
was not scrubbing indiscriminately, for there would be further dirt of
the same atrocious kind made by people who had still to fetch away
their purchases; but she was bent on bringing the parlour, where that
“pipe-smoking pig,” the bailiff, had sat, to such an appearance of
scant comfort as could be given to it by cleanliness and the few
articles of furniture bought in for the family. Her mistress and the
young folks should have their tea in it that night, Kezia was
determined.
It was between five and six o’clock, near the usual teatime, when she
came upstairs and said that Master Tom was wanted. The person who
wanted him was in the kitchen, and in the first moments, by the
imperfect fire and candle light, Tom had not even an indefinite sense
of any acquaintance with the rather broad-set but active figure,
perhaps two years older than himself, that looked at him with a pair of
blue eyes set in a disc of freckles, and pulled some curly red locks
with a strong intention of respect. A low-crowned oilskin-covered hat,
and a certain shiny deposit of dirt on the rest of the costume, as of
tablets prepared for writing upon, suggested a calling that had to do
with boats; but this did not help Tom’s memory.
“Sarvant, Master Tom,” said he of the red locks, with a smile which
seemed to break through a self-imposed air of melancholy. “You don’t
know me again, I doubt,” he went on, as Tom continued to look at him
inquiringly; “but I’d like to talk to you by yourself a bit, please.”
“There’s a fire i’ the parlour, Master Tom,” said Kezia, who objected
to leaving the kitchen in the crisis of toasting.
“Come this way, then,” said Tom, wondering if this young fellow
belonged to Guest & Co.’s Wharf, for his imagination ran continually
toward that particular spot; and uncle Deane might any time be sending
for him to say that there was a situation at liberty.
The bright fire in the parlour was the only light that showed the few
chairs, the bureau, the carpetless floor, and the one table—no, not the
_one_ table; there was a second table, in a corner, with a large Bible
and a few other books upon it. It was this new strange bareness that
Tom felt first, before he thought of looking again at the face which
was also lit up by the fire, and which stole a half-shy, questioning
glance at him as the entirely strange voice said:
“Why! you don’t remember Bob, then, as you gen the pocket-knife to, Mr
Tom?”
The rough-handled pocket-knife was taken out in the same moment, and
the largest blade opened by way of irresistible demonstration.
“What! Bob Jakin?” said Tom, not with any cordial delight, for he felt
a little ashamed of that early intimacy symbolised by the pocket-knife,
and was not at all sure that Bob’s motives for recalling it were
entirely admirable.
“Ay, ay, Bob Jakin, if Jakin it must be, ’cause there’s so many Bobs as
you went arter the squerrils with, that day as I plumped right down
from the bough, and bruised my shins a good un—but I got the squerril
tight for all that, an’ a scratter it was. An’ this littlish blade’s
broke, you see, but I wouldn’t hev a new un put in, ’cause they might
be cheatin’ me an’ givin’ me another knife instid, for there isn’t such
a blade i’ the country,—it’s got used to my hand, like. An’ there was
niver nobody else gen me nothin’ but what I got by my own sharpness,
only you, Mr Tom; if it wasn’t Bill Fawks as gen me the terrier pup
istid o’ drowndin’t it, an’ I had to jaw him a good un afore he’d give
it me.”
Bob spoke with a sharp and rather treble volubility, and got through
his long speech with surprising despatch, giving the blade of his knife
an affectionate rub on his sleeve when he had finished.
“Well, Bob,” said Tom, with a slight air of patronage, the foregoing
reminscences having disposed him to be as friendly as was becoming,
though there was no part of his acquaintance with Bob that he
remembered better than the cause of their parting quarrel; “is there
anything I can do for you?”
“Why, no, Mr Tom,” answered Bob, shutting up his knife with a click and
returning it to his pocket, where he seemed to be feeling for something
else. “I shouldn’t ha’ come back upon you now ye’re i’ trouble, an’
folks say as the master, as I used to frighten the birds for, an’ he
flogged me a bit for fun when he catched me eatin’ the turnip, as they
say he’ll niver lift up his head no more,—I shouldn’t ha’ come now to
ax you to gi’ me another knife ’cause you gen me one afore. If a chap
gives me one black eye, that’s enough for me; I sha’n’t ax him for
another afore I sarve him out; an’ a good turn’s worth as much as a bad
un, anyhow. I shall niver grow down’ards again, Mr Tom, an’ you war the
little chap as I liked the best when _I_ war a little chap, for all you
leathered me, and wouldn’t look at me again. There’s Dick Brumby,
there, I could leather him as much as I’d a mind; but lors! you get
tired o’ leatherin’ a chap when you can niver make him see what you
want him to shy at. I’n seen chaps as ’ud stand starin’ at a bough till
their eyes shot out, afore they’d see as a bird’s tail warn’t a leaf.
It’s poor work goin’ wi’ such raff. But you war allays a rare un at
shying, Mr Tom, an’ I could trusten to you for droppin’ down wi’ your
stick in the nick o’ time at a runnin’ rat, or a stoat, or that, when I
war a-beatin’ the bushes.”
Bob had drawn out a dirty canvas bag, and would perhaps not have paused
just then if Maggie had not entered the room and darted a look of
surprise and curiosity at him, whereupon he pulled his red locks again
with due respect. But the next moment the sense of the altered room
came upon Maggie with a force that overpowered the thought of Bob’s
presence. Her eyes had immediately glanced from him to the place where
the bookcase had hung; there was nothing now but the oblong unfaded
space on the wall, and below it the small table with the Bible and the
few other books.
“Oh, Tom!” she burst out, clasping her hands, “where are the books? I
thought my uncle Glegg said he would buy them. Didn’t he? Are those all
they’ve left us?”
“I suppose so,” said Tom, with a sort of desperate indifference. “Why
should they buy many books when they bought so little furniture?”
“Oh, but, Tom,” said Maggie, her eyes filling with tears, as she rushed
up to the table to see what books had been rescued. “Our dear old
Pilgrim’s Progress that you coloured with your little paints; and that
picture of Pilgrim with a mantle on, looking just like a turtle—oh
dear!” Maggie went on, half sobbing as she turned over the few books,
“I thought we should never part with that while we lived; everything is
going away from us; the end of our lives will have nothing in it like
the beginning!”
Maggie turned away from the table and threw herself into a chair, with
the big tears ready to roll down her cheeks, quite blinded to the
presence of Bob, who was looking at her with the pursuant gaze of an
intelligent dumb animal, with perceptions more perfect than his
comprehension.
“Well, Bob,” said Tom, feeling that the subject of the books was
unseasonable, “I suppose you just came to see me because we’re in
trouble? That was very good-natured of you.”
“I’ll tell you how it is, Master Tom,” said Bob, beginning to untwist
his canvas bag. “You see, I’n been with a barge this two ’ear; that’s
how I’n been gettin’ my livin’,—if it wasn’t when I was tentin’ the
furnace, between whiles, at Torry’s mill. But a fortni’t ago I’d a rare
bit o’ luck,—I allays thought I was a lucky chap, for I niver set a
trap but what I catched something; but this wasn’t trap, it was a fire
i’ Torry’s mill, an’ I doused it, else it ’ud set th’ oil alight, an’
the genelman gen me ten suvreigns; he gen me ’em himself last week. An’
he said first, I was a sperrited chap,—but I knowed that afore,—but
then he outs wi’ the ten suvreigns, an’ that war summat new. Here they
are, all but one!” Here Bob emptied the canvas bag on the table. “An’
when I’d got ’em, my head was all of a boil like a kettle o’ broth,
thinkin’ what sort o’ life I should take to, for there war a many
trades I’d thought on; for as for the barge, I’m clean tired out wi’t,
for it pulls the days out till they’re as long as pigs’ chitterlings.
An’ I thought first I’d ha’ ferrets an’ dogs, an’ be a rat-catcher; an’
then I thought as I should like a bigger way o’ life, as I didn’t know
so well; for I’n seen to the bottom o’ rat-catching; an’ I thought, an’
thought, till at last I settled I’d be a packman,—for they’re knowin’
fellers, the packmen are,—an’ I’d carry the lightest things I could i’
my pack; an’ there’d be a use for a feller’s tongue, as is no use
neither wi’ rats nor barges. An’ I should go about the country far an’
wide, an’ come round the women wi’ my tongue, an’ get my dinner hot at
the public,—lors! it ’ud be a lovely life!”
Bob paused, and then said, with defiant decision, as if resolutely
turning his back on that paradisaic picture:
“But I don’t mind about it, not a chip! An’ I’n changed one o’ the
suvreigns to buy my mother a goose for dinner, an’ I’n bought a blue
plush wescoat, an’ a sealskin cap,—for if I meant to be a packman, I’d
do it respectable. But I don’t mind about it, not a chip! My yead isn’t
a turnip, an’ I shall p’r’aps have a chance o’ dousing another fire
afore long. I’m a lucky chap. So I’ll thank you to take the nine
suvreigns, Mr Tom, and set yoursen up with ’em somehow, if it’s true as
the master’s broke. They mayn’t go fur enough, but they’ll help.”
Tom was touched keenly enough to forget his pride and suspicion.
“You’re a very kind fellow, Bob,” he said, colouring, with that little
diffident tremor in his voice which gave a certain charm even to Tom’s
pride and severity, “and I sha’n’t forget you again, though I didn’t
know you this evening. But I can’t take the nine sovereigns; I should
be taking your little fortune from you, and they wouldn’t do me much
good either.”
“Wouldn’t they, Mr Tom?” said Bob, regretfully. “Now don’t say so
’cause you think I want ’em. I aren’t a poor chap. My mother gets a
good penn’orth wi’ picking feathers an’ things; an’ if she eats nothin’
but bread-an’-water, it runs to fat. An’ I’m such a lucky chap; an’ I
doubt you aren’t quite so lucky, Mr Tom,—th’ old master isn’t,
anyhow,—an’ so you might take a slice o’ my luck, an’ no harm done.
Lors! I found a leg o’ pork i’ the river one day; it had tumbled out o’
one o’ them round-sterned Dutchmen, I’ll be bound. Come, think better
on it, Mr Tom, for old ’quinetance’ sake, else I shall think you bear
me a grudge.”
Bob pushed the sovereigns forward, but before Tom could speak Maggie,
clasping her hands, and looking penitently at Bob, said:
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Bob; I never thought you were so good. Why, I think
you’re the kindest person in the world!”
Bob had not been aware of the injurious opinion for which Maggie was
performing an inward act of penitence, but he smiled with pleasure at
this handsome eulogy,—especially from a young lass who, as he informed
his mother that evening, had “such uncommon eyes, they looked somehow
as they made him feel nohow.”
“No, indeed Bob, I can’t take them,” said Tom; “but don’t think I feel
your kindness less because I say no. I don’t want to take anything from
anybody, but to work my own way. And those sovereigns wouldn’t help me
much—they wouldn’t really—if I were to take them. Let me shake hands
with you instead.”
Tom put out his pink palm, and Bob was not slow to place his hard,
grimy hand within it.
“Let me put the sovereigns in the bag again,” said Maggie; “and you’ll
come and see us when you’ve bought your pack, Bob.”
“It’s like as if I’d come out o’ make believe, o’ purpose to show ’em
you,” said Bob, with an air of discontent, as Maggie gave him the bag
again, “a-taking ’em back i’ this way. I _am_ a bit of a Do, you know;
but it isn’t that sort o’ Do,—it’s on’y when a feller’s a big rogue, or
a big flat, I like to let him in a bit, that’s all.”
“Now, don’t you be up to any tricks, Bob,” said Tom, “else you’ll get
transported some day.”
“No, no; not me, Mr Tom,” said Bob, with an air of cheerful confidence.
“There’s no law again’ flea-bites. If I wasn’t to take a fool in now
and then, he’d niver get any wiser. But, lors! hev a suvreign to buy
you and Miss summat, on’y for a token—just to match my pocket-knife.”
While Bob was speaking he laid down the sovereign, and resolutely
twisted up his bag again. Tom pushed back the gold, and said, “No,
indeed, Bob; thank you heartily, but I can’t take it.” And Maggie,
taking it between her fingers, held it up to Bob and said, more
persuasively:
“Not now, but perhaps another time. If ever Tom or my father wants help
that you can give, we’ll let you know; won’t we, Tom? That’s what you
would like,—to have us always depend on you as a friend that we can go
to,—isn’t it, Bob?”
“Yes, Miss, and thank you,” said Bob, reluctantly taking the money;
“that’s what I’d like, anything as you like. An’ I wish you good-by,
Miss, and good-luck, Mr Tom, and thank you for shaking hands wi’ me,
_though_ you wouldn’t take the money.”
Kezia’s entrance, with very black looks, to inquire if she shouldn’t
bring in the tea now, or whether the toast was to get hardened to a
brick, was a seasonable check on Bob’s flux of words, and hastened his
parting bow.
Chapter VII.
How a Hen Takes to Stratagem
The days passed, and Mr Tulliver showed, at least to the eyes of the
medical man, stronger and stronger symptoms of a gradual return to his
normal condition; the paralytic obstruction was, little by little,
losing its tenacity, and the mind was rising from under it with fitful
struggles, like a living creature making its way from under a great
snowdrift, that slides and slides again, and shuts up the newly made
opening.
Time would have seemed to creep to the watchers by the bed, if it had
only been measured by the doubtful, distant hope which kept count of
the moments within the chamber; but it was measured for them by a
fast-approaching dread which made the nights come too quickly. While Mr
Tulliver was slowly becoming himself again, his lot was hastening
toward its moment of most palpable change. The taxing-masters had done
their work like any respectable gunsmith conscientiously preparing the
musket, that, duly pointed by a brave arm, will spoil a life or two.
Allocaturs, filing of bills in Chancery, decrees of sale, are legal
chain-shot or bomb-shells that can never hit a solitary mark, but must
fall with widespread shattering. So deeply inherent is it in this life
of ours that men have to suffer for each other’s sins, so inevitably
diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and
we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in
pulsations of unmerited pain.
By the beginning of the second week in January, the bills were out
advertising the sale, under a decree of Chancery, of Mr Tulliver’s
farming and other stock, to be followed by a sale of the mill and land,
held in the proper after-dinner hour at the Golden Lion. The miller
himself, unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in that
first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought of; and
often in his conscious hours talked in a feeble, disjointed manner of
plans he would carry out when he “got well.” The wife and children were
not without hope of an issue that would at least save Mr Tulliver from
leaving the old spot, and seeking an entirely strange life. For uncle
Deane had been induced to interest himself in this stage of the
business. It would not, he acknowledged, be a bad speculation for Guest
& Co. to buy Dorlcote Mill, and carry on the business, which was a good
one, and might be increased by the addition of steam power; in which
case Tulliver might be retained as manager. Still, Mr Deane would say
nothing decided about the matter; the fact that Wakem held the mortgage
on the land might put it into his head to bid for the whole estate, and
further, to outbid the cautious firm of Guest & Co., who did not carry
on business on sentimental grounds. Mr Deane was obliged to tell Mrs
Tulliver something to that effect, when he rode over to the mill to
inspect the books in company with Mrs Glegg; for she had observed that
“if Guest & Co. would only think about it, Mr Tulliver’s father and
grandfather had been carrying on Dorlcote Mill long before the oil-mill
of that firm had been so much as thought of.”
Mr Deane, in reply, doubted whether that was precisely the relation
between the two mills which would determine their value as investments.
As for uncle Glegg, the thing lay quite beyond his imagination; the
good-natured man felt sincere pity for the Tulliver family, but his
money was all locked up in excellent mortgages, and he could run no
risk; that would be unfair to his own relatives; but he had made up his
mind that Tulliver should have some new flannel waistcoats which he had
himself renounced in favour of a more elastic commodity, and that he
would buy Mrs Tulliver a pound of tea now and then; it would be a
journey which his benevolence delighted in beforehand, to carry the tea
and see her pleasure on being assured it was the best black.
Still, it was clear that Mr Deane was kindly disposed toward the
Tullivers. One day he had brought Lucy, who was come home for the
Christmas holidays, and the little blond angel-head had pressed itself
against Maggie’s darker cheek with many kisses and some tears. These
fair slim daughters keep up a tender spot in the heart of many a
respectable partner in a respectable firm, and perhaps Lucy’s anxious,
pitying questions about her poor cousins helped to make uncle Deane
more prompt in finding Tom a temporary place in the warehouse, and in
putting him in the way of getting evening lessons in book-keeping and
calculation.
That might have cheered the lad and fed his hopes a little, if there
had not come at the same time the much-dreaded blow of finding that his
father must be a bankrupt, after all; at least, the creditors must be
asked to take less than their due, which to Tom’s untechnical mind was
the same thing as bankruptcy. His father must not only be said to have
“lost his property,” but to have “failed,”—the word that carried the
worst obloquy to Tom’s mind. For when the defendant’s claim for costs
had been satisfied, there would remain the friendly bill of Mr Gore,
and the deficiency at the bank, as well as the other debts which would
make the assets shrink into unequivocal disproportion; “not more than
ten or twelve shillings in the pound,” predicted Mr Deane, in a decided
tone, tightening his lips; and the words fell on Tom like a scalding
liquid, leaving a continual smart.
He was sadly in want of something to keep up his spirits a little in
the unpleasant newness of his position,—suddenly transported from the
easy carpeted _ennui_ of study-hours at Mr Stelling’s, and the busy
idleness of castle-building in a “last half” at school, to the
companionship of sacks and hides, and bawling men thundering down heavy
weights at his elbow. The first step toward getting on in the world was
a chill, dusty, noisy affair, and implied going without one’s tea in
order to stay in St Ogg’s and have an evening lesson from a one-armed
elderly clerk, in a room smelling strongly of bad tobacco. Tom’s young
pink-and-white face had its colours very much deadened by the time he
took off his hat at home, and sat down with keen hunger to his supper.
No wonder he was a little cross if his mother or Maggie spoke to him.
But all this while Mrs Tulliver was brooding over a scheme by which
she, and no one else, would avert the result most to be dreaded, and
prevent Wakem from entertaining the purpose of bidding for the mill.
Imagine a truly respectable and amiable hen, by some portentous
anomaly, taking to reflection and inventing combinations by which she
might prevail on Hodge not to wring her neck, or send her and her
chicks to market; the result could hardly be other than much cackling
and fluttering. Mrs Tulliver, seeing that everything had gone wrong,
had begun to think she had been too passive in life; and that, if she
had applied her mind to business, and taken a strong resolution now and
then, it would have been all the better for her and her family. Nobody,
it appeared, had thought of going to speak to Wakem on this business of
the mill; and yet, Mrs Tulliver reflected, it would have been quite the
shortest method of securing the right end. It would have been of no
use, to be sure, for Mr Tulliver to go,—even if he had been able and
willing,—for he had been “going to law against Wakem” and abusing him
for the last ten years; Wakem was always likely to have a spite against
him. And now that Mrs Tulliver had come to the conclusion that her
husband was very much in the wrong to bring her into this trouble, she
was inclined to think that his opinion of Wakem was wrong too. To be
sure, Wakem had “put the bailies in the house, and sold them up”; but
she supposed he did that to please the man that lent Mr Tulliver the
money, for a lawyer had more folks to please than one, and he wasn’t
likely to put Mr Tulliver, who had gone to law with him, above
everybody else in the world. The attorney might be a very reasonable
man; why not? He had married a Miss Clint, and at the time Mrs Tulliver
had heard of that marriage, the summer when she wore her blue satin
spencer, and had not yet any thoughts of Mr Tulliver, she knew no harm
of Wakem. And certainly toward herself, whom he knew to have been a
Miss Dodson, it was out of all possibility that he could entertain
anything but good-will, when it was once brought home to his
observation that she, for her part, had never wanted to go to law, and
indeed was at present disposed to take Mr Wakem’s view of all subjects
rather than her husband’s. In fact, if that attorney saw a respectable
matron like herself disposed “to give him good words,” why shouldn’t he
listen to her representations? For she would put the matter clearly
before him, which had never been done yet. And he would never go and
bid for the mill on purpose to spite her, an innocent woman, who
thought it likely enough that she had danced with him in their youth at
Squire Darleigh’s, for at those big dances she had often and often
danced with young men whose names she had forgotten.
Mrs Tulliver hid these reasonings in her own bosom; for when she had
thrown out a hint to Mr Deane and Mr Glegg that she wouldn’t mind going
to speak to Wakem herself, they had said, “No, no, no,” and “Pooh,
pooh,” and “Let Wakem alone,” in the tone of men who were not likely to
give a candid attention to a more definite exposition of her project;
still less dared she mention the plan to Tom and Maggie, for “the
children were always so against everything their mother said”; and Tom,
she observed, was almost as much set against Wakem as his father was.
But this unusual concentration of thought naturally gave Mrs Tulliver
an unusual power of device and determination; and a day or two before
the sale, to be held at the Golden Lion, when there was no longer any
time to be lost, she carried out her plan by a stratagem. There were
pickles in question, a large stock of pickles and ketchup which Mrs
Tulliver possessed, and which Mr Hyndmarsh, the grocer, would certainly
purchase if she could transact the business in a personal interview, so
she would walk with Tom to St Ogg’s that morning; and when Tom urged
that she might let the pickles be at present,—he didn’t like her to go
about just yet,—she appeared so hurt at this conduct in her son,
contradicting her about pickles which she had made after the family
receipts inherited from his own grandmother, who had died when his
mother was a little girl, that he gave way, and they walked together
until she turned toward Danish Street, where Mr Hyndmarsh retailed his
grocery, not far from the offices of Mr Wakem.
That gentleman was not yet come to his office; would Mrs Tulliver sit
down by the fire in his private room and wait for him? She had not long
to wait before the punctual attorney entered, knitting his brow with an
examining glance at the stout blond woman who rose, curtsying
deferentially,—a tallish man, with an aquiline nose and abundant
iron-gray hair. You have never seen Mr Wakem before, and are possibly
wondering whether he was really as eminent a rascal, and as crafty,
bitter an enemy of honest humanity in general, and of Mr Tulliver in
particular, as he is represented to be in that eidolon or portrait of
him which we have seen to exist in the miller’s mind.
It is clear that the irascible miller was a man to interpret any
chance-shot that grazed him as an attempt on his own life, and was
liable to entanglements in this puzzling world, which, due
consideration had to his own infallibility, required the hypothesis of
a very active diabolical agency to explain them. It is still possible
to believe that the attorney was not more guilty toward him than an
ingenious machine, which performs its work with much regularity, is
guilty toward the rash man who, venturing too near it, is caught up by
some fly-wheel or other, and suddenly converted into unexpected
mince-meat.
But it is really impossible to decide this question by a glance at his
person; the lines and lights of the human countenance are like other
symbols,—not always easy to read without a key. On an _a priori_ view
of Wakem’s aquiline nose, which offended Mr Tulliver, there was not
more rascality than in the shape of his stiff shirt-collar, though this
too along with his nose, might have become fraught with damnatory
meaning when once the rascality was ascertained.
“Mrs Tulliver, I think?” said Mr Wakem.
“Yes, sir; Miss Elizabeth Dodson as was.”
“Pray be seated. You have some business with me?”
“Well, sir, yes,” said Mrs Tulliver, beginning to feel alarmed at her
own courage, now she was really in presence of the formidable man, and
reflecting that she had not settled with herself how she should begin.
Mr Wakem felt in his waistcoat pockets, and looked at her in silence.
“I hope, sir,” she began at last,—“I hope, sir, you’re not a-thinking
as _I_ bear you any ill-will because o’ my husband’s losing his
lawsuit, and the bailies being put in, and the linen being sold,—oh
dear!—for I wasn’t brought up in that way. I’m sure you remember my
father, sir, for he was close friends with Squire Darleigh, and we
allays went to the dances there, the Miss Dodsons,—nobody could be more
looked on,—and justly, for there was four of us, and you’re quite aware
as Mrs Glegg and Mrs Deane are my sisters. And as for going to law and
losing money, and having sales before you’re dead, I never saw anything
o’ that before I was married, nor for a long while after. And I’m not
to be answerable for my bad luck i’ marrying out o’ my own family into
one where the goings-on was different. And as for being drawn in t’
abuse you as other folks abuse you, sir, _that_ I niver was, and nobody
can say it of me.”
Mrs Tulliver shook her head a little, and looked at the hem of her
pocket handkerchief.
“I’ve no doubt of what you say, Mrs Tulliver,” said Mr Wakem, with cold
politeness. “But you have some question to ask me?”
“Well, sir, yes. But that’s what I’ve said to myself,—I’ve said you’d
had some nat’ral feeling; and as for my husband, as hasn’t been himself
for this two months, I’m not a-defending him, in no way, for being so
hot about th’ erigation,—not but what there’s worse men, for he never
wronged nobody of a shilling nor a penny, not willingly; and as for his
fieriness and lawing, what could I do? And him struck as if it was with
death when he got the letter as said you’d the hold upo’ the land. But
I can’t believe but what you’ll behave as a gentleman.”
“What does all this mean, Mrs Tulliver?” said Mr Wakem rather sharply.
“What do you want to ask me?”
“Why, sir, if you’ll be so good,” said Mrs Tulliver, starting a little,
and speaking more hurriedly,—“if you’ll be so good not to buy the mill
an’ the land,—the land wouldn’t so much matter, only my husband ull’ be
like mad at your having it.”
Something like a new thought flashed across Mr Wakem’s face as he said,
“Who told you I meant to buy it?”
“Why, sir, it’s none o’ my inventing, and I should never ha’ thought of
it; for my husband, as ought to know about the law, he allays used to
say as lawyers had never no call to buy anything,—either lands or
houses,—for they allays got ’em into their hands other ways. An’ I
should think that ’ud be the way with you, sir; and I niver said as
you’d be the man to do contrairy to that.”
“Ah, well, who was it that _did_ say so?” said Wakem, opening his desk,
and moving things about, with the accompaniment of an almost inaudible
whistle.
“Why, sir, it was Mr Glegg and Mr Deane, as have all the management;
and Mr Deane thinks as Guest & Co. ’ud buy the mill and let Mr Tulliver
work it for ’em, if you didn’t bid for it and raise the price. And it
’ud be such a thing for my husband to stay where he is, if he could get
his living: for it was his father’s before him, the mill was, and his
grandfather built it, though I wasn’t fond o’ the noise of it, when
first I was married, for there was no mills in our family,—not the
Dodson’s,—and if I’d known as the mills had so much to do with the law,
it wouldn’t have been me as ’ud have been the first Dodson to marry
one; but I went into it blindfold, that I did, erigation and
everything.”
“What! Guest & Co. would keep the mill in their own hands, I suppose,
and pay your husband wages?”
“Oh dear, sir, it’s hard to think of,” said poor Mrs Tulliver, a little
tear making its way, “as my husband should take wage. But it ’ud look
more like what used to be, to stay at the mill than to go anywhere
else; and if you’ll only think—if you was to bid for the mill and buy
it, my husband might be struck worse than he was before, and niver get
better again as he’s getting now.”
“Well, but if I bought the mill, and allowed your husband to act as my
manager in the same way, how then?” said Mr Wakem.
“Oh, sir, I doubt he could niver be got to do it, not if the very mill
stood still to beg and pray of him. For your name’s like poison to him,
it’s so as never was; and he looks upon it as you’ve been the ruin of
him all along, ever since you set the law on him about the road through
the meadow,—that’s eight year ago, and he’s been going on ever since—as
I’ve allays told him he was wrong——”
“He’s a pig-headed, foul-mouthed fool!” burst out Mr Wakem, forgetting
himself.
“Oh dear, sir!” said Mrs Tulliver, frightened at a result so different
from the one she had fixed her mind on; “I wouldn’t wish to contradict
you, but it’s like enough he’s changed his mind with this illness,—he’s
forgot a many things he used to talk about. And you wouldn’t like to
have a corpse on your mind, if he was to die; and they _do_ say as it’s
allays unlucky when Dorlcote Mill changes hands, and the water might
all run away, and _then_—not as I’m wishing you any ill-luck, sir, for
I forgot to tell you as I remember your wedding as if it was yesterday;
Mrs Wakem was a Miss Clint, I know _that;_ and my boy, as there isn’t a
nicer, handsomer, straighter boy nowhere, went to school with your
son——”
Mr Wakem rose, opened the door, and called to one of his clerks.
“You must excuse me for interrupting you, Mrs Tulliver; I have business
that must be attended to; and I think there is nothing more necessary
to be said.”
“But if you _would_ bear it in mind, sir,” said Mrs Tulliver, rising,
“and not run against me and my children; and I’m not denying Mr
Tulliver’s been in the wrong, but he’s been punished enough, and
there’s worse men, for it’s been giving to other folks has been his
fault. He’s done nobody any harm but himself and his family,—the more’s
the pity,—and I go and look at the bare shelves every day, and think
where all my things used to stand.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll bear it in mind,” said Mr Wakem, hastily, looking
toward the open door.
“And if you’d please not to say as I’ve been to speak to you, for my
son ’ud be very angry with me for demeaning myself, I know he would,
and I’ve trouble enough without being scolded by my children.”
Poor Mrs Tulliver’s voice trembled a little, and she could make no
answer to the attorney’s “good morning,” but curtsied and walked out in
silence.
“Which day is it that Dorlcote Mill is to be sold? Where’s the bill?”
said Mr Wakem to his clerk when they were alone.
“Next Friday is the day,—Friday at six o’clock.”
“Oh, just run to Winship’s the auctioneer, and see if he’s at home. I
have some business for him; ask him to come up.”
Although, when Mr Wakem entered his office that morning, he had had no
intention of purchasing Dorlcote Mill, his mind was already made up.
Mrs Tulliver had suggested to him several determining motives, and his
mental glance was very rapid; he was one of those men who can be prompt
without being rash, because their motives run in fixed tracks, and they
have no need to reconcile conflicting aims.
To suppose that Wakem had the same sort of inveterate hatred toward
Tulliver that Tulliver had toward him would be like supposing that a
pike and a roach can look at each other from a similar point of view.
