

                                  George Eliot

                             The Mill on the Floss

 In their death they were not divided
 

                                   Book First

                                   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, tinging 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 the 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 towards 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 towards 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 grey 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 Ladyday. 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'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' backards and forrards, 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 thinking'
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 driving 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 shan'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 - an' 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 of a pity, though,« said Mr. Tulliver, »as the lad should
take after the mother's side istead o' the little wench. That's the worst on't
wi' the 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 all 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 up-stairs
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
creature', all the while I'm waiting for her down-stairs. 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 drowned 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.
    »O dear, O dear, Maggie, what are you thinking' of, to throw your bonnet down
there? Take it up-stairs, 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 patch-work, like a little lady.«
    »O 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
upwards 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
bonhommie towards 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; among 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 towards 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 Ladyday, 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 shan'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 afterwards, 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 knew it all
beforehand. And allays at her book! But it's bad - it's bad,« Mr. Tulliver
added, sadly, checking this blameable 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,
    »O, 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, 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 patronising 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?«
    »O 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, towards which she
had an occasional fit of fondness in Tom's absence, neglecting its toilette, 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'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'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 straightforrard 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 daresay, 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' payin' 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.«
    »O 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 book-men; 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 daresay 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 Ladyday 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? shan'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.«
    »O, 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 extravagancies, 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 towards 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
towards 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. O dear, O 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 towards 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 afterwards 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, »O no, it
doesn't'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 for ever pouring, pouring - the fine white powder softening all
surfaces, and making the very spider-nets 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 been'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 looking' i' books for 'em.«
    »O, 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
sun-fish, 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't know.
But I think Tom's clever, for all he doesn't'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. »O
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.
    »O 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 an offal creature as iver come about the primises, he
is. He remembers nothing but his own inside - an' I wish it 'ud gripe him.«
    »O, 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? O, he will be so angry
with me, I know he will, and so sorry about his rabbits - and so am I sorry. O,
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't like 'em. He made the rabbits' ears to
lie back, an' it's nothing' 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 pig-sty, 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 feather 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-grey eyes wandered
towards 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 of 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!«
    »O, 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 he hooks one by
one, before he spoke again.
    »And the fellows fought me, because I wouldn't give in about the toffee.«
    »O 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't going to go halves because anybody leathered me.«
    »O 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.«
    »O 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 up-stairs.
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.«
    »O, but, Tom, they're all dead.«
    Tom stopped immediately in his walk and turned round towards 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 shan'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.«
    »O, 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 a silly - but I never do forget things - I don't.«
    »O, 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 shan't go fishing with me to-morrow.«
    With this terrible conclusion, Tom ran away from Maggie towards 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? O, 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.
    »O, 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 footstep 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 drowned,« 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 drowned,« 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, »O 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 dipping
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 afterwards - 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 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 cheese-cakes 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'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?«
    »O 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 hatbands 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 her self, 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 eyeing the
third, which was to be divided between them - »No, I shan'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 towards 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 shan'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 shan'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.
    »O, please, Tom, have it: I don't mind - I like the other: please take
this.«
    »No, I shan'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.
    »O, 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. »O, Tom, why didn't you ask me?«
    »I wasn't'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't going to do what wasn't'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 towards 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 bed-room: 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 holly, 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 villainous-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 over-paid, 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 towards Yap, »he's no more
good wi' a rot nor nothing'. I see it myself - I did - at the rot-catchin' i'
your feather'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'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 asty
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 quite 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 were 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't,« said Tom, loudly and peremptorily. »You give me the halfpenny -
I've won it fair.«
    »I shan'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 impunity 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 shan'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 shan't go
along with you any more,« he added, turning round homeward, not without casting
a regret towards 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 fighting' turkey-cock,
you are ....«
    Tom walked on without looking round, 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
nothing' 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 sisters' 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 odour 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 shan'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 forward a bit, sooner than put it back,
because folks are late as ought to ha' known better.«
    »O 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 cheese-cake
and a glaas 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'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
waterfowl 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 large be-feathered and be-ribboned 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 doorpost. 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 doorpost 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 parish'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 he
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 heared 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'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 hare-skin on his chest, and has a
trembling in his talk - quite a gentleman sort o' man. I told him there wasn't't
many months in the year as I wasn't'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 up-stairs, 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 up-stairs 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'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 was 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 »contrary« 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 up-stairs, 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 her 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.
    »O Lucy,« she burst out, after kissing her, »you'll stay with Tom and me,
won't you? O 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 o' their uncles and aunts? That wasn't'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 acknowledgement 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 &amp; 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 up-stairs 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.
    »O, yes, there is time for this - do come, Tom.«
    Tom followed Maggie up-stairs 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.
    »O, 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 shears 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.
    »O, Maggie,« said Tom, jumping round her, and slapping his knees as he
laughed, »O, my buttons, what a queer thing you look! Look at yourself in the
glass - you look like the idiot we throw our nut-shells to at school.«
    Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly of 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 the idiot, the affair had quite a new aspect. She
looked in the glass, and still Tom laughed and clapped his hands, and Maggie's
flushed cheeks began to pale, and her lips to tremble a little.
    »O Maggie, you'll have to go down to dinner directly,« said Tom. »O 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 down-stairs 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 gig-whip 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'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 schoolfellows 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 niver 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 shan't come.«
    »O, 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?«
    O, 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 down-stairs. 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 towards 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
under-tone 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;
»its 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, »O 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 niver 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 cap-strings 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 towards 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 yeomen 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 sent 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 o' 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't want to know your
opinion nor mine neither. 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.
    »O, 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 folk 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 towards 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 - its 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 for ever. 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 gold-fish
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 a sister, who had not only come into 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'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 formally 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 doorpost 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 towards 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-house
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 hencoop.
    »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 yon, 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
god-mother, 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
a-piece.«
    »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
towards 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.«
    That 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, towards 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-bye,« 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-bye.«
    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 towards 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 hairdresser 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 hairdresser, 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 toilette - 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 of 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.«
    »O, I daresay, Miss Spitfire! I'd never be such a cross thing as you -
making faces like that. Lucy doesn't'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.
    »O Tom,« said Maggie, at last, going half-way towards 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 thumb-nail 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 shoe-wiping, 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 the 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 upwards.
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'oeuvre 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 Abbot 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 to 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 up-stairs. 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 grey 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 fly-cages, or the wonderful flowerpots; 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 mollycoddle, 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 fore-finger 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 fire-arms 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 towards Tom, put
her arm round his neck and said, »O, Tom, isn't it pretty?«
    Lest you should think it showed a revolting insensibility in Tom that he
felt any new anger towards 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 in-doors, 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'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 badluck, 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 a comprehensive
review of her past conduct. »There's no woman strives more for her children; and
I'm sure, at scouring-time this Ladyday as I've had all the bed-hangings taken
down, I did as much as the two gells put together; and there's this 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
pork-pie, 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've to do with
their money. But Jane and me were allays contrary: 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'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 to-morrow, if Pullet
doesn't'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 afterwards
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 towards 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, »O, 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.
    »O Tom, dare you?« said Lucy. »Aunt said we mustn't go out of the garden.«
    »O, 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.
    »O, 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 ti megetos 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 learnt 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 his 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
towards 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
drowned 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 had 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 only 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 towards 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 a 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 high-road.
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 there 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 they 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 ye 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 daresay 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.
    »O 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.
    »O 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 patronising 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.
    »O, 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 vigour, 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 even 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 towards 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
halfpennies, 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« meant »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.«
    »O, 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 »Goodbye,«
the donkey, at a strong hint from the man's stick, set off at a rapid walk along
the lane towards 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
inhabited by witches, and it was a relief to find that the donkey did not stop
there.
    At last - O, sight of joy! - this lane, the longest in the world was coming
to an end, was opening on a broad high-road, 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.
    »O, stop, stop!« she cried out. »There's my father! O, 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' Dudlow Lane, and I was bringing her where she said her
home was. It's a good way to come arter being on the tramp all day.«
    »O, 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?«
    »O, 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?«
    »O 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 burdens 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 hill-side, 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
lovetime, 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 rumour 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 for ever 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- 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 hill-tops! 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 for ever 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 fervour, 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 armour, 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 windows 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 economising 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 clue 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 neutralising 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 wall-fruit 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 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 drug-like odours 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 unmistakeable 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 into 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 house-hold 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,
milk-porridge, 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 any
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 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, notwithstanding 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 acknowledgement 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 eldest 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,
riefly 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, »O 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 OEdipus,
and in this case he might plead, like OEdipus, 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. Jacobs' 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 rather 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 more supernal thunder.
    Mr. Stelling was a well-sized, broad-chested man, not yet thirty, with
flaxen hair standing erect, and large lightish-grey 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 vigour, 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 master-ships 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 towards 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
offhand, 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 hotelkeeper
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
lodgement 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 shrew-mouse 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. Jacobs'
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
shan'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 whip-cord,
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 towards 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 O 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.
    »O, 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 patronising
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.«
    »O, I can't help it,« said Maggie, impatiently. »Don't tease me, Tom. O,
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.«
    »O, 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 vigour, 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.
    »O, 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.
    »O, 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 that 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.
    »O, I daresay, 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.«
    »O but, Tom, you won't! I shan'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?«
    »O, 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 towards 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.«
    »O,« said Maggie, pouting, »I daresay 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!«
    »O, 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.«
    »O, 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?«
    »O, 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.
    »O, 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 ...«
    »O dear, O dear, Tom,« said Maggie, »what a time you are! Ut ...«
    »Ut, ostrea ...«
    »No, no,« said Maggie, »ut, tigris ...«
    »O yes, now I can do,« said Tom; »it was tigris, vulpes, I'd forgotten: ut
tigris, vulpes; 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 learnt 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't come next. It's Nomen non creskens
enittivo ...«
    »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.«
    »O, 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 daresay,« 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 vigour 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 severely
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 out-door world, for he meant to light up home with
new brightness, to deepen all the richness of in-door 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 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 learnt
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 mantelpieces 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 caroling 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 was 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 unmistakeable 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 dykes 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 straightforrard; 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 dykes 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 clamoured 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
towards 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'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 towards 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
high-road: 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 grey 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 creature, 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. Stelling, 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 sugar-candy; 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 odours 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 towards 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 hump-backed tailor
in the neighbourhood of Mr. Jacobs' 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. »O 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!«
    »O, 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
daresay 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.
    »O 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 anything?« 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.«
    »O, 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 daresay 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?«
    »O 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 towards the son of Lawyer Wakem, and it had
occurred to him that if Philip disliked his father, that fact might go some way
towards 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 leaning 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 learnt it when he was a boy, of course,« said Philip. »But I daresay
he's forgotten it.«
    »O, 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.«
    »O, 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.«
    »O, 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.«
    »O, 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 shan'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.«
    »O, 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?«
    »O yes,« said Philip; »lots of them, besides the Greek stories. I can tell
you about Richard Coeur-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
Jacobs' - 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 alternations 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 scimitar 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 cocoa-nut 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 dullness 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 dullness. 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
rigour, 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'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 patronisingly, 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.
    »O 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?«
    »O 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 towards a good understanding very much as
a caressed mollusc 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- 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?«
    »O, 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.«
    »O 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.«
    »O 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.
    »O, he always keeps in his up-stairs study on Saturday afternoons,« 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 that 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 towards amity were not met, he
relapsed into his least favourable disposition towards Philip, and resolved
never to appeal to him either about drawing or exercises 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 vigour.
    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?«
    »O, 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, Magsie, will you? I've got something I want to do up-stairs.«
    »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 towards the fireplace, 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 up-stairs 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 up-stairs.
»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 up-stairs.
    »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.
    »O, I shan'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 musn't squeal out, you know.«
    »O, 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 shan'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-grey
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
horse-shoe frown, and Tom had tried with all his frowning-might to make a
horse-shoe 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 approximative idea of
his fierce and blood-thirsty 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, »O 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.
    »O 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! O don't. I wish I'd never come up-stairs!«
    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 towards 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 downwards, 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 towards the room. Mr.
Stelling, from his up-stairs 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 had 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?«
    »O no, O 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 daresay 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-by.«
    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-grey 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 over-powered 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-bye, 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 armour 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 daresay 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.
    »O 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.«
    »O no, I shan'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.
    »O 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, »O 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 shan'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 grey 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 towards 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 streets 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. Stelling 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 result, 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'
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 towards 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 towards 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 in 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 daresay?« 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, »O 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 life-long
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 -
    »O 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. O 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 arms, saying, »Do
remember to eat something on the way, dear.« Maggie's heart went out towards
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 icebergs 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 new 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 for ever 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
whose 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 towards 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.
    »O!« 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 grey 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 paralysed by this sudden accumulation of troubles, went
backwards and forwards 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.
    »O mother, what is the matter?« Maggie said, with pale lips, as her mother
came towards 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 towards 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 up-stairs 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 towards 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 towards 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'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.«
    »O, 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 up-stairs, 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 down-stairs - not in any of the bedrooms. There was
but one room below the attic which Maggie had left unsearched: it was the
store-room, 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 table-cloths she held in her
lap.
    She dropped them, and started up as Tom spoke.
    »O 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 table-cloth 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 clothes 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, O dear, O 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 shan'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 table-cloths 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 towards 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 tea-pot, 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 towards 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 towards 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 table-cloths 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.
    »O sister, what a world this is!« she exclaimed as she entered; »what
trouble, O dear!«
    Mrs. Deane was a thin-lipped woman, who made small well-considered speeches
on peculiar occasions, repeating them afterwards 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 to-morrow. 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
up-stairs .... I shall niver 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 up-stairs?«
    »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'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 baby 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 acquaintance, 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 forward
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
table- I couldn't speak fairer; for as for the teapot as she doesn't'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.«
    »O dear, O 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 flutted,
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 suchlike. 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.«
    »O 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 Mosses. 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 store-room with no
other feeling than blank despair.
    She went up-stairs 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 store-room door
suggested a new thought to her. She went towards 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 towards 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
daylight 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 loth 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 my 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
disposial. 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 towards 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 towards 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.
    »O 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.«
    »O 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! O 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.«
    »O 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.«
    »O dear, O 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 table-cloth.
    »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
table-cloth, »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 forward 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 to 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 candour. »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 effects 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 round 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?«
    »O, 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 down-stairs with my aunts, father: shall I fetch her?«
    »Ay, ay: poor Bessy!« and his eyes turned towards 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 it 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
towards 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 blameable, 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 &amp; 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 has 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
&amp; Co., where he expected to find his uncle Deane. But this was Mr. Deane's
morning at the bank, a clerk told him, 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 towards 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
for ever to the loud ticking of a time-piece. 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 towards 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'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'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 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 with 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'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 cheques 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 afterwards - I didn't care about them.«
    »Ay, ay, that's all very well,« said Mr. Deane; »but it doesn't'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 on 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 shop-wenches take you for fine gentlemen.
That wasn't't the way I started, young man: when I was sixteen, my jacket smelt of
tar, and I wasn't'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 should 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-bye. 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 towards
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? 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.
    »O what a pity we haven't got Dominie Sampson,« said Maggie, who couldn't
help mingling some gaiety 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 daresay. 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 up-stairs. 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 look 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 move 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
folks'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 tea-time, when she came
up-stairs 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, Mister 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 &amp; Co.'s Wharf; for his imagination ran continually towards 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 have
a new 'un put in, 'cause they might be cheatin' me an' givin' me another knife
istid, 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 nothing' but what I got by my own
sharpness, only you, Mr. Tom; if it wasn't't Bill Fawks as gen me the terrier pup
istid o' drowndin' 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
reminiscences 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 caught me eatin' the turnip, as they say he'll niver lift up his yead
no more - I shouldn't ha' come now to axe 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
shan't axe him for another afore I starve 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 canvass 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.
    »O 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?«
    »O 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 - O 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
canvass bag. »You see, I'n been with a barge this two 'ear - that's how I'n been
getting' my living' - if it wasn't'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 never set a trap but what I caught something; but this
wasn't't a trap, it was a fire i' Torry's mill, an' I doused it, else it 'ud ha'
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 knew 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 canvass bag on the table. »An'
when I'd got 'em, my head was all of a boil like a kettle o' broth, thinking'
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' fellows, 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 shan'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 nothing' 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 -
    »O, 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' fleabites. If I wasn't't to take a fool in now and then,
he'd niver get any wiser. But, lors! have 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-bye, 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 towards 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 &amp; 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
&amp; 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 &amp; 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 towards 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 towards 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 that 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'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 towards herself - whom he knew to have been
a Miss Dodson - it was out of all possibility that he could entertain anything
but goodwill, 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 towards
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-grey 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 or 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 towards him,
than an ingenious machine, which performs its work with much regularity, is
guilty towards 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 - O dear! ... for I wasn't'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 have
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 contrary 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 &amp; 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't fond o' the noise of it, when first I was married, for there was no mills
in our family - not the Dodsons' - 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 &amp; Co. will keep the mill in their own hands, I suppose, and
pay your husband wages?«
    »O 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.
    »O 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.
    »O 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, 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 towards
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 towards
Tulliver, that Tulliver had towards 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 attorney's
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 efforts 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 towards 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, over-heated
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 &amp; 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 besides Philip; but towards 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 down-stairs:
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 for-getfulness, 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 down-stairs 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 down-stairs: 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 &amp;
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
towards 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, »O
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
down-stairs. 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 down-stairs: 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 down-stairs.
    »Ay, ay, Luke, stop a bit, sit down,« said Mr. Tulliver, pointing his stick
towards 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?«
    »O 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 down-stairs,
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 towards 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 fust 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 towards 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'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 ....«
    »O 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 shilling 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 vigour 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 towards 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 this
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 and 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 appletrees. My father was a huge
man for planting - it was like a merrymaking 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 runs 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 shan'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 afterwards 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'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'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 raskills - 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 ay 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 - 'n got my head under the yoke.
Now write - write it i' the Bible.«
    »O 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, father?« 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 hones 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.«
    »O 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 for ever 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 epoch. 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 of 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 towards
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 for ever 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 churchyard, 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
for 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 towards 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 shoe-buckles 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 churchgoer, 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 common-sense 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 towards 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
towards 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 towards the repayment of those creditors, was the object towards
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 bed-time. 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 towards 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 seal-skin cap and a
blue plush waistcoat, carrying a pack on his back, and followed closely by a
bull-terrier of brindled coat and defiant aspect.
    »O 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-making' 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 was 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-looking' 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 picture hingin' before me. An' when I see'd the book open upo' the stall,
wi' the lady looking' out of it wi' eyes a bit like your'n when you was frettin'
- you'll excuse my taken' 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 say-so - 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 sensable
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't much pickin' o' your feather an' mother, to look at you.
Not but what 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,« added 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 a 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 enough. 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 Mumps'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'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't want to cheat me, Miss-lors, I'm a honest chap, I am;
only I must have a bit o' sport, an' now I don't go wi' the ferrets, I'n got no
varmint to come over but them haggling women. I wish you good-evening, Miss.«
    »Good-bye, 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' having' a big thumb? It might as well ha' been
narrow.«
    Maggie, thus exalted into Bob's directing 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 armour
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 out-door 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,
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 towards
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
out-door 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
towards her father and mother, who were so unlike what she would have them to be
- towards 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 burden 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
hymn-book, 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 for ever 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
desire to mount unto this height, thou must set out courageously, and lay the
axe to the root, that thou mayst 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 mayst 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 cleave 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 suppreme
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
ardour 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
outpourings, 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 towards 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 ardour 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 outwards 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 »contrary« 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
towards 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 up-stairs; 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 should 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 towards 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 savoured 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 grey 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 towards the square looking-glass which was condemned
to hang with its face towards 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 towards 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 ardours 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 rounded, 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.
    »O 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 daresay 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.
    »O, 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.«
    »O, 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 grey eyes
entreatingly in 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-bye« 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 towards 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 towards him as when
she was a child.
    »I can't say either yes or no,« she said at last, turning round and walking
towards the way she had 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.«
    »O 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 lusters.
    »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. »O, 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-bye, 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?«
    »O no, I forgot; good-bye,« 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't change his mind .... O dear, the
sun is set. I am too long away. Good-bye.« 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 towards 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 towards 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 for ever 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 ardour 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 shipowner,
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 spooney 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 towards 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 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 Bob's 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 eyelids 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 thinking' 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 pas-sill: 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' kept' 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 getting' so full o' money, I must
have 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 have 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' making' 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' getting' 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'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 saying', 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 have 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 making' my
mother comfor'ble. I should get more, on'y I'm such a soft wi' the women - I
can't help lettin' 'em have 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 patronising
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 patronising. »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 service, 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-looking' 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 knew 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 looking' 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 on'y 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 telling' you fibs: an'
five-an'-eightpence I shall ask for 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', mum,« 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
knew 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 pound 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
getting' as rich as a Jew. Bucks her name is - she doesn't'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 making' you a present o' th' articles - I am, indeed. That
eightpence shaves off my profit 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
making' Mr. Tom's fortin. Eh, I wish I'd got another twenty pound to lay out for
mysen: I shouldn't stay to say my Catechism afore I knew 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't my nephey's own aunt, and th' 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 shan'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 &amp; 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 deserve 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?«
    »O 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 medieval
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 dullness 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 egoistic 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.«
    »O 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?«
    »O 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 for ever, 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 towards 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 towards 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
baise 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 dullness.«
    »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 afterwards, 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
towards 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?«
    »O 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 afterwards, 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 backwards and forwards 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? O, 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 flood-marks 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 burden 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 farthest 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 hat-band 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 to-day 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 under-current 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- »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'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'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 towards 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?«
    »O 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
towards 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, I will not bear it - I will listen no longer,« Maggie 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 fulfil 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 - 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-grey 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 towards 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.«
    »O, 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 up-stairs.
    »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 -
    »O, 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 grey-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 th' 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 creature! 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 bed - time. Mr. Tulliver naturally wanted,
to hear all the particulars of Tom's trading adventures, and he listened with
growing excitement and delight. Ho 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 a-glow;
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 yard-gates 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 shan'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.
    »O 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 see 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 grey 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't say it's worse -
he only said sudden, Bessy, fetch the boy and girl. Tell 'em to make haste.«
    Maggie and Tom threw on their clothes hastily in the chill grey 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 towards Tom, who came and stood next to her.
    »Tom, my lad, it's come upon me as I shan'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 dullness in his eyes. But at last he looked towards 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 for ever 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 down-stairs 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.
    »O, 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 round-robin, 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.«
    »O, 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 have 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 shan'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?«
    »O 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 daresay 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, blonde girl, with round blue eyes, who will stare at us
silently.«
    »O 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'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 towards 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 its 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.«
    »O, 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.«
    »O 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.«
    »O 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
demoralising way with a reforming violoncello. In this 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
chiffonière, 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 patronising 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?«
    »O 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 bonds 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 odour 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 fond 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 towards 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, unbiased by any indirect considerations. He meant to choose Lucy: she
was a little darling, and exactly the sort of woman he had always most admired.
 