The roach necessarily abhors the mode in which the pike gets his
living, and the pike is likely to think nothing further even of the
most indignant roach than that he is excellent good eating; it could
only be when the roach choked him that the pike could entertain a
strong personal animosity. If Mr Tulliver had ever seriously injured or
thwarted the attorney, Wakem would not have refused him the distinction
of being a special object of his vindictiveness. But when Mr Tulliver
called Wakem a rascal at the market dinner-table, the attorneys’
clients were not a whit inclined to withdraw their business from him;
and if, when Wakem himself happened to be present, some jocose
cattle-feeder, stimulated by opportunity and brandy, made a thrust at
him by alluding to old ladies’ wills, he maintained perfect _sang
froid_, and knew quite well that the majority of substantial men then
present were perfectly contented with the fact that “Wakem was Wakem”;
that is to say, a man who always knew the stepping-stones that would
carry him through very muddy bits of practice. A man who had made a
large fortune, had a handsome house among the trees at Tofton, and
decidedly the finest stock of port-wine in the neighbourhood of St
Ogg’s, was likely to feel himself on a level with public opinion. And I
am not sure that even honest Mr Tulliver himself, with his general view
of law as a cockpit, might not, under opposite circumstances, have seen
a fine appropriateness in the truth that “Wakem was Wakem”; since I
have understood from persons versed in history, that mankind is not
disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors when their
victory is on the right side. Tulliver, then, could be no obstruction
to Wakem; on the contrary, he was a poor devil whom the lawyer had
defeated several times; a hot-tempered fellow, who would always give
you a handle against him. Wakem’s conscience was not uneasy because he
had used a few tricks against the miller; why should he hate that
unsuccessful plaintiff, that pitiable, furious bull entangled in the
meshes of a net?
Still, among the various excesses to which human nature is subject,
moralists have never numbered that of being too fond of the people who
openly revile us. The successful Yellow candidate for the borough of
Old Topping, perhaps, feels no pursuant meditative hatred toward the
Blue editor who consoles his subscribers with vituperative rhetoric
against Yellow men who sell their country, and are the demons of
private life; but he might not be sorry, if law and opportunity
favoured, to kick that Blue editor to a deeper shade of his favourite
colour. Prosperous men take a little vengeance now and then, as they
take a diversion, when it comes easily in their way, and is no
hindrance to business; and such small unimpassioned revenges have an
enormous effect in life, running through all degrees of pleasant
infliction, blocking the fit men out of places, and blackening
characters in unpremeditated talk. Still more, to see people who have
been only insignificantly offensive to us reduced in life and
humiliated, without any special effort of ours, is apt to have a
soothing, flattering influence. Providence or some other prince of this
world, it appears, has undertaken the task of retribution for us; and
really, by an agreeable constitution of things, our enemies somehow
_don’t_ prosper.
Wakem was not without this parenthetic vindictiveness toward the
uncomplimentary miller; and now Mrs Tulliver had put the notion into
his head, it presented itself to him as a pleasure to do the very thing
that would cause Mr Tulliver the most deadly mortification,—and a
pleasure of a complex kind, not made up of crude malice, but mingling
with it the relish of self-approbation. To see an enemy humiliated
gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the
highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent
action or concession on his behalf. That is a sort of revenge which
falls into the scale of virtue, and Wakem was not without an intention
of keeping that scale respectably filled. He had once had the pleasure
of putting an old enemy of his into one of the St Ogg’s alms-houses, to
the rebuilding of which he had given a large subscription; and here was
an opportunity of providing for another by making him his own servant.
Such things give a completeness to prosperity, and contribute elements
of agreeable consciousness that are not dreamed of by that
short-sighted, overheated vindictiveness which goes out of its way to
wreak itself in direct injury. And Tulliver, with his rough tongue
filed by a sense of obligation, would make a better servant than any
chance-fellow who was cap-in-hand for a situation. Tulliver was known
to be a man of proud honesty, and Wakem was too acute not to believe in
the existence of honesty. He was given to observing individuals, not
to judging of them according to maxims, and no one knew better than he
that all men were not like himself. Besides, he intended to overlook
the whole business of land and mill pretty closely; he was fond of
these practical rural matters. But there were good reasons for
purchasing Dorlcote Mill, quite apart from any benevolent vengeance on
the miller. It was really a capital investment; besides, Guest & Co.
were going to bid for it. Mr Guest and Mr Wakem were on friendly dining
terms, and the attorney liked to predominate over a ship-owner and
mill-owner who was a little too loud in the town affairs as well as in
his table-talk. For Wakem was not a mere man of business; he was
considered a pleasant fellow in the upper circles of St Ogg’s—chatted
amusingly over his port-wine, did a little amateur farming, and had
certainly been an excellent husband and father; at church, when he went
there, he sat under the handsomest of mural monuments erected to the
memory of his wife. Most men would have married again under his
circumstances, but he was said to be more tender to his deformed son
than most men were to their best-shapen offspring. Not that Mr Wakem
had not other sons beside Philip; but toward them he held only a
chiaroscuro parentage, and provided for them in a grade of life duly
beneath his own. In this fact, indeed, there lay the clenching motive
to the purchase of Dorlcote Mill. While Mrs Tulliver was talking, it
had occurred to the rapid-minded lawyer, among all the other
circumstances of the case, that this purchase would, in a few years to
come, furnish a highly suitable position for a certain favourite lad
whom he meant to bring on in the world.
These were the mental conditions on which Mrs Tulliver had undertaken
to act persuasively, and had failed; a fact which may receive some
illustration from the remark of a great philosopher, that fly-fishers
fail in preparing their bait so as to make it alluring in the right
quarter, for want of a due acquaintance with the subjectivity of
fishes.
Chapter VIII.
Daylight on the Wreck
It was a clear frosty January day on which Mr Tulliver first came
downstairs. The bright sun on the chestnut boughs and the roofs
opposite his window had made him impatiently declare that he would be
caged up no longer; he thought everywhere would be more cheery under
this sunshine than his bedroom; for he knew nothing of the bareness
below, which made the flood of sunshine importunate, as if it had an
unfeeling pleasure in showing the empty places, and the marks where
well-known objects once had been. The impression on his mind that it
was but yesterday when he received the letter from Mr Gore was so
continually implied in his talk, and the attempts to convey to him the
idea that many weeks had passed and much had happened since then had
been so soon swept away by recurrent forgetfulness, that even Mr
Turnbull had begun to despair of preparing him to meet the facts by
previous knowledge. The full sense of the present could only be
imparted gradually by new experience,—not by mere words, which must
remain weaker than the impressions left by the _old_ experience. This
resolution to come downstairs was heard with trembling by the wife and
children. Mrs Tulliver said Tom must not go to St Ogg’s at the usual
hour, he must wait and see his father downstairs; and Tom complied,
though with an intense inward shrinking from the painful scene. The
hearts of all three had been more deeply dejected than ever during the
last few days. For Guest & Co. had not bought the mill; both mill and
land had been knocked down to Wakem, who had been over the premises,
and had laid before Mr Deane and Mr Glegg, in Mrs Tulliver’s presence,
his willingness to employ Mr Tulliver, in case of his recovery, as a
manager of the business. This proposition had occasioned much family
debating. Uncles and aunts were almost unanimously of opinion that such
an offer ought not to be rejected when there was nothing in the way but
a feeling in Mr Tulliver’s mind, which, as neither aunts nor uncles
shared it, was regarded as entirely unreasonable and childish,—indeed,
as a transferring toward Wakem of that indignation and hatred which Mr
Tulliver ought properly to have directed against himself for his
general quarrelsomeness, and his special exhibition of it in going to
law. Here was an opportunity for Mr Tulliver to provide for his wife
and daughter without any assistance from his wife’s relations, and
without that too evident descent into pauperism which makes it annoying
to respectable people to meet the degraded member of the family by the
wayside. Mr Tulliver, Mrs Glegg considered, must be made to feel, when
he came to his right mind, that he could never humble himself enough;
for _that_ had come which she had always foreseen would come of his
insolence in time past “to them as were the best friends he’d got to
look to.” Mr Glegg and Mr Deane were less stern in their views, but
they both of them thought Tulliver had done enough harm by his
hot-tempered crotchets and ought to put them out of the question when a
livelihood was offered him; Wakem showed a right feeling about the
matter,—_he_ had no grudge against Tulliver.
Tom had protested against entertaining the proposition. He shouldn’t
like his father to be under Wakem; he thought it would look
mean-spirited; but his mother’s main distress was the utter
impossibility of ever “turning Mr Tulliver round about Wakem,” or
getting him to hear reason; no, they would all have to go and live in a
pigsty on purpose to spite Wakem, who spoke “so as nobody could be
fairer.” Indeed, Mrs Tulliver’s mind was reduced to such confusion by
living in this strange medium of unaccountable sorrow, against which
she continually appealed by asking, “Oh dear, what _have_ I done to
deserve worse than other women?” that Maggie began to suspect her poor
mother’s wits were quite going.
“Tom,” she said, when they were out of their father’s room together,
“we _must_ try to make father understand a little of what has happened
before he goes downstairs. But we must get my mother away. She will say
something that will do harm. Ask Kezia to fetch her down, and keep her
engaged with something in the kitchen.”
Kezia was equal to the task. Having declared her intention of staying
till the master could get about again, “wage or no wage,” she had found
a certain recompense in keeping a strong hand over her mistress,
scolding her for “moithering” herself, and going about all day without
changing her cap, and looking as if she was “mushed.” Altogether, this
time of trouble was rather a Saturnalian time to Kezia; she could scold
her betters with unreproved freedom. On this particular occasion there
were drying clothes to be fetched in; she wished to know if one pair of
hands could do everything in-doors and out, and observed that _she_
should have thought it would be good for Mrs Tulliver to put on her
bonnet, and get a breath of fresh air by doing that needful piece of
work. Poor Mrs Tulliver went submissively downstairs; to be ordered
about by a servant was the last remnant of her household dignities,—she
would soon have no servant to scold her. Mr Tulliver was resting in his
chair a little after the fatigue of dressing, and Maggie and Tom were
seated near him, when Luke entered to ask if he should help master
downstairs.
“Ay, ay, Luke; stop a bit, sit down,” said Mr Tulliver pointing his
stick toward a chair, and looking at him with that pursuant gaze which
convalescent persons often have for those who have tended them,
reminding one of an infant gazing about after its nurse. For Luke had
been a constant night-watcher by his master’s bed.
“How’s the water now, eh, Luke?” said Mr Tulliver. “Dix hasn’t been
choking you up again, eh?”
“No, sir, it’s all right.”
“Ay, I thought not; he won’t be in a hurry at that again, now Riley’s
been to settle him. That was what I said to Riley yesterday—I said——”
Mr Tulliver leaned forward, resting his elbows on the armchair, and
looking on the ground as if in search of something, striving after
vanishing images like a man struggling against a doze. Maggie looked at
Tom in mute distress, their father’s mind was so far off the present,
which would by-and-by thrust itself on his wandering consciousness! Tom
was almost ready to rush away, with that impatience of painful emotion
which makes one of the differences between youth and maiden, man and
woman.
“Father,” said Maggie, laying her hand on his, “don’t you remember that
Mr Riley is dead?”
“Dead?” said Mr Tulliver, sharply, looking in her face with a strange,
examining glance.
“Yes, he died of apoplexy nearly a year ago. I remember hearing you say
you had to pay money for him; and he left his daughters badly off; one
of them is under-teacher at Miss Firniss’s, where I’ve been to school,
you know.”
“Ah?” said her father, doubtfully, still looking in her face. But as
soon as Tom began to speak he turned to look at _him_ with the same
inquiring glances, as if he were rather surprised at the presence of
these two young people. Whenever his mind was wandering in the far
past, he fell into this oblivion of their actual faces; they were not
those of the lad and the little wench who belonged to that past.
“It’s a long while since you had the dispute with Dix, father,” said
Tom. “I remember your talking about it three years ago, before I went
to school at Mr Stelling’s. I’ve been at school there three years;
don’t you remember?”
Mr Tulliver threw himself backward again, losing the childlike outward
glance under a rush of new ideas, which diverted him from external
impressions.
“Ay, ay,” he said, after a minute or two, “I’ve paid a deal o’ money—I
was determined my son should have a good eddication; I’d none myself,
and I’ve felt the miss of it. And he’ll want no other fortin, that’s
what I say—if Wakem was to get the better of me again——”
The thought of Wakem roused new vibrations, and after a moment’s pause
he began to look at the coat he had on, and to feel in his side-pocket.
Then he turned to Tom, and said in his old sharp way, “Where have they
put Gore’s letter?”
It was close at hand in a drawer, for he had often asked for it before.
“You know what there is in the letter, father?” said Tom, as he gave it
to him.
“To be sure I do,” said Mr Tulliver, rather angrily. “What o’ that? If
Furley can’t take to the property, somebody else can; there’s plenty o’
people in the world besides Furley. But it’s hindering—my not being
well—go and tell ’em to get the horse in the gig, Luke; I can get down
to St Ogg’s well enough—Gore’s expecting me.”
“No, dear father!” Maggie burst out entreatingly; “it’s a very long
while since all that; you’ve been ill a great many weeks,—more than two
months; everything is changed.”
Mr Tulliver looked at them all three alternately with a startled gaze;
the idea that much had happened of which he knew nothing had often
transiently arrested him before, but it came upon him now with entire
novelty.
“Yes, father,” said Tom, in answer to the gaze. “You needn’t trouble
your mind about business until you are quite well; everything is
settled about that for the present,—about the mill and the land and the
debts.”
“What’s settled, then?” said his father, angrily.
“Don’t you take on too much about it, sir,” said Luke. “You’d ha’ paid
iverybody if you could,—that’s what I said to Master Tom,—I said you’d
ha’ paid iverybody if you could.”
Good Luke felt, after the manner of contented hard-working men whose
lives have been spent in servitude, that sense of natural fitness in
rank which made his master’s downfall a tragedy to him. He was urged,
in his slow way, to say something that would express his share in the
family sorrow; and these words, which he had used over and over again
to Tom when he wanted to decline the full payment of his fifty pounds
out of the children’s money, were the most ready to his tongue. They
were just the words to lay the most painful hold on his master’s
bewildered mind.
“Paid everybody?” he said, with vehement agitation, his face flushing,
and his eye lighting up. “Why—what—have they made me a _bankrupt?_”
“Oh, father, dear father!” said Maggie, who thought that terrible word
really represented the fact; “bear it well, because we love you; your
children will always love you. Tom will pay them all; he says he will,
when he’s a man.”
She felt her father beginning to tremble; his voice trembled too, as he
said, after a few moments:
“Ay, my little wench, but I shall never live twice o’er.”
“But perhaps you will live to see me pay everybody, father,” said Tom,
speaking with a great effort.
“Ah, my lad,” said Mr Tulliver, shaking his head slowly, “but what’s
broke can never be whole again; it ’ud be your doing, not mine.” Then
looking up at him, “You’re only sixteen; it’s an up-hill fight for you,
but you mustn’t throw it at your father; the raskills have been too
many for him. I’ve given you a good eddication,—that’ll start you.”
Something in his throat half choked the last words; the flush, which
had alarmed his children because it had so often preceded a recurrence
of paralysis, had subsided, and his face looked pale and tremulous. Tom
said nothing; he was still struggling against his inclination to rush
away. His father remained quiet a minute or two, but his mind did not
seem to be wandering again.
“Have they sold me up, then?” he said more calmly, as if he were
possessed simply by the desire to know what had happened.
“Everything is sold, father; but we don’t know all about the mill and
the land yet,” said Tom, anxious to ward off any question leading to
the fact that Wakem was the purchaser.
“You must not be surprised to see the room look very bare downstairs,
father,” said Maggie; “but there’s your chair and the bureau; _they’re_
not gone.”
“Let us go; help me down, Luke,—I’ll go and see everything,” said Mr
Tulliver, leaning on his stick, and stretching out his other hand
toward Luke.
“Ay, sir,” said Luke, as he gave his arm to his master, “you’ll make up
your mind to’t a bit better when you’ve seen iverything; you’ll get
used to’t. That’s what my mother says about her shortness o’
breath,—she says she’s made friends wi’t now, though she fought again’
it sore when it just come on.”
Maggie ran on before to see that all was right in the dreary parlour,
where the fire, dulled by the frosty sunshine, seemed part of the
general shabbiness. She turned her father’s chair, and pushed aside the
table to make an easy way for him, and then stood with a beating heart
to see him enter and look round for the first time. Tom advanced before
him, carrying the leg-rest, and stood beside Maggie on the hearth. Of
those two young hearts Tom’s suffered the most unmixed pain, for
Maggie, with all her keen susceptibility, yet felt as if the sorrow
made larger room for her love to flow in, and gave breathing-space to
her passionate nature. No true boy feels that; he would rather go and
slay the Nemean lion, or perform any round of heroic labours, than
endure perpetual appeals to his pity, for evils over which he can make
no conquest.
Mr Tulliver paused just inside the door, resting on Luke, and looking
round him at all the bare places, which for him were filled with the
shadows of departed objects,—the daily companions of his life. His
faculties seemed to be renewing their strength from getting a footing
on this demonstration of the senses.
“Ah!” he said slowly, moving toward his chair, “they’ve sold me
up—they’ve sold me up.”
Then seating himself, and laying down his stick, while Luke left the
room, he looked round again.
“They’ve left the big Bible,” he said. “It’s got everything in,—when I
was born and married; bring it me, Tom.”
The quarto Bible was laid open before him at the fly-leaf, and while he
was reading with slowly travelling eyes Mrs Tulliver entered the room,
but stood in mute surprise to find her husband down already, and with
the great Bible before him.
“Ah,” he said, looking at a spot where his finger rested, “my mother
was Margaret Beaton; she died when she was forty-seven,—hers wasn’t a
long-lived family; we’re our mother’s children, Gritty and me are,—we
shall go to our last bed before long.”
He seemed to be pausing over the record of his sister’s birth and
marriage, as if it were suggesting new thoughts to him; then he
suddenly looked up at Tom, and said, in a sharp tone of alarm:
“They haven’t come upo’ Moss for the money as I lent him, have they?”
“No, father,” said Tom; “the note was burnt.”
Mr Tulliver turned his eyes on the page again, and presently said:
“Ah—Elizabeth Dodson—it’s eighteen year since I married her——”
“Come next Ladyday,” said Mrs Tulliver, going up to his side and
looking at the page.
Her husband fixed his eyes earnestly on her face.
“Poor Bessy,” he said, “you was a pretty lass then,—everybody said
so,—and I used to think you kept your good looks rarely. But you’re
sorely aged; don’t you bear me ill-will—I meant to do well by you—we
promised one another for better or for worse——”
“But I never thought it ’ud be so for worse as this,” said poor Mrs
Tulliver, with the strange, scared look that had come over her of late;
“and my poor father gave me away—and to come on so all at once——”
“Oh, mother!” said Maggie, “don’t talk in that way.”
“No, I know you won’t let your poor mother speak—that’s been the way
all my life—your father never minded what I said—it ’ud have been o’ no
use for me to beg and pray—and it ’ud be no use now, not if I was to go
down o’ my hands and knees——”
“Don’t say so, Bessy,” said Mr Tulliver, whose pride, in these first
moments of humiliation, was in abeyance to the sense of some justice in
his wife’s reproach. “If there’s anything left as I could do to make
you amends, I wouldn’t say you nay.”
“Then we might stay here and get a living, and I might keep among my
own sisters,—and me been such a good wife to you, and never crossed you
from week’s end to week’s end—and they all say so—they say it ’ud be
nothing but right, only you’re so turned against Wakem.”
“Mother,” said Tom, severely, “this is not the time to talk about
that.”
“Let her be,” said Mr Tulliver. “Say what you mean, Bessy.”
“Why, now the mill and the land’s all Wakem’s, and he’s got everything
in his hands, what’s the use o’ setting your face against him, when he
says you may stay here, and speaks as fair as can be, and says you may
manage the business, and have thirty shillings a-week, and a horse to
ride about to market? And where have we got to put our heads? We must
go into one o’ the cottages in the village,—and me and my children
brought down to that,—and all because you must set your mind against
folks till there’s no turning you.”
Mr Tulliver had sunk back in his chair trembling.
“You may do as you like wi’ me, Bessy,” he said, in a low voice; “I’ve
been the bringing of you to poverty—this world’s too many for me—I’m
nought but a bankrupt; it’s no use standing up for anything now.”
“Father,” said Tom, “I don’t agree with my mother or my uncles, and I
don’t think you ought to submit to be under Wakem. I get a pound a-week
now, and you can find something else to do when you get well.”
“Say no more, Tom, say no more; I’ve had enough for this day. Give me a
kiss, Bessy, and let us bear one another no ill-will; we shall never be
young again—this world’s been too many for me.”
Chapter IX.
An Item Added to the Family Register
That first moment of renunciation and submission was followed by days
of violent struggle in the miller’s mind, as the gradual access of
bodily strength brought with it increasing ability to embrace in one
view all the conflicting conditions under which he found himself.
Feeble limbs easily resign themselves to be tethered, and when we are
subdued by sickness it seems possible to us to fulfil pledges which the
old vigor comes back and breaks. There were times when poor Tulliver
thought the fulfilment of his promise to Bessy was something quite too
hard for human nature; he had promised her without knowing what she was
going to say,—she might as well have asked him to carry a ton weight on
his back. But again, there were many feelings arguing on her side,
besides the sense that life had been made hard to her by having married
him. He saw a possibility, by much pinching, of saving money out of his
salary toward paying a second dividend to his creditors, and it would
not be easy elsewhere to get a situation such as he could fill.
He had led an easy life, ordering much and working little, and had no
aptitude for any new business. He must perhaps take to day-labour, and
his wife must have help from her sisters,—a prospect doubly bitter to
him, now they had let all Bessy’s precious things be sold, probably
because they liked to set her against him, by making her feel that he
had brought her to that pass. He listened to their admonitory talk,
when they came to urge on him what he was bound to do for poor Bessy’s
sake, with averted eyes, that every now and then flashed on them
furtively when their backs were turned. Nothing but the dread of
needing their help could have made it an easier alternative to take
their advice.
But the strongest influence of all was the love of the old premises
where he had run about when he was a boy, just as Tom had done after
him. The Tullivers had lived on this spot for generations, and he had
sat listening on a low stool on winter evenings while his father talked
of the old half-timbered mill that had been there before the last great
floods which damaged it so that his grandfather pulled it down and
built the new one. It was when he got able to walk about and look at
all the old objects that he felt the strain of his clinging affection
for the old home as part of his life, part of himself. He couldn’t bear
to think of himself living on any other spot than this, where he knew
the sound of every gate door, and felt that the shape and colour of
every roof and weather-stain and broken hillock was good, because his
growing senses had been fed on them. Our instructed vagrancy, which has
hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the
tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans,—which is nourished on
books of travel and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the
Zambesi,—can hardly get a dim notion of what an old-fashioned man like
Tulliver felt for this spot, where all his memories centred, and where
life seemed like a familiar smooth-handled tool that the fingers clutch
with loving ease. And just now he was living in that freshened memory
of the far-off time which comes to us in the passive hours of recovery
from sickness.
“Ay, Luke,” he said one afternoon, as he stood looking over the orchard
gate, “I remember the day they planted those apple-trees. My father was
a huge man for planting,—it was like a merry-making to him to get a
cart full o’ young trees; and I used to stand i’ the cold with him, and
follow him about like a dog.”
Then he turned round, and leaning against the gate-post, looked at the
opposite buildings.
“The old mill ’ud miss me, I think, Luke. There’s a story as when the
mill changes hands, the river’s angry; I’ve heard my father say it many
a time. There’s no telling whether there mayn’t be summat _in_ the
story, for this is a puzzling world, and Old Harry’s got a finger in
it—it’s been too many for me, I know.”
“Ay, sir,” said Luke, with soothing sympathy, “what wi’ the rust on the
wheat, an’ the firin’ o’ the ricks an’ that, as I’ve seen i’ my
time,—things often looks comical; there’s the bacon fat wi’ our last
pig run away like butter,—it leaves nought but a scratchin’.”
“It’s just as if it was yesterday, now,” Mr Tulliver went on, “when my
father began the malting. I remember, the day they finished the
malt-house, I thought summat great was to come of it; for we’d a
plum-pudding that day and a bit of a feast, and I said to my
mother,—she was a fine dark-eyed woman, my mother was,—the little wench
’ull be as like her as two peas.” Here Mr Tulliver put his stick
between his legs, and took out his snuff-box, for the greater enjoyment
of this anecdote, which dropped from him in fragments, as if he every
other moment lost narration in vision. “I was a little chap no higher
much than my mother’s knee,—she was sore fond of us children, Gritty
and me,—and so I said to her, ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘shall we have
plum-pudding _every_ day because o’ the malt-house? She used to tell me
o’ that till her dying day. She was but a young woman when she died, my
mother was. But it’s forty good year since they finished the
malt-house, and it isn’t many days out of ’em all as I haven’t looked
out into the yard there, the first thing in the morning,—all weathers,
from year’s end to year’s end. I should go off my head in a new place.
I should be like as if I’d lost my way. It’s all hard, whichever way I
look at it,—the harness ’ull gall me, but it ’ud be summat to draw
along the old road, instead of a new un.”
“Ay, sir,” said Luke, “you’d be a deal better here nor in some new
place. I can’t abide new places mysen: things is allays
awk’ard,—narrow-wheeled waggins, belike, and the stiles all another
sort, an’ oat-cake i’ some places, tow’rt th’ head o’ the Floss, there.
It’s poor work, changing your country-side.”
“But I doubt, Luke, they’ll be for getting rid o’ Ben, and making you
do with a lad; and I must help a bit wi’ the mill. You’ll have a worse
place.”
“Ne’er mind, sir,” said Luke, “I sha’n’t plague mysen. I’n been wi’ you
twenty year, an’ you can’t get twenty year wi’ whistlin’ for ’em, no
more nor you can make the trees grow: you mun wait till God A’mighty
sends ’em. I can’t abide new victual nor new faces, _I_ can’t,—you
niver know but what they’ll gripe you.”
The walk was finished in silence after this, for Luke had disburthened
himself of thoughts to an extent that left his conversational resources
quite barren, and Mr Tulliver had relapsed from his recollections into
a painful meditation on the choice of hardships before him. Maggie
noticed that he was unusually absent that evening at tea; and afterward
he sat leaning forward in his chair, looking at the ground, moving his
lips, and shaking his head from time to time. Then he looked hard at
Mrs Tulliver, who was knitting opposite him, then at Maggie, who, as
she bent over her sewing, was intensely conscious of some drama going
forward in her father’s mind. Suddenly he took up the poker and broke
the large coal fiercely.
“Dear heart, Mr Tulliver, what can you be thinking of?” said his wife,
looking up in alarm; “it’s very wasteful, breaking the coal, and we’ve
got hardly any large coal left, and I don’t know where the rest is to
come from.”
“I don’t think you’re quite so well to-night, are you, father?” said
Maggie; “you seem uneasy.”
“Why, how is it Tom doesn’t come?” said Mr Tulliver, impatiently.
“Dear heart! is it time? I must go and get his supper,” said Mrs
Tulliver, laying down her knitting, and leaving the room.
“It’s nigh upon half-past eight,” said Mr Tulliver. “He’ll be here
soon. Go, go and get the big Bible, and open it at the beginning, where
everything’s set down. And get the pen and ink.”
Maggie obeyed, wondering; but her father gave no further orders, and
only sat listening for Tom’s footfall on the gravel, apparently
irritated by the wind, which had risen, and was roaring so as to drown
all other sounds. There was a strange light in his eyes that rather
frightened Maggie; _she_ began to wish that Tom would come, too.
“There he is, then,” said Mr Tulliver, in an excited way, when the
knock came at last. Maggie went to open the door, but her mother came
out of the kitchen hurriedly, saying, “Stop a bit, Maggie; I’ll open
it.”
Mrs Tulliver had begun to be a little frightened at her boy, but she
was jealous of every office others did for him.
“Your supper’s ready by the kitchen-fire, my boy,” she said, as he took
off his hat and coat. “You shall have it by yourself, just as you like,
and I won’t speak to you.”
“I think my father wants Tom, mother,” said Maggie; “he must come into
the parlour first.”
Tom entered with his usual saddened evening face, but his eyes fell
immediately on the open Bible and the inkstand, and he glanced with a
look of anxious surprise at his father, who was saying,—
“Come, come, you’re late; I want you.”
“Is there anything the matter, father?” said Tom.
“You sit down, all of you,” said Mr Tulliver, peremptorily.
“And, Tom, sit down here; I’ve got something for you to write i’ the
Bible.”
They all three sat down, looking at him. He began to speak slowly,
looking first at his wife.
“I’ve made up my mind, Bessy, and I’ll be as good as my word to you.
There’ll be the same grave made for us to lie down in, and we mustn’t
be bearing one another ill-will. I’ll stop in the old place, and I’ll
serve under Wakem, and I’ll serve him like an honest man; there’s no
Tulliver but what’s honest, mind that, Tom,”—here his voice
rose,—“they’ll have it to throw up against me as I paid a dividend, but
it wasn’t my fault; it was because there’s raskills in the world.
They’ve been too many for me, and I must give in. I’ll put my neck in
harness,—for you’ve a right to say as I’ve brought you into trouble,
Bessy,—and I’ll serve him as honest as if he was no raskill; I’m an
honest man, though I shall never hold my head up no more. I’m a tree as
is broke—a tree as is broke.”
He paused and looked on the ground. Then suddenly raising his head, he
said, in a louder yet deeper tone:
“But I won’t forgive him! I know what they say, he never meant me any
harm. That’s the way Old Harry props up the rascals. He’s been at the
bottom of everything; but he’s a fine gentleman,—I know, I know. I
shouldn’t ha’ gone to law, they say. But who made it so as there was no
arbitratin’, and no justice to be got? It signifies nothing to him, I
know that; he’s one o’ them fine gentlemen as get money by doing
business for poorer folks, and when he’s made beggars of ’em he’ll give
’em charity. I won’t forgive him! I wish he might be punished with
shame till his own son ’ud like to forget him. I wish he may do summat
as they’d make him work at the treadmill! But he won’t,—he’s too big a
raskill to let the law lay hold on him. And you mind this, Tom,—you
never forgive him neither, if you mean to be my son. There’ll maybe
come a time when you may make him feel; it’ll never come to me; I’n got
my head under the yoke. Now write—write it i’ the Bible.”
“Oh, father, what?” said Maggie, sinking down by his knee, pale and
trembling. “It’s wicked to curse and bear malice.”
“It isn’t wicked, I tell you,” said her father, fiercely. “It’s wicked
as the raskills should prosper; it’s the Devil’s doing. Do as I tell
you, Tom. Write.”
“What am I to write?” said Tom, with gloomy submission.
“Write as your father, Edward Tulliver, took service under John Wakem,
the man as had helped to ruin him, because I’d promised my wife to make
her what amends I could for her trouble, and because I wanted to die in
th’ old place where I was born and my father was born. Put that i’ the
right words—you know how—and then write, as I don’t forgive Wakem for
all that; and for all I’ll serve him honest, I wish evil may befall
him. Write that.”
There was a dead silence as Tom’s pen moved along the paper; Mrs
Tulliver looked scared, and Maggie trembled like a leaf.
“Now let me hear what you’ve wrote,” said Mr Tulliver. Tom read aloud
slowly.
“Now write—write as you’ll remember what Wakem’s done to your father,
and you’ll make him and his feel it, if ever the day comes. And sign
your name Thomas Tulliver.”
“Oh no, father, dear father!” said Maggie, almost choked with fear.
“You shouldn’t make Tom write that.”
“Be quiet, Maggie!” said Tom. “I _shall_ write it.”
BOOK FOURTH
THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION.
Chapter I.
A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet
Journeying down the Rhone on a summer’s day, you have perhaps felt the
sunshine made dreary by those ruined villages which stud the banks in
certain parts of its course, telling how the swift river once rose,
like an angry, destroying god, sweeping down the feeble generations
whose breath is in their nostrils, and making their dwellings a
desolation. Strange contrast, you may have thought, between the effect
produced on us by these dismal remnants of commonplace houses, which in
their best days were but the sign of a sordid life, belonging in all
its details to our own vulgar era, and the effect produced by those
ruins on the castled Rhine, which have crumbled and mellowed into such
harmony with the green and rocky steeps that they seem to have a
natural fitness, like the mountain-pine; nay, even in the day when they
were built they must have had this fitness, as if they had been raised
by an earth-born race, who had inherited from their mighty parent a
sublime instinct of form. And that was a day of romance; If those
robber-barons were somewhat grim and drunken ogres, they had a certain
grandeur of the wild beast in them,—they were forest boars with tusks,
tearing and rending, not the ordinary domestic grunter; they
represented the demon forces forever in collision with beauty, virtue,
and the gentle uses of life; they made a fine contrast in the picture
with the wandering minstrel, the soft-lipped princess, the pious
recluse, and the timid Israelite. That was a time of colour, when the
sunlight fell on glancing steel and floating banners; a time of
adventure and fierce struggle,—nay, of living, religious art and
religious enthusiasm; for were not cathedrals built in those days, and
did not great emperors leave their Western palaces to die before the
infidel strongholds in the sacred East? Therefore it is that these
Rhine castles thrill me with a sense of poetry; they belong to the
grand historic life of humanity, and raise up for me the vision of an
echo. But these dead-tinted, hollow-eyed, angular skeletons of villages
on the Rhone oppress me with the feeling that human life—very much of
it—is a narrow, ugly, grovelling existence, which even calamity does
not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its bare vulgarity of
conception; and I have a cruel conviction that the lives these ruins
are the traces of were part of a gross sum of obscure vitality, that
will be swept into the same oblivion with the generations of ants and
beavers.
Perhaps something akin to this oppressive feeling may have weighed upon
you in watching this old-fashioned family life on the banks of the
Floss, which even sorrow hardly suffices to lift above the level of the
tragi-comic. It is a sordid life, you say, this of the Tullivers and
Dodsons, irradiated by no sublime principles, no romantic visions, no
active, self-renouncing faith; moved by none of those wild,
uncontrollable passions which create the dark shadows of misery and
crime; without that primitive, rough simplicity of wants, that hard,
submissive, ill-paid toil, that childlike spelling-out of what nature
has written, which gives its poetry to peasant life. Here one has
conventional worldly notions and habits without instruction and without
polish, surely the most prosaic form of human life; proud
respectability in a gig of unfashionable build; worldliness without
side-dishes. Observing these people narrowly, even when the iron hand
of misfortune has shaken them from their unquestioning hold on the
world, one sees little trace of religion, still less of a distinctively
Christian creed. Their belief in the Unseen, so far as it manifests
itself at all, seems to be rather a pagan kind; their moral notions,
though held with strong tenacity, seem to have no standard beyond
hereditary custom. You could not live among such people; you are
stifled for want of an outlet toward something beautiful, great, or
noble; you are irritated with these dull men and women, as a kind of
population out of keeping with the earth on which they live,—with this
rich plain where the great river flows forever onward, and links the
small pulse of the old English town with the beatings of the world’s
mighty heart. A vigorous superstition, that lashes its gods or lashes
its own back, seems to be more congruous with the mystery of the human
lot, than the mental condition of these emmet-like Dodsons and
Tullivers.
I share with you this sense of oppressive narrowness; but it is
necessary that we should feel it, if we care to understand how it acted
on the lives of Tom and Maggie,—how it has acted on young natures in
many generations, that in the onward tendency of human things have
risen above the mental level of the generation before them, to which
they have been nevertheless tied by the strongest fibres of their
hearts. The suffering, whether of martyr or victim, which belongs to
every historical advance of mankind, is represented in this way in
every town, and by hundreds of obscure hearths; and we need not shrink
from this comparison of small things with great; for does not science
tell us that its highest striving is after the ascertainment of a unity
which shall bind the smallest things with the greatest? In natural
science, I have understood, there is nothing petty to the mind that has
a large vision of relations, and to which every single object suggests
a vast sum of conditions. It is surely the same with the observation of
human life.
Certainly the religious and moral ideas of the Dodsons and Tullivers
were of too specific a kind to be arrived at deductively, from the
statement that they were part of the Protestant population of Great
Britain. Their theory of life had its core of soundness, as all
theories must have on which decent and prosperous families have been
reared and have flourished; but it had the very slightest tincture of
theology. If, in the maiden days of the Dodson sisters, their Bibles
opened more easily at some parts than others, it was because of dried
tulip-petals, which had been distributed quite impartially, without
preference for the historical, devotional, or doctrinal. Their religion
was of a simple, semi-pagan kind, but there was no heresy in it,—if
heresy properly means choice,—for they didn’t know there was any other
religion, except that of chapel-goers, which appeared to run in
families, like asthma. How _should_ they know? The vicar of their
pleasant rural parish was not a controversialist, but a good hand at
whist, and one who had a joke always ready for a blooming female
parishioner. The religion of the Dodsons consisted in revering whatever
was customary and respectable; it was necessary to be baptised, else
one could not be buried in the church-yard, and to take the sacrament
before death, as a security against more dimly understood perils; but
it was of equal necessity to have the proper pall-bearers and
well-cured hams at one’s funeral, and to leave an unimpeachable will. A
Dodson would not be taxed with the omission of anything that was
becoming, or that belonged to that eternal fitness of things which was
plainly indicated in the practice of the most substantial parishioners,
and in the family traditions,—such as obedience to parents,
faithfulness to kindred, industry, rigid honesty, thrift, the thorough
scouring of wooden and copper utensils, the hoarding of coins likely to
disappear from the currency, the production of first-rate commodities
for the market, and the general preference of whatever was home-made.
The Dodsons were a very proud race, and their pride lay in the utter
frustration of all desire to tax them with a breach of traditional duty
or propriety. A wholesome pride in many respects, since it identified
honour with perfect integrity, thoroughness of work, and faithfulness
to admitted rules; and society owes some worthy qualities in many of
her members to mothers of the Dodson class, who made their butter and
their fromenty well, and would have felt disgraced to make it
otherwise. To be honest and poor was never a Dodson motto, still less
to seem rich though being poor; rather, the family badge was to be
honest and rich, and not only rich, but richer than was supposed. To
live respected, and have the proper bearers at your funeral, was an
achievement of the ends of existence that would be entirely nullified
if, on the reading of your will, you sank in the opinion of your
fellow-men, either by turning out to be poorer than they expected, or
by leaving your money in a capricious manner, without strict regard to
degrees of kin. The right thing must always be done toward kindred. The
right thing was to correct them severely, if they were other than a
credit to the family, but still not to alienate from them the smallest
rightful share in the family shoebuckles and other property. A
conspicuous quality in the Dodson character was its genuineness; its
vices and virtues alike were phases of a proud honest egoism, which had
a hearty dislike to whatever made against its own credit and interest,
and would be frankly hard of speech to inconvenient “kin,” but would
never forsake or ignore them,—would not let them want bread, but only
require them to eat it with bitter herbs.
The same sort of traditional belief ran in the Tulliver veins, but it
was carried in richer blood, having elements of generous imprudence,
warm affection, and hot-tempered rashness. Mr Tulliver’s grandfather
had been heard to say that he was descended from one Ralph Tulliver, a
wonderfully clever fellow, who had ruined himself. It is likely enough
that the clever Ralph was a high liver, rode spirited horses, and was
very decidedly of his own opinion. On the other hand, nobody had ever
heard of a Dodson who had ruined himself; it was not the way of that
family.
If such were the views of life on which the Dodsons and Tullivers had
been reared in the praiseworthy past of Pitt and high prices, you will
infer from what you already know concerning the state of society in St
Ogg’s, that there had been no highly modifying influence to act on them
in their maturer life. It was still possible, even in that later time
of anti-Catholic preaching, for people to hold many pagan ideas, and
believe themselves good church-people, notwithstanding; so we need
hardly feel any surprise at the fact that Mr Tulliver, though a regular
church-goer, recorded his vindictiveness on the fly-leaf of his Bible.
It was not that any harm could be said concerning the vicar of that
charming rural parish to which Dorlcote Mill belonged; he was a man of
excellent family, an irreproachable bachelor, of elegant pursuits,—had
taken honours, and held a fellowship. Mr Tulliver regarded him with
dutiful respect, as he did everything else belonging to the
church-service; but he considered that church was one thing and
common-sense another, and he wanted nobody to tell _him_ what
commonsense was. Certain seeds which are required to find a nidus for
themselves under unfavourable circumstances have been supplied by
nature with an apparatus of hooks, so that they will get a hold on very
unreceptive surfaces. The spiritual seed which had been scattered over
Mr Tulliver had apparently been destitute of any corresponding
provision, and had slipped off to the winds again, from a total absence
of hooks.
Chapter II.
The Torn Nest Is Pierced by the Thorns
There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies
the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus,
and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the
slow, changed life that follows; in the time when sorrow has become
stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its
pain; in the time when day follows day in dull, unexpectant sameness,
and trial is a dreary routine,—it is then that despair threatens; it is
then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt, and eye and ear
are strained after some unlearned secret of our existence, which shall
give to endurance the nature of satisfaction.
This time of utmost need was come to Maggie, with her short span of
thirteen years. To the usual precocity of the girl, she added that
early experience of struggle, of conflict between the inward impulse
and outward fact, which is the lot of every imaginative and passionate
nature; and the years since she hammered the nails into her wooden
Fetish among the worm-eaten shelves of the attic had been filled with
so eager a life in the triple world of Reality, Books, and Waking
Dreams, that Maggie was strangely old for her years in everything
except in her entire want of that prudence and self-command which were
the qualities that made Tom manly in the midst of his intellectual
boyishness. And now her lot was beginning to have a still, sad
monotony, which threw her more than ever on her inward self. Her father
was able to attend to business again, his affairs were settled, and he
was acting as Wakem’s manager on the old spot. Tom went to and fro
every morning and evening, and became more and more silent in the short
intervals at home; what was there to say? One day was like another; and
Tom’s interest in life, driven back and crushed on every other side,
was concentrating itself into the one channel of ambitious resistance
to misfortune. The peculiarities of his father and mother were very
irksome to him, now they were laid bare of all the softening
accompaniments of an easy, prosperous home; for Tom had very clear,
prosaic eyes, not apt to be dimmed by mists of feeling or imagination.
Poor Mrs Tulliver, it seemed, would never recover her old self, her
placid household activity; how could she? The objects among which her
mind had moved complacently were all gone,—all the little hopes and
schemes and speculations, all the pleasant little cares about her
treasures which had made the world quite comprehensible to her for a
quarter of a century, since she had made her first purchase of the
sugar-tongs, had been suddenly snatched away from her, and she remained
bewildered in this empty life. Why that should have happened to her
which had not happened to other women remained an insoluble question by
which she expressed her perpetual ruminating comparison of the past
with the present. It was piteous to see the comely woman getting
thinner and more worn under a bodily as well as mental restlessness,
which made her often wander about the empty house after her work was
done, until Maggie, becoming alarmed about her, would seek her, and
bring her down by telling her how it vexed Tom that she was injuring
her health by never sitting down and resting herself. Yet amidst this
helpless imbecility there was a touching trait of humble, self-devoting
maternity, which made Maggie feel tenderly toward her poor mother
amidst all the little wearing griefs caused by her mental feebleness.
She would let Maggie do none of the work that was heaviest and most
soiling to the hands, and was quite peevish when Maggie attempted to
relieve her from her grate-brushing and scouring: “Let it alone, my
dear; your hands ’ull get as hard as hard,” she would say; “it’s your
mother’s place to do that. I can’t do the sewing—my eyes fail me.” And
she would still brush and carefully tend Maggie’s hair, which she had
become reconciled to, in spite of its refusal to curl, now it was so
long and massy. Maggie was not her pet child, and, in general, would
have been much better if she had been quite different; yet the womanly
heart, so bruised in its small personal desires, found a future to rest
on in the life of this young thing, and the mother pleased herself with
wearing out her own hands to save the hands that had so much more life
in them.
But the constant presence of her mother’s regretful bewilderment was
less painful to Maggie than that of her father’s sullen,
incommunicative depression. As long as the paralysis was upon him, and
it seemed as if he might always be in a childlike condition of
dependence,—as long as he was still only half awakened to his
trouble,—Maggie had felt the strong tide of pitying love almost as an
inspiration, a new power, that would make the most difficult life easy
for his sake; but now, instead of childlike dependence, there had come
a taciturn, hard concentration of purpose, in strange contrast with his
old vehement communicativeness and high spirit; and this lasted from
day to day, and from week to week, the dull eye never brightening with
any eagerness or any joy. It is something cruelly incomprehensible to
youthful natures, this sombre sameness in middle-aged and elderly
people, whose life has resulted in disappointment and discontent, to
whose faces a smile becomes so strange that the sad lines all about the
lips and brow seem to take no notice of it, and it hurries away again
for want of a welcome. “Why will they not kindle up and be glad
sometimes?” thinks young elasticity. “It would be so easy if they only
liked to do it.” And these leaden clouds that never part are apt to
create impatience even in the filial affection that streams forth in
nothing but tenderness and pity in the time of more obvious affliction.
Mr Tulliver lingered nowhere away from home; he hurried away from
market, he refused all invitations to stay and chat, as in old times,
in the houses where he called on business. He could not be reconciled
with his lot. There was no attitude in which his pride did not feel its
bruises; and in all behaviour toward him, whether kind or cold, he
detected an allusion to the change in his circumstances. Even the days
on which Wakem came to ride round the land and inquire into the
business were not so black to him as those market-days on which he had
met several creditors who had accepted a composition from him. To save
something toward the repayment of those creditors was the object toward
which he was now bending all his thoughts and efforts; and under the
influence of this all-compelling demand of his nature, the somewhat
profuse man, who hated to be stinted or to stint any one else in his
own house, was gradually metamorphosed into the keen-eyed grudger of
morsels. Mrs Tulliver could not economise enough to satisfy him, in
their food and firing; and he would eat nothing himself but what was of
the coarsest quality. Tom, though depressed and strongly repelled by
his father’s sullenness, and the dreariness of home, entered thoroughly
into his father’s feelings about paying the creditors; and the poor lad
brought his first quarter’s money, with a delicious sense of
achievement, and gave it to his father to put into the tin box which
held the savings. The little store of sovereigns in the tin box seemed
to be the only sight that brought a faint beam of pleasure into the
miller’s eyes,—faint and transient, for it was soon dispelled by the
thought that the time would be long—perhaps longer than his
life,—before the narrow savings could remove the hateful incubus of
debt. A deficit of more than five hundred pounds, with the accumulating
interest, seemed a deep pit to fill with the savings from thirty
shillings a-week, even when Tom’s probable savings were to be added. On
this one point there was entire community of feeling in the four widely
differing beings who sat round the dying fire of sticks, which made a
cheap warmth for them on the verge of bedtime. Mrs Tulliver carried the
proud integrity of the Dodsons in her blood, and had been brought up to
think that to wrong people of their money, which was another phrase for
debt, was a sort of moral pillory; it would have been wickedness, to
her mind, to have run counter to her husband’s desire to “do the right
thing,” and retrieve his name. She had a confused, dreamy notion that,
if the creditors were all paid, her plate and linen ought to come back
to her; but she had an inbred perception that while people owed money
they were unable to pay, they couldn’t rightly call anything their own.
She murmured a little that Mr Tulliver so peremptorily refused to
receive anything in repayment from Mr and Mrs Moss; but to all his
requirements of household economy she was submissive to the point of
denying herself the cheapest indulgences of mere flavour; her only
rebellion was to smuggle into the kitchen something that would make
rather a better supper than usual for Tom.
These narrow notions about debt, held by the old fashioned Tullivers,
may perhaps excite a smile on the faces of many readers in these days
of wide commercial views and wide philosophy, according to which
everything rights itself without any trouble of ours. The fact that my
tradesman is out of pocket by me is to be looked at through the serene
certainty that somebody else’s tradesman is in pocket by somebody else;
and since there must be bad debts in the world, why, it is mere egoism
not to like that we in particular should make them instead of our
fellow-citizens. I am telling the history of very simple people, who
had never had any illuminating doubts as to personal integrity and
honour.
Under all this grim melancholy and narrowing concentration of desire,
Mr Tulliver retained the feeling toward his “little wench” which made
her presence a need to him, though it would not suffice to cheer him.
She was still the desire of his eyes; but the sweet spring of fatherly
love was now mingled with bitterness, like everything else. When Maggie
laid down her work at night, it was her habit to get a low stool and
sit by her father’s knee, leaning her cheek against it. How she wished
he would stroke her head, or give some sign that he was soothed by the
sense that he had a daughter who loved him! But now she got no answer
to her little caresses, either from her father or from Tom,—the two
idols of her life. Tom was weary and abstracted in the short intervals
when he was at home, and her father was bitterly preoccupied with the
thought that the girl was growing up, was shooting up into a woman; and
how was she to do well in life? She had a poor chance for marrying,
down in the world as they were. And he hated the thought of her
marrying poorly, as her aunt Gritty had done; _that_ would be a thing
to make him turn in his grave,—the little wench so pulled down by
children and toil, as her aunt Moss was. When uncultured minds,
confined to a narrow range of personal experience, are under the
pressure of continued misfortune, their inward life is apt to become a
perpetually repeated round of sad and bitter thoughts; the same words,
the same scenes, are revolved over and over again, the same mood
accompanies them; the end of the year finds them as much what they were
at the beginning as if they were machines set to a recurrent series of
movements.
The sameness of the days was broken by few visitors. Uncles and aunts
paid only short visits now; of course, they could not stay to meals,
and the constraint caused by Mr Tulliver’s savage silence, which seemed
to add to the hollow resonance of the bare, uncarpeted room when the
aunts were talking, heightened the unpleasantness of these family
visits on all sides, and tended to make them rare. As for other
acquaintances, there is a chill air surrounding those who are down in
the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold
room; human beings, mere men and women, without furniture, without
anything to offer you, who have ceased to count as anybody, present an
embarrassing negation of reasons for wishing to see them, or of
subjects on which to converse with them. At that distant day, there was
a dreary isolation in the civilised Christian society of these realms
for families that had dropped below their original level, unless they
belonged to a sectarian church, which gets some warmth of brotherhood
by walling in the sacred fire.
Chapter III.
A Voice from the Past
One afternoon, when the chestnuts were coming into flower, Maggie had
brought her chair outside the front door, and was seated there with a
book on her knees. Her dark eyes had wandered from the book, but they
did not seem to be enjoying the sunshine which pierced the screen of
jasmine on the projecting porch at her right, and threw leafy shadows
on her pale round cheek; they seemed rather to be searching for
something that was not disclosed by the sunshine. It had been a more
miserable day than usual; her father, after a visit of Wakem’s had had
a paroxysm of rage, in which for some trifling fault he had beaten the
boy who served in the mill. Once before, since his illness, he had had
a similar paroxysm, in which he had beaten his horse, and the scene had
left a lasting terror in Maggie’s mind. The thought had risen, that
some time or other he might beat her mother if she happened to speak in
her feeble way at the wrong moment. The keenest of all dread with her
was lest her father should add to his present misfortune the
wretchedness of doing something irretrievably disgraceful. The battered
school-book of Tom’s which she held on her knees could give her no
fortitude under the pressure of that dread; and again and again her
eyes had filled with tears, as they wandered vaguely, seeing neither
the chestnut-trees, nor the distant horizon, but only future scenes of
home-sorrow.
Suddenly she was roused by the sound of the opening gate and of
footsteps on the gravel. It was not Tom who was entering, but a man in
a sealskin cap and a blue plush waistcoat, carrying a pack on his back,
and followed closely by a bullterrier of brindled coat and defiant
aspect.
“Oh, Bob, it’s you!” said Maggie, starting up with a smile of pleased
recognition, for there had been no abundance of kind acts to efface the
recollection of Bob’s generosity; “I’m so glad to see you.”
“Thank you, Miss,” said Bob, lifting his cap and showing a delighted
face, but immediately relieving himself of some accompanying
embarrassment by looking down at his dog, and saying in a tone of
disgust, “Get out wi’ you, you thunderin’ sawney!”
“My brother is not at home yet, Bob,” said Maggie; “he is always at St
Ogg’s in the daytime.”
“Well, Miss,” said Bob, “I should be glad to see Mr Tom, but that isn’t
just what I’m come for,—look here!”
Bob was in the act of depositing his pack on the door-step, and with it
a row of small books fastened together with string.
Apparently, however, they were not the object to which he wished to
call Maggie’s attention, but rather something which he had carried
under his arm, wrapped in a red handkerchief.
“See here!” he said again, laying the red parcel on the others and
unfolding it; “you won’t think I’m a-makin’ too free, Miss, I hope, but
I lighted on these books, and I thought they might make up to you a bit
for them as you’ve lost; for I heared you speak o’ picturs,—an’ as for
picturs, _look_ here!”
The opening of the red handkerchief had disclosed a superannuated
“Keepsake” and six or seven numbers of a “Portrait Gallery,” in royal
octavo; and the emphatic request to look referred to a portrait of
George the Fourth in all the majesty of his depressed cranium and
voluminous neckcloth.
“There’s all sorts o’ genelmen here,” Bob went on, turning over the
leaves with some excitement, “wi’ all sorts o’ noses,—an’ some bald an’
some wi’ wigs,—Parlament genelmen, I reckon. An’ here,” he added,
opening the “Keepsake,”—“_here’s_ ladies for you, some wi’ curly hair
and some wi’ smooth, an’ some a-smiling wi’ their heads o’ one side,
an’ some as if they were goin’ to cry,—look here,—a-sittin’ on the
ground out o’ door, dressed like the ladies I’n seen get out o’ the
carriages at the balls in th’ Old Hall there. My eyes! I wonder what
the chaps wear as go a-courtin’ ’em! I sot up till the clock was gone
twelve last night, a-lookin’ at ’em,—I did,—till they stared at me out
o’ the picturs as if they’d know when I spoke to ’em. But, lors! I
shouldn’t know what to say to ’em. They’ll be more fittin’ company for
you, Miss; and the man at the book-stall, he said they banged
iverything for picturs; he said they was a fust-rate article.”
“And you’ve bought them for me, Bob?” said Maggie, deeply touched by
this simple kindness. “How very, very good of you! But I’m afraid you
gave a great deal of money for them.”
“Not me!” said Bob. “I’d ha’ gev three times the money if they’ll make
up to you a bit for them as was sold away from you, Miss. For I’n niver
forgot how you looked when you fretted about the books bein’ gone; it’s
stuck by me as if it was a pictur hingin’ before me. An’ when I see’d
the book open upo’ the stall, wi’ the lady lookin’ out of it wi’ eyes a
bit like your’n when you was frettin’,—you’ll excuse my takin’ the
liberty, Miss,—I thought I’d make free to buy it for you, an’ then I
bought the books full o’ genelmen to match; an’ then”—here Bob took up
the small stringed packet of books—“I thought you might like a bit more
print as well as the picturs, an’ I got these for a sayso,—they’re
cram-full o’ print, an’ I thought they’d do no harm comin’ along wi’
these bettermost books. An’ I hope you won’t say me nay, an’ tell me as
you won’t have ’em, like Mr Tom did wi’ the suvreigns.”
“No, indeed, Bob,” said Maggie, “I’m very thankful to you for thinking
of me, and being so good to me and Tom. I don’t think any one ever did
such a kind thing for me before. I haven’t many friends who care for
me.”
“Hev a dog, Miss!—they’re better friends nor any Christian,” said Bob,
laying down his pack again, which he had taken up with the intention of
hurrying away; for he felt considerable shyness in talking to a young
lass like Maggie, though, as he usually said of himself, “his tongue
overrun him” when he began to speak. “I can’t give you Mumps, ’cause
he’d break his heart to go away from me—eh, Mumps, what do you say, you
riff-raff?” (Mumps declined to express himself more diffusely than by a
single affirmative movement of his tail.) “But I’d get you a pup, Miss,
an’ welcome.”
“No, thank you, Bob. We have a yard dog, and I mayn’t keep a dog of my
own.”
“Eh, that’s a pity; else there’s a pup,—if you didn’t mind about it not
being thoroughbred; its mother acts in the Punch show,—an uncommon
sensible bitch; she means more sense wi’ her bark nor half the chaps
can put into their talk from breakfast to sundown. There’s one chap
carries pots,—a poor, low trade as any on the road,—he says, ‘Why
Toby’s nought but a mongrel; there’s nought to look at in her.’ But I
says to him, ‘Why, what are you yoursen but a mongrel? There wasn’t
much pickin’ o’ _your_ feyther an’ mother, to look at you.’ Not but I
like a bit o’ breed myself, but I can’t abide to see one cur grinnin’
at another. I wish you good evenin’, Miss,” said Bob, abruptly taking
up his pack again, under the consciousness that his tongue was acting
in an undisciplined manner.
“Won’t you come in the evening some time, and see my brother, Bob?”
said Maggie.
“Yes, Miss, thank you—another time. You’ll give my duty to him, if you
please. Eh, he’s a fine growed chap, Mr Tom is; he took to growin’ i’
the legs, an’ _I_ didn’t.”
The pack was down again, now, the hook of the stick having somehow gone
wrong.
“You don’t call Mumps a cur, I suppose?” said Maggie, divining that any
interest she showed in Mumps would be gratifying to his master.
“No, Miss, a fine way off that,” said Bob, with pitying smile; “Mumps
is as fine a cross as you’ll see anywhere along the Floss, an’ I’n been
up it wi’ the barge times enow. Why, the gentry stops to look at him;
but you won’t catch Mumps a-looking at the gentry much,—he minds his
own business, he does.”
The expression of Mump’s face, which seemed to be tolerating the
superfluous existence of objects in general, was strongly confirmatory
of this high praise.
“He looks dreadfully surly,” said Maggie. “Would he let me pat him?”
“Ay, that would he, and thank you. He knows his company, Mumps does. He
isn’t a dog as ’ull be caught wi’ gingerbread; he’d smell a thief a
good deal stronger nor the gingerbread, he would. Lors, I talk to him
by th’ hour together, when I’m walking i’ lone places, and if I’n done
a bit o’ mischief, I allays tell him. I’n got no secrets but what Mumps
knows ’em. He knows about my big thumb, he does.”
“Your big thumb—what’s that, Bob?” said Maggie.
“That’s what it is, Miss,” said Bob, quickly, exhibiting a singularly
broad specimen of that difference between the man and the monkey. “It
tells i’ measuring out the flannel, you see. I carry flannel, ’cause
it’s light for my pack, an’ it’s dear stuff, you see, so a big thumb
tells. I clap my thumb at the end o’ the yard and cut o’ the hither
side of it, and the old women aren’t up to’t.”
“But Bob,” said Maggie, looking serious, “that’s cheating; I don’t like
to hear you say that.”
“Don’t you, Miss?” said Bob regretfully. “Then I’m sorry I said it. But
I’m so used to talking to Mumps, an’ he doesn’t mind a bit o’ cheating,
when it’s them skinflint women, as haggle an’ haggle, an’ ’ud like to
get their flannel for nothing, an’ ’ud niver ask theirselves how I got
my dinner out on’t. I niver cheat anybody as doesn’t want to cheat me,
Miss,—lors, I’m a honest chap, I am; only I must hev a bit o’ sport,
an’ now I don’t go wi’ th’ ferrets, I’n got no varmint to come over but
them haggling women. I wish you good evening, Miss.”
“Good-by, Bob. Thank you very much for bringing me the books. And come
again to see Tom.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Bob, moving on a few steps; then turning half round
he said, “I’ll leave off that trick wi’ my big thumb, if you don’t
think well on me for it, Miss; but it ’ud be a pity, it would. I
couldn’t find another trick so good,—an’ what ’ud be the use o’ havin’
a big thumb? It might as well ha’ been narrow.”
Maggie, thus exalted into Bob’s exalting Madonna, laughed in spite of
herself; at which her worshipper’s blue eyes twinkled too, and under
these favouring auspices he touched his cap and walked away.
The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke’s grand dirge
over them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth
and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so
much as her little finger or the hem of her robe. Bob, with the pack on
his back, had as respectful an adoration for this dark-eyed maiden as
if he had been a knight in armor calling aloud on her name as he
pricked on to the fight.
That gleam of merriment soon died away from Maggie’s face, and perhaps
only made the returning gloom deeper by contrast. She was too
dispirited even to like answering questions about Bob’s present of
books, and she carried them away to her bedroom, laying them down there
and seating herself on her one stool, without caring to look at them
just yet. She leaned her cheek against the window-frame, and thought
that the light-hearted Bob had a lot much happier than hers.
Maggie’s sense of loneliness, and utter privation of joy, had deepened
with the brightness of advancing spring. All the favourite outdoor
nooks about home, which seemed to have done their part with her parents
in nurturing and cherishing her, were now mixed up with the
home-sadness, and gathered no smile from the sunshine. Every affection,
every delight the poor child had had, was like an aching nerve to her.
There was no music for her any more,—no piano, no harmonised voices, no
delicious stringed instruments, with their passionate cries of
imprisoned spirits sending a strange vibration through her frame. And
of all her school-life there was nothing left her now but her little
collection of school-books, which she turned over with a sickening
sense that she knew them all, and they were all barren of comfort. Even
at school she had often wished for books with _more_ in them;
everything she learned there seemed like the ends of long threads that
snapped immediately. And now—without the indirect charm of
school-emulation—Télémaque was mere bran; so were the hard, dry
questions on Christian Doctrine; there was no flavour in them, no
strength. Sometimes Maggie thought she could have been contented with
absorbing fancies; if she could have had all Scott’s novels and all
Byron’s poems!—then, perhaps, she might have found happiness enough to
dull her sensibility to her actual daily life. And yet they were hardly
what she wanted. She could make dream-worlds of her own, but no
dream-world would satisfy her now. She wanted some explanation of this
hard, real life,—the unhappy-looking father, seated at the dull
breakfast-table; the childish, bewildered mother; the little sordid
tasks that filled the hours, or the more oppressive emptiness of weary,
joyless leisure; the need of some tender, demonstrative love; the cruel
sense that Tom didn’t mind what she thought or felt, and that they were
no longer playfellows together; the privation of all pleasant things
that had come to _her_ more than to others,—she wanted some key that
would enable her to understand, and in understanding, to endure, the
heavy weight that had fallen on her young heart. If she had been taught
“real learning and wisdom, such as great men knew,” she thought she
should have held the secrets of life; if she had only books, that she
might learn for herself what wise men knew! Saints and martyrs had
never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets. She knew little of
saints and martyrs, and had gathered, as a general result of her
teaching, that they were a temporary provision against the spread of
Catholicism, and had all died at Smithfield.