                                   Chapter II

                               First Impressions

»He is very clever, Maggie,« said Lucy. She was kneeling on a footstool at
Maggie's feet, after placing that dark lady in the large crimson-velvet chair.
»I feel sure you will like him. I hope you will.«
    »I shall be very difficult to please,« said Maggie, smiling, and holding up
one of Lucy's long curls, that the sunlight might shine through it. »A gentleman
who thinks he is good enough for Lucy must expect to be sharply criticised.«
    »Indeed, he's a great deal too good for me. And sometimes, when he is away,
I almost think it can't really be that he loves me. But I can never doubt it
when he is with me - though I couldn't bear any one but you to know that I feel
in that way, Maggie.«
    »Oh, then, if I disapprove of him you can give him up, since you are not
engaged,« said Maggie, with playful gravity.
    »I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to think
of being married soon,« said Lucy, too thoroughly preoccupied to notice Maggie's
joke; »and I should like everything to go on for a long while just as it is.
Sometimes I am quite frightened lest Stephen should say that he has spoken to
papa; and from something that fell from papa the other day, I feel sure he and
Mr. Guest are expecting that. And Stephen's sisters are very civil to me now. At
first, I think they didn't like his paying me attention; and that was natural.
It does seem out of keeping that I should ever live in a great place like the
Park House - such a little insignificant thing as I am.«
    »But people are not expected to be large in proportion to the houses they
live in, like snails,« said Maggie, laughing. »Pray, are Mr. Guest's sisters
giantesses?«
    »O no; and not handsome - that is, not very,« said Lucy, half-penitent at
this uncharitable remark.
    »But he is - at least he is generally considered very handsome.«
    »Though you are unable to share that opinion?«
    »O, I don't know,« said Lucy, blushing pink over brow and neck. »It is a bad
plan to raise expectation; you will perhaps be disappointed. But I have prepared
a charming surprise for him; I shall have a glorious laugh against him. I shall
not tell you what it is, though.«
    Lucy rose from her knees and went to a little distance, holding her pretty
head on one side, as if she had been arranging Maggie for a portrait, and wished
to judge of the general effect.
    »Stand up a moment, Maggie.«
    »What is your pleasure now?« said Maggie, smiling languidly as she rose from
her chair and looked down on her slight, aërial cousin, whose figure was quite
subordinate to her faultless drapery of silk and crape.
    Lucy kept her contemplative attitude a moment or two in silence, and then
said -
    »I can't think what witchery it is in you, Maggie, that makes you look best
in shabby clothes; though you really must have a new dress now. But do you know,
last night I was trying to fancy you in a handsome fashionable dress, and do
what I would, that old limp merino would come back as the only right thing for
you. I wonder if Marie Antoinette looked all the grander when her gown was
darned at the elbows. Now, if I were to put anything shabby on, I should be
quite unnoticeable - I should be a mere rag.«
    »O, quite,« said Maggie, with mock gravity. »You would be liable to be swept
out of the room with the cobwebs and carpet-dust, and to find yourself under the
grate, like Cinderella. Mayn't I sit down now?«
    »Yes, now you may,« said Lucy, laughing. Then, with an air of serious
reflection, unfastening her large jet brooch, »But you must change brooches,
Maggie; that little butterfly looks silly on you?«
    »But won't that mar the charming effect of my consistent shabbiness?« said
Maggie, seating herself submissively, while Lucy knelt again and unfastened the
contemptible butterfly. »I wish my mother were of your opinion, for she was
fretting last night because this is my best frock. I've been saving my money to
pay for some lessons: I shall never get a better situation without more
accomplishments.«
    Maggie gave a little sigh.
    »Now, don't put on that sad look again,« said Lucy, pinning the large brooch
below Maggie's fine throat »You're forgetting that you've left that dreary
schoolroom behind you, and have no little girls' clothes to mend.«
    »Yes,« said Maggie. »It is with me as I used to think it would be with the
poor uneasy white bear I saw at the show. I thought he must have got so stupid
with the habit of turning backwards and forwards in that narrow space, that he
would keep doing it if they set him free. One gets a bad habit of being
unhappy.«
    »But I shall put you under a discipline of pleasure that will make you lose
that bad habit,« said Lucy, sticking the black butterfly absently in her own
collar, while her eyes met Maggie's affectionately.
    »You dear, tiny thing,« said Maggie, in one of her bursts of loving
admiration, »you enjoy other people's happiness so much, I believe you would do
without any of your own. I wish I were like you.«
    »I've never been tried in that way,« said Lucy. »I've always been so happy.
I don't know whether I could bear much trouble; I never had any but poor mamma's
death. You have been tried, Maggie; and I'm sure you feel for other people quite
as much as I do.«
    »No, Lucy,« said Maggie, shaking her head slowly, »I don't enjoy their
happiness as you do - else I should be more contented. I do feel for them when
they are in trouble; I don't think I could ever bear to make any one unhappy;
and yet I often hate myself, because I get angry sometimes at the sight of happy
people. I think I get worse as I get older - more selfish. That seems very
dreadful.«
    »Now, Maggie!« said Lucy, in a tone of remonstrance, »I don't believe a word
of that. It is all a gloomy fancy - just because you are depressed by a dull,
wearisome life.«
    »Well, perhaps it is,« said Maggie, resolutely clearing away the clouds from
her face with a bright smile, and throwing herself backward in her chair.
»Perhaps it comes from the school diet - watery rice-pudding spiced with
Pinnock. Let us hope it will give way before my mother's custards and this
charming Geoffrey Crayon.«
    Maggie took up the »Sketch Book,« which lay by her on the table.
    »Do I look fit to be seen with this little brooch?« said Lucy, going to
survey the effect in the chimney-glass.
    »O no, Mr. Guest will be obliged to go out of the room again if he sees you
in it. Pray make haste and put another on.«
    Lucy hurried out of the room, but Maggie did not take the opportunity of
opening her book: she let it fall on her knees, while her eyes wandered to the
window, where she could see the sunshine falling on the rich clumps of spring
flowers and on the long hedge of laurels - and beyond, the silvery breadth of
the dear old Floss, that at this distance seemed to be sleeping in a morning
holiday. The sweet fresh garden-scent came through the open window, and the
birds were busy flitting and alighting, gurgling and singing. Yet Maggie's eyes
began to fill with tears. The sight of the old scenes had made the rush of
memories so painful, that even yesterday she had only been able to rejoice in
her mother's restored comfort and Tom's brotherly friendliness as we rejoice in
good news of friends at a distance, rather than in the presence of a happiness
which we share. Memory and imagination urged upon her a sense of privation too
keen to let her taste what was offered in the transient present: her future, she
thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented
renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing: she found joyless
days a of distasteful occupation harder and harder - she found the image of the
intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and
more importunate. The sound of the opening door roused her, and, hastily wiping
away her tears, she began to turn over the leaves of her book.
    »There is one pleasure, I know, Maggie, that your deepest dismalness will
never resist,« said Lucy, beginning to speak as soon as she entered the room.
»That is music, and I mean you to have quite a riotous feast of it. I mean you
to get up your playing again, which used to be so much better than mine, when we
were at Laceham.«
    »You would have laughed to see me playing the little girls' tunes over and
over to them, when I took them to practice,« said Maggie, »just for the sake of
fingering the dear keys again. But I don't know whether I could play anything
more difficult now than Begone, dull care!«
    »I know what a wild state of joy you used to be in when the glee-men came
round,« said Lucy, taking up her embroidery, »and we might have all those old
glees that you used to love so, if I were certain that you don't feel exactly as
Tom does about some things.«
    »I should have thought there was nothing you might be more certain of,« said
Maggie, smiling.
    »I ought rather to have said, one particular thing. Because if you feel just
as he does about that, we shall want our third voice. St Ogg's is so miserably
provided with musical gentlemen. There are really only Stephen and Philip Wakem
who have any knowledge of music, so as to be able to sing a part.«
    Lucy had looked up from her work as she uttered the last sentence, and saw
that there was a change in Maggie's face.
    »Does it hurt you to hear the name mentioned, Maggie? If it does, I will not
speak of him again. I know Tom will not see him if he can avoid it.«
    »I don't feel at all as Tom does on that subject,« said Maggie, rising and
going to the window as if she wanted to see more of the landscape. »I've always
liked Philip Wakem ever since I was a little girl, and saw him at Lorton. He was
so good when Tom hurt his foot.«
    »O, I'm so glad!« said Lucy. »Then you won't mind his coming sometimes, and
we can have much more music than we could without him. I'm very fond of poor
Philip, only I wish he were not so morbid about his deformity. I suppose it is
his deformity that makes him so sad - and sometimes bitter. It is certainly very
piteous to see his poor little crooked body and pale face among great strong
people.«
    »But, Lucy,« said Maggie, trying to arrest the prattling stream ....
    »Ah, there is the door-bell. That must be Stephen,« Lucy went on, not
noticing Maggie's faint effort to speak. »One of the things I most admire in
Stephen is, that he makes a greater friend of Philip than any one.«
    It was too late for Maggie to speak now: the drawing-room door was opening,
and Minny was already growling in a small way at the entrance of a tall
gentleman, who went up to Lucy and took her hand with a half-polite, half-tender
glance and tone of inquiry, which seemed to indicate that he was unconscious of
any other presence.
    »Let me introduce you to my cousin, Miss Tulliver,« said Lucy, turning with
wicked enjoyment towards Maggie, who now approached from the farther window.
»This is Mr. Stephen Guest.«
    For one instant Stephen could not conceal his astonishment at the sight of
this tall dark-eyed nymph with her jet-black coronet of hair; the next, Maggie
felt herself, for the first time in her life, receiving the tribute of a very
deep blush and a very deep bow from a person towards whom she herself was
conscious of timidity. This new experience was very agreeable to her - so
agreeable, that it almost effaced her previous emotion about Philip. There was a
new brightness in her eyes, and a very becoming flush on her check, as she
seated herself.
    »I hope you perceive what a striking likeness you drew the day before
yesterday,« said Lucy, with a pretty laugh of triumph. She enjoyed her lover's
confusion - the advantage was usually on his side.
    »This designing cousin of yours quite deceived me, Miss Tulliver,« said
Stephen, seating himself by Lucy, and stooping to play with Minny - only looking
at Maggie furtively. »She said you had light hair and blue eyes.«
    »Nay, it was you who said so,« remonstrated Lucy. »I only refrained from
destroying your confidence in your own second-sight.«
    »I wish I could always err in the same way,« said Stephen, »and find reality
so much more beautiful than my preconceptions.«
    »Now you have proved yourself equal to the occasion,« said Maggie, »and said
what it was incumbent on you to say under the circumstances.«
    She flashed a slightly defiant look at him: it was clear to her that he had
been drawing a satirical portrait of her beforehand. Lucy had said he was
inclined to be satirical, and Maggie had mentally supplied the addition - »and
rather conceited.«
    »An alarming amount of devil there,« was Stephen's first thought. The
second, when she had bent over her work, was, »I wish she would look at me
again.« The next was to answer:
    »I suppose all phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true. A man
is occasionally grateful when he says thank you. It's rather hard upon him that
he must use the same words with which all the world declines a disagreeable
invitation - don't you think so, Miss Tulliver?«
    »No,« said Maggie, looking at him with her direct glance; »if we use common
words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at
once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or everyday clothes, hung
up in a sacred place.«
    »Then my compliment ought to be eloquent,« said Stephen, really not quite
knowing what he said while Maggie looked at him, »seeing that the words were so
far beneath the occasion.«
    »No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference,«
said Maggie, flushing a little.
    Lucy was rather alarmed: she thought Stephen and Maggie were not going to
like each other. She had always feared lest Maggie should appear too odd and
clever to please that critical gentleman. »Why, dear Maggie,« she interposed,
»you have always pretended that you are too fond of being admired; and now, I
think, you are angry because some one ventures to admire you.«
    »Not at all,« said Maggie; »I like too well to feel that I am admired, but
compliments never make me feel that.«
    »I will never pay you a compliment again, Miss Tulliver,« said Stephen.
    »Thank you; that will be a proof of respect.«
    Poor Maggie! She was so unused to society that she could take nothing as a
matter of course, and had never in her life spoken from the lips merely, so that
she must necessarily appear absurd to more experienced ladies, from the
excessive feeling she was apt to throw into very trivial incidents. But she was
even conscious herself of a little absurdity in this instance. It was true she
had a theoretic objection to compliments, and had once said impatiently to
Philip, that she didn't see why women were to be told with a simper that they
were beautiful, any more than old men were to be told that they were venerable:
still, to be so irritated by a common practice in the case of a stranger like
Mr. Stephen Guest, and to care about his having spoken slightingly of her before
he had seen her, was certainly unreasonable, and as soon as she was silent she
began to be ashamed of herself. It did not occur to her that her irritation was
due to the pleasanter emotion which preceded it, just as when we are satisfied
with a sense of glowing warmth, an innocent drop of cold water may fall upon us
as a sudden smart.
    Stephen was too well-bred not to seem unaware that the previous conversation
could have been felt embarrassing, and at once began to talk of impersonal
matters, asking Lucy if she knew when the bazaar was at length to take place, so
that there might be some hope of seeing her rain the influence of her eyes on
objects more grateful than those worsted flowers that were growing under her
fingers.
    »Some day next month, I believe,« said Lucy. »But your sisters are doing
more for it than I am: they are to have the largest stall.«
    »Ah, yes; but they carry on their manufactures in their own sitting-room,
where I don't intrude on them. I see you are not addicted to the fashionable
vice of fancy-work, Miss Tulliver,« said Stephen, looking at Maggie's plain
hemming.
    »No,« said Maggie, »I can do nothing more difficult or more elegant than
shirt-making.«
    »And your plain sewing is so beautiful, Maggie,« said Lucy, »that I think I
shall beg a few specimens of you to show as fancy-work. Your exquisite sewing is
quite a mystery to me - you used to dislike that sort of work so much in old
days.«
    »It is a mystery easily explained, dear,« said Maggie, looking up quietly.
»Plain sewing was the only thing I could get money by; so I was obliged to try
and do it well.«
    Lucy, good and simple as she was, could not help blushing a little: she did
not quite like that Stephen should know that - Maggie need not have mentioned
it. Perhaps there was some pride in the confession: the pride of poverty that
will not be ashamed of itself. But if Maggie had been the queen of coquettes she
could hardly have invented a means of giving greater piquancy to her beauty in
Stephen's eyes: I am not sure that the quiet admission of plain sewing and
poverty would have done alone, but assisted by the beauty, they made Maggie more
unlike other women even than she had seemed at first.
    »But I can knit, Lucy,« Maggie went on, »if that will be of any use for your
bazaar.«
    »O yes, of infinite use. I shall set you to work with scarlet wool
to-morrow. But your sister is the most enviable person,« continued Lucy, turning
to Stephen, »to have the talent of modelling. She is doing a wonderful bust of
Dr Kenn entirely from memory.«
    »Why, if she can remember to put the eyes very near together, and the
corners of the mouth very far apart, the likeness can hardly fail to be striking
in St Ogg's.«
    »Now that is very wicked of you,« said Lucy, looking rather hurt. »I didn't
think you would speak disrespectfully of Dr Kenn.«
    »I say anything disrespectful of Dr Kenn? Heaven forbid! But I am not bound
to respect a libellous bust of him. I think Kenn one of the finest fellows in
the world. I don't care much about the tall candlesticks he has put on the
communion-table, and I shouldn't like to spoil my temper by getting up to early
prayers every morning. But he's the only man I ever knew personally who seems to
me to have anything of the real apostle in him - a man who has eight hundred
a-year, and is contented with deal furniture and boiled beef because he gives
away two-thirds of his income. That was a very fine thing of him - taking into
his house that poor lad Grattan who shot his mother by accident. He sacrifices
more time than a less busy man could spare, to save the poor fellow from getting
into a morbid state of mind about it. He takes the lad out with him constantly,
I see.«
    »That is beautiful,« said Maggie, who had let her work fall, and was
listening with keen interest. »I never knew any one who did such things.«
    »And one admires that sort of action in Kenn all the more,« said Stephen,
»because his manners in general are rather cold and severe. There's nothing
sugary and maudlin about him.«
    »O, I think he's a perfect character!« said Lucy, with pretty enthusiasm.
    »No; there I can't agree with you,« said Stephen, shaking his head with
sarcastic gravity.
    »Now, what fault can you point out in him?«
    »He's an Anglican.«
    »Well, those are the right views, I think,« said Lucy, gravely.
    »That settles the question in the abstract,« said Stephen, »but not from a
parliamentary point of view. He has set the Dissenters and the Church people by
the ears; and a rising senator like myself, of whose services the country is
very much in need, will find it inconvenient when he puts up for the honour of
representing St Ogg's in Parliament.«
    »Do you really think of that?« said Lucy, her eyes brightening with a proud
pleasure that made her neglect the argumentative interests of Anglicanism.
    »Decidedly - whenever old Mr. Leyburn's public spirit and gout induce him to
give way. My father's heart is set on it; and gifts like mine, you know« - here
Stephen drew himself up, and rubbed his large white hands over his hair with
playful self-admiration - »gifts like mine involve great responsibilities. Don't
you think so, Miss Tulliver?«
    »Yes,« said Maggie, smiling, but not looking up; »so much fluency and
self-possession should not be wasted entirely on private occasions.«
    »Ah, I see how much penetration you have,« said Stephen. »You have
discovered already that I am talkative and impudent. Now superficial people
never discern that - owing to my manner, I suppose.«
    »She doesn't't look at me when I talk of myself,« he thought, while his
listeners were laughing. »I must try other subjects.«
    Did Lucy intend to be present at the meeting of the Book Club next week? was
the next question. Then followed the recommendation to choose Southey's »Life of
Cowper,« unless she were inclined to be philosophical, and startle the ladies of
St Ogg's by voting for one of the Bridgewater Treatises. Of course Lucy wished
to know what these alarmingly learned books were; and as it is always pleasant
to improve the minds of ladies by talking to them at ease on subjects of which
they know nothing, Stephen became quite brilliant in an account of Buckland's
Treatise, which he had just been reading. He was rewarded by seeing Maggie let
her work fall, and gradually get so absorbed in his wonderful geological story
that she sat looking at him, leaning forward with crossed arms, and with an
entire absence of self-consciousness, as if he had been the snuffiest of old
professors, and she a downy-lipped alumnus. He was so fascinated by this clear,
large gaze, that at last he forgot to look away from it occasionally towards
Lucy; but she, sweet child, was only rejoicing that Stephen was proving to
Maggie how clever he was, and that they would certainly be good friends after
all.
    »I will bring you the book, shall I, Miss Tulliver?« said Stephen, when he
found the stream of his recollections running rather shallow. »There are many
illustrations in it that you will like to see.«
    »O, thank you,« said Maggie, blushing with returning self-consciousness at
this direct address, and taking up her work again.
    »No, no,« Lucy interposed. »I must forbid your plunging Maggie in books. I
shall never get her away from them; and I want her to have delicious do-nothing
days, filled with boating, and chatting, and riding, and driving: that is the
holiday she needs.«
    »Apropos!« said Stephen, looking at his watch. »Shall we go out for a row on
the river now? The tide will suit for us to go the Tofton way, and we can walk
back.«
    That was a delightful proposition to Maggie, for it was years since she had
been on the river. When she was gone to put on her bonnet, Lucy lingered to give
an order to the servant, and took the opportunity of telling Stephen that Maggie
had no objection to seeing Philip, so that it was a pity she had sent that note
the day before yesterday. But she would write another to-morrow and invite him.
    »I'll call and beat him up to-morrow,« said Stephen, »and bring him with me
in the evening, shall I? My sisters will want to call on you when I tell them
your cousin is with you. I must leave the field clear for them in the morning.«
    »O yes, pray bring him,« said Lucy. »And you will like Maggie, shan't you?«
she added, in a beseeching tone. »Isn't she a dear, noble-looking creature?«
    »Too tall,« said Stephen, smiling down upon her, »and a little too fiery.
She is not my type of woman, you know.«
    Gentlemen, you are aware, are apt to impart these imprudent confidences to
ladies concerning their unfavourable opinion of sister fair ones. That is why so
many women have the advantage of knowing that they are secretly repulsive to men
who have self-denyingly made ardent love to them. And hardly anything could be
more distinctively characteristic of Lucy, than that she both implicitly
believed what Stephen said, and was determined that Maggie should not know it.
But you, who have a higher logic than the verbal to guide you, have already
foreseen, as the direct sequence to that unfavourable opinion of Stephen's, that
he walked down to the boat-house calculating, by the aid of a vivid imagination,
that Maggie must give him her hand at least twice in consequence of this
pleasant boating plan, and that a gentleman who wishes ladies to look at him is
advantageously situated when he is rowing them in a boat. What then? Had he
fallen in love with this surprising daughter of Mrs. Tulliver at first sight?
Certainly not. Such passions are never heard of in real life. Besides, he was in
love already, and half-engaged to the dearest little creature in the world; and
he was not a man to make a fool of himself in any way. But when one is
five-and-twenty, one has not chalk-stones at one's finger-ends that the touch of
a handsome girl should be entirely indifferent. It was perfectly natural and
safe to admire beauty and enjoy looking at it - at least under such
circumstances as the present. And there was really something very interesting
about this girl, with her poverty and troubles: it was gratifying to see the
friendship between the two cousins. Generally, Stephen admitted, he was not fond
of women who had any peculiarity of character - but here the peculiarity seemed
really of a superior kind; and provided one is not obliged to marry such women,
why, they certainly make a variety in social intercourse.
    Maggie did not fulfil Stephen's hope by looking at him during the first
quarter of an hour: her eyes were too full of the old banks that she knew so
well. She felt lonely, cut off from Philip - the only person who had ever seemed
to love her devotedly, as she had always longed to be loved. But presently the
rhythmic movement of the oars attracted her, and she thought she should like to
learn how to row. This roused her from her reverie, and she asked if she might
take an oar. It appeared that she required much teaching, and she became
ambitious. The exercise brought the warm blood into her cheeks, and made her
inclined to take her lesson merrily.
    »I shall not be satisfied until I can manage both oars, and row you and
Lucy,« she said, looking very bright as she stepped out of the boat. Maggie, we
know, was apt to forget the thing she was doing, and she had chosen an
inopportune moment for her remark: her foot slipped, but happily Mr. Stephen
Guest held her hand, and kept her up with a firm grasp.
    »You have not hurt yourself at all, I hope?« he said, bending to look in her
face with anxiety. It was very charming to be taken care of in that kind
graceful manner by some one taller and stronger than one's self. Maggie had
never felt just in the same way before.
    When they reached home again, they found uncle and aunt Pullet seated with
Mrs. Tulliver in the drawing-room, and Stephen hurried away, asking leave to
come again in the evening.
    »And pray bring with you the volume of Purcell that you took away,« said
Lucy. »I want Maggie to hear your best songs.«
    Aunt Pullet, under the certainty that Maggie would be invited to go out with
Lucy, probably to Park House, was much shocked at the shabbiness of her clothes,
which, when witnessed by the higher society of St Ogg's, would be a discredit to
the family, that demanded a strong and prompt remedy; and the consultation as to
what would be most suitable to this end from among the superfluities of Mrs.
Pullet's wardrobe, was one that Lucy as well as Mrs. Tulliver entered into with
some zeal. Maggie must really have an evening-dress as soon as possible, and she
was about the same height as aunt Pullet.
    »But she's so much broader across the shoulders than I am - it's very
ill-convenient,« said Mrs. Pullet, »else she might wear that beautiful black
brocade o' mine without any alteration; and her arms are beyond everything,«
added Mrs. Pullet, sorrowfully, as she lifted Maggie's large round arm. »She'd
never get my sleeves on.«
    »O never mind that, aunt: pray send us the dress,« said Lucy. »I don't mean
Maggie to have long sleeves, and I have abundance of black lace for trimming.
Her arms will look beautiful.«
    »Maggie's arms are a pretty shape,« said Mrs. Tulliver. »They're like mine
used to be - only mine was never brown: I wish she'd had our family skin.«
    »Nonsense, aunty!« said Lucy, patting her aunt Tulliver's shoulder, »you
don't understand those things. A painter would think Maggie's complexion
beautiful.«
    »May be, my dear,« said Mrs. Tulliver, submissively. »You know better than I
do. Only when I was young a brown skin wasn't't thought well on among respectable
folks.«
    »No,« said uncle Pullet, who took intense interest in the ladies'
conversation as he sucked his lozenges. »Though there was a song about the
Nut-brown Maid, too; I think she was crazy - crazy Kate - but I can't justly
remember.«
    »O dear, dear!« said Maggie, laughing, but impatient; »I think that will be
the end of my brown skin, if it is always to be talked about so much.«
 

                                  Chapter III

                              Confidential Moments

When Maggie went up to her bedroom that night, it appeared that she was not at
all inclined to undress. She set down her candle on the first table that
presented itself, and began to walk up and down her room, which was a large one,
with a firm, regular, and rather rapid step, which showed that the exercise was
the instinctive vent of strong excitement. Her eyes and cheeks had an almost
feverish brilliancy; her head was thrown backward, and her hands were clasped
with the palms outward, and with that tension of the arms which is apt to
accompany mental absorption.
    Had anything remarkable happened?
    Nothing that you are not likely to consider in the highest degree
unimportant. She had been hearing some fine music sung by a fine bass voice -
but then it was sung in a provincial, amateur fashion, such as would have left a
critical ear much to desire. And she was conscious of having been looked at a
great deal, in rather a furtive manner, from beneath a pair of well-marked
horizontal eyebrows, with a glance that seemed somehow to have caught the
vibratory influence of the voice. Such things could have had no perceptible
effect on a thoroughly well-educated young lady, with a perfectly balanced mind,
who had had all the advantages of fortune, training, and refined society. But if
Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about
her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been
written; for the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
    In poor Maggie's highly-strung, hungry nature - just come away from a
third-rate schoolroom, with all its jarring sounds and petty round of tasks -
these apparently trivial causes had the effect of rousing and exalting her
imagination in a way that was mysterious to herself. It was not that she thought
distinctly of Mr. Stephen Guest, or dwelt on the indications that he looked at
her with admiration; it was rather that she felt the half-remote presence of a
world of love and beauty and delight, made up of vague, mingled images from all
the poetry and romance she had ever read, or had ever woven in her dreamy
reveries. Her mind glanced back once or twice to the time when she had courted
privation, when she had thought all longing, all impatience was subdued; but
that condition seemed irrecoverably gone, and she recoiled from the remembrance
of it. No prayer, no striving now, would bring back that negative peace: the
battle of her life, it seemed, was not to be decided in that short and easy way
- by perfect renunciation at the very threshold of her youth. The music was
vibrating in her still - Purcell's music, with its wild passion and fancy - and
she could not stay in the recollection of that bare, lonely past. She was in her
brighter aërial world again, when a little tap came at the door: of course it
was her cousin, who entered in ample white dressing-gown.
    »Why, Maggie, you naughty child, haven't you begun to undress?« said Lucy,
in astonishment. »I promised not to come and talk to you, because I thought you
must be tired. But here you are, looking as if you were ready to dress for a
ball. Come, come, get on your dressing-gown, and unplait your hair.«
    »Well, you are not very forward,« retorted Maggie, hastily reaching her own
pink cotton gown, and looking at Lucy's light-brown hair brushed back in curly
disorder.
    »O, I have not much to do. I shall sit down and talk to you till I see you
are really on the way to bed.«
    While Maggie stood and unplaited her long black hair over her pink drapery,
Lucy sat down near the toilette-table, watching her with affectionate eyes, and
head a little aside, like a pretty spaniel. If it appears to you at all
incredible that young ladies should be led on to talk confidentially in a
situation of this kind, I will beg you to remember that human life furnishes
many exceptional cases.
    »You really have enjoyed the music to-night, haven't you, Maggie?«
    »O yes, that is what prevents me from feeling sleepy. I think I should have
no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to
infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on
without effort, when I am filled with music. At other times one is conscious of
carrying a weight.«
    »And Stephen has a splendid voice, hasn't he?«
    »Well, perhaps we are neither of us judges of that,« said Maggie, laughing,
as she seated herself and tossed her long hair back. »You are not impartial, and
I think any barrel-organ splendid.«
    »But tell me what you think of him, now. Tell me exactly - good and bad
too.«
    »O, I think you should humiliate him a little. A lover should not be so much
at ease, and so self-confident. He ought to tremble more.«
    »Nonsense, Maggie! As if any one could tremble at me! You think he is
conceited - I see that. But you don't dislike him, do you?«
    »Dislike him! No. Am I in the habit of seeing such charming people, that I
should be very difficult to please? Besides, how could I dislike any one that
promised to make you happy, you dear thing!« Maggie pinched Lucy's dimpled chin.
    »We shall have more music to-morrow evening,« said Lucy, looking happy
already, »for Stephen will bring Philip Wakem with him.«
    »O Lucy, I can't see him,« said Maggie, turning pale. »At least, I could not
see him without Tom's leave.«
    »Is Tom such a tyrant as that?« said Lucy, surprised. »I'll take the
responsibility, then - tell him it was my fault.«
    »But, dear,« said Maggie, falteringly, »I promised Tom very solemnly -
before my father's death - I promised him I would not speak to Philip without
his knowledge and consent. And I have a great dread of opening the subject with
Tom - of getting into a quarrel with him again.«
    »But I never heard of anything so strange and unreasonable. What harm can
poor Philip have done? May I speak to Tom about it?«
    »O no, pray don't, dear,« said Maggie. »I'll go to him myself to-morrow, and
tell him that you wish Philip to come. I've thought before of asking him to
absolve me from my promise, but I've not had the courage to determine on it.«
    They were both silent for some moments, and then Lucy said -
    »Maggie, you have secrets from me, and I have none from you.«
    Maggie looked meditatively away from Lucy. Then she turned to her and said,
»I should like to tell you about Philip.
    But, Lucy, you must not betray that you know it to any one - least of all to
Philip himself, or to Mr. Stephen Guest.«
    The narrative lasted long, for Maggie had never before known the relief of
such an outpouring: she had never before told Lucy anything of her inmost life;
and the sweet face bent towards her with sympathetic interest, and the little
hand pressing hers, encouraged her to speak on. On two points only she was not
expansive. She did not betray fully what still rankled in her mind as Tom's
great offence - the insults he had heaped on Philip. Angry as the remembrance
still made her, she could not bear that any one else should know it all - both
for Tom's sake and Philip's. And she could not bear to tell Lucy of the last
scene between her father and Wakem, though it was this scene which she had ever
since felt to be a new barrier between herself and Philip. She merely said, she
saw now that Tom was, on the whole, right in regarding any prospect of love and
marriage between her and Philip as put out of the question by the relation of
the two families. Of course Philip's father would never consent.
    »There, Lucy, you have had my story,« said Maggie, smiling, with the tears
in her eyes. »You see I am like Sir Andrew Aguecheek - I was adored once.«
    »Ah, now I see how it is you know Shakespeare and everything, and have
learned so much since you left school; which always seemed to me witchcraft
before - part of your general uncanniness,« said Lucy.
    She mused a little with her eyes downward, and then added, looking at
Maggie, »It is very beautiful that you should love Philip: I never thought such
a happiness would befall him. And in my opinion, you ought not to give him up.
There are obstacles now; but they may be done away with in time.«
    Maggie shook her head.
    »Yes, yes,« persisted Lucy; »I can't help being hopeful about it. There is
something romantic in it - out of the common way - just what everything that
happens to you ought to be. And Philip will adore you like a husband in a fairy
tale. O, I shall puzzle my small brain to contrive some plot that will bring
everybody into the right mind, so that you may marry Philip, when I marry -
somebody else. Wouldn't that be a pretty ending to all my poor, poor Maggie's
troubles?«
    Maggie tried to smile, but shivered, as if she felt a sudden chill.
    »Ah, dear, you are cold,« said Lucy. »You must go to bed; and so must I. I
dare not think what time it is.«
    They kissed each other, and Lucy went away - possessed of a confidence which
had a strong influence over her subsequent impressions. Maggie had been
thoroughly sincere: her nature had never found it easy to be otherwise. But
confidences are sometimes blinding, even when they are sincere.
 

                                   Chapter IV

                               Brother and Sister

Maggie was obliged to go to Tom's lodgings in the middle of the day, when he
would be coming in to dinner, else she would not have found him at home. He was
not lodging with entire strangers. Our friend Bob Jakin had, with Mumps's tacit
consent, taken not only a wife about eight months ago, but also one of those
queer old houses pierced with surprising passages, by the water-side, where, as
he observed, his wife and mother could keep themselves out of mischief by
letting out two »pleasure-boats,« in which he had invested some of his savings,
and by taking in a lodger for the parlour and spare bedroom. Under these
circumstances, what could be better for the interests of all parties, sanitary
considerations apart, than that the lodger should be Mr. Tom?
    It was Bob's wife who opened the door to Maggie. She was a tiny woman, with
the general physiognomy of a Dutch doll, looking, in comparison with Bob's
mother, who filled up the passage in the rear, very much like one of those human
figures which the artist finds conveniently standing near a colossal statue to
show the proportions. The tiny woman curtsied and looked up at Maggie with some
awe as soon as she had opened the door; but the words, »Is my brother at home?«
which Maggie uttered smilingly, made her turn round with sudden excitement, and
say -
    »Eh, mother, mother - tell Bob! - it's Miss Maggie! Come in, Miss, for
goodness do,« she went on, opening a side door, and endeavouring to flatten her
person against the wall to make the utmost space for the visitor.
    Sad recollections crowded on Maggie as she entered the small parlour, which
was now all that poor Tom had to call by the name of »home« - that name which
had once, so many years ago, meant for both of them the same sum of dear
familiar objects. But everything was not strange to her in this new room: the
first thing her eyes dwelt on was the large old Bible, and the sight was not
likely to disperse the old memories. She stood without speaking.
    »If you please to take the privilege o' sitting down, Miss,« said Mrs.
Jakin, rubbing her apron over a perfectly clean chair, and then lifting up the
corner of that garment and holding it to her face with an air of embarrassment,
as she looked wonderingly at Maggie.
    »Bob is at home, then?« said Maggie, recovering herself, and smiling at the
bashful Dutch doll.
    »Yes, Miss; but I think he must be washing and dressing himself - I'll go
and see,« said Mrs. Jakin, disappearing.
    But she presently came back walking with new courage a little way behind her
husband, who showed the brilliancy of his blue eyes and regular white teeth in
the doorway, bowing respectfully.
    »How do you do, Bob?« said Maggie, coming forward and putting out her hand
to him; »I always meant to pay your wife a visit, and I shall come another day
on purpose for that, if she will let me. But I was obliged to come to-day, to
speak to my brother.«
    »He'll be in before long, Miss. He's doing' finely, Mr. Tom is: he'll be one
o' the first men hereabouts - you'll see that.«
    »Well, Bob, I'm sure he'll be indebted to you, whatever he becomes: he said
so himself only the other night, when he was talking of you.«
    »Eh, Miss, that's his way o' taken' it. But I think the more on't when he
says a thing, because his tongue doesn't't overshoot him as mine does. Lors! I'm
no better nor a tilted bottle, I arn't - I can't stop mysen when once I begin.
But you look rarely, Miss - it does me good to see you. What do you say now,
Prissy?« - here Bob turned to his wife. »Isn't it all come true as I said?
Though there isn't many sorts o' goods as I can't over-praise when I set my
tongue to't.«
    Mrs. Bob's small nose seemed to be following the example of her eyes in
turning up reverentially towards Maggie, but she was able now to smile and
curtsy, and say, »I'd looked forward like aenything to seein' you, Miss, for my
husband's tongue's been runnin' on you, like as if he was light-headed, iver
since first he come a-courtin' on me.«
    »Well, well,« said Bob, looking rather silly. »Go an' see after the taters,
else Mr. Tom 'ull have to wait for 'em.«
    »I hope Mumps is friendly with Mrs. Jakin, Bob,« said Maggie, smiling. »I
remember you used to say, he wouldn't like your marrying.«
    »Eh, Miss,« said Bob, grinning, »he made up his mind to't when he see'd what
a little un she was. He pretends not to see her mostly, or else to think as she
isn't full-growed. But about Mr. Tom, Miss,« said Bob, speaking lower and
looking serious, »he's as close as a iron biler, he is; but I'm a 'cutish chap,
an' when I've left off carrying my pack, an' am at a loose end, I've got more
brains nor I know what to do wi', an' I'm forced to busy myself wi' other
folks's insides. An' it worrets me as Mr. Tom 'ull sit by himself so glumpish,
a-knittin' his brow, an' a-looking' at the fire of a night. He should be a bit
livelier now - a fine young fellow like him. My wife says, when she goes in
sometimes, an' he takes no notice of her, he sits looking' into the fire, and
frownin' as if he was watchin' folks at work in it.«
    »He thinks so much about business,« said Maggie.
    »Ay,« said Bob, speaking lower; »but do you think it's nothing' else, Miss?
He's close, Mr. Tom is; but I'm a 'cute chap, I am, an' I thought tow'rt last
Christmas as I'd found out a soft place in him. It was about a little black
spaniel - a rare bit o' breed - as he made a fuss to get. But since then
summat's come over him, as he's set his teeth again' things more nor iver, for
all he's had such good-luck. An' I wanted to tell you, Miss, 'cause I thought
you might work it out of him a bit, now you're come. He's a deal too lonely, and
doesn't't go into company enough.«
    »I'm afraid I have very little power over him, Bob,« said Maggie, a good
deal moved by Bob's suggestion. It was a totally new idea to her mind, that Tom
could have his love troubles. Poor fellow! - and in love with Lucy too! But it
was perhaps a mere fancy of Bob's too officious brain. The present of the dog
meant nothing more than cousinship and gratitude. But Bob had already said,
»Here's Mr. Tom,« and the outer door was opening.
    »There's no time to spare, Tom,« said Maggie, as soon as Bob had left the
room. »I must tell you at once what I came about, else I shall be hindering you
from taking your dinner.«
    Tom stood with his back against the chimney- and Maggie was seated opposite
the light. He noticed that she was tremulous, and he had a presentiment of the
subject she was going to speak about. The presentiment made his voice colder and
harder as he said, »What is it?«
    This tone roused a spirit of resistance in Maggie, and she put her request
in quite a different form from the one she had predetermined on. She rose from
her seat, and, looking straight at Tom, said -
    »I want you to absolve me from my promise about Philip Wakem. Or rather, I
promised you not to see him without telling you. I am come to tell you that I
wish to see him.«
    »Very well,« said Tom, still more coldly.
    But Maggie had hardly finished speaking in that chill, defiant manner,
before she repented, and felt the dread of alienation from her brother.
    »Not for myself, dear Tom. Don't be angry. I shouldn't have asked it, only
that Philip, you know, is a friend of Lucy's, and she wishes him to come - has
invited him to come this evening; and I told her I couldn't see him without
telling you. I shall only see him in the presence of other people. There will
never be anything secret between us again.«
    Tom looked away from Maggie, knitting his brow more strongly for a little
while. Then he turned to her and said, slowly and emphatically -
    »You know what is my feeling on that subject, Maggie. There is no need for
my repeating anything I said a year ago. While my father was living, I felt
bound to use the utmost power over you, to prevent you from disgracing him as
well as yourself, and all of us. But now I must leave you to your own choice.
You wish to be independent - you told me so after my father's death. My opinion
is not changed. If you think of Philip Wakem as a lover again, you must give up
me.«
    »I don't wish it, dear Tom - at least as things are: I see that it would
lead to misery. But I shall soon go away to another situation, and I should like
to be friends with him again while I am here. Lucy wishes it.«
    The severity of Tom's face relaxed a little.
    »I shouldn't mind your seeing him occasionally at my uncle's - I don't want
you to make a fuss on the subject. But I have no confidence in you, Maggie. You
would be led away to do anything.«
    That was a cruel word. Maggie's lip began to tremble.
    »Why will you say that, Tom? It is very hard of you. Have I not done and
borne everything as well as I could? And I have kept my word to you - when -
when .... My life has not been a happy one, any more than yours.«
    She was obliged to be childish - the tears would come. When Maggie was not
angry, she was as dependent on kind or cold words as a daisy on the sunshine or
the cloud: the need of being loved would always subdue her, as, in old days, it
subdued her in the worm-eaten attic. The brother's goodness came uppermost at
this appeal, but it could only show itself in Tom's fashion. He put his hand
gently on her arm, and said, in the tone of a kind pedagogue -
    »Now listen to me, Maggie. I'll tell you what I mean. You're always in
extremes - you have no judgment and self-command; and yet you think you know
best, and will not submit to be guided. You know I didn't wish you to take a
situation. My aunt Pullet was willing to give you a good home, and you might
have lived respectably amongst your relations, until I could have provided a
home for you with my mother. And that is what I should like to do. I wished my
sister to be a lady, and I would always have taken care of you, as my father
desired, until you were well married. But your ideas and mine never accord, and
you will not give way. Yet you might have sense enough to see that a brother,
who goes out into the world and mixes with men, necessarily knows better what is
right and respectable for his sister than she can know herself. You think I am
not kind; but my kindness can only be directed by what I believe to be good for
you.«
    »Yes - I know - dear Tom,« said Maggie, still half-sobbing, but trying to
control her tears. »I know you would do a great deal for me: I know how you
work, and don't spare yourself. I am grateful to you. But, indeed, you can't
quite judge for me - our natures are very different. You don't know how
differently things affect me from what they do you.«
    »Yes, I do know: I know it too well. I know how differently you must feel
about all that affects our family, and your own dignity as a young woman, before
you could think of receiving secret addresses from Philip Wakem. If it was not
disgusting to me in every other way, I should object to my sister's name being
associated for a moment with that of a young man whose father must hate the very
thought of us all, and would spurn you. With any one but you, I should think it
quite certain that what you witnessed just before my father's death would secure
you from ever thinking again of Philip Wakem as a lover. But I don't feel
certain of it with you - I never feel certain about anything with you. At one
time you take pleasure in a sort of perverse self-denial, and at another you
have not resolution to resist a thing that you know to be wrong.«
    There was a terrible cutting truth in Tom's words - that hard rind of truth
which is discerned by unimaginative, unsympathetic minds. Maggie always writhed
under this judgment of Tom's: she rebelled and was humiliated in the same
moment: it seemed as if he held a glass before her to show her her own folly and
weakness - as if he were a prophetic voice predicting her future fallings - and
yet, all the while, she judged him in return: she said inwardly that he was
narrow and unjust, that he was below feeling those mental needs which were often
the source of the wrong-doing or absurdity that made her life a planless riddle
to him.
    She did not answer directly: her heart was too full, and she sat down,
leaning her arm on the table. It was no use trying to make Tom feel that she was
near to him. He always repelled her. Her feeling under his words was complicated
by the allusion to the last scene between her father and Wakem; and at length
that painful, solemn memory surmounted the immediate grievance. No! She did not
think of such things with frivolous indifference, and Tom must not accuse her of
that. She looked up at him with a grave, earnest gaze, and said -
    »I can't make you think better of me, Tom, by anything I can say. But I am
not so shut out from all your feelings as you believe me to be. I see as well as
you do, that from our position with regard to Philip's father - not on other
grounds - it would be unreasonable - - it would be wrong for us to entertain the
idea of marriage; and I have given up thinking of him as a lover .... I am
telling you the truth, and you have no right to disbelieve me: I have kept my
word to you, and you have never detected me in a falsehood. I should not only
not encourage, I should carefully avoid, any intercourse with Philip on any
other footing than that of quiet friendship. You may think that I am unable to
keep my resolutions; but at least you ought not to treat me with hard contempt
on the ground of faults that I have not committed yet.«
    »Well, Maggie,« said Tom, softening under this appeal, »I don't want to
overstrain matters. I think, all things considered, it will be best for you to
see Philip Wakem, if Lucy wishes him to come to the house. I believe what you
say - at least you believe it yourself, I know: I can only warn you. I wish to
be as good a brother to you as you will let me.«
    There was a little tremor in Tom's voice as he uttered the last words, and
Maggie's ready affection came back with as sudden a glow as when they were
children, and bit their cake together as a sacrament of conciliation. She rose
and laid her hand on Tom's shoulder.
    »Dear Tom, I know you mean to be good. I know you have had a great deal to
bear, and have done a great deal. I should like to be a comfort to you - not to
vex you. You don't think I'm altogether naughty, now, do you?«
    Tom smiled at the eager face: his smiles were very pleasant to see when they
did come, for the grey eyes could be tender underneath the frown.
    »No, Maggie.«
    »I may turn out better than you expect.«
    »I hope you will.«
    »And may I come some day and make tea for you, and see this extremely small
wife of Bob's again?«
    »Yes; but trot away now, for I've no more time to spare,« said Tom, looking
at his watch.
    »Not to give me a kiss?«
    Tom bent to kiss her cheek, and then said -
    »There! Be a good girl. I've got a great deal to think of to-day. I'm going
to have a long consultation with my uncle Deane this afternoon.«
    »You'll come to aunt Glegg's to-morrow? We're going all to dine early, that
we may go there to tea. You must come: Lucy told me to say so.«
    »O pooh! I've plenty else to do,« said Tom, pulling his bell violently, and
bringing down the small bell-rope.
    »I'm frightened - I shall run away,« said Maggie, making a laughing retreat;
while Tom, with masculine philosophy, flung the bell-rope to the farther end of
the room - not very far either: a touch of human experience which I flatter
myself will come home to the bosoms of not a few substantial or distinguished
men who were once at an early stage of their rise in the world, and were
cherishing very large hopes in very small lodgings.
 