In one of these meditations it occurred to her that she had forgotten
Tom’s school-books, which had been sent home in his trunk. But she
found the stock unaccountably shrunk down to the few old ones which had
been well thumbed,—the Latin Dictionary and Grammar, a Delectus, a torn
Eutropius, the well-worn Virgil, Aldrich’s Logic, and the exasperating
Euclid. Still, Latin, Euclid, and Logic would surely be a considerable
step in masculine wisdom,—in that knowledge which made men contented,
and even glad to live. Not that the yearning for effectual wisdom was
quite unmixed; a certain mirage would now and then rise on the desert
of the future, in which she seemed to see herself honoured for her
surprising attainments. And so the poor child, with her soul’s hunger
and her illusions of self-flattery, began to nibble at this
thick-rinded fruit of the tree of knowledge, filling her vacant hours
with Latin, geometry, and the forms of the syllogism, and feeling a
gleam of triumph now and then that her understanding was quite equal to
these peculiarly masculine studies. For a week or two she went on
resolutely enough, though with an occasional sinking of heart, as if
she had set out toward the Promised Land alone, and found it a thirsty,
trackless, uncertain journey. In the severity of her early resolution,
she would take Aldrich out into the fields, and then look off her book
toward the sky, where the lark was twinkling, or to the reeds and
bushes by the river, from which the waterfowl rustled forth on its
anxious, awkward flight,—with a startled sense that the relation
between Aldrich and this living world was extremely remote for her. The
discouragement deepened as the days went on, and the eager heart gained
faster and faster on the patient mind. Somehow, when she sat at the
window with her book, her eyes _would_ fix themselves blankly on the
outdoor sunshine; then they would fill with tears, and sometimes, if
her mother was not in the room, the studies would all end in sobbing.
She rebelled against her lot, she fainted under its loneliness, and
fits even of anger and hatred toward her father and mother, who were so
unlike what she would have them to be; toward Tom, who checked her, and
met her thought or feeling always by some thwarting difference,—would
flow out over her affections and conscience like a lava stream, and
frighten her with a sense that it was not difficult for her to become a
demon. Then her brain would be busy with wild romances of a flight from
home in search of something less sordid and dreary; she would go to
some great man—Walter Scott, perhaps—and tell him how wretched and how
clever she was, and he would surely do something for her. But, in the
middle of her vision, her father would perhaps enter the room for the
evening, and, surprised that she sat still without noticing him, would
say complainingly, “Come, am I to fetch my slippers myself?” The voice
pierced through Maggie like a sword; there was another sadness besides
her own, and she had been thinking of turning her back on it and
forsaking it.
This afternoon, the sight of Bob’s cheerful freckled face had given her
discontent a new direction. She thought it was part of the hardship of
her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than
others seemed to feel,—that she had to endure this wide, hopeless
yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and
best on this earth. She wished she could have been like Bob, with his
easily satisfied ignorance, or like Tom, who had something to do on
which he could fix his mind with a steady purpose, and disregard
everything else. Poor child! as she leaned her head against the
window-frame, with her hands clasped tighter and tighter, and her foot
beating the ground, she was as lonely in her trouble as if she had been
the only girl in the civilised world of that day who had come out of
her school-life with a soul untrained for inevitable struggles, with no
other part of her inherited share in the hard-won treasures of thought
which generations of painful toil have laid up for the race of men,
than shreds and patches of feeble literature and false history, with
much futile information about Saxon and other kings of doubtful
example, but unhappily quite without that knowledge of the irreversible
laws within and without her, which, governing the habits, becomes
morality, and developing the feelings of submission and dependence,
becomes religion,—as lonely in her trouble as if every other girl
besides herself had been cherished and watched over by elder minds, not
forgetful of their own early time, when need was keen and impulse
strong.
At last Maggie’s eyes glanced down on the books that lay on the
window-shelf, and she half forsook her reverie to turn over listlessly
the leaves of the “Portrait Gallery,” but she soon pushed this aside to
examine the little row of books tied together with string. “Beauties of
the Spectator,” “Rasselas,” “Economy of Human Life,” “Gregory’s
Letters,”—she knew the sort of matter that was inside all these; the
“Christian Year,”—that seemed to be a hymnbook, and she laid it down
again; but _Thomas à Kempis?_—the name had come across her in her
reading, and she felt the satisfaction, which every one knows, of
getting some ideas to attach to a name that strays solitary in the
memory. She took up the little, old, clumsy book with some curiosity;
it had the corners turned down in many places, and some hand, now
forever quiet, had made at certain passages strong pen-and-ink marks,
long since browned by time. Maggie turned from leaf to leaf, and read
where the quiet hand pointed: “Know that the love of thyself doth hurt
thee more than anything in the world.... If thou seekest this or that,
and wouldst be here or there to enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou
shalt never be quiet nor free from care; for in everything somewhat
will be wanting, and in every place there will be some that will cross
thee.... Both above and below, which way soever thou dost turn thee,
everywhere thou shalt find the Cross; and everywhere of necessity thou
must have patience, if thou wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an
everlasting crown.... If thou desirest to mount unto this height, thou
must set out courageously, and lay the axe to the root, that thou
mayest pluck up and destroy that hidden inordinate inclination to
thyself, and unto all private and earthly good. On this sin, that a man
inordinately loveth himself, almost all dependeth, whatsoever is
thoroughly to be overcome; which evil being once overcome and subdued,
there will presently ensue great peace and tranquillity.... It is but
little thou sufferest in comparison of them that have suffered so much,
were so strongly tempted, so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried
and exercised. Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more heavy
sufferings of others, that thou mayest the easier bear thy little
adversities. And if they seem not little unto thee, beware lest thy
impatience be the cause thereof.... Blessed are those ears that receive
the whispers of the divine voice, and listen not to the whisperings of
the world. Blessed are those ears which hearken not unto the voice
which soundeth outwardly, but unto the Truth, which teacheth inwardly.”
A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while she read, as if she
had been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling of
beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupor. She went on
from one brown mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to point,
hardly conscious that she was reading, seeming rather to listen while a
low voice said;
“Why dost thou here gaze about, since this is not the place of thy
rest? In heaven ought to be thy dwelling, and all earthly things are to
be looked on as they forward thy journey thither. All things pass away,
and thou together with them. Beware thou cleavest not unto them, lest
thou be entangled and perish.... If a man should give all his
substance, yet it is as nothing. And if he should do great penances,
yet are they but little. And if he should attain to all knowledge, he
is yet far off. And if he should be of great virtue, and very fervent
devotion, yet is there much wanting; to wit, one thing, which is most
necessary for him. What is that? That having left all, he leave
himself, and go wholly out of himself, and retain nothing of
self-love.... I have often said unto thee, and now again I say the
same, Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy much inward
peace.... Then shall all vain imaginations, evil perturbations, and
superfluous cares fly away; then shall immoderate fear leave thee, and
inordinate love shall die.”
Maggie drew a long breath and pushed her heavy hair back, as if to see
a sudden vision more clearly. Here, then, was a secret of life that
would enable her to renounce all other secrets; here was a sublime
height to be reached without the help of outward things; here was
insight, and strength, and conquest, to be won by means entirely within
her own soul, where a supreme Teacher was waiting to be heard. It
flashed through her like the suddenly apprehended solution of a
problem, that all the miseries of her young life had come from fixing
her heart on her own pleasure, as if that were the central necessity of
the universe; and for the first time she saw the possibility of
shifting the position from which she looked at the gratification of her
own desires,—of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at her own
life as an insignificant part of a divinely guided whole. She read on
and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with the
invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength;
returning to it after she had been called away, and reading till the
sun went down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an imagination
that could never rest in the present, she sat in the deepening twilight
forming plans of self-humiliation and entire devotedness; and in the
ardor of first discovery, renunciation seemed to her the entrance into
that satisfaction which she had so long been craving in vain. She had
not perceived—how could she until she had lived longer?—the inmost
truth of the old monk’s out-pourings, that renunciation remains sorrow,
though a sorrow borne willingly. Maggie was still panting for
happiness, and was in ecstasy because she had found the key to it. She
knew nothing of doctrines and systems, of mysticism or quietism; but
this voice out of the far-off middle ages was the direct communication
of a human soul’s belief and experience, and came to Maggie as an
unquestioned message.
I suppose that is the reason why the small old-fashioned book, for
which you need only pay sixpence at a book-stall, works miracles to
this day, turning bitter waters into sweetness; while expensive sermons
and treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they were before. It
was written down by a hand that waited for the heart’s prompting; it is
the chronicle of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, trust, and
triumph, not written on velvet cushions to teach endurance to those who
are treading with bleeding feet on the stones. And so it remains to all
time a lasting record of human needs and human consolations; the voice
of a brother who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced,—in the
cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much
chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from
ours,—but under the same silent far-off heavens, and with the same
passionate desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the same
weariness.
In writing the history of unfashionable families, one is apt to fall
into a tone of emphasis which is very far from being the tone of good
society, where principles and beliefs are not only of an extremely
moderate kind, but are always presupposed, no subjects being eligible
but such as can be touched with a light and graceful irony. But then
good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its
dinner-engagements six weeks deep, its opera and its faëry ball-rooms;
rides off its _ennui_ on thoroughbred horses; lounges at the club; has
to keep clear of crinoline vortices; gets its science done by Faraday,
and its religion by the superior clergy who are to be met in the best
houses,—how should it have time or need for belief and emphasis? But
good society, floated on gossamer wings of light irony, is of very
expensive production; requiring nothing less than a wide and arduous
national life condensed in unfragrant deafening factories, cramping
itself in mines, sweating at furnaces, grinding, hammering, weaving
under more or less oppression of carbonic acid, or else, spread over
sheepwalks, and scattered in lonely houses and huts on the clayey or
chalky corn-lands, where the rainy days look dreary. This wide national
life is based entirely on emphasis,—the emphasis of want, which urges
it into all the activities necessary for the maintenance of good
society and light irony; it spends its heavy years often in a chill,
uncarpeted fashion, amidst family discord unsoftened by long corridors.
Under such circumstances, there are many among its myriads of souls who
have absolutely needed an emphatic belief, life in this unpleasurable
shape demanding some solution even to unspeculative minds,—just as you
inquire into the stuffing of your couch when anything galls you there,
whereas eider-down and perfect French springs excite no question. Some
have an emphatic belief in alcohol, and seek their _ekstasis_ or
outside standing-ground in gin; but the rest require something that
good society calls “enthusiasm,” something that will present motives in
an entire absence of high prizes; something that will give patience and
feed human love when the limbs ache with weariness, and human looks are
hard upon us; something, clearly, that lies outside personal desires,
that includes resignation for ourselves and active love for what is not
ourselves. Now and then that sort of enthusiasm finds a far-echoing
voice that comes from an experience springing out of the deepest need;
and it was by being brought within the long lingering vibrations of
such a voice that Maggie, with her girl’s face and unnoted sorrows,
found an effort and a hope that helped her through years of loneliness,
making out a faith for herself without the aid of established
authorities and appointed guides; for they were not at hand, and her
need was pressing. From what you know of her, you will not be surprised
that she threw some exaggeration and wilfulness, some pride and
impetuosity, even into her self-renunciation; her own life was still a
drama for her, in which she demanded of herself that her part should be
played with intensity. And so it came to pass that she often lost the
spirit of humility by being excessive in the outward act; she often
strove after too high a flight, and came down with her poor little
half-fledged wings dabbled in the mud. For example, she not only
determined to work at plain sewing, that she might contribute something
toward the fund in the tin box, but she went, in the first instance, in
her zeal of self-mortification, to ask for it at a linen shop in St
Ogg’s, instead of getting it in a more quiet and indirect way; and
could see nothing but what was entirely wrong and unkind, nay,
persecuting, in Tom’s reproof of her for this unnecessary act. “I don’t
like _my_ sister to do such things,” said Tom, “_I’ll_ take care that
the debts are paid, without your lowering yourself in that way.” Surely
there was some tenderness and bravery mingled with the worldliness and
self-assertion of that little speech; but Maggie held it as dross,
overlooking the grains of gold, and took Tom’s rebuke as one of her
outward crosses. Tom was very hard to her, she used to think, in her
long night-watchings,—to her who had always loved him so; and then she
strove to be contented with that hardness, and to require nothing. That
is the path we all like when we set out on our abandonment of
egoism,—the path of martyrdom and endurance, where the palm-branches
grow, rather than the steep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and
self-blame, where there are no leafy honours to be gathered and worn.
The old books, Virgil, Euclid, and Aldrich—that wrinkled fruit of the
tree of knowledge—had been all laid by; for Maggie had turned her back
on the vain ambition to share the thoughts of the wise. In her first
ardor she flung away the books with a sort of triumph that she had
risen above the need of them; and if they had been her own, she would
have burned them, believing that she would never repent. She read so
eagerly and constantly in her three books, the Bible, Thomas à Kempis,
and the “Christian Year” (no longer rejected as a “hymn-book”), that
they filled her mind with a continual stream of rhythmic memories; and
she was too ardently learning to see all nature and life in the light
of her new faith, to need any other material for her mind to work on,
as she sat with her well-plied needle, making shirts and other
complicated stitchings, falsely called “plain,”—by no means plain to
Maggie, since wristband and sleeve and the like had a capability of
being sewed in wrong side outward in moments of mental wandering.
Hanging diligently over her sewing, Maggie was a sight any one might
have been pleased to look at. That new inward life of hers,
notwithstanding some volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions, yet
shone out in her face with a tender soft light that mingled itself as
added loveliness with the gradually enriched colour and outline of her
blossoming youth. Her mother felt the change in her with a sort of
puzzled wonder that Maggie should be “growing up so good”; it was
amazing that this once “contrairy” child was become so submissive, so
backward to assert her own will. Maggie used to look up from her work
and find her mother’s eyes fixed upon her; they were watching and
waiting for the large young glance, as if her elder frame got some
needful warmth from it. The mother was getting fond of her tall, brown
girl,—the only bit of furniture now on which she could bestow her
anxiety and pride; and Maggie, in spite of her own ascetic wish to have
no personal adornment, was obliged to give way to her mother about her
hair, and submit to have the abundant black locks plaited into a
coronet on the summit of her head, after the pitiable fashion of those
antiquated times.
“Let your mother have that bit o’ pleasure, my dear,” said Mrs
Tulliver; “I’d trouble enough with your hair once.”
So Maggie, glad of anything that would soothe her mother, and cheer
their long day together, consented to the vain decoration, and showed a
queenly head above her old frocks, steadily refusing, however, to look
at herself in the glass. Mrs Tulliver liked to call the father’s
attention to Maggie’s hair and other unexpected virtues, but he had a
brusque reply to give.
“I knew well enough what she’d be, before now,—it’s nothing new to me.
But it’s a pity she isn’t made o’ commoner stuff; she’ll be thrown
away, I doubt,—there’ll be nobody to marry her as is fit for her.”
And Maggie’s graces of mind and body fed his gloom. He sat patiently
enough while she read him a chapter, or said something timidly when
they were alone together about trouble being turned into a blessing. He
took it all as part of his daughter’s goodness, which made his
misfortunes the sadder to him because they damaged her chance in life.
In a mind charged with an eager purpose and an unsatisfied
vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings; Mr Tulliver did not
want spiritual consolation—he wanted to shake off the degradation of
debt, and to have his revenge.
BOOK FIFTH
WHEAT AND TARES.
Chapter I.
In the Red Deeps
The family sitting-room was a long room with a window at each end; one
looking toward the croft and along the Ripple to the banks of the
Floss, the other into the mill-yard. Maggie was sitting with her work
against the latter window when she saw Mr Wakem entering the yard, as
usual, on his fine black horse; but not alone, as usual. Some one was
with him,—a figure in a cloak, on a handsome pony. Maggie had hardly
time to feel that it was Philip come back, before they were in front of
the window, and he was raising his hat to her; while his father,
catching the movement by a side-glance, looked sharply round at them
both.
Maggie hurried away from the window and carried her work upstairs; for
Mr Wakem sometimes came in and inspected the books, and Maggie felt
that the meeting with Philip would be robbed of all pleasure in the
presence of the two fathers. Some day, perhaps, she could see him when
they could just shake hands, and she could tell him that she remembered
his goodness to Tom, and the things he had said to her in the old days,
though they could never be friends any more. It was not at all
agitating to Maggie to see Philip again; she retained her childish
gratitude and pity toward him, and remembered his cleverness; and in
the early weeks of her loneliness she had continually recalled the
image of him among the people who had been kind to her in life, often
wishing she had him for a brother and a teacher, as they had fancied it
might have been, in their talk together. But that sort of wishing had
been banished along with other dreams that savored of seeking her own
will; and she thought, besides, that Philip might be altered by his
life abroad,—he might have become worldly, and really not care about
her saying anything to him now. And yet his face was wonderfully little
altered,—it was only a larger, more manly copy of the pale,
small-featured boy’s face, with the gray eyes, and the boyish waving
brown hair; there was the old deformity to awaken the old pity; and
after all her meditations, Maggie felt that she really _should_ like to
say a few words to him. He might still be melancholy, as he always used
to be, and like her to look at him kindly. She wondered if he
remembered how he used to like her eyes; with that thought Maggie
glanced toward the square looking-glass which was condemned to hang
with its face toward the wall, and she half started from her seat to
reach it down; but she checked herself and snatched up her work, trying
to repress the rising wishes by forcing her memory to recall snatches
of hymns, until she saw Philip and his father returning along the road,
and she could go down again.
It was far on in June now, and Maggie was inclined to lengthen the
daily walk which was her one indulgence; but this day and the following
she was so busy with work which must be finished that she never went
beyond the gate, and satisfied her need of the open air by sitting out
of doors. One of her frequent walks, when she was not obliged to go to
St Ogg’s, was to a spot that lay beyond what was called the “Hill,”—an
insignificant rise of ground crowned by trees, lying along the side of
the road which ran by the gates of Dorlcote Mill. Insignificant I call
it, because in height it was hardly more than a bank; but there may
come moments when Nature makes a mere bank a means toward a fateful
result; and that is why I ask you to imagine this high bank crowned
with trees, making an uneven wall for some quarter of a mile along the
left side of Dorlcote Mill and the pleasant fields behind it, bounded
by the murmuring Ripple. Just where this line of bank sloped down again
to the level, a by-road turned off and led to the other side of the
rise, where it was broken into very capricious hollows and mounds by
the working of an exhausted stone-quarry, so long exhausted that both
mounds and hollows were now clothed with brambles and trees, and here
and there by a stretch of grass which a few sheep kept close-nibbled.
In her childish days Maggie held this place, called the Red Deeps, in
very great awe, and needed all her confidence in Tom’s bravery to
reconcile her to an excursion thither,—visions of robbers and fierce
animals haunting every hollow. But now it had the charm for her which
any broken ground, any mimic rock and ravine, have for the eyes that
rest habitually on the level; especially in summer, when she could sit
on a grassy hollow under the shadow of a branching ash, stooping aslant
from the steep above her, and listen to the hum of insects, like
tiniest bells on the garment of Silence, or see the sunlight piercing
the distant boughs, as if to chase and drive home the truant heavenly
blue of the wild hyacinths. In this June time, too, the dog-roses were
in their glory, and that was an additional reason why Maggie should
direct her walk to the Red Deeps, rather than to any other spot, on the
first day she was free to wander at her will,—a pleasure she loved so
well, that sometimes, in her ardors of renunciation, she thought she
ought to deny herself the frequent indulgence in it.
You may see her now, as she walks down the favourite turning and enters
the Deeps by a narrow path through a group of Scotch firs, her tall
figure and old lavender gown visible through an hereditary black silk
shawl of some wide-meshed net-like material; and now she is sure of
being unseen she takes off her bonnet and ties it over her arm. One
would certainly suppose her to be farther on in life than her
seventeenth year—perhaps because of the slow resigned sadness of the
glance from which all search and unrest seem to have departed; perhaps
because her broad-chested figure has the mould of early womanhood.
Youth and health have withstood well the involuntary and voluntary
hardships of her lot, and the nights in which she has lain on the hard
floor for a penance have left no obvious trace; the eyes are liquid,
the brown cheek is firm and round, the full lips are red. With her dark
colouring and jet crown surmounting her tall figure, she seems to have
a sort of kinship with the grand Scotch firs, at which she is looking
up as if she loved them well. Yet one has a sense of uneasiness in
looking at her,—a sense of opposing elements, of which a fierce
collision is imminent; surely there is a hushed expression, such as one
often sees in older faces under borderless caps, out of keeping with
the resistant youth, which one expects to flash out in a sudden,
passionate glance, that will dissipate all the quietude, like a damp
fire leaping out again when all seemed safe.
But Maggie herself was not uneasy at this moment. She was calmly
enjoying the free air, while she looked up at the old fir-trees, and
thought that those broken ends of branches were the records of past
storms, which had only made the red stems soar higher. But while her
eyes were still turned upward, she became conscious of a moving shadow
cast by the evening sun on the grassy path before her, and looked down
with a startled gesture to see Philip Wakem, who first raised his hat,
and then, blushing deeply, came forward to her and put out his hand.
Maggie, too, coloured with surprise, which soon gave way to pleasure.
She put out her hand and looked down at the deformed figure before her
with frank eyes, filled for the moment with nothing but the memory of
her child’s feelings,—a memory that was always strong in her. She was
the first to speak.
“You startled me,” she said, smiling faintly; “I never meet any one
here. How came you to be walking here? Did you come to meet _me?_”
It was impossible not to perceive that Maggie felt herself a child
again.
“Yes, I did,” said Philip, still embarrassed; “I wished to see you very
much. I watched a long while yesterday on the bank near your house to
see if you would come out, but you never came. Then I watched again
to-day, and when I saw the way you took, I kept you in sight and came
down the bank, behind there. I hope you will not be displeased with
me.”
“No,” said Maggie, with simple seriousness, walking on as if she meant
Philip to accompany her, “I’m very glad you came, for I wished very
much to have an opportunity of speaking to you. I’ve never forgotten
how good you were long ago to Tom, and me too; but I was not sure that
you would remember us so well. Tom and I have had a great deal of
trouble since then, and I think _that_ makes one think more of what
happened before the trouble came.”
“I can’t believe that you have thought of me so much as I have thought
of you,” said Philip, timidly. “Do you know, when I was away, I made a
picture of you as you looked that morning in the study when you said
you would not forget me.”
Philip drew a large miniature-case from his pocket, and opened it.
Maggie saw her old self leaning on a table, with her black locks
hanging down behind her ears, looking into space, with strange, dreamy
eyes. It was a water-colour sketch, of real merit as a portrait.
“Oh dear,” said Maggie, smiling, and flushed with pleasure, “what a
queer little girl I was! I remember myself with my hair in that way, in
that pink frock. I really _was_ like a gypsy. I dare say I am now,” she
added, after a little pause; “am I like what you expected me to be?”
The words might have been those of a coquette, but the full, bright
glance Maggie turned on Philip was not that of a coquette. She really
did hope he liked her face as it was now, but it was simply the rising
again of her innate delight in admiration and love. Philip met her eyes
and looked at her in silence for a long moment, before he said quietly,
“No, Maggie.”
The light died out a little from Maggie’s face, and there was a slight
trembling of the lip. Her eyelids fell lower, but she did not turn away
her head, and Philip continued to look at her. Then he said slowly:
“You are very much more beautiful than I thought you would be.”
“Am I?” said Maggie, the pleasure returning in a deeper flush. She
turned her face away from him and took some steps, looking straight
before her in silence, as if she were adjusting her consciousness to
this new idea. Girls are so accustomed to think of dress as the main
ground of vanity, that, in abstaining from the looking-glass, Maggie
had thought more of abandoning all care for adornment than of
renouncing the contemplation of her face. Comparing herself with
elegant, wealthy young ladies, it had not occurred to her that she
could produce any effect with her person. Philip seemed to like the
silence well. He walked by her side, watching her face, as if that
sight left no room for any other wish. They had passed from among the
fir-trees, and had now come to a green hollow almost surrounded by an
amphitheatre of the pale pink dog-roses. But as the light about them
had brightened, Maggie’s face had lost its glow.
She stood still when they were in the hollows, and looking at Philip
again, she said in a serious, sad voice:
“I wish we could have been friends,—I mean, if it would have been good
and right for us. But that is the trial I have to bear in everything; I
may not keep anything I used to love when I was little. The old books
went; and Tom is different, and my father. It is like death. I must
part with everything I cared for when I was a child. And I must part
with you; we must never take any notice of each other again. That was
what I wanted to speak to you for. I wanted to let you know that Tom
and I can’t do as we like about such things, and that if I behave as if
I had forgotten all about you, it is not out of envy or pride—or—or any
bad feeling.”
Maggie spoke with more and more sorrowful gentleness as she went on,
and her eyes began to fill with tears. The deepening expression of pain
on Philip’s face gave him a stronger resemblance to his boyish self,
and made the deformity appeal more strongly to her pity.
“I know; I see all that you mean,” he said, in a voice that had become
feebler from discouragement; “I know what there is to keep us apart on
both sides. But it is not right, Maggie,—don’t you be angry with me, I
am so used to call you Maggie in my thoughts,—it is not right to
sacrifice everything to other people’s unreasonable feelings. I would
give up a great deal for _my_ father; but I would not give up a
friendship or—or an attachment of any sort, in obedience to any wish of
his that I didn’t recognise as right.”
“I don’t know,” said Maggie, musingly. “Often, when I have been angry
and discontented, it has seemed to me that I was not bound to give up
anything; and I have gone on thinking till it has seemed to me that I
could think away all my duty. But no good has ever come of that; it was
an evil state of mind. I’m quite sure that whatever I might do, I
should wish in the end that I had gone without anything for myself,
rather than have made my father’s life harder to him.”
“But would it make his life harder if we were to see each other
sometimes?” said Philip. He was going to say something else, but
checked himself.
“Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t like it. Don’t ask me why, or anything about
it,” said Maggie, in a distressed tone. “My father feels so strongly
about some things. He is not at all happy.”
“No more am I,” said Philip, impetuously; “I am not happy.”
“Why?” said Maggie, gently. “At least—I ought not to ask—but I’m very,
very sorry.”
Philip turned to walk on, as if he had not patience to stand still any
longer, and they went out of the hollow, winding amongst the trees and
bushes in silence. After that last word of Philip’s, Maggie could not
bear to insist immediately on their parting.
“I’ve been a great deal happier,” she said at last, timidly, “since I
have given up thinking about what is easy and pleasant, and being
discontented because I couldn’t have my own will. Our life is
determined for us; and it makes the mind very free when we give up
wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and doing what
is given us to do.”
“But I can’t give up wishing,” said Philip, impatiently. “It seems to
me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly
alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and
we _must_ hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them
until our feelings are deadened? I delight in fine pictures; I long to
be able to paint such. I strive and strive, and can’t produce what I
want. That is pain to me, and always _will_ be pain, until my faculties
lose their keenness, like aged eyes. Then there are many other things I
long for,”—here Philip hesitated a little, and then said,—“things that
other men have, and that will always be denied me. My life will have
nothing great or beautiful in it; I would rather not have lived.”
“Oh, Philip,” said Maggie, “I wish you didn’t feel so.” But her heart
began to beat with something of Philip’s discontent.
“Well, then,” said he, turning quickly round and fixing his gray eyes
entreatingly on her face, “I should be contented to live, if you would
let me see you sometimes.” Then, checked by a fear which her face
suggested, he looked away again and said more calmly, “I have no friend
to whom I can tell everything, no one who cares enough about me; and if
I could only see you now and then, and you would let me talk to you a
little, and show me that you cared for me, and that we may always be
friends in heart, and help each other, then I might come to be glad of
life.”
“But how can I see you, Philip?” said Maggie, falteringly. (Could she
really do him good? It would be very hard to say “good-by” this day,
and not speak to him again. Here was a new interest to vary the days;
it was so much easier to renounce the interest before it came.)
“If you would let me see you here sometimes,—walk with you here,—I
would be contented if it were only once or twice in a month. _That_
could injure no one’s happiness, and it would sweeten my life.
Besides,” Philip went on, with all the inventive astuteness of love at
one-and-twenty, “if there is any enmity between those who belong to us,
we ought all the more to try and quench it by our friendship; I mean,
that by our influence on both sides we might bring about a healing of
the wounds that have been made in the past, if I could know everything
about them. And I don’t believe there is any enmity in my own father’s
mind; I think he has proved the contrary.”
Maggie shook her head slowly, and was silent, under conflicting
thoughts. It seemed to her inclination, that to see Philip now and
then, and keep up the bond of friendship with him, was something not
only innocent, but good; perhaps she might really help him to find
contentment as she had found it. The voice that said this made sweet
music to Maggie; but athwart it there came an urgent, monotonous
warning from another voice which she had been learning to obey,—the
warning that such interviews implied secrecy; implied doing something
she would dread to be discovered in, something that, if discovered,
must cause anger and pain; and that the admission of anything so near
doubleness would act as a spiritual blight. Yet the music would swell
out again, like chimes borne onward by a recurrent breeze, persuading
her that the wrong lay all in the faults and weaknesses of others, and
that there was such a thing as futile sacrifice for one to the injury
of another. It was very cruel for Philip that he should be shrunk from,
because of an unjustifiable vindictiveness toward his father,—poor
Philip, whom some people would shrink from only because he was
deformed. The idea that he might become her lover or that her meeting
him could cause disapproval in that light, had not occurred to her; and
Philip saw the absence of this idea clearly enough, saw it with a
certain pang, although it made her consent to his request the less
unlikely. There was bitterness to him in the perception that Maggie was
almost as frank and unconstrained toward him as when she was a child.
“I can’t say either yes or no,” she said at last, turning round and
walking toward the way she come; “I must wait, lest I should decide
wrongly. I must seek for guidance.”
“May I come again, then, to-morrow, or the next day, or next week?”
“I think I had better write,” said Maggie, faltering again. “I have to
go to St Ogg’s sometimes, and I can put the letter in the post.”