                                   Chapter V

                     Showing that Tom Had Opened the Oyster

»And now we've settled this Newcastle business, Tom,« said Mr. Deane, that same
afternoon, as they were seated in the private room at the Bank together,
»there's another matter I want to talk to you about. Since you're likely to have
rather a smoky, unpleasant time of it at Newcastle for the next few weeks,
you'll want a good prospect of some sort to keep up your spirits.«
    Tom waited less nervously than he had done on a former occasion in this
apartment, while his uncle took out his snuff-box and gratified each nostril
with deliberate impartiality.
    »You see, Tom,« said Mr. Deane, at last, throwing himself backward, »the
world goes on at a smarter pace now than it did when I was a young fellow. Why,
sir, forty years ago, when I was much such a strapping youngster as you, a man
expected to pull between the shafts the best part of his life, before he got the
whip in his hand. The looms went slowish, and fashions didn't alter quite so
fast: I'd a best suit that lasted me six years. Everything was on a lower scale,
sir - in point of expenditure, I mean. It's this steam, you see, that has made
the difference: it drives on every wheel double pace, and the wheel of fortune
along with 'em, as our Mr. Stephen Guest said at the anniversary dinner (he hits
these things off wonderfully, considering he's seen nothing of business). I
don't find fault with the change, as some people do. Trade, sir, opens a man's
eyes; and if the population is to get thicker upon the ground, as it's doing,
the world must use its wits at inventions of one sort or other. I know I've done
my share as an ordinary man of business. Somebody has said it's a fine thing to
make two ears of corn grow where only one grew before; but, sir, it's a fine
thing, too, to further the exchange of commodities, and bring the grains of corn
to the mouths that are hungry. And that's our line of business; and I consider
it as honourable a position as a man can hold, to be connected with it.«
    Tom knew that the affair his uncle had to speak of was not urgent; Mr. Deane
was too shrewd and practical a man to allow either his reminiscences or his
snuff to impede the progress of trade. Indeed, for the last month or two, there
had been hints thrown out to Tom which enabled him to guess that he was going to
hear some proposition for his own benefit. With the beginning of the last speech
he had stretched out his legs, thrust his hands in his pockets, and prepared
himself for some introductory diffuseness, tending to show that Mr. Deane had
succeeded by his own merit, and that what he had to say to young men in general
was, that if they didn't succeed too, it was because of their own demerit. He
was rather surprised, then, when his uncle put a direct question to him.
    »Let me see - it's going on for seven years now since you applied to me for
a situation - eh, Tom?«
    »Yes, sir; I'm three-and-twenty now,« said Tom.
    »Ah - it's as well not to say that, though: for you'd pass for a good deal
older, and age tells well in business. I remember your coming very well: I
remember I saw there was some pluck in you, and that was what made me give you
encouragement. And I'm happy to say, I was right - I'm not often deceived. I was
naturally a little shy at pushing my nephew, but I'm happy to say you've done me
credit, sir; and if I'd had a son o' my own, I shouldn't have been sorry to see
him like you.«
    Mr. Deane tapped his box and opened it again, repeating in a tone of some
feeling - »No, I shouldn't have been sorry to see him like you.«
    »I'm very glad I've given you satisfaction, sir; I've done my best,« said
Tom, in his proud, independent way.
    »Yes, Tom, you've given me satisfaction. I don't speak of your conduct as a
son; though that weighs with me in my opinion of you. But what I have to do
with, as a partner in our firm, is the qualities you've shown as a man o'
business. Ours is a fine business - a splendid concern, sir - and there's no
reason why it shouldn't go on growing: there's a growing capital, and growing
outlets for it; but there's another thing that's wanted for the prosperity of
every concern, large or small, and that's men to conduct it - men of the right
habits; none o' your flashy fellows, but such as are to be depended on. Now this
is what Mr. Guest and I see clear enough. Three years ago, we took Gell into the
concern: we gave him a share in the oil-mill. And why? Why, because Gell was a
fellow whose services were worth a premium. So it will always be, sir. So it was
with me. And though Gell is pretty near ten years older than you, there are
other points in your favour.«
    Tom was getting a little nervous as Mr. Deane went on speaking; he was
conscious of something he had in his mind to say, which might not be agreeable
to his uncle, simply because it was a new suggestion rather than an acceptance
of the proposition he foresaw.
    »It stands to reason,« Mr. Deane went on, when he had finished his new
pinch, »that your being my nephew weighs in your favour; but I don't deny that
if you'd been no relation of mine at all, your conduct in that affair of
Pelley's bank would have led Mr. Guest and myself to make some acknowledgement of
the service you've been to us; and, backed by your general conduct and business
ability, it has made us determine on giving you a share in the business - a
share which we shall be glad to increase as the years go on. We think that'll be
better, on all grounds, than raising your salary. It'll give you more
importance, and prepare you better for taking some of the anxiety off my
shoulders by-and-by. I'm equal to a good deal o' work at present, thank God; but
I'm getting older - there's no denying that. I told Mr. Guest I would open the
subject to you; and when you come back from this northern business, we can go
into particulars. This is a great stride for a young fellow of three-and-twenty,
but I'm bound to say you've deserved it.«
    »I'm very grateful to Mr. Guest and you, sir; of course I feel the most
indebted to you, who first took me into the business, and have taken a good deal
of pains with me since.«
    Tom spoke with a slight tremor, and paused after he had said this.
    »Yes, yes,« said Mr. Deane. »I don't spare pains when I see they'll be of
any use. I gave myself some trouble with Gell - else he wouldn't have been what
he is.«
    »But there's one thing I should like to mention to you, uncle. I've never
spoken to you of it before. If you remember, at the time my father's property
was sold, there was some thought of your firm buying the Mill: I know you
thought it would be a very good investment, especially if steam were applied.«
    »To be sure, to be sure. But Wakem outbid us - he'd made up his mind to
that. He's rather fond of carrying everything over other people's heads.«
    »Perhaps it's of no use my mentioning it at present,« Tom went on, »but I
wish you to know what I have in my mind about the Mill. I've a strong feeling
about it. It was my father's dying wish that I should try and get it back again
whenever I could: it was in his family for five generations. I promised my
father; and besides that, I'm attached to the place. I shall never like any
other so well. And if it should ever suit your views to buy it for the firm, I
should have a better chance of fulfilling my father's wish. I shouldn't have
liked to mention the thing to you, only you've been kind enough to say my
services have been of some value. And I'd give up a much greater chance in life
for the sake of having the Mill again - I mean, having it in my own hands, and
gradually working off the price.«
    Mr. Deane had listened attentively, and now looked thoughtful.
    »I see, I see,« he said, after a while; »the thing would be possible, if
there were any chance of Wakem's parting with the property. But that I don't
see. He's put that young Jetsome in the place; and he had his reasons when he
bought it, I'll be bound.«
    »He's a loose fish, that young Jetsome,« said Tom. »He's taking to drinking,
and they say he's letting the business go down. Luke told me about it - our old
miller. He says, he shan't stay unless there's an alteration. I was thinking, if
things went on in that way, Wakem might be more willing to part with the Mill.
Luke says he's getting very sour about the way things are going on.«
    »Well, I'll turn it over, Tom. I must inquire into the matter, and go into
it with Mr. Guest. But, you see, it's rather striking out a new branch, and
putting you to that, instead of keeping you where you are, which was what we'd
wanted.«
    »I should be able to manage more than the mill when things were once set
properly going, sir. I want to have plenty of work. There's nothing else I care
about much.«
    There was something rather sad in that speech from a young man of
three-and-twenty, even in uncle Deane's business-loving ears.
    »Pooh, pooh! you'll be having a wife to care about one of these days, if you
get on at this pace in the world. But as to this Mill, we mustn't reckon on our
chickens too early. However, I promise you to bear it in mind, and when you come
back we'll talk of it again. I am going to dinner now. Come and breakfast with
us to-morrow morning, and say good-bye to your mother and sister before you
start.«
 

                                   Chapter VI

                      Illustrating the Laws of Attraction

It is evident to you now, that Maggie had arrived at a moment in her life which
must be considered by all prudent persons as a great opportunity for a young
woman. Launched into the higher society of St Ogg's, with a striking person,
which had the advantage of being quite unfamiliar to the majority of beholders,
and with such moderate assistance of costume as you have seen foreshadowed in
Lucy's anxious colloquy with aunt Pullet, Maggie was certainly at a new
starting-point in life. At Lucy's first evening-party, young Torry fatigued his
facial muscles more than usual in order that »the dark-eyed girl there, in the
corner,« might see him in all the additional style conferred by his eye-glass;
and several young ladies went home intending to have short sleeves with black
lace, and to plait their hair in a broad coronet at the back of their head -
»That cousin of Miss Deane's looked so very well.« In fact, poor Maggie, with
all her inward consciousness of a painful past and her presentiment of a
troublous future, was on the way to become an object of some envy - a topic of
discussion in the newly-established billiard-room, and between fair friends who
had no secrets from each other on the subject of trimmings. The Miss Guests, who
associated chiefly on terms of condescension with the families of St Ogg's, and
were the glass of fashion there, took some exception to Maggie's manners. She
had a way of not assenting at once to the observations current in good society,
and of saying that she didn't know whether those observations were true or not,
which gave her an air of gaucherie, and impeded the even flow of conversation;
but it is a fact capable of an amiable interpretation, that ladies are not the
worst disposed towards a new acquaintance of their own sex because she has
points of inferiority. And Maggie was so entirely without those pretty airs of
coquetry which had the traditional reputation of driving gentlemen to despair,
that she won some feminine pity for being so ineffective in spite of her beauty.
She had not had many advantages, poor thing! and it must be admitted there was
no pretension about her: her abruptness and unevenness of manner were plainly
the result of her secluded and lowly circumstances. It was only a wonder that
there was no tinge of vulgarity about her, considering what the rest of poor
Lucy's relations were: an allusion which always made the Miss Guests shudder a
little. It was not agreeable to think of any connection by marriage with such
people as the Gleggs and the Pullets; but it was of no use to contradict
Stephen, when once he had set his mind on anything, and certainly there was no
possible objection to Lucy in herself - no one could help liking her. She would
naturally desire that the Miss Guests should behave kindly to this cousin of
whom she was so fond, and Stephen would make a great fuss if they were deficient
in civility. Under these circumstances the invitations to Park House were not
wanting; and elsewhere, also, Miss Deane was too popular and too distinguished a
member of society in St Ogg's for any attention towards her to be neglected.
    Thus Maggie was introduced for the first time to the young lady's life, and
knew what it was to get up in the morning without any imperative reason for
doing one thing more than another. This new sense of leisure and unchecked
enjoyment amidst the soft-breathing airs and garden-scents of advancing spring -
amidst the new abundance of music, and lingering strolls in the sunshine, and
the delicious dreaminess of gliding on the river - could hardly be without some
intoxicating effect on her, after her years of privation; and even in the first
week Maggie began to be less haunted by her sad memories and anticipations. Life
was certainly very pleasant just now: it was becoming very pleasant to dress in
the evening, and to feel that she was one of the beautiful things of this
spring-time. And there were admiring eyes always awaiting her now; she was no
longer an unheeded person, liable to be chide, from whom attention was
continually claimed, and on whom no one felt bound to confer any. It was
pleasant, too, when Stephen and Lucy were gone out riding, to sit down at the
piano alone, and find that the old fitness between her fingers and the keys
remained, and revived, like a sympathetic kinship not to be worn out by
separation - to get the tunes she had heard the evening before, and repeat them
again and again until she had found out a way of producing them so as to make
them a more pregnant, passionate language to her. The mere concord of octaves
was a delight to Maggie, and she would often take up a book of studies rather
than any melody, that she might taste more keenly by abstraction the more
primitive sensation of intervals. Not that her enjoyment of music was of the
kind that indicates a great specific talent; it was rather that her sensibility
to the supreme excitement of music was only one form of that passionate
sensibility which belonged to her whole nature, and made her faults and virtues
all merge in each other - made her affections sometimes an impatient demand, but
also prevented her vanity from taking the form of mere feminine coquetry and
device, and gave it the poetry of ambition. But you have known Maggie a long
while, and need to be told, not her characteristics, but her history, which is a
thing hardly to be predicted even from the completest knowledge of
characteristics. For the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from
within. »Character,« says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms -
»character is destiny.« But not the whole of our destiny. Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark, was speculative and irresolute, and we have a great tragedy in
consequence. But if his father had lived to a good old age, and his uncle had
died an early death, we can conceive Hamlet's having married Ophelia, and got
through life with a reputation of sanity, notwithstanding many soliloquies, and
some moody sarcasms towards the fair daughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the
frankest incivility to his father-in-law.
    Maggie's destiny, then, is at present hidden, and we must wait for it to
reveal itself like the course of an unmapped river; we only know that the river
is full and rapid, and that for all rivers there is the same final home. Under
the charm of her new pleasures, Maggie herself was ceasing to think, with her
eager prefiguring imagination, of her future lot; and her anxiety about her
first interview with Philip was losing its predominance: perhaps, unconsciously
to herself, she was not sorry that the interview had been deferred.
    For Philip had not come the evening he was expected, and Mr. Stephen Guest
brought word that he was gone to the coast - probably, he thought, on a
sketching expedition; but it was not certain when he would return. It was just
like Philip - to go off in that way without telling any one. It was not until
the twelfth day that he returned, to find both Lucy's notes awaiting him: he had
left before he knew of Maggie's arrival.
    Perhaps one had need be nineteen again to be quite convinced of the feelings
that were crowded for Maggie into those twelve days - of the length to which
they were stretched for her by the novelty of her experience in them, and the
varying attitudes of her mind. The early days of an acquaintance almost always
have this importance for us, and fill up a larger space in our memory than
longer subsequent periods, which have been less filled with discovery and new
impressions. There were not many hours in those ten days in which Mr. Stephen
Guest was not seated by Lucy's side, or standing near her at the piano, of
accompanying her on some out-door excursion: his attentions were clearly
becoming more assiduous; and that was what every one had expected. Lucy was very
happy: all the happier because Stephen's society seemed to have become much more
interesting and amusing since Maggie had been there. Playful discussions -
sometimes serious ones - were going forward, in which both Stephen and Maggie
revealed themselves, to the admiration of the gentle unobtrusive Lucy; and it
more than once crossed her mind what a charming quartet they should have through
life when Maggie married Philip. Is it an inexplicable thing that a girl should
enjoy her lover's society the more for the presence of a third person, and be
without the slightest spasm of jealousy that the third person had the
conversation habitually directed to her? Not when that girl is as
tranquil-hearted as Lucy, thoroughly possessed with a belief that she knows the
state of her companions' affections, and not prone to the feelings which shake
such a belief in the absence of positive evidence against it. Besides, it was
Lucy by whom Stephen sat, to whom he gave his arm, to whom he appealed as the
person sure to agree with him; and every day there was the same tender
politeness towards her the same consciousness of her wants and care to supply
them. Was there really the same? - it seemed to Lucy that there was more; and it
was no wonder that the real significance of the change escaped her. It was a
subtle act of conscience in Stephen that even he himself was not aware of. His
personal attentions to Maggie were comparatively slight, and there had even
sprung up an apparent distance between them, that prevented the renewal of that
faint resemblance to gallantry into which he had fallen the first day in the
boat. If Stephen came in when Lucy was out of the room - if Lucy left them
together, they never spoke to each other: Stephen, perhaps, seemed to be
examining books on music, and Maggie bent her head assiduously over her work.
Each was oppressively conscious of the other's presence, even to the
finger-ends. Yet each looked and longed for the same thing to happen the next
day. Neither of them had begun to reflect on the matter, or silently to ask, »To
what does all this tend?« Maggie only felt that life was revealing something
quite new to her; and she was absorbed in the direct, immediate experience,
without any energy left for taking account of it and reasoning about it. Stephen
wilfully abstained from self-questioning, and would not admit to himself that he
felt an influence which was to have any determining effect on his conduct. And
when Lucy came into the room again, they were once more unconstrained: Maggie
could contradict Stephen and laugh at him, and he could recommend to her
consideration the example of that most charming heroine, Miss Sophia Western,
who had a great »respect for the understandings of men.« Maggie could look at
Stephen - which, for some reason or other, she always avoided when they were
alone; and he could even ask her to play his accompaniment for him, since Lucy's
fingers were so busy with that bazaar-work; and lecture her on hurrying the
tempo, which was certainly Maggie's weak point.
    One day - it was the day of Philip's return - Lucy had formed a sudden
engagement to spend the evening with Mrs. Kenn, whose delicate state of health,
threatening to become confirmed illness through an attack of bronchitis, obliged
her to resign her functions at the coming bazaar into the hands of other ladies,
of whom she wished Lucy to be one. The engagement had been formed in Stephen's
presence, and he had heard Lucy promise to dine early and call at six o'clock
for Miss Torry, who brought Mrs. Kenn's request.
    »Here is another of the moral results of this idiotic bazaar,« Stephen burst
forth, as soon as Miss Torry had left the room - »taking young ladies from the
duties of the domestic hearth into scenes of dissipation among urn-rugs and
embroidered reticules! I should like to know what is the proper function of
women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still
stronger reasons for bachelors to go out. If this goes on much longer, the bonds
of society will be dissolved.«
    »Well, it will not go on much longer,« said Lucy, laughing, »for the bazaar
is to take place on Monday week.«
    »Thank heaven!« said Stephen. »Kenn himself said the other day, that he
didn't like this plan of making vanity do the work of charity; but just as the
British public is not reasonable enough to bear direct taxation, so St Ogg's has
not got force of motive enough to build and endow schools without calling in the
force of folly.«
    »Did he say so?« said little Lucy, her hazel eyes opening wide with anxiety.
»I never heard him say anything of that kind: I thought he approved of what we
were doing.«
    »I'm sure he approves you,« said Stephen, smiling at her affectionately;
»your conduct in going out to-night looks vicious, I own, but I know there is
benevolence at the bottom of it.«
    »O, you think too well of me,« said Lucy, shaking her head, with a pretty
blush, and there the subject ended. But it was tacitly understood that Stephen
would not come in the evening, and on the strength of that tacit understanding
he made his morning visit the longer, not saying good-bye until after four.
    Maggie was seated in the drawing-room alone, shortly after dinner, with
Minny on her lap, having left her uncle to his wine and his nap, and her mother
to the compromise between knitting and nodding, which, when there was no
company, she always carried on in the dining-room till tea-time. Maggie was
stooping to caress the tiny silken pet, and comforting him for his mistress's
absence, when the sound of a footstep on the gravel made her look up, and she
saw Mr. Stephen Guest walking up the garden, as if he had come straight from the
river. It was very unusual to see him so soon after dinner! He often complained
that their dinner-hour was late at Park House. Nevertheless, there he was, in
his black dress: he had evidently been home, and must have come again by the
river. Maggie felt her cheeks glowing and her heart beating: it was natural she
should be nervous, for she was not accustomed to receive visitors alone. He had
seen her look up through the open window, and raised his hat as he walked
towards it, to enter that way instead of by the door. He blushed too, and
certainly looked as foolish as a young man of some wit and self-possession can
be expected to look, as he walked in with a roll of music in his hand, and said,
with an air of hesitating improvisation -
    »You are surprised to see me again, Miss Tulliver - I ought to apologise for
coming upon you by surprise, but I wanted to come into the town, and I got our
man to row me; so I thought I would bring these things from the Maid of Artois
for your cousin: I forgot them this morning. Will you give them to her?«
    »Yes,« said Maggie, who had risen confusedly with Minny in her arms, and
now, not quite knowing what else to do, sat down again.
    Stephen laid down his hat, with the music, which rolled on the floor, and
sat down in the chair close by her. He had never done so before, and both he and
Maggie were quite aware that it was an entirely new position.
    »Well, you pampered minion!« said Stephen, leaning to pull the long curly
ears that drooped over Maggie's arm. It was not a suggestive remark, and as the
speaker did not follow it up by further development, it naturally left the
conversation at a stand-still. It seemed to Stephen like some action in a dream,
that he was obliged to do, and wonder at himself all the while - to go on
stroking Minny's head. Yet it was very pleasant: he only wished he dared look at
Maggie, and that she would look at him - let him have one long look into those
deep strange eyes of hers, and then he would be satisfied, and quite reasonable
after that. He thought it was becoming a sort of monomania with him, to want
that long look from Maggie; and he was racking his invention continually to find
out some means by which he could have it without its appearing singular and
entailing subsequent embarrassment. As for Maggie, she had no distinct thought -
only the sense of a presence like that of a closely-hovering broad-winged bird
in the darkness, for she was unable to look up, and saw nothing but Minny's
black wavy coat.
    But this must end some time - perhaps it ended very soon, and only seemed
long, as a minute's dream does. Stephen at last sat upright sideways in his
chair, leaning one hand and arm over the back and looking at Maggie. What should
he say?
    »We shall have a splendid sunset, I think; shan't you go out and see it?«
    »I don't know,« said Maggie. Then, courageously raising her eyes and looking
out of the window, »If I'm not playing cribbage with my uncle.«
    A pause: during which Minny is stroked again, but has sufficient insight not
to be grateful for it - to growl rather.
    »Do you like sitting alone?«
    A rather arch look came over Maggie's face, and, just glancing at Stephen,
she said, »Would it be quite civil to say yes?«
    »It was rather a dangerous question for an intruder to ask,« said Stephen,
delighted with that glance, and getting determined to stay for another. »But you
will have more than half an hour to yourself after I am gone,« he added, taking
out his watch. »I know Mr. Deane never comes in till half-past seven.«
    Another pause, during which Maggie looked steadily out of the window, till
by a great effort she moved her head to look down at Minny's back again, and
said -
    »I wish Lucy had not been obliged to go out. We lose our music.«
    »We shall have a new voice to-morrow night,« said Stephen. »Will you tell
your cousin that our friend Philip Wakem is come back? I saw him as I went
home.«
    Maggie gave a little start - it seemed hardly more than a vibration that
passed from head to foot in an instant. But the new images summoned by Philip's
name, dispersed half the oppressive spell she had been under. She rose from her
chair with a sudden resolution, and, laying Minny on his cushion, went to reach
Lucy's large work-basket from its corner. Stephen was vexed and disappointed: he
thought, perhaps Maggie didn't like the name of Wakem to be mentioned to her in
that abrupt way - for he now recalled what Lucy had told him of the family
quarrel. It was of no use to stay any longer. Maggie was seating herself at the
table with her work, and looking chill and proud: and he - he looked like a
simpleton for having come. A gratuitous, entirely superfluous visit of that sort
was sure to make a man disagreeable and ridiculous. Of course it was palpable to
Maggie's thinking, that he had dined hastily in his own room for the sake of
setting off again and finding her alone.
    A boyish state of mind for an accomplished young gentleman of
five-and-twenty, not without legal knowledge! But a reference to history,
perhaps, may make it not incredible.
    At this moment Maggie's ball of knitting-wool rolled along the ground, and
she started up to reach it. Stephen rose too, and, picking up the ball, met her
with a vexed complaining look that gave his eyes quite a new expression to
Maggie, whose own eyes met them as he presented the ball to her.
    »Good-bye,« said Stephen, in a tone that had the same beseeching discontent
as his eyes. He dared not put out his hand - he thrust both hands into his
tail-pockets as he spoke. Maggie thought she had perhaps been rude.
    »Won't you stay?« she said timidly, not looking away, for that would have
seemed rude again.
    »No, thank you,« said Stephen, looking still into the half-unwilling,
half-fascinated eyes, as a thirsty man looks towards the track of the distant
brook. »The boat is waiting for me ... You'll tell your cousin?«
    »Yes.«
    »That I brought the music, I mean?«
    »Yes.«
    »And that Philip is come back.«
    »Yes.« (Maggie did not notice Philip's name this time.)
    »Won't you come out a little way into the garden?« said Stephen, in a still
gentler tone, but the next moment he was vexed that she did not say »No,« for
she moved away now towards the open window, and he was obliged to take his hat
and walk by her side. But he thought of something to make him amends.
    »Do take my arm,« he said, in a low tone, as if it were a secret.
    There is something strangely winning to most women in that offer of the firm
arm: the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help -
the presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs - meets a continual
want of the imagination. Either on that ground or some other, Maggie took the
arm. And they walked together round the grass plot and under the drooping green
of the laburnums, in the same dim dreamy state as they had been in a quarter of
an hour before; only that Stephen had had the look he longed for, without yet
perceiving in himself the symptoms of returning reasonableness, and Maggie had
darting thoughts across the dimness: - how came she to be there? - why had she
come out? Not a word was spoken. If it had been, each would have been less
intensely conscious of the other.
    »Take care of this step,« said Stephen, at last.
    »O, I will go in now,« said Maggie, feeling that the step had come like a
rescue. »Good evening.«
    In an instant she had withdrawn her arm, and was running back to the house.
She did not reflect that this sudden action would only add to the embarrassing
recollections of the last half-hour. She had no thought left for that. She only
threw herself into the low arm-chair, and burst into tears.
    »O Philip, Philip, I wish we were together again - so quietly - in the Red
Deeps.«
    Stephen looked after her a moment, then went on to the boat, and was soon
landed at the wharf. He spent the evening in the billiard-room, smoking one
cigar after another, and losing »lives« at pool. But he would not leave off. He
was determined not to think - not to admit any more distinct remembrance than
was urged upon him by the perpetual presence of Maggie. He was looking at her,
and she was on his arm.
    But there came the necessity of walking home in the cool starlight, and with
it the necessity of cursing his own folly, and bitterly determining that he
would never trust himself alone with Maggie again. It was all madness: he was in
love, thoroughly attached to Lucy, and engaged - engaged as strongly as an
honourable man need be. He wished he had never seen this Maggie Tulliver, to be
thrown into a fever by her in this way: she would make a sweet, strange,
troublesome, adorable wife to some man or other, but he would never have chosen
her himself. Did she feel as he did? He hoped she did - not. He ought not to
have gone. He would master himself in future. He would make himself disagreeable
to her - quarrel with her perhaps. Quarrel with her? Was it possible to quarrel
with a creature who had such eyes - defying and deprecating, contradicting and
clinging, imperious and beseeching - full of delicious opposites. To see such a
creature subdued by love for one would be a lot worth having - to another man.
    There was a muttered exclamation which ended this inward soliloquy, as
Stephen threw away the end of his last cigar, and, thrusting his hands into his
pockets, stalked along at a quieter pace through the shrubbery. It was not of a
benedictory kind.
 

                                  Chapter VII

                                Philip Re-Enters

The next morning was very wet: the sort of morning on which male neighbours who
have no imperative occupation at home are likely to pay their fair friends an
illimitable visit. The rain, which has been endurable enough for the walk or
ride one way, is sure to become so heavy, and at the same time so certain to
clear up by-and-by, that nothing but an open quarrel can abbreviate the visit:
latent detestation will not do at all. And if people happen to be lovers, what
can be so delightful, in England, as a rainy morning? English sunshine is
dubious; bonnets are never quite secure; and if you sit down on the grass, it
may lead to catarrhs. But the rain is to be depended on. You gallop through it
in a mackintosh, and presently find yourself in the seat you like best - a
little above or a little below the one on which your goddess sits (it is the
same thing to the metaphysical mind, and that is the reason why women are at
once worshipped and looked down upon), with a satisfactory confidence that there
will be no lady-callers.
    »Stephen will come earlier this morning, I know,« said Lucy: »he always does
when it's rainy.«
    Maggie made no answer. She was angry with Stephen: she began to think she
should dislike him; and if it had not been for the rain, she would have gone to
her aunt Glegg's this morning, and so have avoided him altogether. As it was,
she must find some reason for remaining out of the room with her mother.
    But Stephen did not come earlier, and there was another visitor - a nearer
neighbour - who preceded him. When Philip entered the room, he was going merely
to bow to Maggie, feeling that their acquaintance was a secret which he was
bound not to betray; but when she advanced towards him and put out her hand, he
guessed at once that Lucy had been taken into her confidence. It was a moment of
some agitation to both, though Philip had spent many hours in preparing for it;
but like all persons who have passed through life with little expectation of
sympathy, he seldom lost his self-control, and shrank with the most sensitive
pride from any noticeable betrayal of emotion. A little extra paleness, a little
tension of the nostril when he spoke, and the voice pitched in rather a higher
key, that to strangers would seem expressive of cold indifference, were all the
signs Philip usually gave of an inward drama that was not without its
fierceness. But Maggie, who had little more power of concealing the impressions
made upon her than if she had been constructed of musical strings, felt her eyes
getting larger with tears as they took each other's hands in silence. They were
not painful tears: they had rather something of the same origin as the tears
women and children shed when they have found some protection to cling to, and
look back on the threatened danger. For Philip, who a little while ago was
associated continually in Maggie's mind with the sense that Tom might reproach
her with some justice, had now, in this short space, become a sort of outward
conscience to her, that she might fly to for rescue and strength. Her tranquil,
tender affection for Philip, with its root deep down in her childhood, and its
memories of long quiet talk confirming by distinct successive impressions the
first instinctive bias - the fact that in him the appeal was more strongly to
her pity and womanly devotedness than to her vanity or other egoistic
excitability of her nature, seemed now to make a sort of sacred place, a
sanctuary where she could find refuge from an alluring influence which the best
part of herself must resist, which must bring horrible tumult within,
wretchedness without. This new sense of her relation to Philip nullified the
anxious scruples she would otherwise have felt, lest she should overstep the
limit of intercourse with him that Tom would sanction; and she put out her hand
to him, and felt the tears in her eyes without any consciousness of an inward
check. The scene was just what Lucy expected, and her kind heart delighted in
bringing Philip and Maggie together again; though, even with all her regard for
Philip, she could not resist the impression that her cousin Tom had some excuse
for feeling shocked at the physical incongruity between the two - a prosaic
person like cousin Tom, who didn't like poetry and fairy tales. But she began to
speak as soon as possible, to set them at ease.
    »This was very good and virtuous of you,« she said, in her pretty treble,
like the low conversational notes of little birds, »to come so soon after your
arrival. And as it is, I think I will pardon you for running away in an
inopportune manner, and giving your friends no notice. Come and sit down here,«
she went on, placing the chair that would suit him best, »and you shall find
yourself treated mercifully.«
    »You will never govern well, Miss Deane,« said Philip as he seated himself,
»because no one will ever believe in your severity. People will always encourage
themselves in misdemeanours by the certainty that you will be indulgent.«
    Lucy gave some playful contradiction, but Philip did not hear what it was,
for he had naturally turned towards Maggie, and she was looking at him with that
open, affectionate scrutiny, which we give to a friend from whom we have been
long separated. What a moment their parting had been! And Philip felt as if he
were only in the morrow of it. He felt this so keenly - with such intense,
detailed remembrance - with such passionate revival of all that had been said
and looked in their last conversation - that with that jealousy and distrust
which in diffident natures is almost inevitably linked with a strong feeling, he
thought he read in Maggie's glance and manner the evidence of a change. The very
fact that he feared and half expected it, would be sure to make this thought
rush in, in the absence of positive proof to the contrary.
    »I am having a great holiday, am I not?« said Maggie. »Lucy is like a fairy
godmother: she has turned me from a drudge into a princess in no time. I do
nothing but indulge myself all day long, and she always finds out what I want
before I know it myself.«
    »I'm sure she is the happier for having you, then,« said Philip. »You must
be better than a whole menagerie of pets to her. And you look well - you are
benefiting by the change.«
    Artificial conversation of this sort went on a little while, till Lucy,
determined to put an end to it, exclaimed, with a good imitation of annoyance,
that she had forgotten something, and was quickly out of the room.
    In a moment Maggie and Philip leaned forward, and the hands were clasped
again, with a look of sad contentment like that of friends who meet in the
memory of recent sorrow.
    »I told my brother I wished to see you, Philip - I asked him to release me
from my promise, and he consented.«
    Maggie, in her impulsiveness, wanted Philip to know at once the position
they must hold towards each other; but she checked herself. The things that had
happened since he had spoken of his love for her were so painful that she shrank
from being the first to allude to them. It seemed almost like an injury towards
Philip even to mention her brother - her brother who had insulted him. But he
was thinking too entirely of her to be sensitive on any other point at that
moment.
    »Then we can at least be friends, Maggie? There is nothing to hinder that
now?«
    »Will not your father object?« said Maggie, withdrawing her hand.
    »I should not give you up on any ground but your own wish, Maggie,« said
Philip, colouring. »There are points on which I should always resist my father,
as I used to tell you. That is one.«
    »Then there is nothing to hinder our being friends, Philip - seeing each
other and talking to each other while I am here: I shall soon go away again. I
mean to go very soon - to a new situation.«
    »Is that inevitable, Maggie?«
    »Yes: I must not stay here long. It would unfit me for the life I must begin
again at last. I can't live in dependence - I can't live with my brother -
though he is very good to me. He would like to provide for me; but that would be
intolerable to me.«
    Philip was silent a few moments, and then said, in that high, feeble voice
which with him indicated the resolute suppression of emotion: -
    »Is there no other alternative, Maggie? Is that life, away from those who
love you, the only one you will allow yourself to look forward to?«
    »Yes, Philip,« she said, looking at him pleadingly, as if she entreated him
to believe that she was compelled to this course. »At least, as things are; I
don't know what may be in years to come. But I begin to think there can never
come much happiness to me from loving: I have always had so much pain mingled
with it. I wish I could make myself a world outside it, as men do.«
    »Now, you are returning to your old thought in a new form, Maggie - the
thought I used to combat,« said Philip, with a slight tinge of bitterness. »You
want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain. I tell
you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating
one's nature. What would become of me, if I tried to escape from pain? Scorn and
cynicism would be my only opium; unless I could fall into some kind of conceited
madness, and fancy myself a favourite of Heaven because I am not a favourite
with men.«
    The bitterness had taken on some impetuosity as Philip went on speaking: the
words were evidently an outlet for some immediate feeling of his own, as well as
an answer to Maggie. There was a pain pressing on him at that moment. He shrank
with proud delicacy from the faintest allusion to the words of love - of
plighted love that had passed between them. It would have seemed to him like
reminding Maggie of a promise; it would have had for him something of the
baseness of compulsion. He could not dwell on the fact that he himself had not
changed; for that too would have had the air of an appeal. His love for Maggie
was stamped, even more than the rest of his experience, with the exaggerated
sense that he was an exception - that she, that every one, saw him in the light
of an exception.
    But Maggie was conscience-stricken.
    »Yes, Philip,« she said, with her childish contrition when he used to chide
her, »you are right, I know. I do always think too much of my own feelings, and
not enough of others' - not enough of yours. I had need have you always to find
fault with me and teach me: so many things have come true that you used to tell
me.«
    Maggie was resting her elbow on the table, leaning her head on her hand and
looking at Philip with half-penitent dependent affection, as she said this;
while he was returning her gaze with an expression that, to her consciousness,
gradually became less vague - became charged with a specific recollection. Had
his mind flown back to something that she now remembered? - something about a
lover of Lucy's? It was a thought that made her shudder: it gave new
definiteness to her present position, and to the tendency of what had happened
the evening before. She moved her arm from the table, urged to change her
position by that positive physical oppression at the heart that sometimes
accompanies a sudden mental pang.
    »What is the matter, Maggie? Has something happened?« Philip said, in
inexpressible anxiety - his imagination being only too ready to weave everything
that was fatal to them both.
    »No - nothing,« said Maggie, rousing her latent will. Philip must not have
that odious thought in his mind: she would banish it from her own. »Nothing,«
she repeated, »except in my own mind. You used to say I should feel the effect
of my starved life, as you called it, and I do. I am too eager in my enjoyment
of music and all luxuries, now they are come to me.«
    She took up her work and occupied herself resolutely, while Philip watched
her, really in doubt whether she had anything more than this general allusion in
her mind. It was quite in Maggie's character to be agitated by vague
self-reproach. But soon there came a violent well-known ring at the door-bell
resounding through the house.
    »O what a startling announcement!« said Maggie, quite mistress of herself,
though not without some inward flutter. »I wonder where Lucy is.«
    Lucy had not been deaf to the signal, and after an interval long enough for
a few solicitous but not hurried inquiries, she herself ushered Stephen in.
    »Well, old fellow,« he said, going straight up to Philip and shaking him
heartily by the hand, bowing to Maggie in passing, »it's glorious to have you
back again; only I wish you'd conduct yourself a little less like a sparrow with
a residence on the house-top, and not go in and out constantly without letting
the servants know. This is about the twentieth time I've had to scamper up those
countless stairs to that painting-room of yours, all to no purpose, because your
people thought you were at home. Such incidents embitter friendship.«
    »I've so few visitors - it seems hardly worth while to leave notice of my
exit and entrances,« said Philip, feeling rather oppressed just then by
Stephen's bright strong presence and strong voice.
    »Are you quite well this morning, Miss Tulliver?« said Stephen, turning to
Maggie with stiff politeness, and putting out his hand with the air of
fulfilling a social duty.
    Maggie gave the tips of her fingers, and said, »Quite well, thank you,« in a
tone of proud indifference. Philip's eyes were watching them keenly; but Lucy
was used to seeing variations in their manner to each other, and only thought
with regret that there was some natural antipathy which every now and then
surmounted their mutual goodwill. »Maggie is not the sort of woman Stephen
admires, and she is irritated by something in him which she interprets as
conceit,« was the silent observation that accounted for everything to guileless
Lucy. Stephen and Maggie had no sooner completed this studied greeting than each
felt hurt by the other's coldness. And Stephen, while rattling on in questions
to Philip about his recent sketching expedition, was thinking all the more about
Maggie because he was not drawing her into the conversation as he had invariably
done before. »Maggie and Philip are not looking happy,« thought Lucy: »this
first interview has been saddening to them.«
    »I think we people who have not been galloping,« she said to Stephen, »are
all a little damped by the rain. Let us have some music. We ought to take
advantage of having Philip and you together. Give us the duet in Masaniello:
Maggie has not heard that, and I know it will suit her.«
    »Come, then,« said Stephen, going towards the piano, and giving a foretaste
of the tune in his deep »brum-brum,« very pleasant to hear.
    »You, please, Philip - you play the accompaniment,« said Lucy, »and then I
can go on with my work. You will like to play, shan't you?« she added, with a
pretty inquiring look, anxious, as usual, lest she should have proposed what was
not pleasant to another; but with yearnings towards her unfinished embroidery.
    Philip had brightened at the proposition, for there is no feeling, perhaps,
except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music - that
does not make a man sing or play the better; and Philip had an abundance of
pent-up feeling at this moment, as complex as any trio or quartet that was ever
meant to express love and jealousy, and resignation and fierce suspicion, all at
the same time.
    »O yes,« he said, seating himself at the piano, »it is a way of eking out
one's imperfect life and being three people at once - to sing and make the piano
sing, and hear them both all the while - or else to sing and paint.«
    »Ah, there you are an enviable fellow. I can do nothing with my hands,« said
Stephen. »That has generally been observed in men of great administrative
capacity, I believe. A tendency to predominance of the reflective powers in me!
- haven't you observed that, Miss Tulliver?«
    Stephen had fallen by mistake into his habit of playful appeal to Maggie,
and she could not repress the answering flush and epigram.
    »I have observed a tendency to predominance,« she said, smiling; and Philip
at that moment devoutly hoped that she found the tendency disagreeable.
    »Come, come,« said Lucy; »music, music! We will discuss each other's
qualities another time.«
    Maggie always tried in vain to go on with her work when music began. She
tried harder than ever to-day; for the thought that Stephen knew how much she
cared for his singing was one that no longer roused a merely playful resistance;
and she knew, too, that it was his habit always to stand so that he could look
at her. But it was of no use: she soon threw her work down, and all her
intentions were lost in the vague state of emotion produced by the inspiring
duet - emotion that seemed to make her at once strong and weak: strong for all
enjoyment, weak for all resistance. When the strain passed into the minor, she
half-started from her seat with the sudden thrill of that change. Poor Maggie!
She looked very beautiful when her soul was being played on in this way by the
inexorable power of sound. You might have seen the slightest perceptible
quivering through her whole frame as she leaned a little forward, clasping her
hands as if to steady herself; while her eyes dilated and brightened into that
wide-open, childish expression of wondering delight, which always came back in
her happiest moments. Lucy, who at other times had always been at the piano when
Maggie was looking in this way, could not resist the impulse to steal up to her
and kiss her. Philip, too, caught a glimpse of her now and then round the open
book on the desk, and felt that he had never before seen her under so strong an
influence.
    »More, more!« said Lucy, when the duet had been encored. »Something spirited
again. Maggie always says she likes a great rush of sound.«
    »It must be Let us take the road, then,« said Stephen - »so suitable for a
wet morning. But are you prepared to abandon the most sacred duties of life, and
come and sing with us?«
    »O yes,« said Lucy, laughing. »If you will look out the Beggar's Opera from
the large canterbury. It has a dingy cover.«
    »That is a great clue, considering there are about a score covers here of
rival dinginess,« said Stephen, drawing out the canterbury.
    »O, play something the while, Philip,« said Lucy, noticing that his fingers
were wandering over the keys. »What is that you are falling into? - something
delicious that I don't know.«
    »Don't you know that?« said Philip, bringing out the tune more definitely.
»It's from the Somnambula - Ah! perchè non posso odiarti. I don't know the
opera, but it appears the tenor is telling the heroine that he shall always love
her though she may forsake him. You've heard me sing it to the English words, I
love thee still.«
    It was not quite unintentionally that Philip had wandered into this song,
which might be an indirect expression to Maggie of what he could not prevail on
himself to say to her directly. Her ears had been open to what he was saying,
and when he began to sing, she understood the plaintive passion of the music.
That pleading tenor had no very fine qualities as a voice, but it was not quite
new to her: it had sung to her by snatches, in a subdued way, among the grassy
walks and hollows, and underneath the leaning ash-tree in the Red Deeps. There
seemed to be some reproach in the words - did Philip mean that? She wished she
had assured him more distinctly in their conversation that she desired not to
renew the hope of love between them, only because it clashed with her inevitable
circumstances. She was touched, not thrilled by the song: it suggested distinct
memories and thoughts, and brought quiet regret in the place of excitement.
    »That's the way with you tenors,« said Stephen, who was waiting with music
in his hand while Philip finished the song. »You demoralise the fair sex by
warbling your sentimental love and constancy under all sorts of vile treatment.
Nothing short of having your heads served up in a dish like that medieval tenor
or troubadour, would prevent you from expressing your entire resignation. I must
administer an antidote, while Miss Deane prepares to tear herself away from her
bobbins.«
    Stephen rolled out, with saucy energy -
 
»Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?«
 
and seemed to make all the air in the room alive with a new influence. Lucy,
always proud of what Stephen did, went towards the piano with laughing, admiring
looks at him; and Maggie, in spite of her resistance to the spirit of the song
and to the singer, was taken hold of and shaken by the invisible influence - was
borne along by a wave too strong for her.
    But, angrily resolved not to betray herself, she seized her work, and went
on making false stitches and pricking her fingers with much perseverance, not
looking up or taking notice of what was going forward, until all the three
voices united in »Let us take the road.«
    I am afraid there would have been a subtle, stealing gratification in her
mind if she had known how entirely this saucy, defiant Stephen was occupied with
her: how he was passing rapidly from a determination to treat her with
ostentatious indifference to an irritating desire for some sign of inclination
from her - some interchange of subdued word or look with her. It was not long
before he found an opportunity, when they had passed to the music of »The
Tempest.« Maggie, feeling the need of a footstool, was walking across the room
to get one, when Stephen, who was not singing just then, and was conscious of
all her movements, guessed her want, and flew to anticipate her, lifting the
footstool with an entreating look at her, which made it impossible not to return
a glance of gratitude. And then, to have the footstool placed carefully by a too
self-confident personage - not any self-confident personage, but one in
particular, who suddenly looks humble and anxious, and lingers, bending still,
to ask if there is not some draught in that position between the window and the
fireplace, and if he may not be allowed to move the work-table for her - these
things will summon a little of the too-ready, traitorous tenderness into a
woman's eyes, compelled as she is in her girlish time to learn her life-lessons
in very trivial language. And to Maggie such things had not been everyday
incidents, but were a new element in her life, and found her keen appetite for
homage quite fresh. That tone of gentle solicitude obliged her to look at the
face that was bent towards her, and to say, »No, thank you;« and nothing could
prevent that mutual glance from being delicious to both, as it had been the
evening before.
    It was but an ordinary act of politeness in Stephen; it had hardly taken two
minutes; and Lucy, who was singing, scarcely noticed it. But to Philip's mind,
filled already with a vague anxiety that was likely to find a definite ground
for itself in any trivial incident, this sudden eagerness in Stephen, and the
change in Maggie's face, which was plainly reflecting a beam from his, seemed so
strong a contrast with the previous overwrought signs of indifference, as to be
charged with painful meaning. Stephen's voice, pouring in again, jarred upon his
nervous susceptibility as if it had been the clang of sheet-iron, and he felt
inclined to make the piano shriek in utter discord. He had really seen no
communicable ground for suspecting any unusual feeling between Stephen and
Maggie: his own reason told him so, and he wanted to go home at once that he
might reflect coolly on these false images, till he had convinced himself of
their nullity. But then, again, he wanted to stay as long as Stephen stayed -
always to be present when Stephen was present with Maggie. It seemed to poor
Philip so natural, nay, inevitable, that any man who was near Maggie should fall
in love with her! There was no promise of happiness for her if she were beguiled
into loving Stephen Guest; and this thought emboldened Philip to view his own
love for her in the light of a less unequal offering. He was beginning to play
very falsely under this deafening inward tumult, and Lucy was looking at him in
astonishment, when Mrs. Tulliver's entrance to summon them to lunch came as an
excuse for abruptly breaking off the music.
    »Ah, Mr. Philip,« said Mr. Deane, when they entered the dining-room, »I've
not seen you for a long while. Your father's not at home, I think, is he? I went
after him to the office the other day, and they said he was out of town.«
    »He's been to Mudport on business for several days,« said Philip; »but he's
come back now.«
    »As fond of his farming hobby as ever, eh?«
    »I believe so,« said Philip, rather wondering at this sudden interest in his
father's pursuits.
    »Ah!« said Mr. Deane, »he's got some land in his own hands on this side the
river as well as the other, I think?«
    »Yes, he has.«
    »Ah!« continued Mr. Deane, as he dispensed the pigeon-pie; »he must find
farming a heavy item - an expensive hobby. I never had a hobby myself - never
would give in to that. And the worst of all hobbies are those that people think
they can get money at. They shoot their money down like corn out of a sack
then.«
    Lucy felt a little nervous under her father's apparently gratuitous
criticism of Mr. Wakem's expenditure. But it ceased there, and Mr. Deane became
unusually silent and meditative during his luncheon. Lucy, accustomed to watch
all indications in her father, and having reasons, which had recently become
strong, for an extra interest in what referred to the Wakems, felt an unusual
curiosity to know what had prompted her father's questions. His subsequent
silence made her suspect there had been some special reason for them in his
mind.
    With this idea in her head, she resorted to her usual plan when she wanted
to tell or ask her father anything particular: she found a reason for her aunt
Tulliver to leave the dining-room after dinner, and seated herself on a small
stool at her father's knee. Mr. Deane, under those circumstances, considered
that he tasted some of the most agreeable moments his merits had purchased him
in life, notwithstanding that Lucy, disliking to have her hair powdered with
snuff, usually began by mastering his snuff-box on such occasions.
    »You don't want to go to sleep yet, papa, do you?« she said, as she brought
up her stool and opened the large fingers that clutched the snuff-box.
    »Not yet,« said Mr. Deane, glancing at the reward of merit in the decanter.
»But what do you want?« he added, pinching the dimpled chin fondly. »To coax
some more sovereigns out of my pocket for your bazaar? Eh?«
    »No, I have no base motives at all to-day. I only want to talk, not to beg.
I want to know what made you ask Philip Wakem about his father's farming to-day,
papa? It seemed rather odd, because you never hardly say anything to him about
his father; and why should you care about Mr. Wakem's losing money by his
hobby?«
    »Something to do with business,« said Mr. Deane, waving his hands, as if to
repel intrusion into that mystery.
    »But, papa, you always say Mr. Wakem has brought Philip up like a girl: how
came you to think you should get any business knowledge out of him? Those abrupt
questions sounded rather oddly. Philip thought them queer.«
    »Nonsense, child!« said Mr. Deane, willing to justify his social demeanour,
with which he had taken some pains in his upward progress. »There's a report
that Wakem's mill and farm on the other side of the river - Dorlcote Mill, your
uncle Tulliver's, you know - isn't answering so well as it did. I wanted to see
if your friend Philip would let anything out about his father's being tired of
farming.«
    »Why? Would you buy the mill, papa, if he would part with it?« said Lucy,
eagerly. »O, tell me everything - here, you shall have your snuff-box if you'll
tell me. Because Maggie says all their hearts are set on Tom's getting back the
mill some time. It was one of the last things her father said to Tom, that he
must get back the mill.«
    »Hush, you little puss,« said Mr. Deane, availing himself of the restored
snuff-box. »You must not say a word about this thing - do you hear? There's very
little chance of their getting the mill, or of anybody's getting it out of
Wakem's hands. And if he knew that we wanted it with a view to the Tullivers
getting it again, he'd be the less likely to part with it. It's natural, after
what happened. He behaved well enough to Tulliver before; but a horsewhipping is
not likely to be paid for with sugar-plums.«
    »Now, papa,« said Lucy, with a little air of solemnity, »will you trust me?
You must not ask me all my reasons for what I'm going to say - but I have very
strong reasons. And I'm very cautious - I am, indeed.«
    »Well, let us hear.«
    »Why, I believe, if you will let me take Philip Wakem into our confidence -
let me tell him all about your wish to buy, and what it's for - that my cousins
wish to have it, and why they wish to have it - I believe Philip would help to
bring it about I know he would desire to do it.«
    »I don't see how that can be, child,« said Mr. Deane, looking puzzled. »Why
should he care?« - then, with a sudden penetrating look at his daughter, »You
don't think the poor lad's fond of you, and so you can make him do what you
like?« (Mr. Deane felt quite safe about his daughter's affections.)
    »No, papa; he cares very little about me - not so much as I care about him.
But I have a reason for being quite sure of what I say. Don't you ask me. And if
you ever guess, don't tell me. Only give me leave to do as I think fit about
it.«
    Lucy rose from her stool to seat herself on her father's knee, and kissed
him with that last request.
    »Are you sure you won't do mischief, now?« he said, looking at her with
delight.
    »Yes, papa, quite sure. I'm very wise; I've got all your business talents.
Didn't you admire my accompt-book, now, when I showed it you?«
    »Well, well, if this youngster will keep his counsel, there won't be much
harm done. And to tell the truth, I think there's not much chance for us any
other way. Now, let me go off to sleep.«
 

                                  Chapter VIII

                              Wakem in a New Light

Before three days had passed after the conversation you have just overheard
between Lucy and her father, she had contrived to have a private interview with
Philip during a visit of Maggie's to her aunt Glegg. For a day and a night
Philip turned over in his mind with restless agitation all that Lucy had told
him in that interview, till he had thoroughly resolved on a course of action. He
thought he saw before him now a possibility of altering his position with
respect to Maggie, and removing at least one obstacle between them. He laid his
plan and calculated all his moves with the fervid deliberation of a chess-player
in the days of his first ardour, and was amazed himself at his sudden genius as
a tactician. His plan was as bold as it was thoroughly calculated. Having
watched for a moment when his father had nothing more urgent on his hands than
the newspaper, he went behind him, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said -
    »Father, will you come into my sanctum, and look at my new sketches? I've
arranged them now.«
    »I'm getting terribly stiff in the joints, Phil, for climbing those stairs
of yours,« said Wakem, looking kindly at his son as he laid down his paper. »But
come along, then.«
    »This is a nice place for you, isn't it, Phil? - a capital light that from
the roof, eh?« was, as usual, the first thing he said on entering the
painting-room. He liked to remind himself and his son too that his fatherly
indulgence had provided the accommodation. He had been a good father. Emily
would have nothing to reproach him with there, if she came back again from her
grave.
    »Come, come,« he said, putting his double eye-glass over his nose, and
seating himself to take a general view while he rested, »you've got a famous
show here. Upon my word, I don't see that your things aren't as good as that
London artist's - what's his name - that Leyburn gave so much money for.«
    Philip shook his head and smiled. He had seated himself on his
painting-stool, and had taken a lead pencil in his hand, with which he was
making strong marks to counteract the sense of tremulousness. He watched his
father get up, and walk slowly round, good-naturedly dwelling on the pictures
much longer than his amount of genuine taste for landscape would have prompted,
till he stopped before a stand on which two pictures were placed - one much
larger than the other - the smaller one in a leather case.
    »Bless me! what have you here?« said Wakem, startled by a sudden transition
from landscape to portrait. »I thought you'd left off figures. Who are these?«
    »They are the same person,« said Philip, with calm promptness, »at different
ages.«
    »And what person?« said Wakem, sharply fixing his eyes with a growing look
of suspicion on the larger picture.
    »Miss Tulliver. The small one is something like what she was when I was at
school with her brother at King's Lorton: the larger one is not quite so good a
likeness of what she was when I came from abroad.«
    Wakem turned round fiercely, with a flushed face, letting his eye-glass
fall, and looking at his son with a savage expression for a moment, as if he was
ready to strike that daring feebleness from the stool. But he threw himself into
the arm-chair again, and thrust his hands into his trouser-pockets, still
looking angrily at his son, however. Philip did not return the look, but sat
quietly watching the point of his pencil.
    »And do you mean to say, then, that you have had any acquaintance with her
since you came from abroad?« said Wakem, at last, with that vain effort which
rage always makes to throw as much punishment as it desires to inflict into
words and tones, since blows are forbidden.
    »Yes: I saw a great deal of her for a whole year before her father's death.
We met often in that thicket - the Red Deeps - near Dorlcote Mill. I love her
dearly: I shall never love any other woman. I have thought of her ever since she
was a little girl.«
    »Go on, sir! - and you have corresponded with her all this while?«
    »No. I never told her I loved her till just before we parted, and she
promised her brother not to see me again or to correspond with me. I am not sure
that she loves me, or would consent to marry me. But if she would consent - if
she did love me well enough - I should marry her.«
    »And this is the return you make me for all the indulgences I've heaped on
you?« said Wakem, getting white, and beginning to tremble under an enraged sense
of impotence before Philip's calm defiance and concentration of purpose.
    »No, father,« said Philip, looking up at him for the first time. »I don't
regard it as a return. You have been an indulgent father to me; but I have
always felt that it was because you had an affectionate wish to give me as much
happiness as my unfortunate lot would admit of - not that it was a debt you
expected me to pay by sacrificing all my chances of happiness to satisfy
feelings of yours, which I can never share.«
    »I think most sons would share their father's feelings in this case,« said
Wakem, bitterly. »The girl's father was an ignorant mad brute, who was within an
inch of murdering me. The whole town knows it. And the brother is just as
insolent, only in a cooler way. He forbade her seeing you, you say; he'll break
every bone in your body, for your greater happiness, if you don't take care. But
you seem to have made up your mind: you have counted the consequences, I
suppose. Of course you are independent of me: you can marry this girl to-morrow,
if you like: you are a man of five-and-twenty - you can go your way, and I can
go mine. We need have no more to do with each other.«
    Wakem rose and walked towards the door, but something held him back, and
instead of leaving the room, he walked up and down it. Philip was slow to reply,
and when he spoke, his tone had a more incisive quietness and clearness than
ever.
    »No: I can't marry Miss Tulliver, even if she would have me - if I have only
my own resources to maintain her with. I have been brought up to no profession.
I can't offer her poverty as well as deformity.«
    »Ah, there is a reason for your clinging to me, doubtless,« said Wakem,
still bitterly, though Philip's last words had given him a pang: they had
stirred a feeling which had been a habit for a quarter of a century. He threw
himself into the chair again.
    »I expected all this,« said Philip. »I know these scenes are often happening
between father and son. If I were like other men of my age, I might answer your
angry words by still angrier - we might part - I should marry the woman I love,
and have a chance of being as happy as the rest. But if it will be a
satisfaction to you to annihilate the very object of everything you've done for
me, you have an advantage over most fathers: you can completely deprive me of
the only thing that would make my life worth having.«
    Philip paused, but his father was silent.
    »You know best what satisfaction you would have, beyond that of gratifying a
ridiculous rancour worthy only of wandering savages.«
    »Ridiculous rancour!« Wakem burst out. »What do you mean? Damn it! is a man
to be horsewhipped by a boor and love him for it? Besides, there's that cold,
proud devil of a son, who said a word to me I shall not forget when we had the
settling. He would be as pleasant a mark for a bullet as I know - if he were
worth the expense.«
    »I don't mean your resentment towards them,« said Philip, who had his
reasons for some sympathy with this view of Tom, »though a feeling of revenge is
not worth much, that you should care to keep it. I mean your extending the
enmity to a helpless girl, who has too much sense and goodness to share their
narrow prejudices. She has never entered into the family quarrels.«
    »What does that signify? We don't ask what a woman does - we ask whom she
belongs to. It's altogether a degrading thing to you - to think of marrying old
Tulliver's daughter.«
    For the first time in the dialogue, Philip lost some of his self-control,
and coloured with anger.
    »Miss Tulliver,« he said, with bitter incisiveness, »has the only grounds of
rank that anything but vulgar folly can suppose to belong to the middle class:
she is thoroughly refined, and her friends, whatever else they may be, are
respected for irreproachable honour and integrity. All St Ogg's, I fancy, would
pronounce her to be more than my equal.«
    Wakem darted a glance of fierce question at his son; but Philip was not
looking at him, and with a certain penitent consciousness went on, in a few
moments, as if in amplification of his last words -
    »Find a single person in St Ogg's who will not tell you that a beautiful
creature like her would be throwing herself away on a pitiable object like me.«
    »Not she!« said Wakem, rising again, and forgetting everything else in a
burst of resentful pride, half fatherly, half personal. »It would be a deuced
fine match for her. It's all stuff about an accidental deformity, when a girl's
really attached to a man.«
    »But girls are not apt to get attached under those circumstances,« said
Philip.
    »Well, then,« said Wakem, rather brutally, trying to recover his previous
position, »if she doesn't't care for you, you might have spared yourself the
trouble of talking to me about her - and you might have spared me the trouble of
refusing my consent to what was never likely to happen.«
    Wakem strode to the door, and, without looking round again, banged it after
him.
    Philip was not without confidence that his father would be ultimately
wrought upon as he had expected, by what had passed; but the scene had jarred
upon his nerves, which were as sensitive as a woman's. He determined not to go
down to dinner: he couldn't meet his father again that day. It was Wakem's
habit, when he had no company at home, to go out in the evening - often as early
as half-past seven; and as it was far on in the afternoon now, Philip locked up
his room and went out for a long ramble, thinking he would not return until his
father was out of the house again. He got into a boat, and went down the river
to a favourite village, where he dined, and lingered till it was late enough for
him to return. He had never had any sort of quarrel with his father before, and
had a sickening fear that this contest, just begun, might go on for weeks - and
what might not happen in that time? He would not allow himself to define what
that involuntary question meant. But if he could once be in the position of
Maggie's accepted, acknowledged lover, there would be less room for vague dread.
He went up to his painting-room again, and threw himself, with a sense of
fatigue, into the arm-chair, looking round absently at the views of water and
rock that were ranged around, till he fell into a doze, in which he fancied
Maggie was slipping down a glistening, green, slimy channel of a waterfall, and
he was looking on helpless, till he was awakened by what seemed a sudden, awful
crash.
    It was the opening of the door, and he could hardly have dozed more than a
few moments, for there was no perceptible change in the evening light. It was
his father who entered; and when Philip moved to vacate the chair for him, he
said -
    »Sit still. I'd rather walk about.«
    He stalked up and down the room once or twice, and then, standing opposite
Philip with his hand thrust in his side-pockets, he said, as if continuing a
conversation that had not been broken off -
    »But this girl seems to have been fond of you, Phil, else she wouldn't have
met you in that way.«
    Philip's heart was beating rapidly, and a transient flush passed over his
face like a gleam. It was not quite easy to speak at once.
    »She liked me at King's Lorton, when she was a little girl, because I used
to sit with her brother a great deal when he had hurt his foot. She had kept
that in her memory, and thought of me as a friend of a long while ago. She
didn't think of me as a lover, when she met me.«
    »Well, but you made love to her at last. What did she say then?« said Wakem,
walking about again.
    »She said she did love me then.«
    »Confound it, then, what else do you want? Is she a jilt?«
    »She was very young then,« said Philip, hesitatingly. »I'm afraid she hardly
knew what she felt. I'm afraid our long separation, and the idea that events
must always divide us, may have made a difference.«
    »But she's in the town. I've seen her at church. Haven't you spoken to her
since you came back?«
    »Yes, at Mr. Deane's. But I couldn't renew my proposals to her on several
grounds. One obstacle would be removed if you would give your consent - if you
would be willing to think of her as a daughter-in-law.«
    Wakem was silent a little while, pausing before Maggie's picture.
    »She's not the sort of woman your mother was, though, Phil,« he said, at
last. »I saw her at church - she's handsomer than this - deuced fine eyes and
fine figure, I saw; but rather dangerous and unmanageable, eh?«
    »She's very tender and affectionate; and so simple - without the airs and
petty contrivances other women have.«
    »Ah?« said Wakem. Then looking round at his son, »But your mother looked
gentler: she had that brown wavy hair and grey eyes, like yours. You can't
remember her very well. It was a thousand pities I'd no likeness of her.«
    »Then, shouldn't you be glad for me to have the same sort of happiness,
father - to sweeten my life for me? There can never be another tie so strong to
you as that which began eight-and-twenty years ago, when you married my mother,
and you have been tightening it ever since.«
    »Ah, Phil - you're the only fellow that knows the best of me,« said Wakem,
giving his hand to his son. »We must keep together if we can. And now, what am I
to do? You must come down-stairs and tell me. Am I to go and call on this
dark-eyed damsel?«
    The barrier once thrown down in this way, Philip could talk freely to his
father of their entire relation with the Tullivers - of the desire to get the
mill and land back into the family - and of its transfer to Guest &amp; Co. as
an intermediate step. He could venture now to be persuasive and urgent, and his
father yielded with more readiness than he had calculated on.
    »I don't care about the mill,« he said at last, with a sort of angry
compliance. »I've had an infernal deal of bother lately about the mill. Let them
pay me for my improvements, that's all. But there's one thing you needn't ask
me. I shall have no direct transactions with young Tulliver. If you like to
swallow him, for his sister's sake, you may; but I've no sauce that will make
him go down.«
    I leave you to imagine the agreeable feelings with which Philip went to Mr.
Deane the next day, to say that Mr. Wakem was ready to open the negotiations,
and Lucy's pretty triumph as she appealed to her father whether she had not
proved her great business abilities. Mr. Deane was rather puzzled, and suspected
that there had been something »going on« among the young people to which he
wanted a clue. But to men of Mr. Deane's stamp, what goes on among the young
people is as extraneous to the real business of life as what goes on among the
birds and butterflies - until it can be shown to have a malign bearing on
monetary affairs. And in this case the bearing appeared to be entirely
propitious.
 