“Oh no,” said Philip eagerly; “that would not be so well. My father
might see the letter—and—he has not any enmity, I believe, but he views
things differently from me; he thinks a great deal about wealth and
position. Pray let me come here once more. _Tell_ me when it shall be;
or if you can’t tell me, I will come as often as I can till I do see
you.”
“I think it must be so, then,” said Maggie, “for I can’t be quite
certain of coming here any particular evening.”
Maggie felt a great relief in adjourning the decision. She was free now
to enjoy the minutes of companionship; she almost thought she might
linger a little; the next time they met she should have to pain Philip
by telling him her determination.
“I can’t help thinking,” she said, looking smilingly at him, after a
few moments of silence, “how strange it is that we should have met and
talked to each other, just as if it had been only yesterday when we
parted at Lorton. And yet we must both be very much altered in those
five years,—I think it is five years. How was it you seemed to have a
sort of feeling that I was the same Maggie? I was not quite so sure
that you would be the same; I know you are so clever, and you must have
seen and learnt so much to fill your mind; I was not quite sure you
would care about me now.”
“I have never had any doubt that you would be the same, whenever I
might see you,” said Philip,—“I mean, the same in everything that made
me like you better than any one else. I don’t want to explain that; I
don’t think any of the strongest effects our natures are susceptible of
can ever be explained. We can neither detect the process by which they
are arrived at, nor the mode in which they act on us. The greatest of
painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child; he couldn’t
have told how he did it, and we can’t tell why we feel it to be divine.
I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our
understandings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains of
music affect me so strangely; I can never hear them without their
changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would
last, I might be capable of heroisms.”
“Ah! I know what you mean about music; _I_ feel so,” said Maggie,
clasping her hands with her old impetuosity. “At least,” she added, in
a saddened tone, “I used to feel so when I had any music; I never have
any now except the organ at church.”
“And you long for it, Maggie?” said Philip, looking at her with
affectionate pity. “Ah, you can have very little that is beautiful in
your life. Have you many books? You were so fond of them when you were
a little girl.”
They were come back to the hollow, round which the dog-roses grew, and
they both paused under the charm of the faëry evening light, reflected
from the pale pink clusters.
“No, I have given up books,” said Maggie, quietly, “except a very, very
few.”
Philip had already taken from his pocket a small volume, and was
looking at the back as he said:
“Ah, this is the second volume, I see, else you might have liked to
take it home with you. I put it in my pocket because I am studying a
scene for a picture.”
Maggie had looked at the back too, and saw the title; it revived an old
impression with overmastering force.
“‘The Pirate,’” she said, taking the book from Philip’s hands. “Oh, I
began that once; I read to where Minna is walking with Cleveland, and I
could never get to read the rest. I went on with it in my own head, and
I made several endings; but they were all unhappy. I could never make a
happy ending out of that beginning. Poor Minna! I wonder what is the
real end. For a long while I couldn’t get my mind away from the
Shetland Isles,—I used to feel the wind blowing on me from the rough
sea.”
Maggie spoke rapidly, with glistening eyes.
“Take that volume home with you, Maggie,” said Philip, watching her
with delight. “I don’t want it now. I shall make a picture of you
instead,—you, among the Scotch firs and the slanting shadows.”
Maggie had not heard a word he had said; she was absorbed in a page at
which she had opened. But suddenly she closed the book, and gave it
back to Philip, shaking her head with a backward movement, as if to say
“avaunt” to floating visions.
“Do keep it, Maggie,” said Philip, entreatingly; “it will give you
pleasure.”
“No, thank you,” said Maggie, putting it aside with her hand and
walking on. “It would make me in love with this world again, as I used
to be; it would make me long to see and know many things; it would make
me long for a full life.”
“But you will not always be shut up in your present lot; why should you
starve your mind in that way? It is narrow asceticism; I don’t like to
see you persisting in it, Maggie. Poetry and art and knowledge are
sacred and pure.”
“But not for me, not for me,” said Maggie, walking more hurriedly;
“because I should want too much. I must wait; this life will not last
long.”
“Don’t hurry away from me without saying ‘good-by,’ Maggie,” said
Philip, as they reached the group of Scotch firs, and she continued
still to walk along without speaking. “I must not go any farther, I
think, must I?”
“Oh no, I forgot; good-by,” said Maggie, pausing, and putting out her
hand to him. The action brought her feeling back in a strong current to
Philip; and after they had stood looking at each other in silence for a
few moments, with their hands clasped, she said, withdrawing her hand:
“I’m very grateful to you for thinking of me all those years. It is
very sweet to have people love us. What a wonderful, beautiful thing it
seems that God should have made your heart so that you could care about
a queer little girl whom you only knew for a few weeks! I remember
saying to you that I thought you cared for me more than Tom did.”
“Ah, Maggie,” said Philip, almost fretfully, “you would never love me
so well as you love your brother.”
“Perhaps not,” said Maggie, simply; “but then, you know, the first
thing I ever remember in my life is standing with Tom by the side of
the Floss, while he held my hand; everything before that is dark to me.
But I shall never forget you, though we must keep apart.”
“Don’t say so, Maggie,” said Philip. “If I kept that little girl in my
mind for five years, didn’t I earn some part in her? She ought not to
take herself quite away from me.”
“Not if I were free,” said Maggie; “but I am not, I must submit.” She
hesitated a moment, and then added, “And I wanted to say to you, that
you had better not take more notice of my brother than just bowing to
him. He once told me not to speak to you again, and he doesn’t change
his mind—Oh dear, the sun is set. I am too long away. Good-by.” She
gave him her hand once more.
“I shall come here as often as I can till I see you again, Maggie. Have
some feeling for _me_ as well as for others.”
“Yes, yes, I have,” said Maggie, hurrying away, and quickly
disappearing behind the last fir-tree; though Philip’s gaze after her
remained immovable for minutes as if he saw her still.
Maggie went home, with an inward conflict already begun; Philip went
home to do nothing but remember and hope. You can hardly help blaming
him severely. He was four or five years older than Maggie, and had a
full consciousness of his feeling toward her to aid him in foreseeing
the character his contemplated interviews with her would bear in the
opinion of a third person. But you must not suppose that he was capable
of a gross selfishness, or that he could have been satisfied without
persuading himself that he was seeking to infuse some happiness into
Maggie’s life,—seeking this even more than any direct ends for himself.
He could give her sympathy; he could give her help. There was not the
slightest promise of love toward him in her manner; it was nothing more
than the sweet girlish tenderness she had shown him when she was
twelve. Perhaps she would never love him; perhaps no woman ever _could_
love him. Well, then, he would endure that; he should at least have the
happiness of seeing her, of feeling some nearness to her. And he
clutched passionately the possibility that she _might_ love him;
perhaps the feeling would grow, if she could come to associate him with
that watchful tenderness which her nature would be so keenly alive to.
If any woman could love him, surely Maggie was that woman; there was
such wealth of love in her, and there was no one to claim it all. Then,
the pity of it, that a mind like hers should be withering in its very
youth, like a young forest-tree, for want of the light and space it was
formed to flourish in! Could he not hinder that, by persuading her out
of her system of privation? He would be her guardian angel; he would do
anything, bear anything, for her sake—except not seeing her.
Chapter II.
Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob’s Thumb
While Maggie’s life-struggles had lain almost entirely within her own
soul, one shadowy army fighting another, and the slain shadows forever
rising again, Tom was engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare, grappling
with more substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite conquests.
So it has been since the days of Hecuba, and of Hector, Tamer of
horses; inside the gates, the women with streaming hair and uplifted
hands offering prayers, watching the world’s combat from afar, filling
their long, empty days with memories and fears; outside, the men, in
fierce struggle with things divine and human, quenching memory in the
stronger light of purpose, losing the sense of dread and even of wounds
in the hurrying ardor of action.
From what you have seen of Tom, I think he is not a youth of whom you
would prophesy failure in anything he had thoroughly wished; the wagers
are likely to be on his side, notwithstanding his small success in the
classics. For Tom had never desired success in this field of
enterprise; and for getting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity
there is nothing like pouring out on a mind a good amount of subjects
in which it feels no interest. But now Tom’s strong will bound together
his integrity, his pride, his family regrets, and his personal
ambition, and made them one force, concentrating his efforts and
surmounting discouragements. His uncle Deane, who watched him closely,
soon began to conceive hopes of him, and to be rather proud that he had
brought into the employment of the firm a nephew who appeared to be
made of such good commercial stuff. The real kindness of placing him in
the warehouse first was soon evident to Tom, in the hints his uncle
began to throw out, that after a time he might perhaps be trusted to
travel at certain seasons, and buy in for the firm various vulgar
commodities with which I need not shock refined ears in this place; and
it was doubtless with a view to this result that Mr Deane, when he
expected to take his wine alone, would tell Tom to step in and sit with
him an hour, and would pass that hour in much lecturing and catechising
concerning articles of export and import, with an occasional excursus
of more indirect utility on the relative advantages to the merchants of
St Ogg’s of having goods brought in their own and in foreign bottoms,—a
subject on which Mr Deane, as a ship-owner, naturally threw off a few
sparks when he got warmed with talk and wine.
Already, in the second year, Tom’s salary was raised; but all, except
the price of his dinner and clothes, went home into the tin box; and he
shunned comradeship, lest it should lead him into expenses in spite of
himself. Not that Tom was moulded on the spoony type of the Industrious
Apprentice; he had a very strong appetite for pleasure,—would have
liked to be a Tamer of horses and to make a distinguished figure in all
neighbouring eyes, dispensing treats and benefits to others with
well-judged liberality, and being pronounced one of the finest young
fellows of those parts; nay, he determined to achieve these things
sooner or later; but his practical shrewdness told him that the means
to such achievements could only lie for him in present abstinence and
self-denial; there were certain milestones to be passed, and one of the
first was the payment of his father’s debts. Having made up his mind on
that point, he strode along without swerving, contracting some rather
saturnine sternness, as a young man is likely to do who has a premature
call upon him for self-reliance. Tom felt intensely that common cause
with his father which springs from family pride, and was bent on being
irreproachable as a son; but his growing experience caused him to pass
much silent criticism on the rashness and imprudence of his father’s
past conduct; their dispositions were not in sympathy, and Tom’s face
showed little radiance during his few home hours. Maggie had an awe of
him, against which she struggled as something unfair to her
consciousness of wider thoughts and deeper motives; but it was of no
use to struggle. A character at unity with itself—that performs what it
intends, subdues every counteracting impulse, and has no visions beyond
the distinctly possible—is strong by its very negations.
You may imagine that Tom’s more and more obvious unlikeness to his
father was well fitted to conciliate the maternal aunts and uncles; and
Mr Deane’s favourable reports and predictions to Mr Glegg concerning
Tom’s qualifications for business began to be discussed amongst them
with various acceptance. He was likely, it appeared, to do the family
credit without causing it any expense and trouble. Mrs Pullet had
always thought it strange if Tom’s excellent complexion, so entirely
that of the Dodsons, did not argue a certainty that he would turn out
well; his juvenile errors of running down the peacock, and general
disrespect to his aunts, only indicating a tinge of Tulliver blood
which he had doubtless outgrown. Mr Glegg, who had contracted a
cautious liking for Tom ever since his spirited and sensible behaviour
when the execution was in the house, was now warming into a resolution
to further his prospects actively,—some time, when an opportunity
offered of doing so in a prudent manner, without ultimate loss; but Mrs
Glegg observed that she was not given to speak without book, as some
people were; that those who said least were most likely to find their
words made good; and that when the right moment came, it would be seen
who could do something better than talk. Uncle Pullet, after silent
meditation for a period of several lozenges, came distinctly to the
conclusion, that when a young man was likely to do well, it was better
not to meddle with him.
Tom, meanwhile, had shown no disposition to rely on any one but
himself, though, with a natural sensitiveness toward all indications of
favourable opinion, he was glad to see his uncle Glegg look in on him
sometimes in a friendly way during business hours, and glad to be
invited to dine at his house, though he usually preferred declining on
the ground that he was not sure of being punctual. But about a year
ago, something had occurred which induced Tom to test his uncle Glegg’s
friendly disposition.
Bob Jakin, who rarely returned from one of his rounds without seeing
Tom and Maggie, awaited him on the bridge as he was coming home from St
Ogg’s one evening, that they might have a little private talk. He took
the liberty of asking if Mr Tom had ever thought of making money by
trading a bit on his own account. Trading, how? Tom wished to know.
Why, by sending out a bit of a cargo to foreign ports; because Bob had
a particular friend who had offered to do a little business for him in
that way in Laceham goods, and would be glad to serve Mr Tom on the
same footing. Tom was interested at once, and begged for full
explanation, wondering he had not thought of this plan before.
He was so well pleased with the prospect of a speculation that might
change the slow process of addition into multiplication, that he at
once determined to mention the matter to his father, and get his
consent to appropriate some of the savings in the tin box to the
purchase of a small cargo. He would rather not have consulted his
father, but he had just paid his last quarter’s money into the tin box,
and there was no other resource. All the savings were there; for Mr
Tulliver would not consent to put the money out at interest lest he
should lose it. Since he had speculated in the purchase of some corn,
and had lost by it, he could not be easy without keeping the money
under his eye.
Tom approached the subject carefully, as he was seated on the hearth
with his father that evening, and Mr Tulliver listened, leaning forward
in his arm-chair and looking up in Tom’s face with a sceptical glance.
His first impulse was to give a positive refusal, but he was in some
awe of Tom’s wishes, and since he had the sense of being an “unlucky”
father, he had lost some of his old peremptoriness and determination to
be master. He took the key of the bureau from his pocket, got out the
key of the large chest, and fetched down the tin box,—slowly, as if he
were trying to defer the moment of a painful parting. Then he seated
himself against the table, and opened the box with that little
padlock-key which he fingered in his waistcoat pocket in all vacant
moments. There they were, the dingy bank-notes and the bright
sovereigns, and he counted them out on the table—only a hundred and
sixteen pounds in two years, after all the pinching.
“How much do you want, then?” he said, speaking as if the words burnt
his lips.
“Suppose I begin with the thirty-six pounds, father?” said Tom.
Mr Tulliver separated this sum from the rest, and keeping his hand over
it, said:
“It’s as much as I can save out o’ my pay in a year.”
“Yes, father; it is such slow work, saving out of the little money we
get. And in this way we might double our savings.”
“Ay, my lad,” said the father, keeping his hand on the money, “but you
might lose it,—you might lose a year o’ my life,—and I haven’t got
many.”
Tom was silent.
“And you know I wouldn’t pay a dividend with the first hundred, because
I wanted to see it all in a lump,—and when I see it, I’m sure on’t. If
you trust to luck, it’s sure to be against me. It’s Old Harry’s got the
luck in his hands; and if I lose one year, I shall never pick it up
again; death ’ull o’ertake me.”
Mr Tulliver’s voice trembled, and Tom was silent for a few minutes
before he said:
“I’ll give it up, father, since you object to it so strongly.”
But, unwilling to abandon the scheme altogether, he determined to ask
his uncle Glegg to venture twenty pounds, on condition of receiving
five per cent. of the profits. That was really a very small thing to
ask. So when Bob called the next day at the wharf to know the decision,
Tom proposed that they should go together to his uncle Glegg’s to open
the business; for his diffident pride clung to him, and made him feel
that Bobs’ tongue would relieve him from some embarrassment.
Mr Glegg, at the pleasant hour of four in the afternoon of a hot August
day, was naturally counting his wall-fruit to assure himself that the
sum total had not varied since yesterday. To him entered Tom, in what
appeared to Mr Glegg very questionable companionship,—that of a man
with a pack on his back,—for Bob was equipped for a new journey,—and of
a huge brindled bull-terrier, who walked with a slow, swaying movement
from side to side, and glanced from under his eye-lids with a surly
indifference which might after all be a cover to the most offensive
designs.
Mr Glegg’s spectacles, which had been assisting him in counting the
fruit, made these suspicious details alarmingly evident to him.
“Heigh! heigh! keep that dog back, will you?” he shouted, snatching up
a stake and holding it before him as a shield when the visitors were
within three yards of him.
“Get out wi’ you, Mumps,” said Bob, with a kick. “He’s as quiet as a
lamb, sir,”—an observation which Mumps corroborated by a low growl as
he retreated behind his master’s legs.
“Why, what ever does this mean, Tom?” said Mr Glegg. “Have you brought
information about the scoundrels as cut my trees?” If Bob came in the
character of “information,” Mr Glegg saw reasons for tolerating some
irregularity.
“No, sir,” said Tom; “I came to speak to you about a little matter of
business of my own.”
“Ay—well; but what has this dog got to do with it?” said the old
gentleman, getting mild again.
“It’s my dog, sir,” said the ready Bob. “An’ it’s me as put Mr Tom up
to the bit o’ business; for Mr Tom’s been a friend o’ mine iver since I
was a little chap; fust thing iver I did was frightenin’ the birds for
th’ old master. An’ if a bit o’ luck turns up, I’m allays thinkin’ if I
can let Mr Tom have a pull at it. An’ it’s a downright roarin’ shame,
as when he’s got the chance o’ making a bit o’ money wi’ sending goods
out,—ten or twelve per zent clear, when freight an’ commission’s
paid,—as he shouldn’t lay hold o’ the chance for want o’ money. An’
when there’s the Laceham goods,—lors! they’re made o’ purpose for folks
as want to send out a little carguy; light, an’ take up no room,—you
may pack twenty pound so as you can’t see the passill; an’ they’re
manifacturs as please fools, so I reckon they aren’t like to want a
market. An’ I’d go to Laceham an’ buy in the goods for Mr Tom along wi’
my own. An’ there’s the shupercargo o’ the bit of a vessel as is goin’
to take ’em out. I know him partic’lar; he’s a solid man, an’ got a
family i’ the town here. Salt, his name is,—an’ a briny chap he is
too,—an’ if you don’t believe me, I can take you to him.”
Uncle Glegg stood open-mouthed with astonishment at this unembarrassed
loquacity, with which his understanding could hardly keep pace. He
looked at Bob, first over his spectacles, then through them, then over
them again; while Tom, doubtful of his uncle’s impression, began to
wish he had not brought this singular Aaron, or mouthpiece. Bob’s talk
appeared less seemly, now some one besides himself was listening to it.
“You seem to be a knowing fellow,” said Mr Glegg, at last.
“Ay, sir, you say true,” returned Bob, nodding his head aside; “I think
my head’s all alive inside like an old cheese, for I’m so full o’
plans, one knocks another over. If I hadn’t Mumps to talk to, I should
get top-heavy an’ tumble in a fit. I suppose it’s because I niver went
to school much. That’s what I jaw my old mother for. I says, ‘You
should ha’ sent me to school a bit more,’ I says, ‘an’ then I could ha’
read i’ the books like fun, an’ kep’ my head cool an’ empty.’ Lors,
she’s fine an’ comfor’ble now, my old mother is; she ates her baked
meat an’ taters as often as she likes. For I’m gettin’ so full o’
money, I must hev a wife to spend it for me. But it’s botherin,’ a wife
is,—and Mumps mightn’t like her.”
Uncle Glegg, who regarded himself as a jocose man since he had retired
from business, was beginning to find Bob amusing, but he had still a
disapproving observation to make, which kept his face serious.
“Ah,” he said, “I should think you’re at a loss for ways o’ spending
your money, else you wouldn’t keep that big dog, to eat as much as two
Christians. It’s shameful—shameful!” But he spoke more in sorrow than
in anger, and quickly added:
“But, come now, let’s hear more about this business, Tom. I suppose you
want a little sum to make a venture with. But where’s all your own
money? You don’t spend it all—eh?”
“No, sir,” said Tom, colouring; “but my father is unwilling to risk it,
and I don’t like to press him. If I could get twenty or thirty pounds
to begin with, I could pay five per cent for it, and then I could
gradually make a little capital of my own, and do without a loan.”
“Ay—ay,” said Mr Glegg, in an approving tone; “that’s not a bad notion,
and I won’t say as I wouldn’t be your man. But it ’ull be as well for
me to see this Salt, as you talk on. And then—here’s this friend o’
yours offers to buy the goods for you. Perhaps you’ve got somebody to
stand surety for you if the money’s put into your hands?” added the
cautious old gentleman, looking over his spectacles at Bob.
“I don’t think that’s necessary, uncle,” said Tom. “At least, I mean it
would not be necessary for me, because I know Bob well; but perhaps it
would be right for you to have some security.”
“You get your percentage out o’ the purchase, I suppose?” said Mr
Glegg, looking at Bob.
“No, sir,” said Bob, rather indignantly; “I didn’t offer to get a apple
for Mr Tom, o’ purpose to hev a bite out of it myself. When I play
folks tricks, there’ll be more fun in ’em nor that.”
“Well, but it’s nothing but right you should have a small percentage,”
said Mr Glegg. “I’ve no opinion o’ transactions where folks do things
for nothing. It allays looks bad.”
“Well, then,” said Bob, whose keenness saw at once what was implied,
“I’ll tell you what I get by’t, an’ it’s money in my pocket in the
end,—I make myself look big, wi’ makin’ a bigger purchase. That’s what
I’m thinking on. Lors! I’m a ’cute chap,—I am.”
“Mr Glegg, Mr Glegg!” said a severe voice from the open parlour window,
“pray are you coming in to tea, or are you going to stand talking with
packmen till you get murdered in the open daylight?”
“Murdered?” said Mr Glegg; “what’s the woman talking of? Here’s your
nephey Tom come about a bit o’ business.”
“Murdered,—yes,—it isn’t many ’sizes ago since a packman murdered a
young woman in a lone place, and stole her thimble, and threw her body
into a ditch.”
“Nay, nay,” said Mr Glegg, soothingly, “you’re thinking o’ the man wi’
no legs, as drove a dog-cart.”
“Well, it’s the same thing, Mr Glegg, only you’re fond o’ contradicting
what I say; and if my nephey’s come about business, it ’ud be more
fitting if you’d bring him into the house, and let his aunt know about
it, instead o’ whispering in corners, in that plotting, underminding
way.”
“Well, well,” said Mr Glegg, “we’ll come in now.”
“You needn’t stay here,” said the lady to Bob, in a loud voice, adapted
to the moral, not the physical, distance between them. “We don’t want
anything. I don’t deal wi’ packmen. Mind you shut the gate after you.”
“Stop a bit; not so fast,” said Mr Glegg; “I haven’t done with this
young man yet. Come in, Tom; come in,” he added, stepping in at the
French window.
“Mr Glegg,” said Mrs G., in a fatal tone, “if you’re going to let that
man and his dog in on my carpet, before my very face, be so good as to
let me know. A wife’s got a right to ask that, I hope.”
“Don’t you be uneasy, mum,” said Bob, touching his cap. He saw at once
that Mrs Glegg was a bit of game worth running down, and longed to be
at the sport; “we’ll stay out upo’ the gravel here,—Mumps and me will.
Mumps knows his company,—he does. I might hish at him by th’ hour
together, before he’d fly at a real gentlewoman like you. It’s
wonderful how he knows which is the good-looking ladies; and’s
partic’lar fond of ’em when they’ve good shapes. Lors!” added Bob,
laying down his pack on the gravel, “it’s a thousand pities such a lady
as you shouldn’t deal with a packman, i’ stead o’ goin’ into these
newfangled shops, where there’s half-a-dozen fine gents wi’ their chins
propped up wi’ a stiff stock, a-looking like bottles wi’ ornamental
stoppers, an’ all got to get their dinner out of a bit o’ calico; it
stan’s to reason you must pay three times the price you pay a packman,
as is the nat’ral way o’ gettin’ goods,—an’ pays no rent, an’ isn’t
forced to throttle himself till the lies are squeezed out on him,
whether he will or no. But lors! mum, you know what it is better nor I
do,—_you_ can see through them shopmen, I’ll be bound.”
“Yes, I reckon I can, and through the packmen too,” observed Mrs Glegg,
intending to imply that Bob’s flattery had produced no effect on _her;_
while her husband, standing behind her with his hands in his pockets
and legs apart, winked and smiled with conjugal delight at the
probability of his wife’s being circumvented.
“Ay, to be sure, mum,” said Bob. “Why, you must ha’ dealt wi’ no end o’
packmen when you war a young lass—before the master here had the luck
to set eyes on you. I know where you lived, I do,—seen th’ house many a
time,—close upon Squire Darleigh’s,—a stone house wi’ steps——”
“Ah, that it had,” said Mrs Glegg, pouring out the tea. “You know
something o’ my family, then? Are you akin to that packman with a
squint in his eye, as used to bring th’ Irish linen?”
“Look you there now!” said Bob, evasively. “Didn’t I know as you’d
remember the best bargains you’ve made in your life was made wi’
packmen? Why, you see even a squintin’ packman’s better nor a shopman
as can see straight. Lors! if I’d had the luck to call at the stone
house wi’ my pack, as lies here,”—stooping and thumping the bundle
emphatically with his fist,—“an’ th’ handsome young lasses all stannin’
out on the stone steps, it ud’ ha’ been summat like openin’ a pack,
that would. It’s on’y the poor houses now as a packman calls on, if it
isn’t for the sake o’ the sarvant-maids. They’re paltry times, these
are. Why, mum, look at the printed cottons now, an’ what they was when
you wore ’em,—why, you wouldn’t put such a thing on now, I can see. It
must be first-rate quality, the manifactur as you’d buy,—summat as ’ud
wear as well as your own faitures.”
“Yes, better quality nor any you’re like to carry; you’ve got nothing
first-rate but brazenness, I’ll be bound,” said Mrs Glegg, with a
triumphant sense of her insurmountable sagacity. “Mr Glegg, are you
going ever to sit down to your tea? Tom, there’s a cup for you.”
“You speak true there, mum,” said Bob. “My pack isn’t for ladies like
you. The time’s gone by for that. Bargains picked up dirt cheap! A bit
o’ damage here an’ there, as can be cut out, or else niver seen i’ the
wearin’, but not fit to offer to rich folks as can pay for the look o’
things as nobody sees. I’m not the man as ’ud offer t’ open my pack to
_you_, mum; no, no; I’m a imperent chap, as you say,—these times makes
folks imperent,—but I’m not up to the mark o’ that.”
“Why, what goods do you carry in your pack?” said Mrs Glegg.
“Fine-coloured things, I suppose,—shawls an’ that?”
“All sorts, mum, all sorts,” said Bob,—thumping his bundle; “but let us
say no more about that, if _you_ please. I’m here upo’ Mr Tom’s
business, an’ I’m not the man to take up the time wi’ my own.”
“And pray, what _is_ this business as is to be kept from me?” said Mrs
Glegg, who, solicited by a double curiosity, was obliged to let the
one-half wait.
“A little plan o’ nephey Tom’s here,” said good-natured Mr Glegg; “and
not altogether a bad ’un, I think. A little plan for making money;
that’s the right sort o’ plan for young folks as have got their fortin
to make, eh, Jane?”
“But I hope it isn’t a plan where he expects iverything to be done for
him by his friends; that’s what the young folks think of mostly
nowadays. And pray, what has this packman got to do wi’ what goes on in
our family? Can’t you speak for yourself, Tom, and let your aunt know
things, as a nephey should?”
“This is Bob Jakin, aunt,” said Tom, bridling the irritation that aunt
Glegg’s voice always produced. “I’ve known him ever since we were
little boys. He’s a very good fellow, and always ready to do me a
kindness. And he has had some experience in sending goods out,—a small
part of a cargo as a private speculation; and he thinks if I could
begin to do a little in the same way, I might make some money. A large
interest is got in that way.”
“Large int’rest?” said aunt Glegg, with eagerness; “and what do you
call large int’rest?”
“Ten or twelve per cent, Bob says, after expenses are paid.”
“Then why wasn’t I let to know o’ such things before, Mr Glegg?” said
Mrs Glegg, turning to her husband, with a deep grating tone of
reproach. “Haven’t you allays told me as there was no getting more nor
five per cent?”
“Pooh, pooh, nonsense, my good woman,” said Mr Glegg. “You couldn’t go
into trade, could you? You can’t get more than five per cent with
security.”
“But I can turn a bit o’ money for you, an’ welcome, mum,” said Bob,
“if you’d like to risk it,—not as there’s any risk to speak on. But if
you’d a mind to lend a bit o’ money to Mr Tom, he’d pay you six or
seven per zent, an’ get a trifle for himself as well; an’ a
good-natur’d lady like you ’ud like the feel o’ the money better if
your nephey took part on it.”
“What do you say, Mrs G.?” said Mr Glegg. “I’ve a notion, when I’ve
made a bit more inquiry, as I shall perhaps start Tom here with a bit
of a nest-egg,—he’ll pay me int’rest, you know,—an’ if you’ve got some
little sums lyin’ idle twisted up in a stockin’ toe, or that——”
“Mr Glegg, it’s beyond iverything! You’ll go and give information to
the tramps next, as they may come and rob me.”
“Well, well, as I was sayin’, if you like to join me wi’ twenty pounds,
you can—I’ll make it fifty. That’ll be a pretty good nest-egg, eh,
Tom?”
“You’re not counting on me, Mr Glegg, I hope,” said his wife. “You
could do fine things wi’ my money, I don’t doubt.”
“Very well,” said Mr Glegg, rather snappishly, “then we’ll do without
you. I shall go with you to see this Salt,” he added, turning to Bob.
“And now, I suppose, you’ll go all the other way, Mr Glegg,” said Mrs
G., “and want to shut me out o’ my own nephey’s business. I never said
I wouldn’t put money into it,—I don’t say as it shall be twenty pounds,
though you’re so ready to say it for me,—but he’ll see some day as his
aunt’s in the right not to risk the money she’s saved for him till it’s
proved as it won’t be lost.”
“Ay, that’s a pleasant sort o’risk, that is,” said Mr Glegg,
indiscreetly winking at Tom, who couldn’t avoid smiling. But Bob
stemmed the injured lady’s outburst.
“Ay, mum,” he said admiringly, “you know what’s what—you do. An’ it’s
nothing but fair. _You_ see how the first bit of a job answers, an’
then you’ll come down handsome. Lors, it’s a fine thing to hev good
kin. I got my bit of a nest-egg, as the master calls it, all by my own
sharpness,—ten suvreigns it was,—wi’ dousing the fire at Torry’s mill,
an’ it’s growed an’ growed by a bit an’ a bit, till I’n got a matter o’
thirty pound to lay out, besides makin’ my mother comfor’ble. I should
get more, on’y I’m such a soft wi’ the women,—I can’t help lettin’ ’em
hev such good bargains. There’s this bundle, now,” thumping it lustily,
“any other chap ’ud make a pretty penny out on it. But me!—lors, I
shall sell ’em for pretty near what I paid for ’em.”