                                   Chapter IX

                             Charity in Full-Dress

The culmination of Maggie's career as an admired member of society in St Ogg's
was certainly the day of the bazaar, when her simple, noble beauty, clad in a
white muslin of some soft-floating kind, which I suspect must have come from the
stores of aunt Pullet's wardrobe, appeared with marked distinction among the
more adorned and conventional women around her. We perhaps never detect how much
of our social demeanour is made up of artificial airs, until we see a person who
is at once beautiful and simple: without the beauty, we are apt to call
simplicity awkwardness. The Miss Guests were much too well-bred to have any of
the grimaces and affected tones that belong to pretentious vulgarity; but their
stall being next to the one where Maggie sat, it seemed newly obvious to-day
that Miss Guest held her chin too high, and that Miss Laura spoke and moved
continually with a view to effect.
    All well-dressed? St Ogg's and its neighbourhood were there; and it would have
been worth while to come, even from a distance, to see the fine old hall, with
its open roof and carved oaken rafters, and great oaken folding-doors, and light
shed down from a height on the many-coloured show beneath: a very quaint place,
with broad faded stripes painted on the walls, and here and there a show of
heraldic animals of a bristly, long-snouted character, the cherished emblems of
a noble family once the seigniors of this now civic hall. A grand arch, cut in
the upper wall at one end, surmounted an oaken orchestra, with an open room
behind it, where hothouse plants and stalls for refreshments were disposed: an
agreeable resort for gentlemen, disposed to loiter, and yet to exchange the
occasional crush down below for a more commodious point of view. In fact, the
perfect fitness of this ancient building for an admirable modern purpose, that
made charity truly elegant, and led through vanity up to the supply of a
deficit, was so striking that hardly a person entered the room without
exchanging the remark more than once. Near the great arch over the orchestra was
the stone oriel with painted glass, which was one of the venerable
inconsistencies of the old hall; and it was close by this that Lucy had her
stall, for the convenience of certain large plain articles which she had taken
charge of for Mrs. Kenn. Maggie had begged to sit at the open end of the stall,
and to have the sale of these articles rather than of bead-mats and other
elaborate products, of which she had but a dim understanding. But it soon
appeared that the gentlemen's dressing-gowns, which were among her commodities,
were objects of such general attention and inquiry, and excited so troublesome a
curiosity as to their lining and comparative merits, together with a
determination to test them by trying on, as to make her post a very conspicuous
one. The ladies who had commodities of their own to sell, and did not want
dressing-gowns, saw at once the frivolity and bad taste of this masculine
preference for goods which any tailor could furnish; and it is possible that the
emphatic notice of various kinds which was drawn towards Miss Tulliver on this
public occasion, threw a very strong and unmistakeable light on her subsequent
conduct in many minds then present. Not that anger, on account of spurned
beauty, can dwell in the celestial breasts of charitable ladies, but rather,
that the errors of persons who have once been much admired necessarily take a
deeper tinge from the mere force of contrast; and also, that to-day Maggie's
conspicuous position, for the first time, made evident certain characteristics
which were subsequently felt to have an explanatory bearing. There was something
rather bold in Miss Tulliver's direct gaze, and something undefinably coarse in
the style of her beauty, which placed her, in the opinion of all feminine
judges, far below her cousin Miss Deane; for the ladies of St Ogg's had now
completely ceded to Lucy their hypothetic claims on the admiration of Mr.
Stephen Guest.
    As for dear little Lucy herself, her late benevolent triumph about the Mill,
and all the affectionate projects she was cherishing for Maggie and Philip,
helped to give her the highest spirits to-day, and she felt nothing but pleasure
in the evidence of Maggie's attractiveness. It is true, she was looking very
charming herself, and Stephen was paying her the utmost attention on this public
occasion; jealously buying up the articles he had seen under her fingers in the
process of making, and gaily helping her to cajole the male customers into the
purchase of the most effeminate futilities. He chose to lay aside his hat and
wear a scarlet fez of her embroidering; but by superficial observers this was
necessarily liable to be interpreted less as a compliment to Lucy than as a mark
of coxcombry. »Guest is a great coxcomb,« young Torry observed; »but then he is
a privileged person in St Ogg's - he carries all before him: if another fellow
did such things, everybody would say he made a fool of himself.«
    And Stephen purchased absolutely nothing from Maggie, until Lucy said, in
rather a vexed under-tone -
    »See, now; all the things of Maggie's knitting will be gone, and you will
not have bought one. There are those deliciously soft warm things for the wrists
- do buy them.«
    »Oh, no,« said Stephen, »they must be intended for imaginative persons, who
can chill themselves on this warm day by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. Stern
reason is my forte, you know. You must get Philip to buy those. By the way, why
doesn't't he come?«
    »He never likes going where there are many people, though I enjoined him to
come. He said he would buy up any of my goods that the rest of the world
rejected. But now, do go and buy something of Maggie.«
    »No, no - see - she has got a customer: there is old Wakem himself just
coming up.«
    Lucy's eyes turned with anxious interest towards Maggie, to see how she went
through this first interview, since a sadly memorable time, with a man towards
whom she must have so strange a mixture of feelings; but she was pleased to
notice that Wakem had tact enough to enter at once into talk about the bazaar
wares, and appear interested in purchasing, smiling now and then kindly at
Maggie, and not calling on her to speak much, as if he observed that she was
rather pale and tremulous.
    »Why, Wakem is making himself particularly amiable to your cousin,« said
Stephen, in an under-tone to Lucy; »is it pure magnanimity? you talked of a
family quarrel.«
    »O, that will soon be quite healed, I hope,« said Lucy, becoming a little
indiscreet in her satisfaction, and speaking with an air of significance. But
Stephen did not appear to notice this, and as some lady-purchasers came up, he
lounged on towards Maggie's end, handling trifles and standing aloof until
Wakem, who had taken out his purse, had finished his transactions.
    »My son came with me,« he overheard Wakem saying, »but he has vanished into
some other part of the building, and has left all these charitable gallantries
to me. I hope you'll reproach him for his shabby conduct.«
    She returned his smile and bow without speaking, and he turned away, only
then observing Stephen, and nodding to him. Maggie, conscious that Stephen was
still there, busied herself with counting money, and avoided looking up. She had
been well pleased that he had devoted himself to Lucy to-day, and had not come
near her. They had begun the morning with an indifferent salutation, and both
had rejoiced in being aloof from each other, like a patient who has actually
done without his opium, in spite of former failures in resolution. And during
the last few days they had even been making up their minds to failures, looking
to the outward events that must soon come to separate them, as a reason for
dispensing with self-conquest in detail.
    Stephen moved step by step as if he were being unwillingly dragged, until he
had got round the open end of the stall, and was half hidden by a screen of
draperies. Maggie went on counting her money till she suddenly heard a deep
gentle voice saying, »Aren't you very tired? Do let me bring you something -
some fruit or jelly - mayn't I?«
    The unexpected tones shook her like a sudden accidental vibration of a harp
close by her.
    »O no, thank you,« she said, faintly, and only half-looking up for an
instant.
    »You look so pale,« Stephen insisted, in a more entreating tone. »I'm sure
you're exhausted. I must disobey you, and bring something.«
    »No, indeed, I couldn't take it.«
    »Are you angry with me? What have I done? Do look at me.«
    »Pray, go away,« said Maggie, looking at him helplessly, her eyes glancing
immediately from him to the opposite corner of the orchestra, which was half
hidden by the folds of the old faded green curtain. Maggie had no sooner uttered
this entreaty than she was wretched at the admission it implied; but Stephen
turned away at once, and, following her upward glance, he saw Philip Wakem
seated in the half-hidden corner, so that he could command little more than that
angle of the hall in which Maggie sat. An entirely new thought occurred to
Stephen, and, linking itself with what he had observed of Wakem's manner, and
with Lucy's reply to his observation, it convinced him that there had been some
former relation between Philip and Maggie beyond that childish one of which he
had heard. More than one impulse made him immediately leave the hall and go
up-stairs to the refreshment-room, where, walking up to Philip, he sat down
behind him, and put his hand on his shoulder.
    »Are you studying for a portrait, Phil,« he said, »or for a sketch of that
oriel window? By George! it makes a capital bit from this dark corner, with the
curtain just marking it off.«
    »I have been studying expression,« said Philip, curtly.
    »What! Miss Tulliver's? It's rather of the savage-moody order to-day, I
think - something of the fallen princess serving behind a counter. Her cousin
sent me to her with a civil offer to get her some refreshment, but I have been
snubbed, as usual. There's a natural antipathy between us, I suppose: I have
seldom the honour to please her.«
    »What a hypocrite you are!« said Philip, flushing angrily.
    »What! because experience must have told me that I'm universally pleasing? I
admit the law, but there's some disturbing force here.«
    »I am going,« said Philip, rising abruptly.
    »So am I - to get a breath of fresh air; this place gets oppressive. I think
I have done suit and service long enough.«
    The two friends walked down-stairs together without speaking. Philip turned
through the outer door into the courtyard, but Stephen, saying, »O, by the by, I
must call in here,« went on along the passage to one of the rooms at the other
end of the building, which were appropriated to the town library. He had the
room all to himself, and a man requires nothing less than this, when he wants to
dash his cap on the table, throw himself astride a chair, and stare at a high
brick wall with a frown which would not have been beneath the occasion if he had
been slaying »the giant Python.« The conduct that issues from a moral conflict
has often so close a resemblance to vice, that the distinction escapes all
outward judgments, founded on a mere comparison of actions. It is clear to you,
I hope, that Stephen was not a hypocrite - capable of deliberate doubleness for
a selfish end; and yet his fluctuations between the indulgence of a feeling and
the systematic concealment of it, might have made a good case in support of
Philip's accusation.
    Meanwhile, Maggie sat at her stall cold and trembling, with that painful
sensation in the eyes which comes from resolutely repressed tears. Was her life
to be always like this? - always bringing some new source of inward strife? She
heard confusedly the busy indifferent voices around her, and wished her mind
could flow into that easy, babbling current. It was at this moment that Dr Kenn,
who had quite lately come into the hall, and was now walking down the middle
with his hands behind him, taking a general view, fixed his eyes on Maggie for
the first time, and was struck with the expression of pain on her beautiful
face. She was sitting quite still, for the stream of customers had lessened at
this late hour in the afternoon: the gentlemen had chiefly chosen the middle of
the day, and Maggie's stall was looking rather bare. This, with her absent,
pained expression, finished the contrast between her and her companions, who
were all bright, eager, and busy. He was strongly arrested. Her face had
naturally drawn his attention as a new and striking one at church, and he had
been introduced to her during a short call on business at Mr. Deane's, but he
had never spoken more than three words to her. He walked towards her now, and
Maggie, perceiving some one approaching, roused herself to look up and be
prepared to speak. She felt a childlike, instinctive relief from the sense of
uneasiness in this exertion, when she saw it was Dr Kenn's face that was looking
at her: that plain, middle-aged face, with a grave, penetrating kindness in it,
seeming to tell of a human being who had reached a firm, safe strand, but was
looking with helpful pity towards the strugglers still tossed by the waves, had
an effect on Maggie at this moment which was afterwards remembered by her as if
it had been a promise. The middle-aged, who have lived through their strongest
emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half passionate and not
merely contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood, whom life
has disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of early stumblers
and victims of self-despair. Most of us, at some moment in our young lives,
would have welcomed a priest of that natural order in any sort of canonicals or
uncanonicals, but had to scramble upwards into all the difficulties of nineteen
entirely without such aid, as Maggie did.
    »You find your office rather a fatiguing one, I fear, Miss Tulliver?« said
Dr Kenn.
    »It is, rather,« said Maggie, simply, not being accustomed to simper amiable
denials of obvious facts.
    »But I can tell Mrs. Kenn that you have disposed of her goods very quickly,«
he added; »she will be very much obliged to you.«
    »O, I have done nothing: the gentlemen came very fast to buy the
dressing-gowns and embroidered waistcoats, but I think any of the other ladies
would have sold more: I didn't know what to say about them.«
    Dr Kenn smiled. »I hope I'm going to have you as a permanent parishioner
now, Miss Tulliver - am I? You have been at a distance from us hitherto.«
    »I have been a teacher in a school, and I'm going into another situation of
the same kind very soon.«
    »Ah? I was hoping you would remain among your friends, who are all in this
neighbourhood, I believe.«
    »O, I must go,« said Maggie, earnestly, looking at Dr Kenn with an
expression of reliance, as if she had told him her history in those three words.
It was one of those moments of implicit revelation which will sometimes happen
even between people who meet quite transiently - on a mile's journey, perhaps,
or when resting by the wayside. There is always this possibility of a word or
look from a stranger to keep alive the sense of human brotherhood.
    Dr Kenn's ear and eye took in all the signs that this brief confidence of
Maggie's was charged with meaning.
    »I understand,« he said; »you feel it right to go. But that will not prevent
our meeting again, I hope: it will not prevent my knowing you better, if I can
be of any service to you.«
    He put out his hand and pressed hers kindly before he turned away.
    »She has some trouble or other at heart,« he thought. »Poor child! she looks
as if she might turn out to be one of
 
The souls by nature pitched too high,
By suffering plunged too low.
 
There's something wonderfully honest in those beautiful eyes.«
    It may be surprising that Maggie, among whose many imperfections an
excessive delight in admiration and acknowledged supremacy were not absent now,
any more than when she was instructing the gypsies with a view towards achieving
a royal position among them, was not more elated on a day when she had had the
tribute of so many looks and smiles, together with that satisfactory
consciousness which had necessarily come from being taken before Lucy's
cheval-glass, and made to look at the full length of her tall beauty, crowned by
the night of her massy hair. Maggie had smiled at herself then, and for the
moment had forgotten everything in the sense of her own beauty. If that state of
mind could have lasted, her choice would have been to have Stephen Guest at her
feet, offering her a life filled with all luxuries, with daily incense of
adoration near and distant, and with all possibilities of culture at her
command. But there were things in her stronger than vanity - passion, and
affection, and long deep memories of early discipline and effort, of early
claims on her love and pity; and the stream of vanity was soon swept along and
mingled inperceptibly with that wider current which was at its highest force
to-day, under the double urgency of the events and inward impulses brought by
the last week.
    Philip had not spoken to her himself about the removal of obstacles between
them on his father's side - he shrank from that; but he had told everything to
Lucy, with the hope that Maggie, being informed through her, might give him some
encouraging sign that their being brought thus much nearer to each other was a
happiness to her. The rush of conflicting feelings was too great for Maggie to
say much when Lucy, with a face breathing playful joy, like one of Correggio's
cherubs, poured forth her triumphant revelation; and Lucy could hardly be
surprised that she could do little more than cry with gladness at the thought of
her father's wish being fulfilled, and of Tom's getting the Mill again in reward
for all his hard striving. The details of preparation for the bazaar had then
come to usurp Lucy's attention for the next few days, and nothing had been said
by the cousins on subjects that were likely to rouse deeper feelings. Philip had
been to the house more than once, but Maggie had had no private conversation
with him, and thus she had been left to fight her inward battle without
interference.
    But when the bazaar was fairly ended, and the cousins were alone again,
resting together at home, Lucy said -
    »You must give up going to stay with your aunt Moss the day after to-morrow,
Maggie: write a note to her, and tell her you have put it off at my request, and
I'll send the man with it. She won't be displeased; you'll have plenty of time
to go by-and-by; and I don't want you to go out of the way just now.«
    »Yes, indeed I must go, dear; I can't put it off. I wouldn't leave aunt
Gritty out for the world. And I shall have very little time, for I'm going away
to a new situation on the 25th of June.«
    »Maggie!« said Lucy, almost white with astonishment.
    »I didn't tell you, dear,« said Maggie, making a great effort to command
herself, »because you've been so busy. But some time ago I wrote to our old
governess, Miss Firniss, to ask her to let me know if she met with any situation
that I could fill, and the other day I had a letter from her telling me that I
could take three orphan pupils of hers to the coast during the holidays, and
then make trial of a situation with her as teacher. I wrote yesterday to accept
the offer.«
    Lucy felt so hurt that for some moments she was unable to speak.
    »Maggie,« she said at last, »how could you be so unkind to me - not to tell
me - to take such a step -and now!« She hesitated a little, and then added -
»And Philip? I thought everything was going to be so happy. O Maggie - what is
the reason? Give it up; let me write. There is nothing now to keep you and
Philip apart.«
    »Yes,« said Maggie, faintly. »There is Tom's feeling. He said I must give
him up if I married Philip. And I know he would not change - at least not for a
long while - unless something happened to soften him.«
    »But I will talk to him: he's coming back this week. And this good news
about the Mill will soften him. And I'll talk to him about Philip. Tom's always
very compliant to me: I don't think he's so obstinate.«
    »But I must go,« said Maggie, in a distressed voice. »I must leave some time
to pass. Don't press me to stay, dear Lucy.«
    Lucy was silent for two or three minutes, looking away and ruminating. At
length she knelt down by her cousin, and, looking up in her face with anxious
seriousness, said -
    »Maggie, is it that you don't love Philip well enough to marry him? - tell
me - trust me.«
    Maggie held Lucy's hands tightly in silence a little while. Her own hands
were quite cold. But when she spoke, her voice was quite clear and distinct.
    »Yes, Lucy, I would choose to marry him. I think it would be the best and
highest lot for me - to make his life happy. He loved me first. No one else
could be quite what he is to me. But I can't divide myself from my brother for
life. I must go away, and wait. Pray, don't speak to me again about it.«
    Lucy obeyed in pain and wonder. The next word she said was -
    »Well, dear Maggie, at least you will go to the dance at Park House
to-morrow, and have some music and brightness, before you go to pay these dull,
dutiful visits. Ah! here come aunty and the tea.«
 

                                   Chapter X

                             The Spell Seems Broken

The suite of rooms opening into each other at Park House looked duly brilliant
with lights and flowers and the personal splendours of sixteen couples, with
attendant parents and guardians. The focus of brilliancy was the long
drawing-room, where the dancing went forward, under the inspiration of the grand
piano; the library, into which it opened at one end, had the more sober
illumination of maturity, with caps and cards; and at the other end, the pretty
sitting-room with a conservatory attached, was left as an occasional cool
retreat. Lucy, who had laid aside her black for the first time, and had her
pretty slimness set off by an abundant dress of white crape, was the
acknowledged queen of the occasion; for this was one of the Miss Guests'
thoroughly condescending parties, including no member of any aristocracy higher
than that of St Ogg's, and stretching to the extreme limits of commercial and
professional gentility.
    Maggie at first refused to dance, saying that she had forgotten all the
figures - it was so many years since she had danced at school; and she was glad
to have that excuse, for it is ill dancing with a heavy heart. But at length the
music wrought in her young limbs, and the longing came; even though it was the
horrible young Torry, who walked up a second time to try and persuade her. She
warned him that she could not dance anything but a country-dance; but he, of
course, was willing to wait for that high felicity, meaning only to be
complimentary when he assured her at several intervals that it was a »great
bore« that she couldn't waltz - he would have liked so much to waltz with her.
But at last it was the turn of the good old-fashioned dance which has the least
of vanity and the most of merriment in it, and Maggie quite forgot her troublous
life in a childlike enjoyment of that half-rustic rhythm which seems to banish
pretentious etiquette. She felt quite charitably towards young Torry, as his
hand bore her along and held her up in the dance; her eyes and cheeks had that
fire of young joy in them which will flame out if it can find the least breath
to fan it; and her simple black dress, with its bit of black lace, seemed like
the dim setting of a jewel.
    Stephen had not yet asked her to dance - had not yet paid her more than a
passing civility. Since yesterday, that inward vision of her which perpetually
made part of his consciousness, had been half-screened by the image of Philip
Wakem, which came across it like a blot: there was some attachment between her
and Philip; at least there was an attachment on his side, which made her feel in
some bondage. Here then, Stephen told himself, was another claim of honour which
called on him to resist the attraction that was continually threatening to
overpower him. He told himself so; and yet he had once or twice felt a certain
savage resistance, and at another moment a shuddering repugnance, to this
intrusion of Philip's image, which almost made it a new incitement to rush
towards Maggie and claim her for himself. Nevertheless he had done what he meant
to do this evening: he had kept aloof from her; he had hardly looked at her; and
he had been gaily assiduous to Lucy. But now his eyes were devouring Maggie: he
felt inclined to kick young Torry out of the dance, and take his place. Then he
wanted the dance to end that he might get rid of his partner. The possibility
that he too should dance with Maggie, and have her hand in his so long, was
beginning to possess him like a thirst. But even now their hands were meeting in
the dance - were meeting still to the very end of it, though they were far off
each other.
    Stephen hardly knew what happened, or in what automatic way he got through
the duties of politeness in the interval, until he was free and saw Maggie
seated alone again, at the farther end of the room. He made his way towards her
round the couples that were forming for the waltz, and when Maggie became
conscious that she was the person he sought, she felt, in spite of all the
thoughts that had gone before, a glowing gladness at heart. Her eyes and cheeks
were still brightened with her childlike enthusiasm in the dance; her whole
frame was set to joy and tenderness; even the coming pain could not seem bitter
- she was ready to welcome it as a part of life, for life at this moment seemed
a keen vibrating consciousness poised above pleasure or pain. This one, this
last night, she might expand unrestrainedly in the warmth of the present,
without those chill eating thoughts of the past and the future.
    »They're going to waltz again,« said Stephen, bending to speak to her, with
that glance and tone of subdued tenderness which young dreams create to
themselves in the summer woods when low cooing voices fill the air. Such glances
and tones bring the breath of poetry with them into a room that is half-stifling
with glaring gas and hard flirtation.
    »They are going to waltz again: it is rather dizzy work to look on, and the
room is very warm. Shall we walk about a little?«
    He took her hand and placed it within his arm, and they walked on into the
sitting-room, where the tables were strewn with engravings for the accommodation
of visitors who would not want to look at them. But no visitors were here at
this moment. They passed on into the conservatory.
    »How strange and unreal the trees and flowers look with the lights among
them,« said Maggie, in a low voice. »They look as if they belonged to an
enchanted land, and would never fade away: - I could fancy they were all made of
jewels.«
    She was looking at the tier of geraniums as she spoke, and Stephen made no
answer: but he was looking at her - and does not a supreme poet blend light and
sound into one, calling darkness mute, and light eloquent? Something strangely
powerful there was in the light of Stephen's long gaze, for it made Maggie's
face turn towards it and look upward at it - slowly, like a flower at the
ascending brightness. And they walked unsteadily on, without feeling that they
were walking - without feeling anything but that long grave mutual gaze which
has the solemnity belonging to all deep human passion. The hovering thought that
they must and would renounce each other made this moment of mute confession more
intense in its rapture.
    But they had reached the end of the conservatory, and were obliged to pause
and turn. The change of movement brought a new consciousness to Maggie: she
blushed deeply, turned away her head, and drew her arm from Stephen's, going up
to some flowers to smell them. Stephen stood motionless, and still pale.
    »O, may I get this rose?« said Maggie, making a great effort to say
something, and dissipate the burning sense of irretrievable confession. »I think
I am quite wicked with roses - I like to gather them and smell them till they
have no scent left.«
    Stephen was mute; he was incapable of putting a sentence together, and
Maggie bent her arm a little upward towards the large half-opened rose that had
attracted her. Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm? - the unspeakable
suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied
gently-lessening curves down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost
imperceptible nicks in the firm softness. A woman's arm touched the soul of a
great sculptor two thousand years ago, so that he wrought an image of it for the
Parthenon which moves us still as it clasps lovingly the time-worn marble of a
headless trunk. Maggie's was such an arm as that - and it had the warm tints of
life.
    A mad impulse seized on Stephen; he darted towards the arm, and showered
kisses on it, clasping the wrist.
    But the next moment Maggie snatched it from him, and glared at him like a
wounded war-goddess, quivering with rage and humiliation.
    »How dare you?« - she spoke in a deeply-shaken, half-smothered voice. »What
right have I given you to insult me?«
    She darted from him into the adjoining room, and threw herself on the sofa,
panting and trembling.
    A horrible punishment was come upon her for the sin of allowing a moment's
happiness that was treachery to Lucy, to Philip - to her own better soul. That
momentary happiness had been smitten with a blight - a leprosy: Stephen thought
more lightly of her than he did of Lucy.
    As for Stephen, he leaned back against the framework of the conservatory,
dizzy with the conflict of passions - love, rage, and confused despair: despair
at his want of self-mastery, and despair that he had offended Maggie.
    The last feeling surmounted every other: to be by her side again and entreat
forgiveness was the only thing that had the force of a motive for him, and she
had not been seated more than a few minutes when he came and stood humbly before
her. But Maggie's bitter rage was unspent.
    »Leave me to myself, if you please,« she said, with impetuous haughtiness,
»and for the future avoid me.«
    Stephen turned away, and walked backwards and forwards at the other end of
the room. There was the dire necessity of going back into the dancing-room
again, and he was beginning to be conscious of that. They had been absent so
short a time, that when he went in again the waltz was not ended.
    Maggie, too, was not long before she re-entered. All the pride of her nature
was stung into activity: the hateful weakness which had dragged her within reach
of this wound to her self-respect, had at least wrought its own cure. The
thoughts and temptations of the last month should all be flung away into an
unvisited chamber of memory: there was nothing to allure her now; duty would be
easy, and all the old calm purposes would reign peacefully once more. She
re-entered the drawing-room still with some excited brightness in her face, but
with a sense of proud self-command that defied anything to agitate her. She
refused to dance again, but she talked quite readily and calmly with every one
who addressed her. And when they got home that night, she kissed Lucy with a
free heart, almost exulting in this scorching moment, which had delivered her
from the possibility of another word or look that would have the stamp of
treachery towards that gentle, unsuspicious sister.
    The next morning Maggie did not set off to Basset quite so soon as she had
expected. Her mother was to accompany her in the carriage, and household
business could not be despatched hastily by Mrs. Tulliver. So Maggie, who had
been in a hurry to prepare herself, had to sit waiting, equipped for the drive,
in the garden. Lucy was busy in the house wrapping up some bazaar presents for
the younger ones at Basset, and when there was a loud ring at the door-bell,
Maggie felt some alarm lest Lucy should bring out Stephen to her: it was sure to
be Stephen.
    But presently the visitor came out into the garden alone, and seated himself
by her on the garden-chair. It was not Stephen.
    »We can just catch the tips of the Scotch firs, Maggie, from this seat,«
said Philip.
    They had taken each other's hands in silence, but Maggie had looked at him
with a more complete revival of the old childlike affectionate smile than he had
seen before, and he felt encouraged.
    »Yes,« she said, »I often look at them, and wish I could see the low
sunlight on the stems again. But I have never been that way but once - to the
churchyard, with my mother.«
    »I have been there - I go there - continually,« said Philip. »I have nothing
but the past to live upon.«
    A keen remembrance and keen pity impelled Maggie to put her hand in
Philip's. They had so often walked hand-in-hand!
    »I remember all the spots,« she said - »just where you told me of particular
things - beautiful stories that I had never heard of before.«
    »You will go there again soon - won't you, Maggie?« said Philip, getting
timid. »The Mill will soon be your brother's home again.«
    »Yes; but I shall not be there,« said Maggie. »I shall only hear of that
happiness. I am going away again - Lucy has not told you, perhaps?«
    »Then the future will never join on to the past again, Maggie? That book is
quite closed?«
    The grey eyes that had so often looked up at her with entreating worship,
looked up at her now, with a last struggling ray of hope in them, and Maggie met
them with her large sincere gaze.
    »That book never will be closed, Philip,« she said, with grave sadness; »I
desire no future that will break the ties of the past. But the tie to my brother
is one of the strongest. I can do nothing willingly that will divide me always
from him.«
    »Is that the only reason that would keep us apart for ever, Maggie?« said
Philip, with a desperate determination to have a definite answer.
    »The only reason,« said Maggie, with calm decision. And she believed it. At
that moment she felt as if the enchanted cup had been dashed to the ground. The
reactionary excitement that gave her a proud self-mastery had not subsided, and
she looked at the future with a sense of calm choice.
    They sat hand-in-hand without looking at each other or speaking for a few
minutes: in Maggie's mind the first scenes of love and parting were more present
than the actual moment, and she was looking at Philip in the Red Deeps.
    Philip felt that he ought to have been thoroughly happy in that answer of
hers: she was as open and transparent as a rock-pool. Why was he not thoroughly
happy? Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that
would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.
 

                                   Chapter XI

                                  In the Lane

Maggie had been four days at her aunt Moss's, giving the early June sunshine
quite a new brightness in the care-dimmed eyes of that affectionate woman, and
making an epoch for her cousins great and small, who were learning her words and
actions by heart, as if she had been a transient avatar of perfect wisdom and
beauty.
    She was standing on the causeway with her aunt and a group of cousins
feeding the chickens, at that quiet moment in the life of the farmyard before
the afternoon milking-time. The great buildings round the hollow yard were as
dreary and tumble-down as ever, but over the old garden-wall the straggling
rose-bushes were beginning to toss their summer weight, and the grey wood and
old bricks of the house, on its higher level, had a look of sleepy age in the
broad afternoon sunlight, that suited the quiescent time. Maggie, with her
bonnet over her arm, was smiling down at the hatch of small fluffy chickens,
when her aunt exclaimed -
    »Goodness me! who is that gentleman coming in at the gate?«
    It was a gentleman on a tall bay horse; and the flanks and neck of the horse
were streaked black with fast riding. Maggie felt a beating at head and heart -
horrible as the sudden leaping to life of a savage enemy who had feigned death.
    »Who is it, my dear?« said Mrs. Moss, seeing in Maggie's face the evidence
that she knew.
    »It is Mr. Stephen Guest,« said Maggie, rather faintly. »My cousin Lucy's --
a gentleman who is very intimate at my cousin's.«
    Stephen was already close to them, had jumped off his horse, and now raised
his hat as he advanced.
    »Hold the horse, Willy,« said Mrs. Moss to the twelve-year-old boy.
    »No, thank you,« said Stephen, pulling at the horse's impatiently tossing
head. »I must be going again immediately. I have a message to deliver to you,
Miss Tulliver - on private business. May I take the liberty of asking you to
walk a few yards with me?«
    He had a half-jaded, half-irritated look, such as a man gets when he has
been dogged by some care or annoyance that makes his bed and his dinner of
little use to him. He spoke almost abruptly, as if his errand were too pressing
for him to trouble himself about what would be thought by Mrs. Moss of his visit
and request. Good Mrs. Moss, rather nervous in the presence of this apparently
haughty gentleman, was inwardly wondering whether she would be doing right or
wrong to invite him again to leave his horse and walk in, when Maggie, feeling
all the embarrassment of the situation, and unable to say anything, put on her
bonnet, and turned to walk towards the gate.
    Stephen turned too, and walked by her side, leading his horse.
    Not a word was spoken till they were out in the lane, and had walked four or
five yards, when Maggie, who had been looking straight before her all the while,
turned again to walk back, saying, with haughty resentment -
    »There is no need for me to go any farther. I don't know whether you
consider it gentlemanly and delicate conduct to place me in a position that
forced me to come out with you - or whether you wished to insult me still
further by thrusting an interview upon me in this way.«
    »Of course you are angry with me for coming,« said Stephen, bitterly. »Of
course it is of no consequence what a man has to suffer - it is only your
woman's dignity that you care about.«
    Maggie gave a slight start, such as might have come from the slightest
possible electric shock.
    »As if it were not enough that I'm entangled in this way - that I'm mad with
love for you - that I resist the strongest passion a man can feel, because I try
to be true to other claims - but you must treat me as if I were a coarse brute,
who would willingly offend you. And when, if I had my own choice, I should ask
you to take my hand, and my fortune, and my whole life, and do what you liked
with them! I know I forgot myself. I took an unwarrantable liberty. I hate
myself for having done it. But I repented immediately - I've been repenting ever
since. You ought not to think it unpardonable: a man who loves with his whole
soul, as I do you, is liable to be mastered by his feelings for a moment; but
you know - you must believe - that the worst pain I could have is to have pained
you - that I would give the world to recall the error.«
    Maggie dared not speak - dared not turn her head. The strength that had come
from resentment was all gone, and her lips were quivering visibly. She could not
trust herself to utter the full forgiveness that rose in answer to that
confession.
    They were come nearly in front of the gate again, and she paused, trembling.
    »You must not say these things - I must not hear them,« she said, looking
down in misery, as Stephen came in front of her, to prevent her from going
farther towards the gate. »I'm very sorry for any pain you have to go through;
but it is of no use to speak.«
    »Yes, it is of use,« said Stephen, impetuously. »It would be of use if you
would treat me with some sort of pity and consideration, instead of doing me
vile injustice in your mind. I could bear everything more quietly if I knew you
didn't hate me for an insolent coxcomb. Look at me - see what a hunted devil I
am: I've been riding thirty miles every day to get away from the thought of
you.«
    Maggie did not - dared not look. She had already seen the harassed face. But
she said, gently -
    »I don't think any evil of you.«
    »Then, dearest, look at me,« said Stephen, in deepest, tenderest tones of
entreaty. »Don't go away from me yet. Give me a moment's happiness - make me
feel you've forgiven me.«
    »Yes, I do forgive you,« said Maggie, shaken by those tones, and all the
more frightened at herself. »But pray let me go in again. Pray go away.«
    A great tear fell from under her lowered eyelids.
    »I can't go away from you - I can't leave you,« said Stephen, with still
more passionate pleading. »I shall come back again if you send me away with this
coldness - I can't answer for myself. But if you will go with me only a little
way, I can live on that. You see plainly enough that your anger has only made me
ten times more unreasonable.«
    Maggie turned. But Tancred, the bay horse, began to make such spirited
remonstrances against this frequent change of direction, that Stephen, catching
sight of Willy Moss peeping through the gate, called out, »Here! just come and
hold my horse for five minutes.«
    »O no,« said Maggie, hurriedly, »my aunt will think it so strange.«
    »Never mind,« Stephen answered, impatiently; »they don't know the people at
St Ogg's. Lead him up and down just here, for five minutes,« he added to Willy,
who was now close to them; and then he turned to Maggie's side, and they walked
on. It was clear that she must go on now.
    »Take my arm,« said Stephen, entreatingly; and she took it, feeling all the
while as if she were sliding downwards in a nightmare.
    »There is no end to this misery,« she began, struggling to repel the
influence by speech. »It is wicked - base - ever allowing a word or look that
Lucy - that others might not have seen. Think of Lucy.«
    »I do think of her - bless her. If I didn't --« Stephen had laid his hand on
Maggie's that rested on his arm, and they both felt it difficult to speak.
    »And I have other ties,« Maggie went on, at last, with a desperate effort, -
»even if Lucy did not exist.«
    »You are engaged to Philip Wakem?« said Stephen, hastily. »Is it so?«
    »I consider myself engaged to him - I don't mean to marry any one else.«
    Stephen was silent again until they had turned out of the sun into a side
line, all grassy and sheltered. Then he burst out impetuously -
    »It is unnatural - it is horrible. Maggie, if you loved me as I love you, we
should throw everything else to the winds for the sake of belonging to each
other. We should break all these mistaken ties that were made in blindness, and
determine to marry each other.«
    »I would rather die than fall into that temptation,« said Maggie, with deep,
slow distinctness - all the gathered spiritual force of painful years coming to
her aid in this extremity. She drew her arm from his as she spoke.
    »Tell me, then, that you don't care for me,« he said, almost violently.
»Tell me that you love some one else better.«
    It darted through Maggie's mind that here was a mode of releasing herself
from outward struggle - to tell Stephen that her whole heart was Philip's. But
her lips would not utter that, and she was silent.
    »If you do love me, dearest,« said Stephen, gently, taking up her hand again
and laying it within his arm, »it is better - it is right that we should marry
each other. We can't help the pain it will give. It is come upon us without our
seeking: it is natural - it has taken hold of me in spite of every effort I have
made to resist it. God knows, I've been trying to be faithful to tacit
engagements, and I've only made things worse - I'd better have given way at
first.«
    Maggie was silent. If it were not wrong - if she were once convinced of
that, and need no longer beat and struggle against this current, soft and yet
strong as the summer stream!
    »Say yes, dearest,« said Stephen, leaning to look entreatingly in her face.
»What could we care about in the whole world beside, if we belonged to each
other?«
    Her breath was on his face - his lips were very near hers - but there was a
great dread dwelling in his love for her.
    Her lips and eyelids quivered; she opened her eyes full on his for an
instant, like a lovely wild animal timid and struggling under caresses, and then
turned sharp round towards home again.
    »And after all,« he went on, in an impatient tone, trying to defeat his own
scruples as well as hers, »I am breaking no positive engagement: if Lucy's
affections had been withdrawn from me and given to some one else, I should have
felt no right to assert a claim on her. If you are not absolutely pledged to
Philip, we are neither of us bound.«
    »You don't believe that - it is not your real feeling,« said Maggie,
earnestly. »You feel, as I do, that the real tie lies in the feelings and
expectations we have raised in other minds. Else all pledges might be broken,
when there was no outward penalty. There would be no such thing as
faithfulness.«
    Stephen was silent: he could not pursue that argument; the opposite
conviction had wrought in him too strongly through his previous time of
struggle. But it soon presented itself in a new form.
    »The pledge can't be fulfilled,« he said, with impetuous insistence. »It is
unnatural: we can only pretend to give ourselves to any one else. There is wrong
in that too - there may be misery in it for them as well as for us. Maggie, you
must see that - you do see that.«
    He was looking eagerly at her face for the least sign of compliance; his
large, firm, gentle grasp was on her hand. She was silent for a few moments,
with her eyes fixed on the ground; then she drew a deep breath, and said,
looking up at him with solemn sadness -
    »O it is difficult - life is very difficult! It seems right to me sometimes
that we should follow our strongest feeling; - but then, such feelings
continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us - the
ties that have made others dependent on us - and would cut them in two. If life
were quite easy and simple, as it might have been in paradise, and we could
always see that one being first towards whom .... I mean, if life did not make
duties for us before love comes, love would be a sign that two people ought to
belong to each other. But I see - I feel it is not so now: there are things we
must renounce in life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult
and dark to me; but I see one thing quite clearly - that I must not, cannot,
seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural; but surely pity
and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live in me still,
and punish me if I did not obey them. I should be haunted by the suffering I had
caused. Our love would be poisoned. Don't urge me; help me - help me, because I
love you.«
    Maggie had become more and more earnest as she went on; her face had become
flushed, and her eyes fuller and fuller of appealing love. Stephen had the fibre
of nobleness in him that vibrated to her appeal: but in the same moment - how
could it be otherwise? - that pleading beauty gained new power over him.
    »Dearest,« he said, in scarcely more than a whisper, while his arm stole
round her, »I'll do, I'll bear anything you wish. But - one kiss - one - the
last - before we part.«
    One kiss - and then a long look - until Maggie said tremulously, »Let me go
- let us make haste back.«
    She hurried along, and not another word was spoken. Stephen stood still and
beckoned when they came within sight of Willy and the horse, and Maggie went on
through the gate. Mrs. Moss was standing alone at the door of the old porch: she
had sent all the cousins in, with kind thoughtfulness. It might be a joyful
thing that Maggie had a rich and handsome lover, but she would naturally feel
embarrassed at coming in again: - and it might not be joyful. In either case,
Mrs. Moss waited anxiously to receive Maggie by herself. The speaking face told
plainly enough that, if there was joy, it was of a very agitating, dubious sort.
    »Sit down here a bit, my dear.« She drew Maggie into the porch, and sat down
on the bench by her: - there was no privacy in the house.
    »O aunt Gritty, I'm very wretched. I wish I could have died when I was
fifteen. It seemed so easy to give things up then - it is so hard now.«
    The poor child threw her arms round her aunt's neck, and fell into long,
deep sobs.
 

                                  Chapter XII

                                 A Family Party

Maggie left her good aunt Gritty at the end of the week, and went to Garum Firs
to pay her visit to aunt Pullet according to agreement. In the mean time very
unexpected things had happened, and there was to be a family party at Garum to
discuss and celebrate a change in the fortunes of the Tullivers, which was
likely finally to carry away the shadow of their demerits like the last limb of
an eclipse, and cause their hitherto obscured virtues to shine forth in
full-rounded splendour. It is pleasant to know that a new ministry just come
into office are not the only fellow-men who enjoy a period of high appreciation
and full-blown eulogy: in many respectable families throughout this realm,
relatives becoming creditable meet with a similar cordiality of recognition,
which, in its fine freedom from the coercion of any antecedents, suggests the
hopeful possibility that we may some day without any notice find ourselves in
full millennium, with cockatrices who have ceased to bite, and wolves that no
longer show their teeth with any but the blandest intentions.
    Lucy came so early as to have the start even of aunt Glegg; for she longed
to have some undisturbed talk with Maggie about the wonderful news. It seemed -
did it not? said Lucy, with her prettiest air of wisdom - as if everything, even
other people's misfortunes (poor creatures!) were conspiring now to make poor
dear aunt Tulliver, and cousin Tom, and naughty Maggie too, if she were not
obstinately bent on the contrary, as happy as they deserved to be after all
their troubles. To think that the very day - the very day - after Tom had come
back from Newcastle, that unfortunate young Jetsome, whom Mr. Wakem had placed
at the Mill, had been pitched off his horse in a drunken fit, and was lying at
St Ogg's in a dangerous state, so that Wakem had signified his wish that the new
purchasers should enter on the premises at once! It was very dreadful for that
unhappy young man, but it did seem as if the misfortune had happened then,
rather than at any other time, in order that cousin Tom might all the sooner
have the fit reward of his exemplary conduct - papa thought so very highly of
him. Aunt Tulliver must certainly go to the Mill now, and keep house for Tom:
that was rather a loss to Lucy in the matter of household comfort; but then, to
think of poor aunty being in her old place again, and gradually getting comforts
about her there!
    On this last point Lucy had her cunning projects, and when she and Maggie
had made their dangerous way down the bright stairs into the handsome parlour,
where the very sunbeams seemed cleaner than elsewhere, she directed her
manoeuvres, as any other great tactician would have done, against the weaker
side of the enemy.
    »Aunt Pullet,« she said, seating herself on the sofa, and caressingly
adjusting that lady's floating cap-string, »I want you to make up your mind what
linen and things you will give Tom towards housekeeping; because you're always
so generous - you give such nice things, you know; and if you set the example,
aunt Glegg will follow.«
    »That she never can, my dear,« said Mrs. Pullet, with unusual vigour, »for
she hasn't got the linen to follow suit wi' mine, I can tell you. She'd niver
the taste, not if she'd spend the money. Big checks and live things, like stags
and foxes, all her table-linen is - not a spot nor a diamont among 'em. But it's
poor work, dividing one's linen before one dies - I niver thought to ha' done
that, Bessy,« Mrs. Pullet continued, shaking her head and looking at her sister
Tulliver, »when you and me chose the double diamont, the first flax iver we'd
spun - and the Lord knows where yours is gone.«
    »I'd no choice, I'm sure, sister,« said poor Mrs. Tulliver, accustomed to
consider herself in the light of an accused person. »I'm sure it was no wish o'
mine, iver, as I should lie awake o' nights thinking o' my best bleached linen
all over the country.«
    »Take a peppermint, Mrs. Tulliver,« said uncle Pullet, feeling that he was
offering a cheap and wholesome form of comfort, which he was recommending by
example.
    »O but, aunt Pullet,« said Lucy, »you've so much beautiful linen. And
suppose you had had daughters! Then you must have divided it, when they were
married.«
    »Well, I don't say as I won't do it,« said Mrs. Pullet, »for now Tom's so
lucky, it's nothing but right his friends should look on him and help him.
There's the table-cloths I bought at your sale, Bessy; it was nothing but good
natur' o' me to buy 'em, for they've been lying in the chest ever since. But I'm
not going to give Maggie any more o' my Indy muslin and things, if she's to go
into service again, when she might stay and keep me company, and do my sewing
for me, if she wasn't't wanted at her brother's.«
    »Going into service,« was the expression by which the Dodson mind
represented to itself the position of teacher or governess, and Maggie's return
to that menial condition, now circumstances offered her more eligible prospects,
was likely to be a sore point with all her relatives, besides Lucy. Maggie in
her crude form, with her hair down her back, and altogether in a state of
dubious promise, was a most undesirable niece; but now she was capable of being
at once ornamental and useful. The subject was revived in aunt and uncle Glegg's
presence, over the tea and muffins.
    »Hegh, hegh!« said Mr. Glegg, good-naturedly patting Maggie on the back,
»nonsense, nonsense! Don't let us hear of you taking a place again, Maggie. Why,
you must ha' picked up half-a-dozen sweethearts at the bazaar: isn't there one
of 'em the right sort of article? Come, now?«
    »Mr. Glegg,« said his wife, with that shade of increased politeness in her
severity which she always put on with her crisper fronts, »you'll excuse me, but
you're far too light for a man of your years. It's respect and duty to her
aunts, and the rest of her kin as are so good to her, should have kept my niece
from fixing about going away again without consulting us - not sweethearts, if
I'm to use such a word, though it was never heared in my family.«
    »Why, what did they call us, when we went to see 'em, then, eh, neighbour
Pullet? They thought us sweet enough then,« said Mr. Glegg, winking pleasantly,
while Mr. Pullet, at the suggestion of sweetness, took a little more sugar.
    »Mr. Glegg,« said Mrs. G., »if you're going to be undelicate, let me know.«
    »La, Jane, your husband's only joking,« said Mrs. Pullet; »let him joke
while he's got health and strength. There's poor Mr. Tilt got his mouth drawn
all o' one side, and couldn't laugh if he was to try.«
    »I'll trouble you for the muffineer, then, Mr. Glegg,« said Mrs. G., »if I
may be so bold to interrupt your joking. Though it's other people must see the
joke in a niece's putting a slight on her mother's eldest sister, as is the head
o' the family; and only coming in and out on short visits, all the time she's
been in the town, and then settling to go away without my knowledge - as I'd
laid caps out on purpose for her to make 'em up for me, - and me as have divided
my money so equal -«
    »Sister,« Mrs. Tulliver broke in, anxiously, »I'm sure Maggie never thought
o' going away without staying at your house as well as the others. Not as it's
my wish she should go away at all - but quite contrary. I'm sure I'm innocent.
I've said over and over again, My dear, you've no call to go away. But there's
ten days or a fortnight Maggie 'll have before she's fixed to go: she can stay
at your house just as well, and I'll step in when I can, and so will Lucy.«
    »Bessy,« said Mrs. Glegg, »if you'd exercise a little more thought, you
might know I should hardly think it was worth while to unpin a bed, and go to
all that trouble now, just at the end o' the time, when our house isn't above a
quarter of an hour's walk from Mr. Deane's. She can come the first thing in the
morning, and go back the last at night, and be thankful she's got a good aunt so
close to her to come and sit with. I know I should, when I was her age.«
    »La, Jane,« said Mrs. Pullet, »it 'ud do your beds good to have somebody to
sleep in 'em. There's that striped room smells dreadful mouldy, and the glass
mildewed like anything. I'm sure I thought I should be struck with death when
you took me in.«
    »O, there is Tom!« exclaimed Lucy, clapping her hands. »He's come on
Sindbad, as I told him. I was afraid he was not going to keep his promise.«
    Maggie jumped up to kiss Tom as he entered, with strong feeling, at this
first meeting since the prospect of returning to the Mill had been opened to
him; and she kept his hand, leading him to the chair by her side. To have no
cloud between herself and Tom was still a perpetual yearning in her, that had
its root deeper than all change. He smiled at her very kindly this evening, and
said, »Well, Magsie, how's aunt Moss?«
    »Come, come, sir,« said Mr. Glegg, putting out his hand. »Why, you're such a
big man, you carry all before you, it seems. You're come into your luck a good
deal earlier than us old folks did - but I wish you joy, I wish you joy. You'll
get the Mill all for your own again, some day, I'll be bound. You won't stop
half-way up the hill.«
    »But I hope he'll bear in mind as it's his mother's family as he owes it
to,« said Mrs. Glegg. »If he hadn't had them to take after, he'd ha' been poorly
off. There was never any failures, nor lawing, nor wastefulness in our family -
nor dying without wills -«
    »No, nor sudden deaths,« said aunt Pullet; »allays the doctor called in. But
Tom had the Dodson skin: I said that from the first. And I don't know what you
mean to do, sister Glegg, but I mean to give him a table-cloth of all my three
biggest sizes but one, besides sheets. I don't say what more I shall do; but
that I shall do, and if I should die to-morrow, Mr. Pullet, you'll bear it in
mind - though you'll be blundering with the keys, and never remember as that on
the third shelf o' the left-hand wardrobe, behind the night-caps with the broad
ties - not the narrow-frilled uns - is the key o' the drawer in the Blue Room,
where the key o' the Blue Closet is. You'll make a mistake, and I shall niver be
worthy to know it. You've a memory for my pills and draughts, wonderful - I'll
allays say that of you - but you're lost among the keys.« This gloomy prospect
of the confusion that would ensue on her decease, was very affecting to Mrs.
Pullet.
    »You carry it too far, Sophy - that locking in and out,« said Mrs. Glegg, in
a tone of some disgust at this folly. »You go beyond your own family. There's
nobody can say I don't lock up; but I do what's reasonable, and no more. And as
for the linen, I shall look out what's serviceable, to make a present of to my
nephey: I've got cloth as has never been whittened, better worth having than
other people's fine holland; and I hope he'll lie down in it and think of his
aunt.«
    Tom thanked Mrs. Glegg, but evaded any promise to meditate nightly on her
virtues; and Mr. Glegg effected a diversion for him by asking about Mr. Deane's
intentions concerning steam.
    Lucy had had her far-sighted views in begging Tom to come on Sindbad. It
appeared, when it was time to go home, that the man-servant was to ride the
horse, and cousin Tom was to drive home his mother and Lucy. »You must sit by
yourself, aunty,« said that contriving young lady, »because I must sit by Tom;
I've a great deal to say to him.«
    In the eagerness of her affectionate anxiety for Maggie, Lucy could not
persuade herself to defer a conversation about her with Tom, who, she thought,
with such a cup of joy before him as this rapid fulfilment of his wish about the
Mill, must become pliant and flexible. Her nature supplied her with no key to
Tom's; and she was puzzled as well as pained to notice the unpleasant change on
his countenance when she gave him the history of the way in which Philip had
used his influence with his father. She had counted on this revelation as a
great stroke of policy, which was to turn Tom's heart towards Philip at once,
and, besides that, prove that the elder Wakem was ready to receive Maggie with
all the honours of a daughter-in-law. Nothing was wanted, then, but for dear
Tom, who always had that pleasant smile when he looked at cousin Lucy, to turn
completely round, say the opposite of what he had always said before, and
declare that he, for his part, was delighted that all the old grievances should
be healed, and that Maggie should have Philip with all suitable despatch: in
cousin Lucy's opinion nothing could be easier.
    But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities that
create severity - strength of will, conscious rectitude of purpose, narrowness
of imagination and intellect, great power of self-control, and a disposition to
exert control over others - prejudices come as the natural food of tendencies
which can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking
knowledge which we call truth. Let a prejudice be bequeathed, car ied in the
air, adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye - however it may come, these
minds will give it a habitation: it is something to assert strongly and bravely,
something to fill up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to impose on
others with the authority of conscious right: it is at once a staff and a baton.
Every prejudice that will answer these purposes is self-evident. Our good
upright Tom Tulliver's mind was of this class: his inward criticism of his
father's faults did not prevent him from adopting his father's prejudice; it was
a prejudice against a man of lax principle and lax life, and it was a
meeting-point for all the disappointed feelings of family and personal pride.
Other feelings added their force to produce Tom's bitter repugnance to Philip,
and to Maggie's union with him; and notwithstanding Lucy's power over her
strong-willed cousin, she got nothing but a cold refusal ever to sanction such a
marriage: »but of course Maggie could do as she liked - she had declared her
determination to be independent. For Tom's part, he held himself bound by his
duty to his father's memory, and by every manly feeling, never to consent to any
relation with the Wakems.«
    Thus, all that Lucy had effected by her zealous mediation was to fill Tom's
mind with the expectation that Maggie's perverse resolve to go into a situation
again would presently metamorphose itself, as her resolves were apt to do, into
something equally perverse, but entirely different - a marriage with Philip
Wakem.
 

                                  Chapter XIII

                            Borne Along by the Tide

In less than a week Maggie was at St Ogg's again, - outwardly in much the same
position as when her visit there had just begun. It was easy for her to fill her
mornings apart from Lucy without any obvious effort; for she had her promised
visits to pay to her aunt Glegg, and it was natural that she should give her
mother more than usual of her companionship in these last weeks, especially as
there were preparations to be thought of for Tom's housekeeping. But Lucy would
hear of no pretext for her remaining away in the evenings: she must always come
from aunt Glegg's before dinner - »else what shall I have of you?« said Lucy,
with a tearful pout that could not be resisted. And Mr. Stephen Guest had
unaccountably taken to dining at Mr. Deane's as often as possible, instead of
avoiding that, as he used to do. At first he began his mornings with a
resolution that he would not dine there - not even go in the evening, till
Maggie was away. He had even devised a plan of starting off on a journey in this
agreeable June weather: the headaches which he had constantly been alleging as a
ground for stupidity and silence were a sufficient ostensible motive. But the
journey was not taken, and by the fourth morning no distinct resolution was
formed about the evenings: they were only foreseen as times when Maggie would
still be present for a little while - when one more touch, one more glance,
might be snatched. For, why not? There was nothing to conceal between them: they
knew - they had confessed their love, and they had renounced each other: they
were going to part. Honour and conscience were going to divide them: Maggie,
with that appeal from her inmost soul, had decided it; but surely they might
cast a lingering look at each other across the gulf, before they turned away
never to look again till that strange light had for ever faded out of their
eyes.
    Maggie, all this time, moved about with a quiescence and even torpor of
manner, so contrasted with her usual fitful brightness and ardour, that Lucy
would have had to seek some other cause for such a change, if she had not been
convinced that the position in which Maggie stood between Philip and her
brother, and the prospect of her self-imposed wearisome banishment, were quite
enough to account for a large amount of depression. But under this torpor there
was a fierce battle of emotions, such as Maggie in all her life of struggle had
never known or foreboded: it seemed to her as if all the worst evil in her had
lain in ambush till now, and had suddenly started up full-armed, with hideous,
overpowering strength! There were moments in which a cruel selfishness seemed to
be getting possession of her: why should not Lucy - why should not Philip
suffer? She had had to suffer through many years of her life; and who had
renounced anything for her? And when something like that fullness of existence -
love, wealth, ease, refinement, all that her nature craved - was brought within
her reach, why was she to forego it, that another might have it - another, who
perhaps needed it less? But amidst all this new passionate tumult there were the
old voices making themselves heard with rising power, till, from time to time,
the tumult seemed quelled. Was that existence which tempted her the full
existence she dreamed? Where, then, would be all the memories of early striving
- all the deep pity for another's pain, which had been nurtured in her through
years of affection and hardship - all the divine presentiment of something
higher than mere personal enjoyment, which had made the sacredness of life? She
might as well hope to enjoy walking by maiming her feet, as hope to enjoy an
existence in which she set out by maiming the faith and sympathy that were the
best organs of her soul. And then, if pain were so hard to her, what was it to
others? - »Ah, God! preserve me from inflicting - give me strength to bear it.«
- How had she sunk into this struggle with a temptation that she would once have
thought herself as secure from, as from deliberate crime? When was that first
hateful moment in which she had been conscious of a feeling that clashed with
her truth, affection, and gratitude, and had not shaken it from her with horror,
as if it had been a loathsome thing? - And yet, since this strange, sweet,
subduing influence did not, should not, conquer her - since it was to remain
simply her own suffering. ... her mind was meeting Stephen's in that thought of
his, that they might still snatch moments of mute confession before the parting
came. For was not he suffering too? She saw it daily - saw it in the sickened
look of fatigue with which, as soon as he was not compelled to exert himself, he
relapsed into indifference towards everything but the possibility of watching
her. Could she refuse sometimes to answer that beseeching look which she felt to
be following her like a low murmur of love and pain? She refused it less and
less, till at last the evening for them both was sometimes made of a moment's
mutual gaze: they thought of it till it came, and when it had come, they thought
of nothing else. One other thing Stephen seemed now and then to care for, and
that was, to sing: it was a way of speaking to Maggie. Perhaps he was not
distinctly conscious that he was impelled to it by a secret longing - running
counter to all his self-confessed resolves - to deepen the hold he had on her.
Watch your own speech, and notice how it is guided by your less conscious
purposes, and you will understand that contradiction in Stephen.
    Philip Wakem was a less frequent visitor, but he came occasionally in the
evening, and it happened that he was there when Lucy said, as they sat out on
the lawn, near sunset -
    »Now Maggie's tale of visits to aunt Glegg is completed, I mean that we
shall go out boating every day until she goes. She has not had half enough
boating because of these tiresome visits, and she likes it better than anything.
Don't you, Maggie?«
    »Better than any sort of locomotion, I hope you mean,« said Philip, smiling
at Maggie, who was lolling backward in a low garden-chair, »else she will be
selling her soul to that ghostly boatman who haunts the Floss - only for the
sake of being drifted in a boat for ever.«
    »Should you like to be her boatman?« said Lucy. »Because, if you would, you
can come with us and take an oar. If the Floss were but a quiet lake instead of
a river, we should be independent of any gentleman, for Maggie can row
splendidly. As it is, we are reduced to ask services of knights and squires, who
do not seem to offer them with great alacrity.«
    She looked playful reproach at Stephen, who was sauntering up and down, and
was just singing in pianissimo falsetto -
 
»The thirst that from the soul doth rise,
Doth ask a drink divine.«
 
He took no notice, but still kept aloof: he had done so frequently during
Philip's recent visits.
    »You don't seem inclined for boating,« said Lucy, when he came to sit down
by her on the bench. »Doesn't rowing suit you now?«
    »O, I hate a large party in a boat,« he said, almost irritably. »I'll come
when you have no one else.«
    Lucy coloured, fearing that Philip would be hurt: it was quite a new thing
for Stephen to speak in that way; but he had certainly not been well of late.
Philip coloured too, but less from a feeling of personal offence than from a
vague suspicion that Stephen's moodiness had some relation to Maggie, who had
started up from her chair as he spoke, and had walked towards the hedge of
laurels to look at the descending sunlight on the river.
    »As Miss Deane didn't know she was excluding others by inviting me,« said
Philip, »I am bound to resign.«
    »No, indeed, you shall not,« said Lucy, much vexed. »I particularly wish for
your company to-morrow. The tide will suit at half-past ten: it will be a
delicious time for a couple of hours to row to Luckreth and walk back, before
the sun gets too hot. And how can you object to four people in a boat?« she
added, looking at Stephen.
    »I don't object to the people, but the number,« said Stephen, who had
recovered himself, and was rather ashamed of his rudeness. »If I voted for a
fourth at all, of course it would be you, Phil. But we won't divide the pleasure
of escorting the ladies; we'll take it alternately. I'll go the next day.«
    This incident had the effect of drawing Philip's attention with freshened
solicitude towards Stephen and Maggie; but when they re-entered the house, music
was proposed, and Mrs. Tulliver and Mr. Deane being occupied with cribbage,
Maggie sat apart near the table where the books and work were placed - doing
nothing, however, but listening abstractedly to the music. Stephen presently
turned to a duet which he insisted that Lucy and Philip should sing: he had
often done the same thing before; but this evening Philip thought he divined
some double intention in every word and look of Stephen's, and watched him
keenly - angry with himself all the while for this clinging suspicion. For had
not Maggie virtually denied any ground for his doubts on her side? and she was
truth itself: it was impossible not to believe her word and glance when they had
last spoken together in the garden. Stephen might be strongly fascinated by her
(what was more natural?), but Philip felt himself rather base for intruding on
what must be his friend's painful secret. Still, he watched. Stephen, moving
away from the piano, sauntered slowly towards the table near which Maggie sat,
and turned over the newspapers, apparently in mere idleness. Then he seated
himself with his back to the piano, dragging a newspaper under his elbow, and
thrusting his hand through his hair, as if he had been attracted by some bit of
local news in the Laceham Courier. He was in reality looking at Maggie, who had
not taken the slightest notice of his approach. She had always additional
strength of resistance when Philip was present, just as we can restrain our
speech better in a spot that we feel to be hallowed. But at last she heard the
word »dearest« uttered in the softest tone of pained entreaty, like that of a
patient who asks for something that ought to have been given without asking. She
had never heard that word since the moments in the lane at Basset, when it had
come from Stephen again and again, almost as involuntarily as if it had been an
inarticulate cry. Philip could hear no word, but he had moved to the opposite
side of the piano, and could see Maggie start and blush, raise her eyes an
instant towards Stephen's face, but immediately look apprehensively towards
himself. It was not evident to her that Philip had observed her; but a pang of
shame, under the sense of this concealment, made her move from her chair and
walk to her mother's side to watch the game at cribbage.
    Philip went home soon after in a state of hideous doubt mingled with
wretched certainty. It was impossible for him now to resist the conviction that
there was some mutual consciousness between Stephen and Maggie; and for half the
night his irritable, susceptible nerves were pressed upon almost to frenzy by
that one wretched fact: he could attempt no explanation that would reconcile it
with her words and actions. When, at last, the need for belief in Maggie rose to
its habitual predominance, he was not long in imagining the truth: - she was
struggling, she was banishing herself - this was the clue to all he had seen
since his return. But athwart that belief there came other possibilities that
would not be driven out of sight. His imagination wrought out the whole story:
Stephen was madly in love with her; he must have told her so; she had rejected
him, and was hurrying away. But would he give her up, knowing - Philip felt the
fact with heart-crushing despair - that she was made half helpless by her
feeling towards him?
    When the morning came, Philip was too ill to think of keeping his engagement
to go in the boat. In his present agitation he could decide on nothing: he could
only alternate between contradictory intentions. First, he thought he must have
an interview with Maggie, and entreat her to confide in him; then again, he
distrusted his own interference. Had he not been thrusting himself on Maggie all
along? She had uttered words long ago in her young ignorance; it was enough to
make her hate him that these should be continually present with her as a bond.
And had he any right to ask her for a revelation of feelings which she had
evidently intended to withhold from him? He would not trust himself to see her,
till he had assured himself that he could act from pure anxiety for her, and not
from egoistic irritation. He wrote a brief note to Stephen, and sent it early by
the servant, saying that he was not well enough to fulfil his engagement to Miss
Deane. Would Stephen take his excuse, and fill his place?
    Lucy had arranged a charming plan, which had made her quite content with
Stephen's refusal to go in the boat. She discovered that her father was to drive
to Lindum this morning at ten: Lindum was the very place she wanted to go to, to
make purchases - important purchases, which must by no means be put off to
another opportunity; and aunt Tulliver must go too, because she was concerned in
some of the purchases.
    »You will have your row in the boat just the same, you know,« she said to
Maggie when they went out of the breakfast-room and up-stairs together; »Philip
will be here at half-past ten, and it is a delicious morning. Now, don't say a
word against it, you dear dolorous thing. What is the use of my being a fairy
godmother, if you set your face against all the wonders I work for you? Don't
think of awful cousin Tom: you may disobey him a little.«
    Maggie did not persist in objecting. She was almost glad of the plan; for
perhaps it would bring her some strength and calmness to be alone with Philip
again: it was like revisiting the scene of a quieter life, in which the very
struggles were repose, compared with the daily tumult of the present. She
prepared herself for the boat, and at half-past ten sat waiting in the
drawing-room.
    The ring of the door-bell was punctual, and she was thinking with half-sad,
affectionate pleasure of the surprise Philip would have in finding that he was
to be with her alone, when she distinguished a firm rapid step across the hall,
that was certainly not Philip's: the door opened, and Stephen Guest entered.
    In the first moment they were both too much agitated to speak; for Stephen
had learned from the servant that the others were gone out. Maggie had started
up and sat down again, with her heart beating violently; and Stephen, throwing
down his cap and gloves, came and sat by her in silence. She thought Philip
would be coming soon; and with great effort - for she trembled visibly - she
rose to go to a distant chair.
    »He is not coming,« said Stephen, in a low tone. »I am going in the boat.«
    »O, we can't go,« said Maggie, sinking into her chair again. »Lucy did not
expect - she would be hurt. Why is not Philip come?«
    »He is not well; he asked me to come instead.«
    »Lucy is gone to Lindum,« said Maggie, taking off her bonnet, with hurried,
trembling fingers. »We must not go.«
    »Very well,« said Stephen, dreamily, looking at her, as he rested his arm on
the back of his chair. »Then we'll stay here.«
    He was looking into her deep, deep eyes - far-off and mysterious as the
starlit blackness, and yet very near, and timidly loving. Maggie sat perfectly
still - perhaps for moments, perhaps for minutes - until the helpless trembling
had ceased, and there was a warm glow on her cheek.
    »The man is waiting - he has taken the cushions,« she said. »Will you go and
tell him?«
    »What shall I tell him?« said Stephen, almost in a whisper. He was looking
at the lips now.
    Maggie made no answer.
    »Let us go,« Stephen murmured, entreatingly, rising, and taking her hand to
raise her too. »We shall not be long together.«
    And they went. Maggie felt that she was being led down the garden among the
roses, being helped with firm tender care into the boat, having the cushion and
cloak arranged for her feet, and her parasol opened for her (which she had
forgotten) - all by this stronger presence that seemed to bear her along without
any act of her own will, like the added self which comes with the sudden
exalting influence of a strong tonic - and she felt nothing else. Memory was
excluded.
    They glided rapidly along, Stephen rowing, helped by the backward-flowing
tide, past the Tofton trees and houses - on between the silent sunny fields and
pastures, which seemed filled with a natural joy that had no reproach for
theirs. The breath of the young, unwearied day, the delicious rhythmic dip of
the oars, the fragmentary song of a passing bird heard now and then, as if it
were only the overflowing of brim-full gladness, the sweet solitude of a twofold
consciousness that was mingled into one by that grave untiring gaze which need
not be averted - what else could there be in their minds for the first hour?
Some low, subdued, languid exclamation of love came from Stephen from time to
time, as he went on rowing idly, half automatically: otherwise, they spoke no
word; for what could words have been but an inlet to thought? and thought did
not belong to that enchanted haze in which they were enveloped - it belonged to
the past and the future that lay outside the haze. Maggie was only dimly
conscious of the banks, as they passed them, and dwelt with no recognition on
the villages: she knew there were several to be passed before they reached
Luckreth, where they always stopped and left the boat. At all times she was so
liable to fits of absence, that she was likely enough to let her way-marks pass
unnoticed.
    But at last Stephen, who had been rowing more and more idly, ceased to row,
laid down the oars, folded his arms, and looked down on the water as if watching
the pace at which the boat glided without his help. This sudden change roused
Maggie. She looked at the far-stretching fields - at the banks close by - and
felt that they were entirely strange to her. A terrible alarm took possession of
her.
    »O, have we passed Luckreth - where we were to stop?« she exclaimed, looking
back to see if the place were out of sight. No village was to be seen. She
turned round again, with a look of distressed questioning at Stephen.
    He went on watching the water, and said, in a strange, dreamy, absent tone,
»Yes - a long way.«
    »O what shall I do?« cried Maggie, in an agony. »We shall not get home for
hours - and Lucy - O God, help me!«
    She clasped her hands and broke into a sob, like a frightened child: she
thought of nothing but of meeting Lucy, and seeing her look of pained surprise
and doubt - perhaps of just upbraiding.
    Stephen moved and sat near her, and gently drew down the clasped hands.
    »Maggie,« he said, in a deep tone of slow decision, »let us never go home
again - till no one can part us - till we are married.«
    The unusual tone, the startling words, arrested Maggie's sob, and she sat
quite still - wondering: as if Stephen might have seen some possibilities that
would alter everything, and annul the wretched facts.
    »See, Maggie, how everything has come without our seeking - in spite of all
our efforts. We never thought of being alone together again: it has all been
done by others. See how the tide is carrying us out - away from all those
unnatural bonds that we have been trying to make faster round us - and trying in
vain. It will carry us on to Torby, and we can land there, and get some
carriage, and hurry on to York and then to Scotland - and never pause a moment
till we are bound to each other, so that only death can part us. It is the only
right thing, dearest: it is the only way of escaping from this wretched
entanglement. Everything has concurred to point it out to us. We have contrived
nothing, we have thought of nothing ourselves.«
    Stephen spoke with deep, earnest pleading. Maggie listened - passing from
her startled wonderment to the yearning after that belief, that the tide was
doing it all - that she might glide along with the swift, silent stream, and not
struggle any more. But across that stealing influence came the terrible shadow
of past thoughts; and the sudden horror lest now, at last, the moment of fatal
intoxication was close upon her, called up feelings of angry resistance towards
Stephen.
    »Let me go!« she said, in an agitated tone, flashing an indignant look at
him, and trying to get her hands free. »You have wanted to deprive me of any
choice. You knew we were come too far - you have dared to take advantage of my
thoughtlessness. It is unmanly to bring me into such a position.«
    Stung by this reproach, he released her hands, moved back to his former
place, and folded his arms, in a sort of desperation at the difficulty Maggie's
words had made present to him. If she would not consent to go on, he must curse
himself for the embarrassment he had led her into. But the reproach was the
unendurable thing: the one thing worse than parting with her was, that she
should feel he had acted unworthily towards her. At last he said, in a tone of
suppressed rage -
    »I didn't notice that we had passed Luckreth till we had got to the next
village; and then it came into my mind that we would go on. I can't justify it:
I ought to have told you. It is enough to make you hate me - since you don't
love me well enough to make everything else indifferent to you, as I do you.
Shall I stop the boat, and try to get you out here? I'll tell Lucy that I was
mad - and that you hate me - and you shall be clear of me for ever. No one can
blame you, because I have behaved unpardonably to you.«
    Maggie was paralysed: it was easier to resist Stephen's pleading, than this
picture he had called up of himself suffering while she was vindicated - easier
even to turn away from his look of tenderness than from this look of angry
misery, that seemed to place her in selfish isolation from him. He had called up
a state of feeling in which the reasons which had acted on her conscience seemed
to be transmuted into mere self-regard. The indignant fire in her eyes was
quenched, and she began to look at him with timid distress. She had reproached
him for being hurried into irrevocable trespass - she, who had been so weak
herself.
    »As if I shouldn't feel what happened to you - just the same,« she said,
with reproach of another kind - the reproach of love, asking for more trust.
This yielding to the idea of Stephen's suffering was more fatal than the other
yielding, because it was less distinguishable from that sense of others' claims
which was the moral basis of her resistance.
    He felt all the relenting in her look and tone - it was heaven opening
again. He moved to her side, and took her hand, leaning his elbow on the back of
the boat, and saying nothing. He dreaded to utter another word, he dreaded to
make another movement, that might provoke another reproach or denial from her.
Life hung on her consent: everything else was hopeless, confused, sickening
misery. They glided along in this way, both resting in that silence as in a
haven, both dreading lest their feelings should be divided again - till they
became aware that the clouds had gathered, and that the slightest perceptible
freshening of the breeze was growing and growing, so that the whole character of
the day was altered.
    »You will be chill, Maggie, in this thin dress. Let me raise the cloak over
your shoulders. Get up an instant, dearest.«
    Maggie obeyed: there was an unspeakable charm in being told what to do, and
having everything decided for her. She sat down again covered with the cloak,
and Stephen took to his oars again, making haste; for they must try to get to
Torby as fast as they could. Maggie was hardly conscious of having said or done
anything decisive. All yielding is attended with a less vivid consciousness than
resistance; it is the partial sleep of thought; it is the submergence of our own
personality by another. Every influence tended to lull her into acquiescence:
that dreamy gliding in the boat, which had lasted for four hours, and had
brought some weariness and exhaustion - the recoil of her fatigued sensations
from the impracticable difficulty of getting out of the boat at this unknown
distance from home, and walking for long miles - all helped to bring her into
more complete subjection to that strong mysterious charm which made a last
parting from Stephen seem the death of all joy, and made the thought of wounding
him like the first touch of the torturing iron before which resolution shrank.
And then there was the present happiness of being with him, which was enough to
absorb all her languid energy.
    Presently Stephen observed a vessel coming after them. Several vessels,
among them the steamer to Mudport, had passed them with the early tide, but for
the last hour they had seen none. He looked more and more eagerly at this
vessel, as if a new thought had come into his mind along with it, and then he
looked at Maggie hesitatingly.
    »Maggie, dearest,« he said, at last, »if this vessel should be going to
Mudport, or to any convenient place on the coast northward, it would be our best
plan to get them to take us on board. You are fatigued - and it may soon rain -
it may be a wretched business, getting to Torby in this boat. It's only a
trading-vessel, but I daresay you can be made tolerably comfortable. We'll take
the cushions out of the boat. It is really our best plan. They'll be glad enough
to take us: I've got plenty of money about me; I can pay them well.«
    Maggie's heart began to beat with reawakened alarm at this new proposition;
but she was silent - one course seemed as difficult as another.
    Stephen hailed the vessel. It was a Dutch vessel going to Mudport, the
English mate informed him, and, if this wind held, would be there in less than
two days.
    »We had got out too far with our boat,« said Stephen. »I was trying to make
for Torby. But I'm afraid of the weather; and this lady - my wife - will be
exhausted with fatigue and hunger. Take us on board - will you? - and haul up
the boat. I'll pay you well.«
    Maggie, now really faint and trembling with fear, was taken on board, making
an interesting object of contemplation to admiring Dutchmen. The mate feared the
lady would have a poor time of it on board, for they had no accommodation for
such entirely unlooked-for passengers - no private cabin larger than an
old-fashioned church-pew. But at least they had Dutch cleanliness, which makes
all other inconveniences tolerable; and the boat-cushions were spread into a
couch for Maggie on the poop with all alacrity. But to pace up and down the deck
leaning on Stephen - being upheld by his strength - was the first change that
she needed: then came food, and then quiet reclining on the cushions, with the
sense that no new resolution could be taken that day. Everything must wait till
to-morrow. Stephen sat beside her with her hand in his; they could only speak to
each other in low tones; only look at each other now and then, for it would take
a long while to dull the curiosity of the five men on board, and reduce these
handsome young strangers to that minor degree of interest, which belongs, in a
sailor's regard, to all objects nearer than the horizon. But Stephen was
triumphantly happy. Every other thought or care was thrown into unmarked
perspective by the certainty that Maggie must be his. The leap had been taken
now: he had been tortured by scruples, he had fought fiercely with overmastering
inclination, he had hesitated; but repentance was impossible. He murmured forth
in fragmentary sentences his happiness - his adoration - his tenderness - his
belief that their life together must be heaven - that her presence with him
would give rapture to every common day - that to satisfy her lightest wish was
dearer to him than all other bliss - that everything was easy for her sake,
except to part with her, and now they never would part; he would belong to her
for ever, and all that was his was hers - had no value for him except as it was
hers. Such things, uttered in low broken tones by the one voice that has first
stirred the fibre of young passion, have only a feeble effect - on experienced
minds at a distance from them. To poor Maggie they were very near: they were
like nectar held close to thirsty lips: there was, there must be, then, a life
for mortals here below which was not hard and chill - in which affection would
no longer be self-sacrifice. Stephen's passionate words made the vision of such
a life more fully present to her than it had ever been before; and the vision
for the time excluded all realities - all except the returning sun-gleams which
broke out on the waters as the evening approached, and mingled with the
visionary sunlight of promised happiness - all except the hand that pressed
hers, and the voice that spoke to her, and the eyes that looked at her with
grave, unspeakable love.
    There was to be no rain, after all; the clouds rolled off to the horizon
again, making the great purple rampart and long purple isles of that wondrous
land which reveals itself to us when the sun goes down - the land that the
evening star watches over. Maggie was to sleep all night on the poop; it was
better than going below; and she was covered with the warmest wrappings the ship
could furnish. It was still early, when the fatigues of the day brought on a
drowsy longing for perfect rest, and she laid down her head, looking at the
faint dying flush in the west, where the one golden lamp was getting brighter
and brighter. Then she looked up at Stephen, who was still seated by her,
hanging over her as he leaned his arm against the vessel's side. Behind all the
delicious visions of these last hours, which had flowed over her like a soft
stream, and made her entirely passive, there was the dim consciousness that the
condition was a transient one, and that the morrow must bring back the old life
of struggle - that there were thoughts which would presently avenge themselves
for this oblivion. But now nothing was distinct to her: she was being lulled to
sleep with that soft stream still flowing over her, with those delicious visions
melting and fading like the wondrous aërial land of the west.
 