“Have you got a bit of good net, now?” said Mrs Glegg, in a patronizing
tone, moving from the tea-table, and folding her napkin.
“Eh, mum, not what you’d think it worth your while to look at. I’d
scorn to show it you. It ’ud be an insult to you.”
“But let me see,” said Mrs Glegg, still patronizing. “If they’re
damaged goods, they’re like enough to be a bit the better quality.”
“No, mum, I know my place,” said Bob, lifting up his pack and
shouldering it. “I’m not going t’ expose the lowness o’ my trade to a
lady like you. Packs is come down i’ the world; it ’ud cut you to th’
heart to see the difference. I’m at your sarvice, sir, when you’ve a
mind to go and see Salt.”
“All in good time,” said Mr Glegg, really unwilling to cut short the
dialogue. “Are you wanted at the wharf, Tom?”
“No, sir; I left Stowe in my place.”
“Come, put down your pack, and let me see,” said Mrs Glegg, drawing a
chair to the window and seating herself with much dignity.
“Don’t you ask it, mum,” said Bob, entreatingly.
“Make no more words,” said Mrs Glegg, severely, “but do as I tell you.”
“Eh mum, I’m loth, that I am,” said Bob, slowly depositing his pack on
the step, and beginning to untie it with unwilling fingers. “But what
you order shall be done” (much fumbling in pauses between the
sentences). “It’s not as you’ll buy a single thing on me,—I’d be sorry
for you to do it,—for think o’ them poor women up i’ the villages
there, as niver stir a hundred yards from home,—it ’ud be a pity for
anybody to buy up their bargains. Lors, it’s as good as a junketing to
’em when they see me wi’ my pack, an’ I shall niver pick up such
bargains for ’em again. Least ways, I’ve no time now, for I’m off to
Laceham. See here now,” Bob went on, becoming rapid again, and holding
up a scarlet woollen Kerchief with an embroidered wreath in the corner;
“here’s a thing to make a lass’s mouth water, an’ on’y two shillin’—an’
why? Why, ’cause there’s a bit of a moth-hole ’i this plain end. Lors,
I think the moths an’ the mildew was sent by Providence o’ purpose to
cheapen the goods a bit for the good-lookin’ women as han’t got much
money. If it hadn’t been for the moths, now, every hankicher on ’em ’ud
ha’ gone to the rich, handsome ladies, like you, mum, at five shillin’
apiece,—not a farthin’ less; but what does the moth do? Why, it nibbles
off three shillin’ o’ the price i’ no time; an’ then a packman like me
can carry ’t to the poor lasses as live under the dark thack, to make a
bit of a blaze for ’em. Lors, it’s as good as a fire, to look at such a
hankicher!”
Bob held it at a distance for admiration, but Mrs Glegg said sharply:
“Yes, but nobody wants a fire this time o’ year. Put these coloured
things by; let me look at your nets, if you’ve got ’em.”
“Eh, mum, I told you how it ’ud be,” said Bob, flinging aside the
coloured things with an air of desperation. “I knowed it ud’ turn
again’ you to look at such paltry articles as I carry. Here’s a piece
o’ figured muslin now, what’s the use o’ you lookin’ at it? You might
as well look at poor folks’s victual, mum; it ’ud on’y take away your
appetite. There’s a yard i’ the middle on’t as the pattern’s all
missed,—lors, why, it’s a muslin as the Princess Victoree might ha’
wore; but,” added Bob, flinging it behind him on to the turf, as if to
save Mrs Glegg’s eyes, “it’ll be bought up by the huckster’s wife at
Fibb’s End,—that’s where _it’ll_ go—ten shillin’ for the whole lot—ten
yards, countin’ the damaged un—five-an’-twenty shillin’ ’ud ha’ been
the price, not a penny less. But I’ll say no more, mum; it’s nothing to
you, a piece o’ muslin like that; you can afford to pay three times the
money for a thing as isn’t half so good. It’s nets _you_ talked on;
well, I’ve got a piece as ’ull serve you to make fun on——”
“Bring me that muslin,” said Mrs Glegg. “It’s a buff; I’m partial to
buff.”
“Eh, but a _damaged_ thing,” said Bob, in a tone of deprecating
disgust. “You’d do nothing with it, mum, you’d give it to the cook, I
know you would, an’ it ’ud be a pity,—she’d look too much like a lady
in it; it’s unbecoming for servants.”
“Fetch it, and let me see you measure it,” said Mrs Glegg,
authoritatively.
Bob obeyed with ostentatious reluctance.
“See what there is over measure!” he said, holding forth the extra
half-yard, while Mrs Glegg was busy examining the damaged yard, and
throwing her head back to see how far the fault would be lost on a
distant view.
“I’ll give you six shilling for it,” she said, throwing it down with
the air of a person who mentions an ultimatum.
“Didn’t I tell you now, mum, as it ’ud hurt your feelings to look at my
pack? That damaged bit’s turned your stomach now; I see it has,” said
Bob, wrapping the muslin up with the utmost quickness, and apparently
about to fasten up his pack. “You’re used to seein’ a different sort o’
article carried by packmen, when you lived at the stone house. Packs is
come down i’ the world; I told you that; _my_ goods are for common
folks. Mrs Pepper ’ull give me ten shillin’ for that muslin, an’ be
sorry as I didn’t ask her more. Such articles answer i’ the
wearin’,—they keep their colour till the threads melt away i’ the
wash-tub, an’ that won’t be while _I’m_ a young un.”
“Well, seven shilling,” said Mrs Glegg.
“Put it out o’ your mind, mum, now do,” said Bob. “Here’s a bit o’ net,
then, for you to look at before I tie up my pack, just for you to see
what my trade’s come to,—spotted and sprigged, you see, beautiful but
yallow,—’s been lyin’ by an’ got the wrong colour. I could niver ha’
bought such net, if it hadn’t been yallow. Lors, it’s took me a deal o’
study to know the vally o’ such articles; when I begun to carry a pack,
I was as ignirant as a pig; net or calico was all the same to me. I
thought them things the most vally as was the thickest. I was took in
dreadful, for I’m a straightforrard chap,—up to no tricks, mum. I can
only say my nose is my own, for if I went beyond, I should lose myself
pretty quick. An’ I gev five-an’-eightpence for that piece o’ net,—if I
was to tell y’ anything else I should be tellin’ you fibs,—an’
five-an’-eightpence I shall ask of it, not a penny more, for it’s a
woman’s article, an’ I like to ’commodate the women.
Five-an’-eightpence for six yards,—as cheap as if it was only the dirt
on it as was paid for.’”
“I don’t mind having three yards of it,’” said Mrs Glegg.
“Why, there’s but six altogether,” said Bob. “No, mum, it isn’t worth
your while; you can go to the shop to-morrow an’ get the same pattern
ready whitened. It’s on’y three times the money; what’s that to a lady
like you?” He gave an emphatic tie to his bundle.
“Come, lay me out that muslin,” said Mrs Glegg. “Here’s eight shilling
for it.”
“You _will_ be jokin’,” said Bob, looking up with a laughing face; “I
see’d you was a pleasant lady when I fust come to the winder.”
“Well, put it me out,” said Mrs Glegg, peremptorily.
“But if I let you have it for ten shillin’, mum, you’ll be so good as
not tell nobody. I should be a laughin’-stock; the trade ’ud hoot me,
if they knowed it. I’m obliged to make believe as I ask more nor I do
for my goods, else they’d find out I was a flat. I’m glad you don’t
insist upo’ buyin’ the net, for then I should ha’ lost my two best
bargains for Mrs Pepper o’ Fibb’s End, an’ she’s a rare customer.”
“Let me look at the net again,” said Mrs Glegg, yearning after the
cheap spots and sprigs, now they were vanishing.
“Well, I can’t deny _you_, mum,” said Bob handing it out.
“Eh!, see what a pattern now! Real Laceham goods. Now, this is the sort
o’ article I’m recommendin’ Mr Tom to send out. Lors, it’s a fine thing
for anybody as has got a bit o’ money; these Laceham goods ’ud make it
breed like maggits. If I was a lady wi’ a bit o’ money!—why, I know one
as put thirty pounds into them goods,—a lady wi’ a cork leg, but as
sharp,—you wouldn’t catch _her_ runnin’ her head into a sack; _she’d_
see her way clear out o’ anything afore she’d be in a hurry to start.
Well, she let out thirty pound to a young man in the drapering line,
and he laid it out i’ Laceham goods, an’ a shupercargo o’ my
acquinetance (not Salt) took ’em out, an’ she got her eight per zent
fust go off; an’ now you can’t hold her but she must be sendin’ out
carguies wi’ every ship, till she’s gettin’ as rich as a Jew. Bucks her
name is, she doesn’t live i’ this town. Now then, mum, if you’ll please
to give me the net——”
“Here’s fifteen shilling, then, for the two,” said Mrs Glegg. “But it’s
a shameful price.”
“Nay, mum, you’ll niver say that when you’re upo’ your knees i’ church
i’ five years’ time. I’m makin’ you a present o’ th’ articles; I am,
indeed. That eightpence shaves off my profits as clean as a razor. Now
then, sir,” continued Bob, shouldering his pack, “if you please, I’ll
be glad to go and see about makin’ Mr Tom’s fortin. Eh, I wish I’d got
another twenty pound to lay out _my_sen; I shouldn’t stay to say my
Catechism afore I knowed what to do wi’t.”
“Stop a bit, Mr Glegg,” said the lady, as her husband took his hat,
“you never _will_ give me the chance o’ speaking. You’ll go away now,
and finish everything about this business, and come back and tell me
it’s too late for me to speak. As if I wasn’t my nephey’s own aunt, and
the head o’ the family on his mother’s side! and laid by guineas, all
full weight, for him, as he’ll know who to respect when I’m laid in my
coffin.”
“Well, Mrs G., say what you mean,” said Mr G., hastily.
“Well, then, I desire as nothing may be done without my knowing. I
don’t say as I sha’n’t venture twenty pounds, if you make out as
everything’s right and safe. And if I do, Tom,” concluded Mrs Glegg,
turning impressively to her nephew, “I hope you’ll allays bear it in
mind and be grateful for such an aunt. I mean you to pay me interest,
you know; I don’t approve o’ giving; we niver looked for that in _my_
family.”
“Thank you, aunt,” said Tom, rather proudly. “I prefer having the money
only lent to me.”
“Very well; that’s the Dodson sperrit,” said Mrs Glegg, rising to get
her knitting with the sense that any further remark after this would be
bathos.
Salt—that eminently “briny chap”—having been discovered in a cloud of
tobacco-smoke at the Anchor Tavern, Mr Glegg commenced inquiries which
turned out satisfactorily enough to warrant the advance of the
“nest-egg,” to which aunt Glegg contributed twenty pounds; and in this
modest beginning you see the ground of a fact which might otherwise
surprise you; namely, Tom’s accumulation of a fund, unknown to his
father, that promised in no very long time to meet the more tardy
process of saving, and quite cover the deficit. When once his attention
had been turned to this source of gain, Tom determined to make the most
of it, and lost no opportunity of obtaining information and extending
his small enterprises. In not telling his father, he was influenced by
that strange mixture of opposite feelings which often gives equal truth
to those who blame an action and those who admire it,—partly, it was
that disinclination to confidence which is seen between near kindred,
that family repulsion which spoils the most sacred relations of our
lives; partly, it was the desire to surprise his father with a great
joy. He did not see that it would have been better to soothe the
interval with a new hope, and prevent the delirium of a too sudden
elation.
At the time of Maggie’s first meeting with Philip, Tom had already
nearly a hundred and fifty pounds of his own capital; and while they
were walking by the evening light in the Red Deeps, he, by the same
evening light, was riding into Laceham, proud of being on his first
journey on behalf of Guest & Co., and revolving in his mind all the
chances that by the end of another year he should have doubled his
gains, lifted off the obloquy of debt from his father’s name, and
perhaps—for he should be twenty-one—have got a new start for himself,
on a higher platform of employment. Did he not desire it? He was quite
sure that he did.
Chapter III.
The Wavering Balance
I said that Maggie went home that evening from the Red Deeps with a
mental conflict already begun. You have seen clearly enough, in her
interview with Philip, what that conflict was. Here suddenly was an
opening in the rocky wall which shut in the narrow valley of
humiliation, where all her prospect was the remote, unfathomed sky; and
some of the memory-haunting earthly delights were no longer out of her
reach. She might have books, converse, affection; she might hear
tidings of the world from which her mind had not yet lost its sense of
exile; and it would be a kindness to Philip too, who was
pitiable,—clearly not happy. And perhaps here was an opportunity
indicated for making her mind more worthy of its highest service;
perhaps the noblest, completest devoutness could hardly exist without
some width of knowledge; _must_ she always live in this resigned
imprisonment? It was so blameless, so good a thing that there should be
friendship between her and Philip; the motives that forbade it were so
unreasonable, so unchristian! But the severe monotonous warning came
again and again,—that she was losing the simplicity and clearness of
her life by admitting a ground of concealment; and that, by forsaking
the simple rule of renunciation, she was throwing herself under the
seductive guidance of illimitable wants. She thought she had won
strength to obey the warning before she allowed herself the next week
to turn her steps in the evening to the Red Deeps. But while she was
resolved to say an affectionate farewell to Philip, how she looked
forward to that evening walk in the still, fleckered shade of the
hollows, away from all that was harsh and unlovely; to the
affectionate, admiring looks that would meet her; to the sense of
comradeship that childish memories would give to wiser, older talk; to
the certainty that Philip would care to hear everything she said, which
no one else cared for! It was a half-hour that it would be very hard to
turn her back upon, with the sense that there would be no other like
it. Yet she said what she meant to say; she looked firm as well as sad.
“Philip, I have made up my mind; it is right that we should give each
other up, in everything but memory. I could not see you without
concealment—stay, I know what you are going to say,—it is other
people’s wrong feelings that make concealment necessary; but
concealment is bad, however it may be caused. I feel that it would be
bad for me, for us both. And then, if our secret were discovered, there
would be nothing but misery,—dreadful anger; and then we must part
after all, and it would be harder, when we were used to seeing each
other.”
Philip’s face had flushed, and there was a momentary eagerness of
expression, as if he had been about to resist this decision with all
his might.
But he controlled himself, and said, with assumed calmness: “Well,
Maggie, if we must part, let us try and forget it for one half hour;
let us talk together a little while, for the last time.”
He took her hand, and Maggie felt no reason to withdraw it; his
quietness made her all the more sure she had given him great pain, and
she wanted to show him how unwillingly she had given it. They walked
together hand in hand in silence.
“Let us sit down in the hollow,” said Philip, “where we stood the last
time. See how the dog-roses have strewed the ground, and spread their
opal petals over it.”
They sat down at the roots of the slanting ash.
“I’ve begun my picture of you among the Scotch firs, Maggie,” said
Philip, “so you must let me study your face a little, while you
stay,—since I am not to see it again. Please turn your head this way.”
This was said in an entreating voice, and it would have been very hard
of Maggie to refuse. The full, lustrous face, with the bright black
coronet, looked down like that of a divinity well pleased to be
worshipped, on the pale-hued, small-featured face that was turned up to
it.
“I shall be sitting for my second portrait then,” she said, smiling.
“Will it be larger than the other?”
“Oh yes, much larger. It is an oil-painting. You will look like a tall
Hamadryad, dark and strong and noble, just issued from one of the
fir-trees, when the stems are casting their afternoon shadows on the
grass.”
“You seem to think more of painting than of anything now, Philip?”
“Perhaps I do,” said Philip, rather sadly; “but I think of too many
things,—sow all sorts of seeds, and get no great harvest from any one
of them. I’m cursed with susceptibility in every direction, and
effective faculty in none. I care for painting and music; I care for
classic literature, and mediæval literature, and modern literature; I
flutter all ways, and fly in none.”
“But surely that is a happiness to have so many tastes,—to enjoy so
many beautiful things, when they are within your reach,” said Maggie,
musingly. “It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to
have one sort of talent,—almost like a carrier-pigeon.”
“It might be a happiness to have many tastes if I were like other men,”
said Philip, bitterly. “I might get some power and distinction by mere
mediocrity, as they do; at least I should get those middling
satisfactions which make men contented to do without great ones. I
might think society at St Ogg’s agreeable then. But nothing could make
life worth the purchase-money of pain to me, but some faculty that
would lift me above the dead level of provincial existence. Yes, there
is one thing,—a passion answers as well as a faculty.”
Maggie did not hear the last words; she was struggling against the
consciousness that Philip’s words had set her own discontent vibrating
again as it used to do.
“I understand what you mean,” she said, “though I know so much less
than you do. I used to think I could never bear life if it kept on
being the same every day, and I must always be doing things of no
consequence, and never know anything greater. But, dear Philip, I think
we are only like children that some one who is wiser is taking care of.
Is it not right to resign ourselves entirely, whatever may be denied
us? I have found great peace in that for the last two or three years,
even joy in subduing my own will.”
“Yes, Maggie,” said Philip, vehemently; “and you are shutting yourself
up in a narrow, self-delusive fanaticism, which is only a way of
escaping pain by starving into dulness all the highest powers of your
nature. Joy and peace are not resignation; resignation is the willing
endurance of a pain that is not allayed, that you don’t expect to be
allayed. Stupefaction is not resignation; and it is stupefaction to
remain in ignorance,—to shut up all the avenues by which the life of
your fellow-men might become known to you. I am not resigned; I am not
sure that life is long enough to learn that lesson. _You_ are not
resigned; you are only trying to stupefy yourself.”
Maggie’s lips trembled; she felt there was some truth in what Philip
said, and yet there was a deeper consciousness that, for any immediate
application it had to her conduct, it was no better than falsity. Her
double impression corresponded to the double impulse of the speaker.
Philip seriously believed what he said, but he said it with vehemence
because it made an argument against the resolution that opposed his
wishes. But Maggie’s face, made more childlike by the gathering tears,
touched him with a tenderer, less egotistic feeling. He took her hand
and said gently:
“Don’t let us think of such things in this short half-hour, Maggie. Let
us only care about being together. We shall be friends in spite of
separation. We shall always think of each other. I shall be glad to
live as long as you are alive, because I shall think there may always
come a time when I can—when you will let me help you in some way.”
“What a dear, good brother you would have been, Philip,” said Maggie,
smiling through the haze of tears. “I think you would have made as much
fuss about me, and been as pleased for me to love you, as would have
satisfied even me. You would have loved me well enough to bear with me,
and forgive me everything. That was what I always longed that Tom
should do. I was never satisfied with a _little_ of anything. That is
why it is better for me to do without earthly happiness altogether. I
never felt that I had enough music,—I wanted more instruments playing
together; I wanted voices to be fuller and deeper. Do you ever sing
now, Philip?” she added abruptly, as if she had forgotten what went
before.
“Yes,” he said, “every day, almost. But my voice is only middling, like
everything else in me.”
“Oh, sing me something,—just one song. I _may_ listen to that before I
go,—something you used to sing at Lorton on a Saturday afternoon, when
we had the drawing-room all to ourselves, and I put my apron over my
head to listen.”
“_I_ know,” said Philip; and Maggie buried her face in her hands while
he sang _sotto voce_, “Love in her eyes sits playing,” and then said,
“That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Oh no, I won’t stay,” said Maggie, starting up. “It will only haunt
me. Let us walk, Philip. I must go home.”
She moved away, so that he was obliged to rise and follow her.
“Maggie,” he said, in a tone of remonstrance, “don’t persist in this
wilful, senseless privation. It makes me wretched to see you benumbing
and cramping your nature in this way. You were so full of life when you
were a child; I thought you would be a brilliant woman,—all wit and
bright imagination. And it flashes out in your face still, until you
draw that veil of dull quiescence over it.”
“Why do you speak so bitterly to me, Philip?” said Maggie.
“Because I foresee it will not end well; you can never carry on this
self-torture.”
“I shall have strength given me,” said Maggie, tremulously.
“No, you will not, Maggie; no one has strength given to do what is
unnatural. It is mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No
character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world
some day, and then every rational satisfaction of your nature that you
deny now will assault you like a savage appetite.”
Maggie started and paused, looking at Philip with alarm in her face.
“Philip, how dare you shake me in this way? You are a tempter.”
“No, I am not; but love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives
foreboding. _Listen_ to me,—let _me_ supply you with books; do let me
see you sometimes,—be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton.
It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be
committing this long suicide.”
Maggie felt unable to speak. She shook her head and walked on in
silence, till they came to the end of the Scotch firs, and she put out
her hand in sign of parting.
“Do you banish me from this place forever, then, Maggie? Surely I may
come and walk in it sometimes? If I meet you by chance, there is no
concealment in that?”
It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become
irrevocable—when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us—that
tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm
conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long
struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.
Maggie felt her heart leap at this subterfuge of Philip’s, and there
passed over her face that almost imperceptible shock which accompanies
any relief. He saw it, and they parted in silence.
Philip’s sense of the situation was too complete for him not to be
visited with glancing fears lest he had been intervening too
presumptuously in the action of Maggie’s conscience, perhaps for a
selfish end. But no!—he persuaded himself his end was not selfish. He
had little hope that Maggie would ever return the strong feeling he had
for her; and it must be better for Maggie’s future life, when these
petty family obstacles to her freedom had disappeared, that the present
should not be entirely sacrificed, and that she should have some
opportunity of culture,—some interchange with a mind above the vulgar
level of those she was now condemned to live with. If we only look far
enough off for the consequence of our actions, we can always find some
point in the combination of results by which those actions can be
justified; by adopting the point of view of a Providence who arranges
results, or of a philosopher who traces them, we shall find it possible
to obtain perfect complacency in choosing to do what is most agreeable
to us in the present moment. And it was in this way that Philip
justified his subtle efforts to overcome Maggie’s true prompting
against a concealment that would introduce doubleness into her own
mind, and might cause new misery to those who had the primary natural
claim on her. But there was a surplus of passion in him that made him
half independent of justifying motives. His longing to see Maggie, and
make an element in her life, had in it some of that savage impulse to
snatch an offered joy which springs from a life in which the mental and
bodily constitution have made pain predominate. He had not his full
share in the common good of men; he could not even pass muster with the
insignificant, but must be singled out for pity, and excepted from what
was a matter of course with others. Even to Maggie he was an exception;
it was clear that the thought of his being her lover had never entered
her mind.
Do not think too hardly of Philip. Ugly and deformed people have great
need of unusual virtues, because they are likely to be extremely
uncomfortable without them; but the theory that unusual virtues spring
by a direct consequence out of personal disadvantages, as animals get
thicker wool in severe climates, is perhaps a little overstrained. The
temptations of beauty are much dwelt upon, but I fancy they only bear
the same relation to those of ugliness, as the temptation to excess at
a feast, where the delights are varied for eye and ear as well as
palate, bears to the temptations that assail the desperation of hunger.
Does not the Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what
is human in us?
Philip had never been soothed by that mother’s love which flows out to
us in the greater abundance because our need is greater, which clings
to us the more tenderly because we are the less likely to be winners in
the game of life; and the sense of his father’s affection and
indulgence toward him was marred by the keener perception of his
father’s faults. Kept aloof from all practical life as Philip had been,
and by nature half feminine in sensitiveness, he had some of the
woman’s intolerant repulsion toward worldliness and the deliberate
pursuit of sensual enjoyment; and this one strong natural tie in his
life,—his relation as a son,—was like an aching limb to him. Perhaps
there is inevitably something morbid in a human being who is in any way
unfavourably excepted from ordinary conditions, until the good force
has had time to triumph; and it has rarely had time for that at
two-and-twenty. That force was present in Philip in much strength, but
the sun himself looks feeble through the morning mists.
Chapter IV.
Another Love-Scene
Early in the following April, nearly a year after that dubious parting
you have just witnessed, you may, if you like, again see Maggie
entering the Red Deeps through the group of Scotch firs. But it is
early afternoon and not evening, and the edge of sharpness in the
spring air makes her draw her large shawl close about her and trip
along rather quickly; though she looks round, as usual, that she may
take in the sight of her beloved trees. There is a more eager,
inquiring look in her eyes than there was last June, and a smile is
hovering about her lips, as if some playful speech were awaiting the
right hearer. The hearer was not long in appearing.
“Take back your _Corinne_,” said Maggie, drawing a book from under her
shawl. “You were right in telling me she would do me no good; but you
were wrong in thinking I should wish to be like her.”
“Wouldn’t you really like to be a tenth Muse, then, Maggie?” said
Philip looking up in her face as we look at a first parting in the
clouds that promises us a bright heaven once more.
“Not at all,” said Maggie, laughing. “The Muses were uncomfortable
goddesses, I think,—obliged always to carry rolls and musical
instruments about with them. If I carried a harp in this climate, you
know, I must have a green baize cover for it; and I should be sure to
leave it behind me by mistake.”
“You agree with me in not liking Corinne, then?”
“I didn’t finish the book,” said Maggie. “As soon as I came to the
blond-haired young lady reading in the park, I shut it up, and
determined to read no further. I foresaw that that light-complexioned
girl would win away all the love from Corinne and make her miserable.
I’m determined to read no more books where the blond-haired women carry
away all the happiness. I should begin to have a prejudice against
them. If you could give me some story, now, where the dark woman
triumphs, it would restore the balance. I want to avenge Rebecca and
Flora MacIvor and Minna, and all the rest of the dark unhappy ones.
Since you are my tutor, you ought to preserve my mind from prejudices;
you are always arguing against prejudices.”
“Well, perhaps you will avenge the dark women in your own person, and
carry away all the love from your cousin Lucy. She is sure to have some
handsome young man of St Ogg’s at her feet now; and you have only to
shine upon him—your fair little cousin will be quite quenched in your
beams.”
“Philip, that is not pretty of you, to apply my nonsense to anything
real,” said Maggie, looking hurt. “As if I, with my old gowns and want
of all accomplishments, could be a rival of dear little Lucy,—who knows
and does all sorts of charming things, and is ten times prettier than I
am,—even if I were odious and base enough to wish to be her rival.
Besides, I never go to aunt Deane’s when any one is there; it is only
because dear Lucy is good, and loves me, that she comes to see me, and
will have me go to see her sometimes.”
“Maggie,” said Philip, with surprise, “it is not like you to take
playfulness literally. You must have been in St Ogg’s this morning, and
brought away a slight infection of dulness.”
“Well,” said Maggie, smiling, “if you meant that for a joke, it was a
poor one; but I thought it was a very good reproof. I thought you
wanted to remind me that I am vain, and wish every one to admire me
most. But it isn’t for that that I’m jealous for the dark women,—not
because I’m dark myself; it’s because I always care the most about the
unhappy people. If the blond girl were forsaken, I should like _her_
best. I always take the side of the rejected lover in the stories.”
“Then you would never have the heart to reject one yourself, should
you, Maggie?” said Philip, flushing a little.
“I don’t know,” said Maggie, hesitatingly. Then with a bright smile, “I
think perhaps I could if he were very conceited; and yet, if he got
extremely humiliated afterward, I should relent.”
“I’ve often wondered, Maggie,” Philip said, with some effort, “whether
you wouldn’t really be more likely to love a man that other women were
not likely to love.”
“That would depend on what they didn’t like him for,” said Maggie,
laughing. “He might be very disagreeable. He might look at me through
an eye-glass stuck in his eye, making a hideous face, as young Torry
does. I should think other women are not fond of that; but I never felt
any pity for young Torry. I’ve never any pity for conceited people,
because I think they carry their comfort about with them.”
“But suppose, Maggie,—suppose it was a man who was not conceited, who
felt he had nothing to be conceited about; who had been marked from
childhood for a peculiar kind of suffering, and to whom you were the
day-star of his life; who loved you, worshipped you, so entirely that
he felt it happiness enough for him if you would let him see you at
rare moments——”
Philip paused with a pang of dread lest his confession should cut short
this very happiness,—a pang of the same dread that had kept his love
mute through long months. A rush of self-consciousness told him that he
was besotted to have said all this. Maggie’s manner this morning had
been as unconstrained and indifferent as ever.
But she was not looking indifferent now. Struck with the unusual
emotion in Philip’s tone, she had turned quickly to look at him; and as
he went on speaking, a great change came over her face,—a flush and
slight spasm of the features, such as we see in people who hear some
news that will require them to readjust their conceptions of the past.
She was quite silent, and walking on toward the trunk of a fallen tree,
she sat down, as if she had no strength to spare for her muscles. She
was trembling.
“Maggie,” said Philip, getting more and more alarmed in every fresh
moment of silence, “I was a fool to say it; forget that I’ve said it. I
shall be contented if things can be as they were.”
The distress with which he spoke urged Maggie to say something. “I am
so surprised, Philip; I had not thought of it.” And the effort to say
this brought the tears down too.
“Has it made you hate me, Maggie?” said Philip, impetuously. “Do you
think I’m a presumptuous fool?”
“Oh, Philip!” said Maggie, “how can you think I have such feelings? As
if I were not grateful for _any_ love. But—but I had never thought of
your being my lover. It seemed so far off—like a dream—only like one of
the stories one imagines—that I should ever have a lover.”
“Then can you bear to think of me as your lover, Maggie?” said Philip,
seating himself by her, and taking her hand, in the elation of a sudden
hope. “_Do_ you love me?”
Maggie turned rather pale; this direct question seemed not easy to
answer. But her eyes met Philip’s, which were in this moment liquid and
beautiful with beseeching love. She spoke with hesitation, yet with
sweet, simple, girlish tenderness.
“I think I could hardly love any one better; there is nothing but what
I love you for.” She paused a little while, and then added: “But it
will be better for us not to say any more about it, won’t it, dear
Philip? You know we couldn’t even be friends, if our friendship were
discovered. I have never felt that I was right in giving way about
seeing you, though it has been so precious to me in some ways; and now
the fear comes upon me strongly again, that it will lead to evil.”
“But no evil has come, Maggie; and if you had been guided by that fear
before, you would only have lived through another dreary, benumbing
year, instead of reviving into your real self.”
Maggie shook her head. “It has been very sweet, I know,—all the talking
together, and the books, and the feeling that I had the walk to look
forward to, when I could tell you the thoughts that had come into my
head while I was away from you. But it has made me restless; it has
made me think a great deal about the world; and I have impatient
thoughts again,—I get weary of my home; and then it cuts me to the
heart afterward, that I should ever have felt weary of my father and
mother. I think what you call being benumbed was better—better for
me—for then my selfish desires were benumbed.”
Philip had risen again, and was walking backward and forward
impatiently.
“No, Maggie, you have wrong ideas of self-conquest, as I’ve often told
you. What you call self-conquest—blinding and deafening yourself to all
but one train of impressions—is only the culture of monomania in a
nature like yours.”