                                  Chapter XIV

                                     Waking

When Maggie was gone to sleep, Stephen, weary too with his unaccustomed amount
of rowing, and with the intense inward life of the last twelve hours, but too
restless to sleep, walked and lounged about the deck with his cigar far on into
midnight, not seeing the dark water - hardly conscious there were stars - living
only in the near and distant future. At last fatigue conquered restlessness, and
he rolled himself up in a piece of tarpauling on the deck near Maggie's feet.
    She had fallen asleep before nine, and had been sleeping for six hours
before the faintest hint of a midsummer daybreak was discernible. She awoke from
that vivid dreaming which makes the margin of our deeper rest: She was in a boat
on the wide water with Stephen, and in the gathering darkness something like a
star appeared, that grew and grew till they saw it was the Virgin seated in St
Ogg's boat, and it came nearer and nearer, till they saw the Virgin was Lucy and
the boatman was Philip - no, not Philip, but her brother, who rowed past without
looking at her; and she rose to stretch out her arms and call to him, and their
own boat turned over with the movement, and they began to sink, till with one
spasm of dread she seemed to awake, and find she was a child again in the
parlour at evening twilight, and Tom was not really angry. From the soothed
sense of that false waking she passed to the real waking - to the plash of water
against the vessel, and the sound of a footstep on the deck, and the awful
starlit sky. There was a moment of utter bewilderment before her mind could get
disentangled from the confused web of dreams; but soon the whole terrible truth
urged itself upon her. Stephen was not by her now: she was alone with her own
memory and her own dread. The irrevocable wrong that must blot her life had been
committed: she had brought sorrow into the lives of others - into the lives that
were knit up with hers by trust and love. The feeling of a few short weeks had
hurried her into the sins her nature had most recoiled from - breach of faith
and cruel selfishness; she had rent the ties that had given meaning to duty, and
had made herself an outlawed soul, with no guide but the wayward choice of her
own passion. And where would that lead her? - where had it led her now? She had
said she would rather die than fall into that temptation. She felt it now - now
that the consequences of such a fall had come before the outward act was
completed. There was at least this fruit from all her years of striving after
the highest and best - that her soul, though betrayed, beguiled, ensnared, could
never deliberately consent to a choice of the lower. And a choice of what? O God
- not a choice of joy, but of conscious cruelty and hardness; for could she ever
cease to see before her Lucy and Philip, with their murdered trust and hopes?
Her life with Stephen could have no sacredness: she must for ever sink and
wander vaguely, driven by uncertain impulse; for she had let go the clue of life
- that clue which once in the far-off years her young need had clutched so
strongly. She had renounced all delights then, before she knew them, before they
had come within her reach. Philip had been right when he told her that she knew
nothing of renunciation: she had thought it was quiet ecstasy; she saw it face
to face now - that sad patient loving strength which holds the clue of life -
and saw that the thorns were for ever pressing on its brow. The yesterday, which
could never be revoked - if she could have changed it now for any length of
inward silent endurance, she would have bowed beneath that cross with a sense of
rest.
    Daybreak came and the reddening eastern light, while her past life was
grasping her in this way, with that tightening clutch which comes in the last
moments of possible rescue. She could see Stephen now lying on the deck still
fast asleep, and with the sight of him there came a wave of anguish that found
its way in a long-suppressed sob. The worst bitterness of parting - the thought
that urged the sharpest inward cry for help, was the pain it must give to him.
But surmounting everything was the horror at her own possible failure, the dread
lest her conscience should be benumbed again, and not rise to energy till it was
too late. - Too late! it was too late already not to have caused misery: too
late for everything, perhaps, but to rush away from the last act of baseness -
the tasting of joys that were wrung from crushed hearts.
    The sun was rising now, and Maggie started up with the sense that a day of
resistance was beginning for her. Her eyelashes were still wet with tears, as
with her shawl over her head, she sat looking at the slowly-rounding sun.
Something roused Stephan too, and, getting up from his hard bed, he came to sit
beside her. The sharp instinct of anxious love saw something to give him alarm
in the very first glance. He had a hovering dread of some resistance in Maggie's
nature that he would be unable to overcome. He had the uneasy consciousness that
he had robbed her of perfect freedom yesterday: there was too much native honour
in him, for him not to feel that, if her will should recoil, his conduct would
have been odious, and she would have a right to reproach him.
    But Maggie did not feel that right: she was too conscious of fatal weakness
in herself - too full of the tenderness that comes with the foreseen need for
inflicting a wound. She let him take her hand when he came to sit down beside
her, and smiled at him - only with rather a sad glance; she could say nothing to
pain him till the moment of possible parting was nearer. And so they drank their
cup of coffee together, and walked about the deck, and heard the captain's
assurance that they should be in at Mudport by five o'clock, each with an inward
burden; but in him it was an undefined fear, which he trusted to the coming
hours to dissipate; in her it was a definite resolve on which she was trying
silently to tighten her hold. Stephen was continually, through the morning,
expressing his anxiety at the fatigue and discomfort she was suffering, and
alluded to landing and to the change of motion and repose she would have in a
carriage, wanting to assure himself more completely by presupposing that
everything would be as he had arranged it. For a long while Maggie contented
herself with assuring him that she had had a good night's rest, and that she
didn't mind about being on the vessel - it was not like being on the open sea -
it was only a little less pleasant than being in a boat on the Floss. But a
suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes, and Stephen became more and
more uneasy as the day advanced, under the sense that Maggie had entirely lost
her passiveness. He longed, but did not dare, to speak of their marriage - of
where they would go after it, and the steps he would take to inform his father,
and the rest, of what had happened. He longed to assure himself of a tacit
assent from her. But each time he looked at her, he gathered a stronger dread of
the new, quiet sadness with which she met his eyes. And they were more and more
silent.
    »Here we are in sight of Mudport,« he said, at last. »Now, dearest,« he
added, turning towards her with a look that was half-beseeching, »the worst part
of your fatigue is over. On the land we can command swiftness. In another hour
and a half we shall be in a chaise together - and that will seem rest to you
after this.«
    Maggie felt it was time to speak: it would only be unkind now to assent by
silence. She spoke in the lowest tone, as he had done, but with distinct
decision.
    »We shall not be together - we shall have parted.«
    The blood rushed to Stephen's face.
    »We shall not,« he said. »I'll die first.«
    It was as he had dreaded - there was a struggle coming. But neither of them
dared to say another word, till the boat was let down, and they were taken to
the landing-place. Here there was a cluster of gazers and passengers awaiting
the departure of the steamboat to St Ogg's. Maggie had a dim sense, when she had
landed, and Stephen was hurrying her along on his arm, that some one had
advanced towards her from that cluster as if he were coming to speak to her. But
she was hurried along, and was indifferent to everything but the coming trial.
    A porter guided them to the nearest inn and posting-house, and Stephen gave
the order for the chaise as they passed through the yard. Maggie took no notice
of this, and only said, »Ask them to show us into a room where we can sit down.«
    When they entered, Maggie did not sit down, and Stephen, whose face had a
desperate determination in it, was about to ring the bell, when she said, in a
firm voice: -
    »I'm not going: we must part here.«
    »Maggie,« he said, turning round towards her, and speaking in the tones of a
man who feels a process of torture beginning, »do you mean to kill me? What is
the use of it now? The whole thing is done.«
    »No, it is not done,« said Maggie. »Too much is done - more than we can ever
remove the trace of. But I will go no farther. Don't try to prevail with me
again. I couldn't choose yesterday.«
    What was he to do? He dared not go near her - her anger might leap out, and
make a new barrier. He walked backwards and forwards in maddening perplexity.
    »Maggie,« he said at last, pausing before her, and speaking in a tone of
imploring wretchedness, »have some pity - hear me - forgive me for what I did
yesterday. I will obey you now - I will do nothing without your full consent.
But don't blight our lives for ever by a rash perversity that can answer no good
purpose to any one - that can only create new evils. Sit down, dearest; wait -
think what you are going to do. Don't treat me as if you couldn't trust me.«
    He had chosen the most effective appeal; but Maggie's will was fixed
unswervingly on the coming wrench. She had made up her mind to suffer.
    »We must not wait,« she said, in a low but distinct voice; »we must part at
once.«
    »We can't part, Maggie,« said Stephen, more impetuously. »I can't bear it.
What is the use of inflicting that misery on me? the blow - whatever it may have
been - has been struck now. Will it help any one else that you should drive me
mad?«
    »I will not begin any future, even for you,« said Maggie, tremulously, »with
a deliberate consent to what ought not to have been. What I told you at Basset I
feel now: I would rather have died than fall into this temptation. It would have
been better if we had parted for ever then. But we must part now.«
    »We will not part,« Stephen burst out, instinctively placing his back
against the door - forgetting everything he had said a few moments before; »I
will not endure it. You'll make me desperate - I shan't know what I do.«
    Maggie trembled. She felt that the parting could not be effected suddenly.
She must rely on a slower appeal to Stephen's better self - she must be prepared
for a harder task than that of rushing away while resolution was fresh. She sat
down. Stephen, watching her with that look of desperation which had come over
him like a lurid light, approached slowly from the door, seated himself close
beside her, and grasped her hand. Her heart beat like the heart of a frightened
bird; but this direct opposition helped her. She felt her determination growing
stronger.
    »Remember what you felt weeks ago,« she began, with beseeching earnestness -
»remember what we both felt - that we owed ourselves to others, and must conquer
every inclination which could make us false to that debt. We have failed to keep
our resolutions; but the wrong remains the same.«
    »No, it does not remain the same,« said Stephen. »We have proved that it was
impossible to keep our resolutions. We have proved that the feeling which draws
us towards each other is too strong to be overcome: that natural law surmounts
every other; we can't help what it clashes with.«
    »It is not so, Stephen - I'm quite sure that is wrong. I have tried to think
it again and again; but I see, if we judged in that way, there would be a
warrant for all treachery and cruelty - we should justify breaking the most
sacred ties that can ever be formed on earth. If the past is not to bind us,
where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.«
    »But there are ties that can't be kept by mere resolution,« said Stephen,
starting up and walking about again. »What is outward faithfulness? Would they
have thanked us for anything so hollow as constancy without love?«
    Maggie did not answer immediately. She was undergoing an inward as well as
an outward contest. At last she said, with a passionate assertion of her
conviction, as much against herself as against him -
    »That seems right - at first; but when I look further, I'm sure it is not
right. Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing what is
easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean renouncing whatever is opposed
to the reliance others have in us - whatever would cause misery to those whom
the course of our lives has made dependent on us. If we - if I had been better,
nobler, those claims would have been so strongly present with me - I should have
felt them pressing on my heart so continually, just as they do now in the
moments when my conscience is awake - that the opposite feeling would never have
grown in me, as it has done: it would have been quenched at once - I should have
prayed for help so earnestly - I should have rushed away as we rush from hideous
danger. I feel no excuse for myself - none. I should never have failed towards
Lucy and Philip as I have done, if I had not been weak, selfish, and hard - able
to think of their pain without a pain to myself that would have destroyed all
temptation. O, what is Lucy feeling now? She believed in me - she loved me - she
was so good to me. Think of her. ...«
    Maggie's voice was getting choked as she uttered these last words.
    »I can't think of her,« said Stephen, stamping as if with pain. »I can think
of nothing but you, Maggie. You demand of a man what is impossible. I felt that
once; but I can't go back to it now. And where is the use of your thinking of
it, except to torture me? You can't save them from pain now; you can only tear
yourself from me, and make my life worthless to me. And even if we could go
back, and both fulfil our engagements - if that were possible now - it would be
hateful - horrible, to think of your ever being Philip's wife - of your ever
being the wife of a man you didn't love. We have both been rescued from a
mistake.«
    A deep flush came over Maggie's face, and she couldn't speak. Stephen saw
this. He sat down again, taking her hand in his, and looking at her with
passionate entreaty.
    »Maggie! Dearest! If you love me, you are mine. Who can have so great a
claim on you as I have? My life is bound up in your love. There is nothing in
the past that can annul our right to each other: it is the first time we have
either of us loved with our whole heart and soul.«
    Maggie was still silent for a little while - looking down. Stephen was in a
flutter of new hope: he was going to triumph. But she raised her eyes and met
his with a glance that was filled with the anguish of regret - not with
yielding.
    »No - not with my whole heart and soul, Stephen,« she said, with timid
resolution. »I have never consented to it with my whole mind. There are
memories, and affections, and longings after perfect goodness, that have such a
strong hold on me; they would never quit me for long; they would come back and
be pain to me - repentance. I couldn't live in peace if I put the shadow of a
wilful sin between myself and God. I have caused sorrow already - I know - I
feel it; but I have never deliberately consented to it: I have never said, They
shall suffer, that I may have joy. It has never been my will to marry you: if
you were to win consent from the momentary triumph of my feeling for you, you
would not have my whole soul. If I could wake back again into the time before
yesterday, I would choose to be true to my calmer affections, and live without
the joy of love.«
    Stephen loosed her hand, and, rising impatiently, walked up and down the
room in suppressed rage.
    »Good God!« he burst out, at last, »what a miserable thing a woman's love is
to a man's! I could commit crimes for you - and you can balance and choose in
that way. But you don't love me: if you had a tithe of the feeling for me that I
have for you, it would be impossible to you to think for a moment of sacrificing
me. But it weighs nothing with you that you are robbing me of my life's
happiness.«
    Maggie pressed her fingers together almost convulsively as she held them
clasped on her lap. A great terror was upon her, as if she were ever and anon
seeing where she stood by great flashes of lightning, and then again stretched
forth her hands in the darkness.
    »No - I don't sacrifice you - I couldn't sacrifice you,« she said, as soon
as she could speak again; »but I can't believe in a good for you, that I feel -
that we both feel is a wrong towards others. We can't choose happiness either
for ourselves or for another: we can't tell where that will lie. We can only
choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we
will renounce that, for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us - for the
sake of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. I know this
belief is hard: it has slipped away from me again and again; but I have felt
that if I let it go for ever, I should have no light through the darkness of
this life.«
    »But, Maggie,« said Stephen, seating himself by her again, »is it possible
you don't see that what happened yesterday has altered the whole position of
things? What infatuation is it - what obstinate prepossession that blinds you to
that? It is too late to say what we might have done or what we ought to have
done. Admitting the very worst view of what has been done, it is a fact we must
act on now; our position is altered; the right course is no longer what it was
before. We must accept our own actions and start afresh from them. Suppose we
had been married yesterday? It is nearly the same thing. The effect on others
would not have been different. It would only have made this difference to
ourselves,« Stephen added, bitterly, »that you might have acknowledged then that
your tie to me was stronger than to others.«
    Again a deep flush came over Maggie's face, and she was silent. Stephen
thought again that he was beginning to prevail - he had never yet believed that
he should not prevail: there are possibilities which our minds shrink from too
completely for us to fear them.
    »Dearest,« he said, in his deepest, tenderest tone, leaning towards her, and
putting his arm round her, »you are mine now - the world believes it - duty must
spring out of that now: in a few hours you will be legally mine, and those who
had claims on us will submit - they will see that there was a force which
declared against their claims.«
    Maggie's eyes opened wide in one terrified look at the face that was close
to hers, and she started up - pale again.
    »O, I can't do it,« she said, in a voice almost of agony - »Stephen - don't
ask me - don't urge me. I can't argue any longer - I don't know what is wise;
but my heart will not let me do it. I see - I feel their trouble now: it is as
if it were branded on my mind. I have suffered, and had no one to pity me; and
now I have made others suffer. It would never leave me; it would embitter your
love to me. I do care for Philip - in a different way: I remember all we said to
each other; I know how he thought of me as the one promise of his life. He was
given to me that I might make his lot less hard; and I have forsaken him. And
Lucy - she has been deceived - she who trusted me more than any one. I cannot
marry you: I cannot take a good for myself that has been wrung out of their
misery. It is not the force that ought to rule us - this that we feel for each
other; it would rend me away from all that my past life has made dear and holy
to me. I can't set out on a fresh life, and forget that: I must go back to it,
and cling to it, else I shall feel as if there were nothing firm beneath my
feet.«
    »Good God, Maggie!« said Stephen, rising too and grasping her arm, »you
rave. How can you go back without marrying me? You don't know what will be said,
dearest. You see nothing as it really is.«
    »Yes, I do. But they will believe me. I will confess everything. Lucy will
believe me - she will forgive you, and - and - O, some good will come by
clinging to the right. Dear, dear Stephen, let me go! - don't drag me into
deeper remorse. My whole soul has never consented - it does not consent now.«
    Stephen let go her arm, and sank back on his chair, half stunned by
despairing rage. He was silent a few moments, not looking at her; while her eyes
were turned towards him yearningly, in alarm at this sudden change. At last he
said, still without looking at her -
    »Go, then - leave me - don't torture me any longer - I can't bear it.«
    Involuntarily she leaned towards him and put out her hand to touch his. But
he shrank from it as if it had been burning iron, and said again -
    »Leave me.«
    Maggie was not conscious of a decision as she turned away from that gloomy
averted face, and walked out of the room: it was like an automatic action that
fulfils a forgotten intention. What came after? A sense of stairs descended as
if in a dream - of flagstones - of a chaise and horses standing - then a street,
and a turning into another street where a stage-coach was standing, taking in
passengers - and the darting thought that that coach would take her away,
perhaps towards home. But she could ask nothing yet; she only got into the
coach.
    Home - where her mother and brother were - Philip - Lucy - the scene of her
very cares and trials - was the haven towards which her mind tended - the
sanctuary where sacred relics lay - where she would be rescued from more
falling. The thought of Stephen was like a horrible throbbing pain, which yet,
as such pains do, seemed to urge all other thoughts into activity. But among her
thoughts, what others would say and think of her conduct was hardly present.
Love and deep pity and remorseful anguish left no room for that.
    The coach was taking her to York - farther away from home; but she did not
learn that until she was set down in the old city at midnight. It was no matter:
she could sleep there, and start home the next day. She had her purse in her
pocket, with all her money in it - a bank-note and a sovereign: she had kept it
in her pocket from forgetfulness, after going out to make purchases the day
before yesterday.
    Did she lie down in the gloomy bedroom of the old inn that night with her
will bent unwaveringly on the path of penitent sacrifice? The great struggles of
life are not so easy as that; the great problems of life are not so clear. In
the darkness of that night she saw Stephen's face turned towards her in
passionate, reproachful misery; she lived through again all the tremulous
delights of his presence with her that made existence an easy floating in a
stream of joy, instead of a quiet resolved endurance and effort. The love she
had renounced came back upon her with a cruel charm, she felt herself opening
her arms to receive it once more; and then it seemed to slip away and fade and
vanish, leaving only the dying sound of a deep thrilling voice that said, »Gone
- for ever gone.«
 

                                  Book Seventh

                                The Final Rescue

                                   Chapter I

                             The Return to the Mill

Between four and five o'clock on the afternoon of the fifth day from that on
which Stephen and Maggie had left St Ogg's, Tom Tulliver was standing on the
gravel-walk outside the old house at Dorlcote Mill. He was master there now: he
had half-fulfilled his father's dying wish, and by years of steady
self-government and energetic work he had brought himself near to the attainment
of more than the old respectability which had been the proud inheritance of the
Dodsons and Tullivers.
    But Tom's face, as he stood in the hot still sunshine of that summer
afternoon, had no gladness, no triumph in it. His mouth wore its bitterest
expression, his severe brow its hardest and deepest fold, as he drew down his
hat farther over his eyes to shelter them from the sun, and, thrusting his hands
deep into his pockets, began to walk up and down the gravel. No news of his
sister had been heard since Bob Jakin had come back in the steamer from Mudport,
and put an end to all improbable suppositions of an accident on the water by
stating that he had seen her land from a vessel with Mr. Stephen Guest. Would
the next news be that she was married - or what? Probably that she was not
married: Tom's mind was set to the expectation of the worst that could happen -
not death, but disgrace.
    As he was walking with his back towards the entrance gate, and his face
towards the rushing mill-stream, a tall dark-eyed figure, that we know well,
approached the gate, and paused to look at him, with a fast-beating heart. Her
brother was the human being of whom she had been most afraid, from her childhood
upwards: afraid with that fear which springs in us when we love one who is
inexorable, unbending, unmodifiable - with a mind that we can never mould
ourselves upon, and yet that we cannot endure to alienate from us. That
deep-rooted fear was shaking Maggie now; but her mind was unswervingly bent on
returning to her brother, as the natural refuge that had been given her. In her
deep humiliation under the retrospect of her own weakness - in her anguish at
the injury she had inflicted - she almost desired to endure the severity of
Tom's reproof, to submit in patient silence to that harsh disapproving judgment
against which she had so often rebelled: it seemed no more than just to her now
- who was weaker than she was? She craved that outward help to her better
purpose which would come from complete, submissive confession - from being in
the presence of those whose looks and words would be a reflection of her own
conscience.
    Maggie had been kept on her bed at York for a day with that prostrating
headache which was likely to follow on the terrible strain of the previous day
and night. There was an expression of physical pain still about her brow and
eyes, and her whole appearance, with her dress so long unchanged, was worn and
distressed. She lifted the latch of the gate and walked in - slowly. Tom did not
hear the gate; he was just then close upon the roaring dam: but he presently
turned, and, lifting up his eyes, saw the figure whose worn look and loneliness
seemed to him a confirmation of his worst conjectures. He paused, trembling and
white with disgust and indignation.
    Maggie paused too - three yards before him. She felt the hatred in his face:
felt it rushing through her fibres; but she must speak.
    »Tom,« she began, faintly, »I am come back to you - I am come back home -
for refuge - to tell you everything.«
    »You will find no home with me,« he answered, with tremulous rage. »You have
disgraced us all. You have disgraced my father's name. You have been a curse to
your best friends. You have been base - deceitful; no motives are strong enough
to restrain you. I wash my hands of you for ever. You don't belong to me.«
    Their mother had come to the door now. She stood paralysed by the double
shock of seeing Maggie and hearing Tom's words.
    »Tom,« said Maggie, with more courage, »I am perhaps not so guilty as you
believe me to be. I never meant to give way to my feelings. I struggled against
them. I was carried too far in the boat to come back on Tuesday. I came back as
soon as I could.«
    »I can't believe in you any more,« said Tom, gradually passing from the
tremulous excitement of the first moment to cold inflexibility. »You have been
carrying on a clandestine relation with Stephen Guest - as you did before with
another. He went to see you at my aunt Moss's; you walked alone with him in the
lanes; you must have behaved as no modest girl would have done to her cousin's
lover, else that could never have happened. The people at Luckreth saw you pass
- you passed all the other places; you knew what you were doing. You have been
using Philip Wakem as a screen to deceive Lucy - the kindest friend you ever
had. Go and see the return you have made her: she's ill - unable to speak - my
mother can't go near her, lest she should remind her of you.«
    Maggie was half stunned - too heavily pressed upon by her anguish even to
discern any difference between her actual guilt and her brother's accusations,
still less to vindicate herself.
    »Tom,« she said, crushing her hands together under her cloak, in the effort
to speak again. »Whatever I have done, I repent it bitterly. I want to make
amends. I will endure anything. I want to be kept from doing wrong again.«
    »What will keep you?« said Tom, with cruel bitterness. »Not religion; not
your natural feelings of gratitude and honour. And he - he would deserve to be
shot, if it were not -- But you are ten times worse than he is. I loathe your
character and your conduct. You struggled with your feelings, you say. Yes! I
have had feelings to struggle with; but I conquered them. I have had a harder
life than you have had; but I have found my comfort in doing my duty. But I will
sanction no such character as yours: the world shall know that I feel the
difference between right and wrong. If you are in want, I will provide for you -
let my mother know. But you shall not come under my roof. It is enough that I
have to bear the thought of your disgrace: the sight of you is hateful to me.«
    Slowly Maggie was turning away with despair in her heart. But the poor
frightened mother's love leaped out now, stronger than all dread.
    »My child! I'll go with you. You've got a mother.«
    O the sweet rest of that embrace to the heart-stricken Maggie! More helpful
than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
    Tom turned and walked into the house.
    »Come in, my child,« Mrs. Tulliver whispered. »He'll let you stay and sleep
in my bed. He won't deny that, if I ask him.«
    »No, mother,« said Maggie, in a low tone, like a moan. »I will never go in.«
    »Then wait for me outside. I'll get ready and come with you.«
    When his mother appeared with her bonnet on, Tom came out to her in the
passage, and put money into her hands.
    »My house is yours, mother, always,« he said. »You will come and let me know
everything you want - you will come back to me.«
    Poor Mrs. Tulliver took the money, too frightened to say anything. The only
thing clear to her was the mother's instinct, that she would go with her unhappy
child.
    Maggie was waiting outside the gate; she took her mother's hand, and they
walked a little way in silence.
    »Mother,« said Maggie, at last, »we will go to Luke's cottage. Luke will
take me in. He was very good to me when I was a little girl.«
    »He's got no room for us, my dear, now; his wife's got so many children. I
don't know where to go, if it isn't to one o' your aunts; and I hardly durst,«
said poor Mrs. Tulliver, quite destitute of mental resources in this extremity.
    Maggie was silent a little while, and then said -
    »Let us go to Bob Jakin's, mother: his wife will have room for us, if they
have no other lodger.«
    So they went on their way to St Ogg's - to the old house by the river-side.
    Bob himself was at home, with a heaviness at heart which resisted even the
new joy and pride of possessing a two months' old baby, quite the liveliest of
its age that had ever been born to prince or packman. He would perhaps not so
thoroughly have understood all the dubiousness of Maggie's appearance with Mr.
Stephen Guest on the quay at Mudport, if he had not witnessed the effect it
produced on Tom when he went to report it; and since then, the circumstances
which in any case gave a disastrous character to her elopement, had passed
beyond the more polite circles of St Ogg's, and had become matter of common
talk, accessible to the grooms and errand-boys. So that when he opened the door
and saw Maggie standing before him in her sorrow and weariness, he had no
questions to ask, except one, which he dared only ask himself, Where was Mr.
Stephen Guest? Bob, for his part, hoped he might be in the warmest department of
an asylum understood to exist in the other world for gentlemen who are likely to
be in fallen circumstances there.
    The lodgings were vacant, and both Mrs. Jakin the larger and Mrs. Jakin the
less were commanded to make all things comfortable for »the old Missis and the
young Miss« - alas! that she was still »Miss.« The ingenious Bob was sorely
perplexed as to how this result could have come about - how Mr. Stephen Guest
could have gone away from her, or could have let her go away from him, when he
had the chance of keeping her with him. But he was silent, and would not allow
his wife to ask him a question; would not present himself in the room, lest it
should appear like intrusion and a wish to pry; having the same chivalry towards
dark-eyed Maggie, as in the days when he had bought her the memorable present of
books.
    But after a day or two Mrs. Tulliver was gone to the Mill again for a few
hours to see to Tom's household matters. Maggie had wished this: after the first
violent outburst of feeling, which came as soon as she had no longer any active
purpose to fulfil, she was less in need of her mother's presence; she even
desired to be alone with her grief. But she had been solitary only a little
while in the old sitting-room that looked on the river, when there came a tap at
the door, and turning round her sad face as she said, »Come in,« she saw Bob
enter with the baby in his arms and Mumps at his heels.
    »We'll go back, if it disturbs you, Miss,« said Bob.
    »No,« said Maggie, in a low voice, wishing she could smile.
    Bob, closing the door behind him, came and stood before her.
    »You see, we've got a little un, Miss, and I wanted you to look at it, and
take it in your arms, if you'd be so good. For we made free to name it after
you, and it 'ud be better for your taken' a bit o' notice on it.«
    Maggie could not speak, but she put out her arms to receive the tiny baby,
while Mumps snuffed at it anxiously, to ascertain that this transference was all
right. Maggie's heart had swelled at this action and speech of Bob's: she knew
well enough that it was a way he had chosen to show his sympathy and respect.
    »Sit down, Bob,« she said presently, and he sat down in silence, finding his
tongue unmanageable in quite a new fashion, refusing to say what he wanted it to
say.
    »Bob,« she said, after a few moments, looking down at the baby, and holding
it anxiously, as if she feared it might slip from her mind and her fingers, »I
have a favour to ask of you.«
    »Don't you speak so, Miss,« said Bob, grasping the skin of Mumps's neck; »if
there's anything I can do for you, I should look upon it as a day's earnings.«
    »I want you to go to Dr Kenn's, and ask to speak to him, and tell him that I
am here, and should be very grateful if he would come to me while my mother is
away. She will not come back till evening.«
    »Eh, Miss - I'd do it in a minute - it is but a step; but Dr Kenn's wife
lies dead - she's to be buried to-morrow - died the day I come from Mudport.
It's all the more pity she should ha' died just now, if you want him. I hardly
like to go a-nigh him yet.«
    »O, no, Bob,« said Maggie, »we must let it be - till after a few days,
perhaps - when you hear that he is going about again. But perhaps he may be
going out of town - to a distance,« she added, with a new sense of despondency
at this idea.
    »Not he, Miss,« said Bob. »He'll none go away. He isn't one o' them
gentlefolks as go to cry at waterin'-places when their wives die: he's got
summat else to do. He looks fine an' sharp after the parish - he does. He
christened the little un; an' he was at me to know what I did of a Sunday, as I
didn't come to church. But I told him I was upo' the travel three parts o' the
Sundays - an' then I'm so used to bein' on my legs, I can't sit so long on end -
an' lors, sir, says I, a packman can do wi' a small 'lowance o' church: it
tastes strong, says I; there's no call to lay it on thick. Eh, Miss, how good
the little un is wi' you! It's like as if it knew you: it partly does, I'll be
bound - like the birds know the mornin'.«
    Bob's tongue was now evidently loosed from its unwonted bon-age, and might
even be in danger of doing more work than was required of it. But the subjects
on which he longed to be informed were so steep and difficult of approach, that
his tongue was likely to run on along the level rather than to carry him on that
unbeaten road. He felt this, and was silent again for a little while, ruminating
much on the possible forms in which he might put a question. At last he said, in
a more timid voice than usual, -
    »Will you give me leave to ask you only one thing, Miss?«
    Maggie was rather startled, but she answered, »Yes, Bob, if it is about
myself - not about any one else.«
    »Well, Miss, it's this: Do you owe anybody a grudge?«
    »No, not any one,« said Maggie, looking up at him inquiringly. »Why?«
    »O, lors, Miss,« said Bob, pinching Mumps's neck harder than ever, »I wish
you did - an' 'ud tell me - I'd leather him till I couldn't see - I would - an'
the Justice might do what he liked to me arter.«
    »O, Bob,« said Maggie, smiling faintly, »you're a very good friend to me.
But I shouldn't like to punish any one, even if they'd done me wrong; I've done
wrong myself too often.«
    This view of things was puzzling to Bob, and threw more obscurity than ever
over what could possibly have happened between Stephen and Maggie. But further
questions would have been too intrusive, even if he could have framed them
suitably, and he was obliged to carry baby away again to an expectant mother.
    »Happen you'd like Mumps for company, Miss,« he said when he had taken the
baby again. »He's rare company - Mumps is - he knows iverything, an' makes no
bother about it. If I tell him, he'll lie before you an' watch you - as still -
just as he watches my pack. You'd better let me leave him a bit; he'll get fond
on you. Lors, it's a fine thing to have a dumb brute fond on you; it'll stick to
you, an' make no jaw.«
    »Yes, do leave him, please,« said Maggie. »I think I should like to have
Mumps for a friend.«
    »Mumps, lie down there,« said Bob, pointing to a place in front of Maggie,
»an' niver do you stir till you're spoke to.«
    Mumps lay down at once, and made no sign of restlessness when his master
left the room.
 