He had spoken with some irritation, but now he sat down by her again
and took her hand.
“Don’t think of the past now, Maggie; think only of our love. If you
can really cling to me with all your heart, every obstacle will be
overcome in time; we need only wait. I can live on hope. Look at me,
Maggie; tell me again it is possible for you to love me. Don’t look
away from me to that cloven tree; it is a bad omen.”
She turned her large dark glance upon him with a sad smile.
“Come, Maggie, say one kind word, or else you were better to me at
Lorton. You asked me if I should like you to kiss me,—don’t you
remember?—and you promised to kiss me when you met me again. You never
kept the promise.”
The recollection of that childish time came as a sweet relief to
Maggie. It made the present moment less strange to her. She kissed him
almost as simply and quietly as she had done when she was twelve years
old. Philip’s eyes flashed with delight, but his next words were words
of discontent.
“You don’t seem happy enough, Maggie; you are forcing yourself to say
you love me, out of pity.”
“No, Philip,” said Maggie, shaking her head, in her old childish way;
“I’m telling you the truth. It is all new and strange to me; but I
don’t think I could love any one better than I love you. I should like
always to live with you—to make you happy. I have always been happy
when I have been with you. There is only one thing I will not do for
your sake; I will never do anything to wound my father. You must never
ask that from me.”
“No, Maggie, I will ask nothing; I will bear everything; I’ll wait
another year only for a kiss, if you will only give me the first place
in your heart.”
“No,” said Maggie, smiling, “I won’t make you wait so long as that.”
But then, looking serious again, she added, as she rose from her seat,—
“But what would your own father say, Philip? Oh, it is quite impossible
we can ever be more than friends,—brother and sister in secret, as we
have been. Let us give up thinking of everything else.”
“No, Maggie, I can’t give you up,—unless you are deceiving me; unless
you really only care for me as if I were your brother. Tell me the
truth.”
“Indeed I do, Philip. What happiness have I ever had so great as being
with you,—since I was a little girl,—the days Tom was good to me? And
your mind is a sort of world to me; you can tell me all I want to know.
I think I should never be tired of being with you.”
They were walking hand in hand, looking at each other; Maggie, indeed,
was hurrying along, for she felt it time to be gone. But the sense that
their parting was near made her more anxious lest she should have
unintentionally left some painful impression on Philip’s mind. It was
one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and
deceptive; when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves
floodmarks which are never reached again.
They stopped to part among the Scotch firs.
“Then my life will be filled with hope, Maggie, and I shall be happier
than other men, in spite of all? We _do_ belong to each other—for
always—whether we are apart or together?”
“Yes, Philip; I should like never to part; I should like to make your
life very happy.”
“I am waiting for something else. I wonder whether it will come.”
Maggie smiled, with glistening tears, and then stooped her tall head to
kiss the pale face that was full of pleading, timid love,—like a
woman’s.
She had a moment of real happiness then,—a moment of belief that, if
there were sacrifice in this love, it was all the richer and more
satisfying.
She turned away and hurried home, feeling that in the hour since she
had trodden this road before, a new era had begun for her. The tissue
of vague dreams must now get narrower and narrower, and all the threads
of thought and emotion be gradually absorbed in the woof of her actual
daily life.
Chapter V.
The Cloven Tree
Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any programme
our fear has sketched out. Fear is almost always haunted by terrible
dramatic scenes, which recur in spite of the best-argued probabilities
against them; and during a year that Maggie had had the burthen of
concealment on her mind, the possibility of discovery had continually
presented itself under the form of a sudden meeting with her father or
Tom when she was walking with Philip in the Red Deeps. She was aware
that this was not one of the most likely events; but it was the scene
that most completely symbolised her inward dread. Those slight indirect
suggestions which are dependent on apparently trivial coincidences and
incalculable states of mind, are the favourite machinery of Fact, but
are not the stuff in which Imagination is apt to work.
Certainly one of the persons about whom Maggie’s fears were furthest
from troubling themselves was her aunt Pullet, on whom, seeing that she
did not live in St Ogg’s, and was neither sharp-eyed nor
sharp-tempered, it would surely have been quite whimsical of them to
fix rather than on aunt Glegg. And yet the channel of fatality—the
pathway of the lightning—was no other than aunt Pullet. She did not
live at St Ogg’s, but the road from Garum Firs lay by the Red Deeps, at
the end opposite that by which Maggie entered.
The day after Maggie’s last meeting with Philip, being a Sunday on
which Mr Pullet was bound to appear in funeral hatband and scarf at St
Ogg’s church, Mrs Pullet made this the occasion of dining with sister
Glegg, and taking tea with poor sister Tulliver. Sunday was the one day
in the week on which Tom was at home in the afternoon; and today the
brighter spirits he had been in of late had flowed over in unusually
cheerful open chat with his father, and in the invitation, “Come,
Magsie, you come too!” when he strolled out with his mother in the
garden to see the advancing cherry-blossoms. He had been better pleased
with Maggie since she had been less odd and ascetic; he was even
getting rather proud of her; several persons had remarked in his
hearing that his sister was a very fine girl. To-day there was a
peculiar brightness in her face, due in reality to an undercurrent of
excitement, which had as much doubt and pain as pleasure in it; but it
might pass for a sign of happiness.
“You look very well, my dear,” said aunt Pullet, shaking her head
sadly, as they sat round the tea-table. “I niver thought your girl ’ud
be so good-looking, Bessy. But you must wear pink, my dear; that blue
thing as your aunt Glegg gave you turns you into a crowflower. Jane
never _was_ tasty. Why don’t you wear that gown o’ mine?”
“It is so pretty and so smart, aunt. I think it’s too showy for me,—at
least for my other clothes, that I must wear with it.
“To be sure, it ’ud be unbecoming if it wasn’t well known you’ve got
them belonging to you as can afford to give you such things when
they’ve done with ’em themselves. It stands to reason I must give my
own niece clothes now and then,—such things as _I_ buy every year, and
never wear anything out. And as for Lucy, there’s no giving to her, for
she’s got everything o’ the choicest; sister Deane may well hold her
head up,—though she looks dreadful yallow, poor thing—I doubt this
liver complaint ’ull carry her off. That’s what this new vicar, this Dr
Kenn, said in the funeral sermon to-day.”
“Ah, he’s a wonderful preacher, by all account,—isn’t he, Sophy?” said
Mrs Tulliver.
“Why, Lucy had got a collar on this blessed day,” continued Mrs Pullet,
with her eyes fixed in a ruminating manner, “as I don’t say I haven’t
got as good, but I must look out my best to match it.”
“Miss Lucy’s called the bell o’ St Ogg’s, they say; that’s a cur’ous
word,” observed Mr Pullet, on whom the mysteries of etymology sometimes
fell with an oppressive weight.
“Pooh!” said Mr Tulliver, jealous for Maggie, “she’s a small thing, not
much of a figure. But fine feathers make fine birds. I see nothing to
admire so much in those diminutive women; they look silly by the side
o’ the men,—out o’ proportion. When I chose my wife, I chose her the
right size,—neither too little nor too big.”
The poor wife, with her withered beauty, smiled complacently.
“But the men aren’t _all_ big,” said uncle Pullet, not without some
self-reference; “a young fellow may be good-looking and yet not be a
six-foot, like Master Tom here.”
“Ah, it’s poor talking about littleness and bigness,—anybody may think
it’s a mercy they’re straight,” said aunt Pullet. “There’s that mismade
son o’ Lawyer Wakem’s, I saw him at church to-day. Dear, dear! to think
o’ the property he’s like to have; and they say he’s very queer and
lonely, doesn’t like much company. I shouldn’t wonder if he goes out of
his mind; for we never come along the road but he’s a-scrambling out o’
the trees and brambles at the Red Deeps.”
This wide statement, by which Mrs Pullet represented the fact that she
had twice seen Philip at the spot indicated, produced an effect on
Maggie which was all the stronger because Tom sate opposite her, and
she was intensely anxious to look indifferent. At Philip’s name she had
blushed, and the blush deepened every instant from consciousness, until
the mention of the Red Deeps made her feel as if the whole secret were
betrayed, and she dared not even hold her tea-spoon lest she should
show how she trembled. She sat with her hands clasped under the table,
not daring to look round. Happily, her father was seated on the same
side with herself, beyond her uncle Pullet, and could not see her face
without stooping forward. Her mother’s voice brought the first relief,
turning the conversation; for Mrs Tulliver was always alarmed when the
name of Wakem was mentioned in her husband’s presence. Gradually Maggie
recovered composure enough to look up; her eyes met Tom’s, but he
turned away his head immediately; and she went to bed that night
wondering if he had gathered any suspicion from her confusion. Perhaps
not; perhaps he would think it was only her alarm at her aunt’s mention
of Wakem before her father; that was the interpretation her mother had
put on it. To her father, Wakem was like a disfiguring disease, of
which he was obliged to endure the consciousness, but was exasperated
to have the existence recognised by others; and no amount of
sensitiveness in her about her father could be surprising, Maggie
thought.
But Tom was too keen-sighted to rest satisfied with such an
interpretation; he had seen clearly enough that there was something
distinct from anxiety about her father in Maggie’s excessive confusion.
In trying to recall all the details that could give shape to his
suspicions, he remembered only lately hearing his mother scold Maggie
for walking in the Red Deeps when the ground was wet, and bringing home
shoes clogged with red soil; still Tom, retaining all his old repulsion
for Philip’s deformity, shrank from attributing to his sister the
probability of feeling more than a friendly interest in such an
unfortunate exception to the common run of men. Tom’s was a nature
which had a sort of superstitious repugnance to everything exceptional.
A love for a deformed man would be odious in any woman, in a sister
intolerable. But if she had been carrying on any kind of intercourse
whatever with Philip, a stop must be put to it at once; she was
disobeying her father’s strongest feelings and her brother’s express
commands, besides compromising herself by secret meetings. He left home
the next morning in that watchful state of mind which turns the most
ordinary course of things into pregnant coincidences.
That afternoon, about half-past three o’clock, Tom was standing on the
wharf, talking with Bob Jakin about the probability of the good ship
Adelaide coming in, in a day or two, with results highly important to
both of them.
“Eh,” said Bob, parenthetically, as he looked over the fields on the
other side of the river, “there goes that crooked young Wakem. I know
him or his shadder as far off as I can see ’em; I’m allays lighting on
him o’ that side the river.”
A sudden thought seemed to have darted through Tom’s mind. “I must go,
Bob,” he said; “I’ve something to attend to,” hurrying off to the
warehouse, where he left notice for some one to take his place; he was
called away home on peremptory business.
The swiftest pace and the shortest road took him to the gate, and he
was pausing to open it deliberately, that he might walk into the house
with an appearance of perfect composure, when Maggie came out at the
front door in bonnet and shawl. His conjecture was fulfilled, and he
waited for her at the gate. She started violently when she saw him.
“Tom, how is it you are come home? Is there anything the matter?”
Maggie spoke in a low, tremulous voice.
“I’m come to walk with you to the Red Deeps, and meet Philip Wakem,”
said Tom, the central fold in his brow, which had become habitual with
him, deepening as he spoke.
Maggie stood helpless, pale and cold. By some means, then, Tom knew
everything. At last she said, “I’m not going,” and turned round.
“Yes, you are; but I want to speak to you first. Where is my father?”
“Out on horseback.”
“And my mother?”
“In the yard, I think, with the poultry.”
“I can go in, then, without her seeing me?”
They walked in together, and Tom, entering the parlour, said to Maggie,
“Come in here.”
She obeyed, and he closed the door behind her.
“Now, Maggie, tell me this instant everything that has passed between
you and Philip Wakem.”
“Does my father know anything?” said Maggie, still trembling.
“No,” said Tom indignantly. “But he _shall_ know, if you attempt to use
deceit toward me any further.”
“I don’t wish to use deceit,” said Maggie, flushing into resentment at
hearing this word applied to her conduct.
“Tell me the whole truth, then.”
“Perhaps you know it.”
“Never mind whether I know it or not. Tell me exactly what has
happened, or my father shall know everything.”
“I tell it for my father’s sake, then.”
“Yes, it becomes you to profess affection for your father, when you
have despised his strongest feelings.”
“You never do wrong, Tom,” said Maggie, tauntingly.
“Not if I know it,” answered Tom, with proud sincerity.
“But I have nothing to say to you beyond this: tell me what has passed
between you and Philip Wakem. When did you first meet him in the Red
Deeps?”
“A year ago,” said Maggie, quietly. Tom’s severity gave her a certain
fund of defiance, and kept her sense of error in abeyance. “You need
ask me no more questions. We have been friendly a year. We have met and
walked together often. He has lent me books.”
“Is that all?” said Tom, looking straight at her with his frown.
Maggie paused a moment; then, determined to make an end of Tom’s right
to accuse her of deceit, she said haughtily:
“No, not quite all. On Saturday he told me that he loved me. I didn’t
think of it before then; I had only thought of him as an old friend.”
“And you _encouraged_ him?” said Tom, with an expression of disgust.
“I told him that I loved him too.”
Tom was silent a few moments, looking on the ground and frowning, with
his hands in his pockets. At last he looked up and said coldly,—
“Now, then, Maggie, there are but two courses for you to take,—either
you vow solemnly to me, with your hand on my father’s Bible, that you
will never have another meeting or speak another word in private with
Philip Wakem, or you refuse, and I tell my father everything; and this
month, when by my exertions he might be made happy once more, you will
cause him the blow of knowing that you are a disobedient, deceitful
daughter, who throws away her own respectability by clandestine
meetings with the son of a man that has helped to ruin her father.
Choose!” Tom ended with cold decision, going up to the large Bible,
drawing it forward, and opening it at the fly-leaf, where the writing
was.
It was a crushing alternative to Maggie.
“Tom,” she said, urged out of pride into pleading, “don’t ask me that.
I will promise you to give up all intercourse with Philip, if you will
let me see him once, or even only write to him and explain
everything,—to give it up as long as it would ever cause any pain to my
father. I feel something for Philip too. _He_ is not happy.”
“I don’t wish to hear anything of your feelings; I have said exactly
what I mean. Choose, and quickly, lest my mother should come in.”
“If I give you my word, that will be as strong a bond to me as if I
laid my hand on the Bible. I don’t require that to bind me.”
“Do what _I_ require,” said Tom. “I can’t trust you, Maggie. There is
no consistency in you. Put your hand on this Bible, and say, ‘I
renounce all private speech and intercourse with Philip Wakem from this
time forth.’ Else you will bring shame on us all, and grief on my
father; and what is the use of my exerting myself and giving up
everything else for the sake of paying my father’s debts, if you are to
bring madness and vexation on him, just when he might be easy and hold
up his head once more?”
“Oh, Tom, _will_ the debts be paid soon?” said Maggie, clasping her
hands, with a sudden flash of joy across her wretchedness.
“If things turn out as I expect,” said Tom. “But,” he added, his voice
trembling with indignation, “while I have been contriving and working
that my father may have some peace of mind before he dies,—working for
the respectability of our family,—you have done all you can to destroy
both.”
Maggie felt a deep movement of compunction; for the moment, her mind
ceased to contend against what she felt to be cruel and unreasonable,
and in her self-blame she justified her brother.
“Tom,” she said in a low voice, “it was wrong of me; but I was so
lonely, and I was sorry for Philip. And I think enmity and hatred are
wicked.”
“Nonsense!” said Tom. “Your duty was clear enough. Say no more; but
promise, in the words I told you.”
“I _must_ speak to Philip once more.”
“You will go with me now and speak to him.”
“I give you my word not to meet him or write to him again without your
knowledge. That is the only thing I will say. I will put my hand on the
Bible if you like.”
“Say it, then.”
Maggie laid her hand on the page of manuscript and repeated the
promise. Tom closed the book, and said, “Now let us go.”
Not a word was spoken as they walked along. Maggie was suffering in
anticipation of what Philip was about to suffer, and dreading the
galling words that would fall on him from Tom’s lips; but she felt it
was in vain to attempt anything but submission. Tom had his terrible
clutch on her conscience and her deepest dread; she writhed under the
demonstrable truth of the character he had given to her conduct, and
yet her whole soul rebelled against it as unfair from its
incompleteness. He, meanwhile, felt the impetus of his indignation
diverted toward Philip. He did not know how much of an old boyish
repulsion and of mere personal pride and animosity was concerned in the
bitter severity of the words by which he meant to do the duty of a son
and a brother. Tom was not given to inquire subtly into his own motives
any more than into other matters of an intangible kind; he was quite
sure that his own motives as well as actions were good, else he would
have had nothing to do with them.
Maggie’s only hope was that something might, for the first time, have
prevented Philip from coming. Then there would be delay,—then she might
get Tom’s permission to write to him. Her heart beat with double
violence when they got under the Scotch firs. It was the last moment of
suspense, she thought; Philip always met her soon after she got beyond
them. But they passed across the more open green space, and entered the
narrow bushy path by the mound. Another turning, and they came so close
upon him that both Tom and Philip stopped suddenly within a yard of
each other. There was a moment’s silence, in which Philip darted a look
of inquiry at Maggie’s face. He saw an answer there, in the pale,
parted lips, and the terrified tension of the large eyes. Her
imagination, always rushing extravagantly beyond an immediate
impression, saw her tall, strong brother grasping the feeble Philip
bodily, crushing him and trampling on him.
“Do you call this acting the part of a man and a gentleman, sir?” Tom
said, in a voice of harsh scorn, as soon as Philip’s eyes were turned
on him again.
“What do you mean?” answered Philip, haughtily.
“Mean? Stand farther from me, lest I should lay hands on you, and I’ll
tell you what I mean. I mean, taking advantage of a young girl’s
foolishness and ignorance to get her to have secret meetings with you.
I mean, daring to trifle with the respectability of a family that has a
good and honest name to support.”
“I deny that,” interrupted Philip, impetuously. “I could never trifle
with anything that affected your sister’s happiness. She is dearer to
me than she is to you; I honour her more than you can ever honour her;
I would give up my life to her.”
“Don’t talk high-flown nonsense to me, sir! Do you mean to pretend that
you didn’t know it would be injurious to her to meet you here week
after week? Do you pretend you had any right to make professions of
love to her, even if you had been a fit husband for her, when neither
her father nor your father would ever consent to a marriage between
you? And _you_,—_you_ to try and worm yourself into the affections of a
handsome girl who is not eighteen, and has been shut out from the world
by her father’s misfortunes! That’s your crooked notion of honour, is
it? I call it base treachery; I call it taking advantage of
circumstances to win what’s too good for you,—what you’d never get by
fair means.”
“It is manly of you to talk in this way to _me_,” said Philip,
bitterly, his whole frame shaken by violent emotions. “Giants have an
immemorial right to stupidity and insolent abuse. You are incapable
even of understanding what I feel for your sister. I feel so much for
her that I could even desire to be at friendship with _you_.”
“I should be very sorry to understand your feelings,” said Tom, with
scorching contempt. “What I wish is that you should understand
_me_,—that I shall take care of _my_ sister, and that if you dare to
make the least attempt to come near her, or to write to her, or to keep
the slightest hold on her mind, your puny, miserable body, that ought
to have put some modesty into your mind, shall not protect you. I’ll
thrash you; I’ll hold you up to public scorn. Who wouldn’t laugh at the
idea of _your_ turning lover to a fine girl?”
Tom and Maggie walked on in silence for some yards. He burst out, in a
convulsed voice.
“Stay, Maggie!” said Philip, making a strong effort to speak. Then
looking at Tom, “You have dragged your sister here, I suppose, that she
may stand by while you threaten and insult me. These naturally seemed
to you the right means to influence me. But you are mistaken. Let your
sister speak. If she says she is bound to give me up, I shall abide by
her wishes to the slightest word.”
“It was for my father’s sake, Philip,” said Maggie, imploringly. “Tom
threatens to tell my father, and he couldn’t bear it; I have promised,
I have vowed solemnly, that we will not have any intercourse without my
brother’s knowledge.”
“It is enough, Maggie. _I_ shall not change; but I wish you to hold
yourself entirely free. But trust me; remember that I can never seek
for anything but good to what belongs to you.”
“Yes,” said Tom, exasperated by this attitude of Philip’s, “you can
talk of seeking good for her and what belongs to her now; did you seek
her good before?”
“I did,—at some risk, perhaps. But I wished her to have a friend for
life,—who would cherish her, who would do her more justice than a
coarse and narrow-minded brother, that she has always lavished her
affections on.”
“Yes, my way of befriending her is different from yours; and I’ll tell
you what is my way. I’ll save her from disobeying and disgracing her
father; I’ll save her from throwing herself away on you,—from making
herself a laughing-stock,—from being flouted by a man like _your_
father, because she’s not good enough for his son. You know well enough
what sort of justice and cherishing you were preparing for her. I’m not
to be imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean. Come
away, Maggie.”
He seized Maggie’s right wrist as he spoke, and she put out her left
hand. Philip clasped it an instant, with one eager look, and then
hurried away.
Tom and Maggie walked on in silence for some yards. He was still
holding her wrist tightly, as if he were compelling a culprit from the
scene of action. At last Maggie, with a violent snatch, drew her hand
away, and her pent-up, long-gathered irritation burst into utterance.
“Don’t suppose that I think you are right, Tom, or that I bow to your
will. I despise the feelings you have shown in speaking to Philip; I
detest your insulting, unmanly allusions to his deformity. You have
been reproaching other people all your life; you have been always sure
you yourself are right. It is because you have not a mind large enough
to see that there is anything better than your own conduct and your own
petty aims.”
“Certainly,” said Tom, coolly. “I don’t see that your conduct is
better, or your aims either. If your conduct, and Philip Wakem’s
conduct, has been right, why are you ashamed of its being known? Answer
me that. I know what I have aimed at in my conduct, and I’ve succeeded;
pray, what good has your conduct brought to you or any one else?”
“I don’t want to defend myself,” said Maggie, still with vehemence: “I
know I’ve been wrong,—often, continually. But yet, sometimes when I
have done wrong, it has been because I have feelings that you would be
the better for, if you had them. If _you_ were in fault ever, if you
had done anything very wrong, I should be sorry for the pain it brought
you; I should not want punishment to be heaped on you. But you have
always enjoyed punishing me; you have always been hard and cruel to me;
even when I was a little girl, and always loved you better than any one
else in the world, you would let me go crying to bed without forgiving
me. You have no pity; you have no sense of your own imperfection and
your own sins. It is a sin to be hard; it is not fitting for a mortal,
for a Christian. You are nothing but a Pharisee. You thank God for
nothing but your own virtues; you think they are great enough to win
you everything else. You have not even a vision of feelings by the side
of which your shining virtues are mere darkness!”
“Well,” said Tom, with cold scorn, “if your feelings are so much better
than mine, let me see you show them in some other way than by conduct
that’s likely to disgrace us all,—than by ridiculous flights first into
one extreme and then into another. Pray, how have you shown your love,
that you talk of, either to me or my father? By disobeying and
deceiving us. I have a different way of showing my affection.”
“Because you are a man, Tom, and have power, and can do something in
the world.”
“Then, if you can do nothing, submit to those that can.”
“So I _will_ submit to what I acknowledge and feel to be right. I will
submit even to what is unreasonable from my father, but I will not
submit to it from you. You boast of your virtues as if they purchased
you a right to be cruel and unmanly, as you’ve been to-day. Don’t
suppose I would give up Philip Wakem in obedience to you. The deformity
you insult would make me cling to him and care for him the more.”
“Very well; that is your view of things,” said Tom, more coldly than
ever; “you need say no more to show me what a wide distance there is
between us. Let us remember that in future, and be silent.”
Tom went back to St Ogg’s, to fulfill an appointment with his uncle
Deane, and receive directions about a journey on which he was to set
out the next morning.
Maggie went up to her own room to pour out all that indignant
remonstrance, against which Tom’s mind was close barred, in bitter
tears. Then, when the first burst of unsatisfied anger was gone by,
came the recollection of that quiet time before the pleasure which had
ended in to-day’s misery had perturbed the clearness and simplicity of
her life. She used to think in that time that she had made great
conquests, and won a lasting stand on serene heights above worldly
temptations and conflict. And here she was down again in the thick of a
hot strife with her own and others’ passions. Life was not so short,
then, and perfect rest was not so near as she had dreamed when she was
two years younger. There was more struggle for her, and perhaps more
falling. If she had felt that she was entirely wrong, and that Tom had
been entirely right, she could sooner have recovered more inward
harmony; but now her penitence and submission were constantly
obstructed by resentment that would present itself to her no otherwise
than as a just indignation. Her heart bled for Philip; she went on
recalling the insults that had been flung at him with so vivid a
conception of what he had felt under them, that it was almost like a
sharp bodily pain to her, making her beat the floor with her foot and
tighten her fingers on her palm.
And yet, how was it that she was now and then conscious of a certain
dim background of relief in the forced separation from Philip? Surely
it was only because the sense of a deliverance from concealment was
welcome at any cost.
Chapter VI.
The Hard-Won Triumph
Three weeks later, when Dorlcote Mill was at its prettiest moment in
all the year,—the great chestnuts in blossom, and the grass all deep
and daisied,—Tom Tulliver came home to it earlier than usual in the
evening, and as he passed over the bridge, he looked with the old
deep-rooted affection at the respectable red brick house, which always
seemed cheerful and inviting outside, let the rooms be as bare and the
hearts as sad as they might inside. There is a very pleasant light in
Tom’s blue-gray eyes as he glances at the house-windows; that fold in
his brow never disappears, but it is not unbecoming; it seems to imply
a strength of will that may possibly be without harshness, when the
eyes and mouth have their gentlest expression. His firm step becomes
quicker, and the corners of his mouth rebel against the compression
which is meant to forbid a smile.
The eyes in the parlour were not turned toward the bridge just then,
and the group there was sitting in unexpectant silence,—Mr Tulliver in
his arm-chair, tired with a long ride, and ruminating with a worn look,
fixed chiefly on Maggie, who was bending over her sewing while her
mother was making the tea.
They all looked up with surprise when they heard the well-known foot.
“Why, what’s up now, Tom?” said his father. “You’re a bit earlier than
usual.”
“Oh, there was nothing more for me to do, so I came away. Well,
mother!”
Tom went up to his mother and kissed her, a sign of unusual good-humour
with him. Hardly a word or look had passed between him and Maggie in
all the three weeks; but his usual incommunicativeness at home
prevented this from being noticeable to their parents.
“Father,” said Tom, when they had finished tea, “do you know exactly
how much money there is in the tin box?”
“Only a hundred and ninety-three pound,” said Mr Tulliver. “You’ve
brought less o’ late; but young fellows like to have their own way with
their money. Though I didn’t do as I liked before _I_ was of age.” He
spoke with rather timid discontent.
“Are you quite sure that’s the sum, father?” said Tom. “I wish you
would take the trouble to fetch the tin box down. I think you have
perhaps made a mistake.”
“How should I make a mistake?” said his father, sharply. “I’ve counted
it often enough; but I can fetch it, if you won’t believe me.”
It was always an incident Mr Tulliver liked, in his gloomy life, to
fetch the tin box and count the money.
“Don’t go out of the room, mother,” said Tom, as he saw her moving when
his father was gone upstairs.
“And isn’t Maggie to go?” said Mrs Tulliver; “because somebody must
take away the things.”
“Just as she likes,” said Tom indifferently.
That was a cutting word to Maggie. Her heart had leaped with the sudden
conviction that Tom was going to tell their father the debts could be
paid; and Tom would have let her be absent when that news was told! But
she carried away the tray and came back immediately. The feeling of
injury on her own behalf could not predominate at that moment.
Tom drew to the corner of the table near his father when the tin box
was set down and opened, and the red evening light falling on them made
conspicuous the worn, sour gloom of the dark-eyed father and the
suppressed joy in the face of the fair-complexioned son. The mother and
Maggie sat at the other end of the table, the one in blank patience,
the other in palpitating expectation.
Mr Tulliver counted out the money, setting it in order on the table,
and then said, glancing sharply at Tom:
“There now! you see I was right enough.”
He paused, looking at the money with bitter despondency.
“There’s more nor three hundred wanting; it’ll be a fine while before
_I_ can save that. Losing that forty-two pound wi’ the corn was a sore
job. This world’s been too many for me. It’s took four year to lay
_this_ by; it’s much if I’m above ground for another four year. I must
trusten to you to pay ’em,” he went on, with a trembling voice, “if you
keep i’ the same mind now you’re coming o’ age. But you’re like enough
to bury me first.”
He looked up in Tom’s face with a querulous desire for some assurance.
“No, father,” said Tom, speaking with energetic decision, though there
was tremor discernible in his voice too, “you will live to see the
debts all paid. You shall pay them with your own hand.”
His tone implied something more than mere hopefulness or resolution. A
slight electric shock seemed to pass through Mr Tulliver, and he kept
his eyes fixed on Tom with a look of eager inquiry, while Maggie,
unable to restrain herself, rushed to her father’s side and knelt down
by him. Tom was silent a little while before he went on.
“A good while ago, my uncle Glegg lent me a little money to trade with,
and that has answered. I have three hundred and twenty pounds in the
bank.”
His mother’s arms were round his neck as soon as the last words were
uttered, and she said, half crying:
“Oh, my boy, I knew you’d make iverything right again, when you got a
man.”
But his father was silent; the flood of emotion hemmed in all power of
speech. Both Tom and Maggie were struck with fear lest the shock of joy
might even be fatal. But the blessed relief of tears came. The broad
chest heaved, the muscles of the face gave way, and the gray-haired man
burst into loud sobs. The fit of weeping gradually subsided, and he sat
quiet, recovering the regularity of his breathing. At last he looked up
at his wife and said, in a gentle tone:
“Bessy, you must come and kiss me now—the lad has made you amends.
You’ll see a bit o’ comfort again, belike.”
When she had kissed him, and he had held her hand a minute, his
thoughts went back to the money.
“I wish you’d brought me the money to look at, Tom,” he said, fingering
the sovereigns on the table; “I should ha’ felt surer.”
“You shall see it to-morrow, father,” said Tom. “My uncle Deane has
appointed the creditors to meet to-morrow at the Golden Lion, and he
has ordered a dinner for them at two o’clock. My uncle Glegg and he
will both be there. It was advertised in the ‘Messenger’ on Saturday.”
“Then Wakem knows on’t!” said Mr Tulliver, his eye kindling with
triumphant fire. “Ah!” he went on, with a long-drawn guttural
enunciation, taking out his snuff-box, the only luxury he had left
himself, and tapping it with something of his old air of defiance.
“I’ll get from under _his_ thumb now, though I _must_ leave the old
mill. I thought I could ha’ held out to die here—but I can’t——we’ve got
a glass o’ nothing in the house, have we, Bessy?”
“Yes,” said Mrs Tulliver, drawing out her much-reduced bunch of keys,
“there’s some brandy sister Deane brought me when I was ill.”
“Get it me, then; get it me. I feel a bit weak.”
“Tom, my lad,” he said, in a stronger voice, when he had taken some
brandy-and-water, “you shall make a speech to ’em. I’ll tell ’em it’s
you as got the best part o’ the money. They’ll see I’m honest at last,
and ha’ got an honest son. Ah! Wakem ’ud be fine and glad to have a son
like mine,—a fine straight fellow,—i’stead o’ that poor crooked
creatur! You’ll prosper i’ the world, my lad; you’ll maybe see the day
when Wakem and his son ’ull be a round or two below you. You’ll like
enough be ta’en into partnership, as your uncle Deane was before
you,—you’re in the right way for’t; and then there’s nothing to hinder
your getting rich. And if ever you’re rich enough—mind this—try and get
th’ old mill again.”
Mr Tulliver threw himself back in his chair; his mind, which had so
long been the home of nothing but bitter discontent and foreboding,
suddenly filled, by the magic of joy, with visions of good fortune. But
some subtle influence prevented him from foreseeing the good fortune as
happening to himself.
“Shake hands wi’ me, my lad,” he said, suddenly putting out his hand.
“It’s a great thing when a man can be proud as he’s got a good son.
I’ve had _that_ luck.”
Tom never lived to taste another moment so delicious as that; and
Maggie couldn’t help forgetting her own grievances. Tom _was_ good; and
in the sweet humility that springs in us all in moments of true
admiration and gratitude, she felt that the faults he had to pardon in
her had never been redeemed, as his faults were. She felt no jealousy
this evening that, for the first time, she seemed to be thrown into the
background in her father’s mind.
There was much more talk before bedtime. Mr Tulliver naturally wanted
to hear all the particulars of Tom’s trading adventures, and he
listened with growing excitement and delight. He was curious to know
what had been said on every occasion; if possible, what had been
thought; and Bob Jakin’s part in the business threw him into peculiar
outbursts of sympathy with the triumphant knowingness of that
remarkable packman. Bob’s juvenile history, so far as it had come under
Mr Tulliver’s knowledge, was recalled with that sense of astonishing
promise it displayed, which is observable in all reminiscences of the
childhood of great men.
It was well that there was this interest of narrative to keep under the
vague but fierce sense of triumph over Wakem, which would otherwise
have been the channel his joy would have rushed into with dangerous
force. Even as it was, that feeling from time to time gave threats of
its ultimate mastery, in sudden bursts of irrelevant exclamation.
It was long before Mr Tulliver got to sleep that night; and the sleep,
when it came, was filled with vivid dreams. At half-past five o’clock
in the morning, when Mrs Tulliver was already rising, he alarmed her by
starting up with a sort of smothered shout, and looking round in a
bewildered way at the walls of the bedroom.
“What’s the matter, Mr Tulliver?” said his wife. He looked at her,
still with a puzzled expression, and said at last:
“Ah!—I was dreaming—did I make a noise?—I thought I’d got hold of him.”
Chapter VII.
A Day of Reckoning
Mr Tulliver was an essentially sober man,—able to take his glass and
not averse to it, but never exceeding the bounds of moderation. He had
naturally an active Hotspur temperament, which did not crave liquid
fire to set it aglow; his impetuosity was usually equal to an exciting
occasion without any such reinforcements; and his desire for the
brandy-and-water implied that the too sudden joy had fallen with a
dangerous shock on a frame depressed by four years of gloom and
unaccustomed hard fare. But that first doubtful tottering moment
passed, he seemed to gather strength with his gathering excitement; and
the next day, when he was seated at table with his creditors, his eye
kindling and his cheek flushed with the consciousness that he was about
to make an honourable figure once more, he looked more like the proud,
confident, warm-hearted, and warm-tempered Tulliver of old times than
might have seemed possible to any one who had met him a week before,
riding along as had been his wont for the last four years since the
sense of failure and debt had been upon him,—with his head hanging
down, casting brief, unwilling looks on those who forced themselves on
his notice. He made his speech, asserting his honest principles with
his old confident eagerness, alluding to the rascals and the luck that
had been against him, but that he had triumphed over, to some extent,
by hard efforts and the aid of a good son; and winding up with the
story of how Tom had got the best part of the needful money. But the
streak of irritation and hostile triumph seemed to melt for a little
while into purer fatherly pride and pleasure, when, Tom’s health having
been proposed, and uncle Deane having taken occasion to say a few words
of eulogy on his general character and conduct, Tom himself got up and
made the single speech of his life. It could hardly have been briefer.
He thanked the gentlemen for the honour they had done him. He was glad
that he had been able to help his father in proving his integrity and
regaining his honest name; and, for his own part, he hoped he should
never undo that work and disgrace that name. But the applause that
followed was so great, and Tom looked so gentlemanly as well as tall
and straight, that Mr Tulliver remarked, in an explanatory manner, to
his friends on his right and left, that he had spent a deal of money on
his son’s education.
The party broke up in very sober fashion at five o’clock. Tom remained
in St Ogg’s to attend to some business, and Mr Tulliver mounted his
horse to go home, and describe the memorable things that had been said
and done, to “poor Bessy and the little wench.” The air of excitement
that hung about him was but faintly due to good cheer or any stimulus
but the potent wine of triumphant joy. He did not choose any back
street to-day, but rode slowly, with uplifted head and free glances,
along the principal street all the way to the bridge.
Why did he not happen to meet Wakem? The want of that coincidence vexed
him, and set his mind at work in an irritating way. Perhaps Wakem was
gone out of town to-day on purpose to avoid seeing or hearing anything
of an honourable action which might well cause him some unpleasant
twinges. If Wakem were to meet him then, Mr Tulliver would look
straight at him, and the rascal would perhaps be forsaken a little by
his cool, domineering impudence. He would know by and by that an honest
man was not going to serve _him_ any longer, and lend his honesty to
fill a pocket already over-full of dishonest gains. Perhaps the luck
was beginning to turn; perhaps the Devil didn’t always hold the best
cards in this world.
Simmering in this way, Mr Tulliver approached the yardgates of Dorlcote
Mill, near enough to see a well-known figure coming out of them on a
fine black horse. They met about fifty yards from the gates, between
the great chestnuts and elms and the high bank.
“Tulliver,” said Wakem, abruptly, in a haughtier tone than usual, “what
a fool’s trick you did,—spreading those hard lumps on that Far Close! I
told you how it would be; but you men never learn to farm with any
method.”
“Oh!” said Tulliver, suddenly boiling up; “get somebody else to farm
for you, then, as’ll ask _you_ to teach him.”
“You have been drinking, I suppose,” said Wakem, really believing that
this was the meaning of Tulliver’s flushed face and sparkling eyes.
“No, I’ve not been drinking,” said Tulliver; “I want no drinking to
help me make up my mind as I’ll serve no longer under a scoundrel.”
“Very well! you may leave my premises to-morrow, then; hold your
insolent tongue and let me pass.” (Tulliver was backing his horse
across the road to hem Wakem in.)
“No, I _sha’n’t_ let you pass,” said Tulliver, getting fiercer. “I
shall tell you what I think of you first. You’re too big a raskill to
get hanged—you’re——”
“Let me pass, you ignorant brute, or I’ll ride over you.”
Mr Tulliver, spurring his horse and raising his whip, made a rush
forward; and Wakem’s horse, rearing and staggering backward, threw his
rider from the saddle and sent him sideways on the ground. Wakem had
had the presence of mind to loose the bridle at once, and as the horse
only staggered a few paces and then stood still, he might have risen
and remounted without more inconvenience than a bruise and a shake. But
before he could rise, Tulliver was off his horse too. The sight of the
long-hated predominant man down, and in his power, threw him into a
frenzy of triumphant vengeance, which seemed to give him preternatural
agility and strength. He rushed on Wakem, who was in the act of trying
to recover his feet, grasped him by the left arm so as to press Wakem’s
whole weight on the right arm, which rested on the ground, and flogged
him fiercely across the back with his riding-whip. Wakem shouted for
help, but no help came, until a woman’s scream was heard, and the cry
of “Father, father!”
Suddenly, Wakem felt, something had arrested Mr Tulliver’s arm; for the
flogging ceased, and the grasp on his own arm was relaxed.
“Get away with you—go!” said Tulliver, angrily. But it was not to Wakem
that he spoke. Slowly the lawyer rose, and, as he turned his head, saw
that Tulliver’s arms were being held by a girl, rather by the fear of
hurting the girl that clung to him with all her young might.
“Oh, Luke—mother—come and help Mr Wakem!” Maggie cried, as she heard
the longed-for footsteps.
“Help me on to that low horse,” said Wakem to Luke, “then I shall
perhaps manage; though—confound it—I think this arm is sprained.”
With some difficulty, Wakem was heaved on to Tulliver’s horse. Then he
turned toward the miller and said, with white rage, “You’ll suffer for
this, sir. Your daughter is a witness that you’ve assaulted me.”
“I don’t care,” said Mr Tulliver, in a thick, fierce voice; “go and
show your back, and tell ’em I thrashed you. Tell ’em I’ve made things
a bit more even i’ the world.”
“Ride my horse home with me,” said Wakem to Luke. “By the Tofton Ferry,
not through the town.”
“Father, come in!” said Maggie, imploringly. Then, seeing that Wakem
had ridden off, and that no further violence was possible, she
slackened her hold and burst into hysteric sobs, while poor Mrs
Tulliver stood by in silence, quivering with fear. But Maggie became
conscious that as she was slackening her hold her father was beginning
to grasp her and lean on her. The surprise checked her sobs.
“I feel ill—faintish,” he said. “Help me in, Bessy—I’m giddy—I’ve a
pain i’ the head.”
He walked in slowly, propped by his wife and daughter and tottered into
his arm-chair. The almost purple flush had given way to paleness, and
his hand was cold.
“Hadn’t we better send for the doctor?” said Mrs Tulliver.
He seemed to be too faint and suffering to hear her; but presently,
when she said to Maggie, “Go and seek for somebody to fetch the
doctor,” he looked up at her with full comprehension, and said,
“Doctor? No—no doctor. It’s my head, that’s all. Help me to bed.”
Sad ending to the day that had risen on them all like a beginning of
better times! But mingled seed must bear a mingled crop.
In half an hour after his father had lain down Tom came home. Bob Jakin
was with him, come to congratulate “the old master,” not without some
excusable pride that he had had his share in bringing about Mr Tom’s
good luck; and Tom had thought his father would like nothing better, as
a finish to the day, than a talk with Bob. But now Tom could only spend
the evening in gloomy expectation of the unpleasant consequences that
must follow on this mad outbreak of his father’s long-smothered hate.
After the painful news had been told, he sat in silence; he had not
spirit or inclination to tell his mother and sister anything about the
dinner; they hardly cared to ask it. Apparently the mingled thread in
the web of their life was so curiously twisted together that there
could be no joy without a sorrow coming close upon it. Tom was dejected
by the thought that his exemplary effort must always be baffled by the
wrong-doing of others; Maggie was living through, over and over again,
the agony of the moment in which she had rushed to throw herself on her
father’s arm, with a vague, shuddering foreboding of wretched scenes to
come. Not one of the three felt any particular alarm about Mr
Tulliver’s health; the symptoms did not recall his former dangerous
attack, and it seemed only a necessary consequence that his violent
passion and effort of strength, after many hours of unusual excitement,
should have made him feel ill. Rest would probably cure him.
Tom, tired out by his active day, fell asleep soon, and slept soundly;
it seemed to him as if he had only just come to bed, when he waked to
see his mother standing by him in the gray light of early morning.
“My boy, you must get up this minute; I’ve sent for the doctor, and
your father wants you and Maggie to come to him.”
“Is he worse, mother?”
“He’s been very ill all night with his head, but he doesn’t say it’s
worse; he only said suddenly, ‘Bessy, fetch the boy and girl. Tell ’em
to make haste.’”
Maggie and Tom threw on their clothes hastily in the chill gray light,
and reached their father’s room almost at the same moment. He was
watching for them with an expression of pain on his brow, but with
sharpened, anxious consciousness in his eyes. Mrs Tulliver stood at the
foot of the bed, frightened and trembling, looking worn and aged from
disturbed rest. Maggie was at the bedside first, but her father’s
glance was toward Tom, who came and stood next to her.
“Tom, my lad, it’s come upon me as I sha’n’t get up again. This world’s
been too many for me, my lad, but you’ve done what you could to make
things a bit even. Shake hands wi’ me again, my lad, before I go away
from you.”
The father and son clasped hands and looked at each other an instant.
Then Tom said, trying to speak firmly,—
“Have you any wish, father—that I can fulfil, when——”
“Ay, my lad—you’ll try and get the old mill back.”
“Yes, father.”
“And there’s your mother—you’ll try and make her amends, all you can,
for my bad luck—and there’s the little wench——”
The father turned his eyes on Maggie with a still more eager look,
while she, with a bursting heart, sank on her knees, to be closer to
the dear, time-worn face which had been present with her through long
years, as the sign of her deepest love and hardest trial.
“You must take care of her, Tom—don’t you fret, my wench—there’ll come
somebody as’ll love you and take your part—and you must be good to her,
my lad. I was good to _my_ sister. Kiss me, Maggie.—Come, Bessy.—You’ll
manage to pay for a brick grave, Tom, so as your mother and me can lie
together.”
He looked away from them all when he had said this, and lay silent for
some minutes, while they stood watching him, not daring to move. The
morning light was growing clearer for them, and they could see the
heaviness gathering in his face, and the dulness in his eyes. But at
last he looked toward Tom and said,—
“I had my turn—I beat him. That was nothing but fair. I never wanted
anything but what was fair.”
“But, father, dear father,” said Maggie, an unspeakable anxiety
predominating over her grief, “you forgive him—you forgive every one
now?”
He did not move his eyes to look at her, but he said,—
“No, my wench. I don’t forgive him. What’s forgiving to do? I can’t
love a raskill——”
His voice had become thicker; but he wanted to say more, and moved his
lips again and again, struggling in vain to speak. At length the words
forced their way.
“Does God forgive raskills?—but if He does, He won’t be hard wi’ me.”
His hands moved uneasily, as if he wanted them to remove some
obstruction that weighed upon him. Two or three times there fell from
him some broken words,—
“This world’s—too many—honest man—puzzling——”
Soon they merged into mere mutterings; the eyes had ceased to discern;
and then came the final silence.
But not of death. For an hour or more the chest heaved, the loud, hard
breathing continued, getting gradually slower, as the cold dews
gathered on the brow.
At last there was total stillness, and poor Tulliver’s dimly lighted
soul had forever ceased to be vexed with the painful riddle of this
world.
Help was come now; Luke and his wife were there, and Mr Turnbull had
arrived, too late for everything but to say, “This is death.”
Tom and Maggie went downstairs together into the room where their
father’s place was empty. Their eyes turned to the same spot, and
Maggie spoke,—
“Tom, forgive me—let us always love each other”; and they clung and
wept together.
BOOK SIXTH
THE GREAT TEMPTATION.
Chapter I.
A Duet in Paradise
The well-furnished drawing-room, with the open grand piano, and the
pleasant outlook down a sloping garden to a boat-house by the side of
the Floss, is Mr Deane’s. The neat little lady in mourning, whose
light-brown ringlets are falling over the coloured embroidery with
which her fingers are busy, is of course Lucy Deane; and the fine young
man who is leaning down from his chair to snap the scissors in the
extremely abbreviated face of the “King Charles” lying on the young
lady’s feet is no other than Mr Stephen Guest, whose diamond ring,
attar of roses, and air of _nonchalant_ leisure, at twelve o’clock in
the day, are the graceful and odoriferous result of the largest
oil-mill and the most extensive wharf in St Ogg’s. There is an apparent
triviality in the action with the scissors, but your discernment
perceives at once that there is a design in it which makes it eminently
worthy of a large-headed, long-limbed young man; for you see that Lucy
wants the scissors, and is compelled, reluctant as she may be, to shake
her ringlets back, raise her soft hazel eyes, smile playfully down on
the face that is so very nearly on a level with her knee, and holding
out her little shell-pink palm, to say,—
“My scissors, please, if you can renounce the great pleasure of
persecuting my poor Minny.”
The foolish scissors have slipped too far over the knuckles, it seems,
and Hercules holds out his entrapped fingers hopelessly.
“Confound the scissors! The oval lies the wrong way. Please draw them
off for me.”
“Draw them off with your other hand,” says Miss Lucy, roguishly.
“Oh, but that’s my left hand; I’m not left-handed.”
Lucy laughs, and the scissors are drawn off with gentle touches from
tiny tips, which naturally dispose Mr Stephen for a repetition _da
capo_. Accordingly, he watches for the release of the scissors, that he
may get them into his possession again.
“No, no,” said Lucy, sticking them in her band, “you shall not have my
scissors again,—you have strained them already. Now don’t set Minny
growling again. Sit up and behave properly, and then I will tell you
some news.”
“What is that?” said Stephen, throwing himself back and hanging his
right arm over the corner of his chair. He might have been sitting for
his portrait, which would have represented a rather striking young man
of five-and-twenty, with a square forehead, short dark-brown hair,
standing erect, with a slight wave at the end, like a thick crop of
corn, and a half-ardent, half-sarcastic glance from under his
well-marked horizontal eyebrows. “Is it very important news?”
“Yes, very. Guess.”
“You are going to change Minny’s diet, and give him three ratafias
soaked in a dessert-spoonful of cream daily?”
“Quite wrong.”
“Well, then, Dr Kenn has been preaching against buckram, and you ladies
have all been sending him a roundrobin, saying, ‘This is a hard
doctrine; who can bear it?’”
“For shame!” said Lucy, adjusting her little mouth gravely. “It is
rather dull of you not to guess my news, because it is about something
I mentioned to you not very long ago.”
“But you have mentioned many things to me not long ago. Does your
feminine tyranny require that when you say the thing you mean is one of
several things, I should know it immediately by that mark?”
“Yes, I know you think I am silly.”
“I think you are perfectly charming.”
“And my silliness is part of my charm?”
“I didn’t say _that_.”
“But I know you like women to be rather insipid. Philip Wakem betrayed
you; he said so one day when you were not here.”
“Oh, I know Phil is fierce on that point; he makes it quite a personal
matter. I think he must be love-sick for some unknown lady,—some
exalted Beatrice whom he met abroad.”
“By the by,” said Lucy, pausing in her work, “it has just occurred to
me that I never found out whether my cousin Maggie will object to see
Philip, as her brother does. Tom will not enter a room where Philip is,
if he knows it; perhaps Maggie may be the same, and then we sha’n’t be
able to sing our glees, shall we?”
“What! is your cousin coming to stay with you?” said Stephen, with a
look of slight annoyance.
“Yes; that was my news, which you have forgotten. She’s going to leave
her situation, where she has been nearly two years, poor thing,—ever
since her father’s death; and she will stay with me a month or
two,—many months, I hope.”
“And am I bound to be pleased at that news?”
“Oh no, not at all,” said Lucy, with a little air of pique. “_I_ am
pleased, but that, of course, is no reason why _you_ should be pleased.
There is no girl in the world I love so well as my cousin Maggie.”
“And you will be inseparable I suppose, when she comes. There will be
no possibility of a _tête-à-tête_ with you any more, unless you can
find an admirer for her, who will pair off with her occasionally. What
is the ground of dislike to Philip? He might have been a resource.”
“It is a family quarrel with Philip’s father. There were very painful
circumstances, I believe. I never quite understood them, or knew them
all. My uncle Tulliver was unfortunate and lost all his property, and I
think he considered Mr Wakem was somehow the cause of it. Mr Wakem
bought Dorlcote Mill, my uncle’s old place, where he always lived. You
must remember my uncle Tulliver, don’t you?”
“No,” said Stephen, with rather supercilious indifference. “I’ve always
known the name, and I dare say I knew the man by sight, apart from his
name. I know half the names and faces in the neighbourhood in that
detached, disjointed way.”
“He was a very hot-tempered man. I remember, when I was a little girl
and used to go to see my cousins, he often frightened me by talking as
if he were angry. Papa told me there was a dreadful quarrel, the very
day before my uncle’s death, between him and Mr Wakem, but it was
hushed up. That was when you were in London. Papa says my uncle was
quite mistaken in many ways; his mind had become embittered. But Tom
and Maggie must naturally feel it very painful to be reminded of these
things. They have had so much, so very much trouble. Maggie was at
school with me six years ago, when she was fetched away because of her
father’s misfortunes, and she has hardly had any pleasure since, I
think. She has been in a dreary situation in a school since uncle’s
death, because she is determined to be independent, and not live with
aunt Pullet; and I could hardly wish her to come to me then, because
dear mamma was ill, and everything was so sad. That is why I want her
to come to me now, and have a long, long holiday.”
“Very sweet and angelic of you,” said Stephen, looking at her with an
admiring smile; “and all the more so if she has the conversational
qualities of her mother.”
“Poor aunty! You are cruel to ridicule her. She is very valuable to
_me_, I know. She manages the house beautifully,—much better than any
stranger would,—and she was a great comfort to me in mamma’s illness.”
“Yes, but in point of companionship one would prefer that she should be
represented by her brandy-cherries and cream-cakes. I think with a
shudder that her daughter will always be present in person, and have no
agreeable proxies of that kind,—a fat, blond girl, with round blue
eyes, who will stare at us silently.”
“Oh yes!” exclaimed Lucy, laughing wickedly, and clapping her hands,
“that is just my cousin Maggie. You must have seen her!”
“No, indeed; I’m only guessing what Mrs Tulliver’s daughter must be;
and then if she is to banish Philip, our only apology for a tenor, that
will be an additional bore.”
“But I hope that may not be. I think I will ask you to call on Philip
and tell him Maggie is coming to-morrow. He is quite aware of Tom’s
feeling, and always keeps out of his way; so he will understand, if you
tell him, that I asked you to warn him not to come until I write to ask
him.”
“I think you had better write a pretty note for me to take; Phil is so
sensitive, you know, the least thing might frighten him off coming at
all, and we had hard work to get him. I can never induce him to come to
the park; he doesn’t like my sisters, I think. It is only your faëry
touch that can lay his ruffled feathers.”
Stephen mastered the little hand that was straying toward the table,
and touched it lightly with his lips. Little Lucy felt very proud and
happy. She and Stephen were in that stage of courtship which makes the
most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of
passion,—when each is sure of the other’s love, but no formal
declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting the
most trivial word, the lightest gesture, into thrills delicate and
delicious as wafted jasmine scent. The explicitness of an engagement
wears off this finest edge of susceptibility; it is jasmine gathered
and presented in a large bouquet.
“But it is really odd that you should have hit so exactly on Maggie’s
appearance and manners,” said the cunning Lucy, moving to reach her
desk, “because she might have been like her brother, you know; and Tom
has not round eyes; and he is as far as possible from staring at
people.”
“Oh, I suppose he is like the father; he seems to be as proud as
Lucifer. Not a brilliant companion, though, I should think.”
“I like Tom. He gave me my Minny when I lost Lolo; and papa is very
fond of him: he says Tom has excellent principles. It was through him
that his father was able to pay all his debts before he died.”
“Oh, ah; I’ve heard about that. I heard your father and mine talking
about it a little while ago, after dinner, in one of their interminable
discussions about business. They think of doing something for young
Tulliver; he saved them from a considerable loss by riding home in some
marvellous way, like Turpin, to bring them news about the stoppage of a
bank, or something of that sort. But I was rather drowsy at the time.”
Stephen rose from his seat, and sauntered to the piano, humming in
falsetto, “Graceful Consort,” as he turned over the volume of “The
Creation,” which stood open on the desk.
“Come and sing this,” he said, when he saw Lucy rising.
“What, ‘Graceful Consort’? I don’t think it suits your voice.”
“Never mind; it exactly suits my feeling, which, Philip will have it,
is the grand element of good singing. I notice men with indifferent
voices are usually of that opinion.”
“Philip burst into one of his invectives against ‘The Creation’ the
other day,” said Lucy, seating herself at the piano. “He says it has a
sort of sugared complacency and flattering make-believe in it, as if it
were written for the birthday _fête_ of a German Grand-Duke.”
“Oh, pooh! He is the fallen Adam with a soured temper. We are Adam and
Eve unfallen, in Paradise. Now, then,—the recitative, for the sake of
the moral. You will sing the whole duty of woman,—‘And from obedience
grows my pride and happiness.’”
“Oh no, I shall not respect an Adam who drags the _tempo_, as you
will,” said Lucy, beginning to play the duet.
Surely the only courtship unshaken by doubts and fears must be that in
which the lovers can sing together. The sense of mutual fitness that
springs from the two deep notes fulfilling expectation just at the
right moment between the notes of the silvery soprano, from the perfect
accord of descending thirds and fifths, from the preconcerted loving
chase of a fugue, is likely enough to supersede any immediate demand
for less impassioned forms of agreement. The contralto will not care to
catechise the bass; the tenor will foresee no embarrassing dearth of
remark in evenings spent with the lovely soprano. In the provinces,
too, where music was so scarce in that remote time, how could the
musical people avoid falling in love with each other? Even political
principle must have been in danger of relaxation under such
circumstances; and the violin, faithful to rotten boroughs, must have
been tempted to fraternise in a demoralizing way with a reforming
violoncello. In that case, the linnet-throated soprano and the
full-toned bass singing,—
“With thee delight is ever new,
With thee is life incessant bliss,”
believed what they sang all the more _because_ they sang it.
“Now for Raphael’s great song,” said Lucy, when they had finished the
duet. “You do the ‘heavy beasts’ to perfection.”
“That sounds complimentary,” said Stephen, looking at his watch. “By
Jove, it’s nearly half-past one! Well, I can just sing this.”
Stephen delivered with admirable ease the deep notes representing the
tread of the heavy beasts; but when a singer has an audience of two,
there is room for divided sentiments. Minny’s mistress was charmed; but
Minny, who had intrenched himself, trembling, in his basket as soon as
the music began, found this thunder so little to his taste that he
leaped out and scampered under the remotest _chiffonnier_, as the most
eligible place in which a small dog could await the crack of doom.
“Adieu, ‘graceful consort,’” said Stephen, buttoning his coat across
when he had done singing, and smiling down from his tall height, with
the air of rather a patronizing lover, at the little lady on the
music-stool. “My bliss is not incessant, for I must gallop home. I
promised to be there at lunch.”
“You will not be able to call on Philip, then? It is of no consequence;
I have said everything in my note.”
“You will be engaged with your cousin to-morrow, I suppose?”
“Yes, we are going to have a little family-party. My cousin Tom will
dine with us; and poor aunty will have her two children together for
the first time. It will be very pretty; I think a great deal about it.”
“But I may come the next day?”
“Oh yes! Come and be introduced to my cousin Maggie; though you can
hardly be said not to have seen her, you have described her so well.”
“Good-bye, then.” And there was that slight pressure of the hands, and
momentary meeting of the eyes, which will often leave a little lady
with a slight flush and smile on her face that do not subside
immediately when the door is closed, and with an inclination to walk up
and down the room rather than to seat herself quietly at her
embroidery, or other rational and improving occupation. At least this
was the effect on Lucy; and you will not, I hope, consider it an
indication of vanity predominating over more tender impulses, that she
just glanced in the chimney-glass as her walk brought her near it. The
desire to know that one has not looked an absolute fright during a few
hours of conversation may be construed as lying within the bounds of a
laudable benevolent consideration for others. And Lucy had so much of
this benevolence in her nature that I am inclined to think her small
egoisms were impregnated with it, just as there are people not
altogether unknown to you whose small benevolences have a predominant
and somewhat rank odor of egoism. Even now, that she is walking up and
down with a little triumphant flutter of her girlish heart at the sense
that she is loved by the person of chief consequence in her small
world, you may see in her hazel eyes an ever-present sunny benignity,
in which the momentary harmless flashes of personal vanity are quite
lost; and if she is happy in thinking of her lover, it is because the
thought of him mingles readily with all the gentle affections and
good-natured offices with which she fills her peaceful days. Even now,
her mind, with that instantaneous alternation which makes two currents
of feeling or imagination seem simultaneous, is glancing continually
from Stephen to the preparations she has only half finished in Maggie’s
room. Cousin Maggie should be treated as well as the grandest
lady-visitor,—nay, better, for she should have Lucy’s best prints and
drawings in her bedroom, and the very finest bouquet of spring flowers
on her table. Maggie would enjoy all that, she was so found of pretty
things! And there was poor aunt Tulliver, that no one made any account
of, she was to be surprised with the present of a cap of superlative
quality, and to have her health drunk in a gratifying manner, for which
Lucy was going to lay a plot with her father this evening. Clearly, she
had not time to indulge in long reveries about her own happy
love-affairs. With this thought she walked toward the door, but paused
there.
“What’s the matter, then, Minny?” she said, stooping in answer to some
whimpering of that small quadruped, and lifting his glossy head against
her pink cheek. “Did you think I was going without you? Come, then, let
us go and see Sinbad.”
Sinbad was Lucy’s chestnut horse, that she always fed with her own hand
when he was turned out in the paddock. She was fond of feeding
dependent creatures, and knew the private tastes of all the animals
about the house, delighting in the little rippling sounds of her
canaries when their beaks were busy with fresh seed, and in the small
nibbling pleasures of certain animals which, lest she should appear too
trivial, I will here call “the more familiar rodents.”
Was not Stephen Guest right in his decided opinion that this slim
maiden of eighteen was quite the sort of wife a man would not be likely
to repent of marrying,—a woman who was loving and thoughtful for other
women, not giving them Judas-kisses with eyes askance on their welcome
defects, but with real care and vision for their half-hidden pains and
mortifications, with long ruminating enjoyment of little pleasures
prepared for them? Perhaps the emphasis of his admiration did not fall
precisely on this rarest quality in her; perhaps he approved his own
choice of her chiefly because she did not strike him as a remarkable
rarity. A man likes his wife to be pretty; well, Lucy was pretty, but
not to a maddening extent. A man likes his wife to be accomplished,
gentle, affectionate, and not stupid; and Lucy had all these
qualifications. Stephen was not surprised to find himself in love with
her, and was conscious of excellent judgment in preferring her to Miss
Leyburn, the daughter of the county member, although Lucy was only the
daughter of his father’s subordinate partner; besides, he had had to
defy and overcome a slight unwillingness and disappointment in his
father and sisters,—a circumstance which gives a young man an agreeable
consciousness of his own dignity. Stephen was aware that he had sense
and independence enough to choose the wife who was likely to make him
happy, unbiassed by any indirect considerations. He meant to choose
Lucy; she was a little darling, and exactly the sort of woman he had
always admired.