                                   Chapter II

                            St Ogg's Passes judgement

It was soon known throughout St Ogg's that Miss Tulliver was come back: she had
not, then, eloped in order to be married to Mr. Stephen Guest - at all events,
Mr. Stephen Guest had not married her - which came to the same thing, so far as
her culpability was concerned. We judge others according to results; how else? -
not knowing the process by which results are arrived at. If Miss Tulliver, after
a few months of well-chosen travel, had returned as Mrs. Stephen Guest - with a
post-marital trousseau, and all the advantages possessed even by the most
unwelcome wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St Ogg's, as elsewhere,
always knew what to think, would have judged in strict consistency with those
results. Public opinion, in these cases, is always of the feminine gender - not
the world, but the world's wife: and she would have seen, that two handsome
young people - the gentleman of quite the first family in St Ogg's - having
found themselves in a false position, had been led into a course which, to say
the least of it, was highly injudicious, and productive of sad pain and
disappointment, especially to that sweet young thing, Miss Deane. Mr. Stephen
Guest had certainly not behaved well; but then, young men were liable to those
sudden infatuated attachments; and bad as it might seem in Mrs. Stephen Guest to
admit the faintest advances from her cousin's lover (indeed it had been said
that she was actually engaged to young Wakem - old Wakem himself had mentioned
it), still she was very young - »and a deformed young man, you know! - and young
Guest so very fascinating; and, they say, he positively worships her (to be
sure, that can't last!) and he ran away with her in the boat quite against her
will - and what could she do? She couldn't come back then: no one would have
spoken to her; and how very well that maize-coloured satinette becomes her
complexion! It seems as if the folds in front were quite come in; several of her
dresses are made so; - they say he thinks nothing too handsome to buy for her.
Poor Miss Deane! She is very pitiable; but then, there was no positive
engagement; and the air at the coast will do her good. After all, if young Guest
felt no more for her than that, it was better for her not to marry him. What a
wonderful marriage for a girl like Miss Tulliver - quite romantic! Why, young
Guest will put up for the borough at the next election. Nothing like commerce
nowadays! That young Wakem nearly went out of his mind - he always was rather
queer; but he's gone abroad again to be out of the way - quite the best thing
for a deformed young man. Miss Unit declares she will never visit Mr. and Mrs.
Stephen Guest - such nonsense! pretending to be better than other people.
Society couldn't be carried on if we inquired into private conduct in that way -
and Christianity tells us to think no evil - and my belief is, that Miss Unit
had no cards sent her.«
    But the results, we know, were not of a kind to warrant this extenuation of
the past. Maggie had returned without a trousseau, without a husband - in that
degraded and outcast condition to which error is well known to lead; and the
world's wife, with that fine instinct which is given her for the preservation of
Society, saw at once that Miss Tulliver's conduct had been of the most
aggravated kind. Could anything be more detestable? A girl so much indebted to
her friends - whose mother as well as herself had received so much kindness from
the Deanes - to lay the design of winning a young man's affections away from her
own cousin, who had behaved like a sister to her! Winning his affections? That
was not the phrase for such a girl as Miss Tulliver: it would have been more
correct to say that she had been actuated by mere unwomanly boldness and
unbridled passion. There was always something questionable about her. That
connection with young Wakem, which, they said, had been carried on for years,
looked very ill - disgusting, in fact! But with a girl of that disposition! - To
the world's wife there had always been something in Miss Tulliver's very
physique that a refined instinct felt to be prophetic of harm. As for poor Mr.
Stephen Guest, he was rather pitiable than otherwise: a young man of
five-and-twenty is not to be too severely judged in these cases - he is really
very much at the mercy of a designing bold girl. And it was clear that he had
given way in spite of himself: he had shaken her off as soon as he could;
indeed, their having parted so soon looked very black indeed - for her. To be
sure, he had written a letter, laying all the blame on himself, and telling the
story in a romantic fashion so as to try and make her appear quite innocent: of
course he would do that! But the refined instinct of the world's wife was not to
be deceived: providentially! - else what would become of Society? Why, her own
brother had turned her from his door: he had seen enough, you might be sure,
before he would do that. A truly respectable young man - Mr. Tom Tulliver: quite
likely to rise in the world! His sister's disgrace was naturally a heavy blow to
him. It was to be hoped that she would go out of the neighbourhood - to America,
or anywhere - so as to purify the air of St Ogg's from the taint of her
presence, extremely dangerous to daughters there! No good could happen to her:
it was only to be hoped she would repent, and that God would have mercy on her:
He had not the care of Society on His hands - as the world's wife had.
    It required nearly a fortnight for fine instinct to assure itself of these
inspirations; indeed, it was a whole week before Stephen's letter came, telling
his father the facts, and adding that he was gone across to Holland - had drawn
upon the agent at Mudport for money - was incapable of any resolution at
present.
    Maggie, all this while, was too entirely filled with a more agonising
anxiety to spend any thought on the view that was being taken of her conduct by
the world of St Ogg's: anxiety about Stephen - Lucy - Philip - beat on her poor
heart in a hard, driving, ceaseless storm of mingled love, remorse, and pity. If
she had thought of rejection and injustice at all, it would have seemed to her
that they had done their worst - that she could hardly feel any stroke from them
intolerable since the words she had heard from her brother's lips. Across all
her anxiety for the loved and the injured, those words shot again and again,
like a horrible pang that would have brought misery and dread even into a heaven
of delights. The idea of ever recovering happiness never glimmered in her mind
for a moment; it seemed as if every sensitive fibre in her were too entirely
preoccupied by pain ever to vibrate again to another influence. Life stretched
before her as one act of penitence, and all she craved, as she dwelt on her
future lot, was something to guarantee her from more falling: her own weakness
haunted her like a vision of hideous possibilities, that made no peace
conceivable except such as lay in the sense of a sure refuge.
    But she was not without practical intentions: the love of independence was
too strong an inheritance and a habit for her not to remember that she must get
her bread; and when other projects looked vague, she fell back on that of
returning to her plain sewing, and so getting enough to pay for her lodging at
Bob's. She meant to persuade her mother to return to the Mill by-and-by, and
live with Tom again; and somehow or other she would maintain herself at St
Ogg's. Dr Kenn would perhaps help her and advise her. She remembered his parting
words at the bazaar. She remembered the momentary feeling of reliance that had
sprung in her when he was talking with her, and she waited with yearning
expectation for the opportunity of confiding everything to him. Her mother
called every day at Mr. Deane's to learn how Lucy was: the report was always sad
- nothing had yet roused her from the feeble passivity which had come on with
the first shock. But of Philip, Mrs. Tulliver had learned nothing: naturally, no
one whom she met would speak to her about what related to her daughter. But at
last she summoned courage to go and see sister Glegg, who of course would know
everything, and had been even to see Tom at the Mill in Mrs. Tulliver's absence,
though he had said nothing of what had passed on the occasion.
    As soon as her mother was gone, Maggie put on her bonnet. She had resolved
on walking to the Rectory and asking to see Dr Kenn: he was in deep grief - but
the grief of another does not jar upon us in such circumstances. It was the
first time she had been beyond the door since her return; nevertheless her mind
was so bent on the purpose of her walk, that the unpleasantness of meeting
people on the way, and being stared at, did not occur to her. But she had no
sooner passed beyond the narrower streets which she had to thread from Bob's
dwelling, than she became aware of unusual glances cast at her; and this
consciousness made her hurry along nervously, afraid to look to right or left.
Presently, however, she came full on Mrs. and Miss Turnbull, old acquaintances
of her family; they both looked at her strangely, and turned a little aside
without speaking. All hard looks were pain to Maggie, but her self-reproach was
too strong for resentment: no wonder they will not speak to me, she thought -
they are very fond of Lucy. But now she knew that she was about to pass a group
of gentlemen, who were standing at the door of the billiard-rooms, and she could
not help seeing young Torry step out a little with his glass at his eye, and bow
to her with that air of nonchalance which he might have bestowed on a friendly
bar-maid. Maggie's pride was too intense for her not to feel that sting, even in
the midst of her sorrow; and for the first time the thought took strong hold of
her that she would have other obloquy cast on her besides that which was felt to
be due to her breach of faith towards Lucy. But she was at the Rectory now;
there, perhaps, she would find something else than retribution. Retribution may
come from any voice: the hardest, cruelest, most imbruted urchin at the
street-corner can inflict it: surely help and pity are rarer things - more
needful for the righteous to bestow.
    She was shown up at once, after being announced, into Dr Kenn's study, where
he sat amongst piled-up books, for which he had little appetite, leaning his
cheek against the head of his youngest child, a girl of three. The child was
sent away with the servant, and when the door was closed, Dr Kenn said, placing
a chair for Maggie, -
    »I was coming to see you, Miss Tulliver; you have anticipated me; I am glad
you did.«
    Maggie looked at him with her childlike directness as she had done at the
bazaar, and said, »I want to tell you everything.« But her eyes filled fast with
tears as she said it, and all the pent-up excitement of her humiliating walk
would have its vent before she could say more.
    »Do tell me everything,« Dr Kenn said, with quiet kindness in his grave firm
voice. »Think of me as one to whom a long experience has been granted, which may
enable him to help you.«
    In rather broken sentences, and with some effort at first, but soon with the
greater ease that came from a sense of relief in the confidence, Maggie told the
brief story of a struggle that must be the beginning of a long sorrow. Only the
day before, Dr Kenn had been made acquainted with the contents of Stephen's
letter, and he had believed them at once, without the confirmation of Maggie's
statement. That involuntary plaint of hers, »O, I must go,« had remained with
him as the sign that she was undergoing some inward conflict.
    Maggie dwelt the longest on the feeling which had made her come back to her
mother and brother, which made her cling to all the memories of the past. When
she had ended, Dr Kenn was silent for some minutes: there was a difficulty on
his mind. He rose, and walked up and down the hearth with his hands behind him.
At last he seated himself again, and said, looking at Maggie -
    »Your prompting to go to your nearest friends - to remain where all the ties
of your life have been formed - is a true prompting, to which the Church in its
original constitution and discipline responds - opening its arms to the penitent
- watching over its children to the last - never abandoning them until they are
hopelessly reprobate. And the Church ought to represent the feeling of the
community, so that every parish should be a family knit together by Christian
brotherhood under a spiritual father. But the ideas of discipline and Christian
fraternity are entirely relaxed - they can hardly be said to exist in the public
mind: they hardly survive except in the partial, contradictory form they have
taken in the narrow communities of schismatics; and if I were not supported by
the firm faith that the Church must ultimately recover the full force of that
constitution which is alone fitted to human needs, I should often lose heart at
observing the want of fellowship and sense of mutual responsibility among my own
flock. At present everything seems tending towards the relaxation of ties -
towards the substitution of wayward choice for the adherence to obligation,
which has its roots in the past. Your conscience and your heart have given you
true light on this point, Miss Tulliver; and I have said all this that you may
know what my wish about you - what my advice to you - would be, if they sprang
from my own feeling and opinion unmodified by counteracting circumstances.«
    Dr Kenn paused a little while. There was an entire absence of effusive
benevolence in his manner; there was something almost cold in the gravity of his
look and voice. If Maggie had not known that his benevolence was persevering in
proportion to its reserve, she might have been chilled and frightened. As it
was, she listened expectantly, quite sure that there would be some effective
help in his words. He went on.
    »Your inexperience of the world, Miss Tulliver, prevents you from
anticipating fully the very unjust conceptions that will probably be formed
concerning your conduct - conceptions which will have a baneful effect, even in
spite of known evidence to disprove them.«
    »O, I do - I begin to see,« said Maggie, unable to repress this utterance of
her recent pain. »I know I shall be insulted: I shall be thought worse than I
am.«
    »You perhaps do not yet know,« said Dr Kenn, with a touch of more personal
pity, »that a letter is come which ought to satisfy every one who has known
anything of you, that you chose the steep and difficult path of a return to the
right, at the moment when that return was most of all difficult.«
    »Oh - where is he?« said poor Maggie, with a flush and tremor that no
presence could have hindered.
    »He is gone abroad: he has written of all that passed to his father. He has
vindicated you to the utmost; and I hope the communication of that letter to
your cousin will have a beneficial effect on her.«
    Dr Kenn waited for her to get calm again before he went on.
    »That letter, as I said, ought to suffice to prevent false impressions
concerning you. But I am bound to tell you, Miss Tulliver, that not only the
experience of my whole life, but my observation within the last three days,
makes me fear that there is hardly any evidence which will save you from the
painful effect of false imputations. The persons who are the most incapable of a
conscientious struggle such as yours, are precisely those who will be likely to
shrink from you; because they will not believe in your struggle. I fear your
life here will be attended not only with much pain, but with many obstructions.
For this reason - and for this only - I ask you to consider whether it will not
perhaps be better for you to take a situation at a distance, according to your
former intention. I will exert myself at once to obtain one for you.«
    »O, if I could but stop here!« said Maggie. »I have no heart to begin a
strange life again. I should have no stay. I should feel like a lonely wanderer
- cut off from the past. I have written to the lady who offered me a situation
to excuse myself. If I remained here, I could perhaps atone in some way to Lucy
- to others: I could convince them that I'm sorry. And,« she added, with some of
the old proud fire flashing out, »I will not go away because people say false
things of me. They shall learn to retract them. If I must go away at last,
because - because others wish it, I will not go now.«
    »Well,« said Dr Kenn, after some consideration, »if you determine on that,
Miss Tulliver, you may rely on all the influence my position gives me. I am
bound to aid and countenance you by the very duties of my office as a parish
priest. I will add, that personally I have a deep interest in your peace of mind
and welfare.«
    »The only thing I want is some occupation that will enable me to get my
bread and be independent,« said Maggie. »I shall not want much. I can go on
lodging where I am.«
    »I must think over the subject maturely,« said Dr Kenn, »and in a few days I
shall be better able to ascertain the general feeling. I shall come to see you:
I shall bear you constantly in mind.«
    When Maggie had left him, Dr Kenn stood ruminating with his hands behind
him, and his eyes fixed on the carpet, under a painful sense of doubt and
difficulty. The tone of Stephen's letter, which he had read, and the actual
relations of all the persons concerned, forced upon him powerfully the idea of
an ultimate marriage between Stephen and Maggie as the least evil; and the
impossibility of their proximity in St Ogg's on any other supposition, until
after years of separation, threw an insurmountable prospective difficulty over
Maggie's stay there. On the other hand, he entered with all the comprehension of
a man who had known spiritual conflict, and lived through years of devoted
service to his fellow-men, into that state of Maggie's heart and conscience
which made the consent to the marriage a desecration to her: her conscience must
not be tampered with: the principle on which she had acted was a safer guide
than any balancing of consequences. His experience told him that intervention
was too dubious a responsibility to be lightly incurred: the possible issue
either of an endeavour to restore the former relations with Lucy and Philip, or
of counselling submission to this irruption of a new feeling, was hidden in a
darkness all the more impenetrable because each immediate step was clogged with
evil.
    The great problem of the shifting relation between passion and duty is clear
to no man who is capable of apprehending it: the question whether the moment has
come in which a man has fallen below the possibility of a renunciation that will
carry any efficacy, and must accept the sway of a passion against which he had
struggled as a trespass, is one for which we have no master-key that will fit
all cases. The casuists have become a byword of reproach; but their perverted
spirit of minute discrimination was the shadow of a truth to which eyes and
hearts are too often fatally sealed - the truth, that moral judgments must
remain false and hollow, unless they are checked and enlightened by a perpetual
reference to the special circumstances that mark the individual lot.
    All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the men
of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity of
our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to lace ourselves up in
formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations
that spring from growing insight and sympathy. And the man of maxims is the
popular representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment
solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice by a
ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting patience,
discrimination, impartiality - without any care to assure themselves whether
they have the insight that comes from a hardly-earned estimate of temptation, or
from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with
all that is human.
 

                                  Chapter III

          Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us

When Maggie was at home again, her mother brought her news of an unexpected line
of conduct in aunt Glegg. As long as Maggie had not been heard of, Mrs. Glegg
had half-closed her shutters and drawn down her blinds: she felt assured that
Maggie was drowned: that was far more probable than that her niece and legatee
should have done anything to wound the family honour in the tenderest point.
When, at last, she learned from Tom that Maggie had come home, and gathered from
him what was her explanation of her absence, she burst forth in severe reproof
of Tom for admitting the worst of his sister until he was compelled. If you were
not to stand by your »kin« as long as there was a shred of honour attributable
to them, pray what were you to stand by? Lightly to admit conduct in one of your
own family that would force you to alter your will, had never been the way of
the Dodsons; and though Mrs. Glegg had always augured ill of Maggie's future at
a time when other people were perhaps less clear-sighted, yet fair-play was a
jewel, and it was not for her own friends to help to rob the girl of her fair
fame, and to cast her out from family shelter to the scorn of the outer world,
until she had become unequivocally a family disgrace. The circumstances were
unprecedented in Mrs. Glegg's experience - nothing of that kind had happened
among the Dodsons before; but it was a case in which her hereditary rectitude
and personal strength of character found a common channel along with her
fundamental ideas of clanship, as they did in her lifelong regard to equity in
money matters. She quarrelled with Mr. Glegg, whose kindness, flowing entirely
into compassion for Lucy, made him as hard in his judgment of Maggie as Mr.
Deane himself was; and, fuming against her sister Tulliver because she did not
at once come to her for advice and help, shut herself up in her own room with
Baxter's »Saints' Rest« from morning till night, denying herself to all
visitors, till Mr. Glegg brought from Mr. Deane the news of Stephen's letter.
Then Mrs. Glegg felt that she had adequate fighting-ground - then she laid aside
Baxter, and was ready to meet all comers. While Mrs. Pullet could do nothing but
shake her head and cry, and wish that cousin Abbot had died, or any number of
funerals had happened rather than this, which had never happened before, so that
there was no knowing how to act, and Mrs. Pullet could never enter St Ogg's
again, because »acquaintances« knew of it all, - Mrs. Glegg only hoped that Mrs.
Wooll, or any one else, would come to her with their false tales about her own
niece, and she would know what to say to that ill-advised person!
    Again she had a scene of remonstrance with Tom, all the more severe in
proportion to the greater strength of her present position. But Tom, like other
immovable things, seemed only the more rigidly fixed under that attempt to shake
him. Poor Tom! he judged by what he had been able to see; and the judgment was
painful enough to himself. He thought he had the demonstration of facts observed
through years by his own eyes which gave no warning of their imperfection, that
Maggie's nature was utterly untrustworthy, and too strongly marked with evil
tendencies to be safely treated with leniency: he would act on that
demonstration at any cost; but the thought of it made his days bitter to him.
Tom, like every one of us, was imprisoned within the limits of his own nature,
and his education had simply glided over him, leaving a slight deposit of
polish: if you are inclined to be severe on his severity, remember that the
responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision. There had
arisen in Tom a repulsion towards Maggie that derived its very intensity from
their early childish love in the time when they had clasped tiny fingers
together, and their later sense of nearness in a common duty and a common
sorrow: the sight of her, as he had told her, was hateful to him. In this branch
of the Dodson family aunt Glegg found a stronger nature than her own - a nature
in which family feeling had lost the character of clanship by taking on a doubly
deep dye of personal pride. Mrs. Glegg allowed that Maggie ought to be punished
- she was not a woman to deny that - she knew what conduct was; but punished in
proportion to the misdeeds proved against her, not to those which were cast upon
her by people outside her own family, who might wish to show that their own kin
were better.
    »Your aunt Glegg scolded me so as niver was, my dear,« said poor Mrs.
Tulliver, when she came back to Maggie, »as I didn't go to her before - she said
it wasn't't for her to come to me first. But she spoke like a sister, too: having
she allays was, and hard to please - O dear! - but she's said the kindest word
as has ever been spoke by you yet, my child. For she says, for all she's been so
set again' having one extry in the house, and making extry spoons and things,
and putting her about in her ways, you shall have a shelter in her house, if
you'll go to her dutiful, and she'll uphold you against folks as say harm of you
when they've no call. And I told her I thought you couldn't bear to see anybody
but me, you were so beat down with trouble; but she said, I won't throw ill
words at her - there's them out o' th' family 'ull be ready enough to do that.
But I'll give her good advice; an' she must be humble. It's wonderful o' Jane;
for I'm sure she used to throw everything I did wrong at me - if it was the
raisin wine as turned out bad, or the pies too hot - or whativer it was.«
    »O mother,« said poor Maggie, shrinking from the thought of all the contact
her bruised mind would have to bear, »tell her I'm very grateful - I'll go to
see her as soon as I can; but I can't see any one just yet, except Dr Kenn. I've
been to him - he will advise me, and help me to get some occupation. I can't
live with any one, or be dependent on them, tell aunt Glegg; I must get my own
bread. But did you hear nothing of Philip - Philip Wakem? Have you never seen
any one that has mentioned him?«
    »No, my dear: but I've been to Lucy's, and I saw your uncle, and he says
they got her to listen to the letter, and she took notice o' Miss Guest, and
asked questions, and the doctor thinks she's on the turn to be better. What a
world this is - what trouble, O dear! The law was the first beginning, an' it's
gone from bad to worse, all of a sudden, just when the luck seemed on the turn.«
This was the first lamentation that Mrs. Tulliver had let slip to Maggie, but
old habit had been revived by the interview with sister Glegg.
    »My poor, poor mother!« Maggie burst out, cut to the heart with pity and
compunction, and throwing her arms round her mother's neck, »I was always
naughty and troublesome to you. And now you might have been happy if it hadn't
been for me.«
    »Eh, my dear,« said Mrs. Tulliver, leaning towards the warm young cheek; »I
must put up wi' my children - I shall never have no more; and if they bring me
bad luck, I must be fond on it - there's nothing else much to be fond on, for my
furnitur' went long ago. And you'd got to be very good once; I can't think how
it's turned out the wrong way so!«
    Still two or three more days passed, and Maggie heard nothing of Philip;
anxiety about him was becoming her predominant trouble, and she summoned courage
at last to inquire about him of Dr Kenn, on his next visit to her. He did not
even know if Philip was at home. The elder Wakem was made moody by an
accumulation of annoyance: the disappointment in this young Jetsome, to whom,
apparently, he was a good deal attached, had been followed close by the
catastrophe to his son's hopes after he had done violence to his own strong
feeling by conceding to them, and had incautiously mentioned this concession in
St Ogg's - and he was almost fierce in his brusqueness when any one asked him a
question about his son. But Philip could hardly have been ill, or it would have
been known through the calling in of the medical man; it was probable that he
was gone out of the town for a little while. Maggie sickened under this
suspense, and her imagination began to live more and more persistently in what
Philip was enduring. What did he believe about her?
    At last Bob brought her a letter, without a post-mark, directed in a hand
which she knew familiarly in the letters of her own name - a hand in which her
name had been written long ago, in a pocket Shakespeare which she possessed. Her
mother was in the room, and Maggie, in violent agitation, hurried up-stairs that
she might read the letter in solitude. She read it with a throbbing brow.
 
        »Maggie, - I believe in you - I know you never meant to deceive me - I
        know you tried to keep faith to me, and to all. I believed this before I
        had any other evidence of it than your own nature. The night after I
        last parted from you I suffered torments. I had seen what convinced me
        that you were not free; that there was another whose presence had a
        power over you which mine never possessed; but through all the
        suggestions - almost murderous suggestions - of rage and jealousy, my
        mind made its way to belief in your truthfulness. I was sure that you
        meant to cleave to me, as you had said; that you had rejected him; that
        you struggled to renounce him, for Lucy's sake and for mine. But I could
        see no issue that was not fatal for you; and that dread shut out the
        very thought of resignation. I foresaw that he would not relinquish you,
        and I believed then, as I believe now, that the strong attraction which
        drew you together proceeded only from one side of your characters, and
        belonged to that partial, divided action of our nature which makes half
        the tragedy of the human lot. I have felt the vibration of chords in
        your nature that I have continually felt the want of in his. But perhaps
        I am wrong; perhaps I feel about you as the artist does about the scene
        over which his soul has brooded with love: he would tremble to see it
        confided to other hands; he would never believe that it could bear for
        another all the meaning and the beauty it bears for him.
            I dared not trust myself to see you that morning; I was filled with
        selfish passion; I was shattered by a night of conscious delirium. I
        told you long ago that I had never been resigned even to the mediocrity
        of my powers: how could I be resigned to the loss of the one thing which
        had ever come to me on earth, with the promise of such deep joy as would
        give a new and blessed meaning to the foregoing pain - the promise of
        another self that would lift my aching affection into the divine rapture
        of an ever-springing, ever-satisfied want?
            But the miseries of that night had prepared me for what came before
        the next. It was no surprise to me. I was certain that he had prevailed
        on you to sacrifice everything to him, and I waited with equal certainty
        to hear of your marriage. I measured your love and his by my own. But I
        was wrong, Maggie. There is something stronger in you than your love for
        him.
            I will not tell you what I went through in that interval. But even
        in its utmost agony - even in those terrible throes that love must
        suffer before it can be disembodied of selfish desire - my love for you
        sufficed to withhold me from suicide, without the aid of any other
        motive. In the midst of my egoism, I yet could not bear to come like a
        death-shadow across the feast of your joy. I could not bear to forsake
        the world in which you still lived and might need me; it was part of the
        faith I had vowed to you - to wait and endure. Maggie, that is a proof
        of what I write now to assure you of - that no anguish I have had to
        bear on your account has been too heavy a price to pay for the new life
        into which I have entered in loving you. I want you to put aside all
        grief because of the grief you have caused me. I was nurtured in the
        sense of privation; I never expected happiness; and in knowing you, in
        loving you, I have had, and still have, what reconciles me to life. You
        have been to my affections what light, what colour is to my eyes - what
        music is to the inward ear; you have raised a dim unrest into vivid
        consciousness. The new life I have found in caring for your joy and
        sorrow more than for what is directly my own, has transformed the spirit
        of rebellious murmuring into that willing endurance which is the birth
        of strong sympathy. I think nothing but such complete and intense love
        could have initiated me into that enlarged life which grows and grows by
        appropriating the life of others; for before, I was always dragged back
        from it by ever-present painful self-consciousness. I even think
        sometimes that this gift of transferred life which has come to me in
        loving you, may be a new power to me.
            Then - dear one - in spite of all, you have been the blessing of my
        life. Let no self-reproach weigh on you because of me. It is I who
        should rather reproach myself for having urged my feelings upon you, and
        hurried you into words that you have felt as fetters. You meant to be
        true to those words; you have been true. I can measure your sacrifice by
        what I have known in only one half-hour of your presence with me, when I
        dreamed that you might love me best. But, Maggie, I have no just claim
        on you for more than affectionate remembrance.
            For some time I have shrunk from writing to you, because I have
        shrunk even from the appearance of wishing to thrust myself before you,
        and so repeating my original error. But you will not misconstrue me. I
        know that we must keep apart for a long while; cruel tongues would force
        us apart, if nothing else did. But I shall not go away. The place where
        you are is the one where my mind must live, wherever I might travel. And
        remember that I am unchangeably yours: yours - not with selfish wishes,
        but with a devotion that excludes such wishes.
            God comfort you, - my loving, large-souled Maggie. If every one else
        has misconceived you, remember that you have never been doubted by him
        whose heart recognised you ten years ago.
            Do not believe any one who says I am ill, because I am not seen out
        of doors. I have only had nervous headaches - no worse than I have
        sometimes had them before. But the overpowering heat inclines me to be
        perfectly quiescent in the day-time. I am strong enough to obey any word
        which shall tell me that I can serve you by word or deed.
                        Yours, to the last,
                                                                  PHILIP WAKEM.«
 
As Maggie knelt by the bed sobbing, with that letter pressed under her, her
feelings again and again gathered themselves in a whispered cry, always in the
same words:
    »O God, is there any happiness in love that could make me forget their
pain?«
 

                                   Chapter IV

                                Maggie and Lucy

By the end of the week Dr Kenn had made up his mind that there was only one way
in which he could secure to Maggie a suitable living at St Ogg's. Even with his
twenty years' experience as a parish priest, he was aghast at the obstinate
continuance of imputations against her in the face of evidence. Hitherto he had
been rather more adored and appealed to than was quite agreeable to him; but
now, in attempting to open the ears of women to reason, and their consciences to
justice, on behalf of Maggie Tulliver, he suddenly found himself as powerless as
he was aware he would have been if he had attempted to influence the shape of
bonnets. Dr Kenn could not be contradicted; he was listened to in silence; but
when he left the room, a comparison of opinions among his hearers yielded much
the same result as before. Miss Tulliver had undeniably acted in a blameable
manner; even Dr Kenn did not deny that: how, then, could he think so lightly of
her as to put that favourable interpretation on everything she had done? Even on
the supposition that required the utmost stretch of belief - namely, that none
of the things said about Miss Tulliver were true - still, since they had been
said about her, they had cast an odour round her which must cause her to be
shrunk from by every woman who had to take care of her own reputation - and of
Society. To have taken Maggie by the hand and said, »I will not believe unproved
evil of you: my lips shall not utter it; my ears shall be closed against it; I,
too, am an erring mortal, liable to stumble, apt to come short of my most
earnest efforts; your lot has been harder than mine, your temptation greater;
let us help each other to stand and walk without more falling;« - to have done
this would have demanded courage, deep pity, self-knowledge, generous trust -
would have demanded a mind that tasted no piquancy in evil-speaking, that felt
no self-exaltation in condemning, that cheated itself with no large words into
the belief that life can have any moral end, any high religion, which excludes
the striving after perfect truth, justice, and love towards the individual men
and women who come across our own path. The ladies of St Ogg's were not beguiled
by any wide speculative conceptions; but they had their favourite abstraction,
called Society, which served to make their consciences perfectly easy in doing
what satisfied their own egoism - thinking and speaking the worst of Maggie
Tulliver, and turning their backs upon her. It was naturally disappointing to Dr
Kenn, after two years of superfluous incense from his feminine parishioners, to
find them suddenly maintaining their views in opposition to his; but then, they
maintained them in opposition to a Higher Authority, which they had venerated
longer. That Authority had furnished a very explicit answer to persons who might
inquire where their social duties began, and might be inclined to take wide
views as to the starting-point. The answer had not turned on the ultimate good
of Society, but on »a certain man« who was found in trouble by the wayside.
    Not that St Ogg's was empty of women with some tenderness of heart and
conscience: probably it had as fair a proportion of human goodness in it as any
other small trading town of that day. But until every good man is brave, we must
expect to find many good women timid: too timid even to believe in the
correctness of their own best promptings, when these would place them in a
minority. And the men at St Ogg's were not all brave by any means: some of them
were even fond of scandal - and to an extent that might have given their
conversation an effeminate character, if it had not been distinguished by
masculine jokes, and by an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual
hatred of women. It was the general feeling of the masculine mind at St Ogg's
that women were not to be interfered with in their treatment of each other.
    And thus every direction in which Dr Kenn had turned in the hope of
procuring some kind recognition and some employment for Maggie, proved a
disappointment to him. Mrs. James Torry could not think of taking Maggie as a
nursery governess, even temporarily - a young woman about whom »such things had
been said,« and about whom »gentlemen joked;« and Miss Kirke, who had a spinal
complaint, and wanted a reader and companion, felt quite sure that Maggie's mind
must be of a quality with which she, for her part, could not risk any contact.
Why did not Miss Tulliver accept the shelter offered her by her aunt Glegg? - it
did not become a girl like her to refuse it. Or else, why did she not go out of
the neighbourhood, and get a situation where she was not known? (It was not,
apparently, of so much importance that she should carry her dangerous tendencies
into strange families unknown at St Ogg's.) She must be very bold and hardened
to wish to stay in a parish where she was so much stared at and whispered about.
    Dr Kenn, having great natural firmness, began, in the presence of this
opposition, as every firm man would have done, to contract a certain strength of
determination over and above what would have been called forth by the end in
view. He himself wanted a daily governess for his younger children; and though
he had hesitated in the first instance to offer this position to Maggie, the
resolution to protest with the utmost force of his personal and priestly
character against her being crushed and driven away by slander, was now
decisive. Maggie gratefully accepted an employment that gave her duties as well
as a support: her days would be filled now, and solitary evenings would be a
welcome rest. She no longer needed the sacrifice her mother made in staying with
her, and Mrs. Tulliver was persuaded to go back to the Mill.
    But now it began to be discovered that Dr Kenn, exemplary as he had hitherto
appeared, had his crotchets - possibly his weaknesses. The masculine mind of St
Ogg's smiled pleasantly, and did not wonder that Kenn liked to see a fine pair
of eyes daily, or that he was inclined to take so lenient a view of the past;
the feminine mind, regarded at that period as less powerful, took a more
melancholy view of the case. If Dr Kenn should be beguiled into marrying that
Miss Tulliver! It was not safe to be too confident, even about the best of men:
an apostle had fallen, and wept bitterly afterwards; and though Peter's denial
was not a close precedent, his repentance was likely to be.
    Maggie had not taken her daily walks to the Rectory for many weeks, before
the dreadful possibility of her some time or other becoming the Rector's wife
had been talked of so often in confidence, that ladies were beginning to discuss
how they should behave to her in that position. For Dr Kenn, it had been
understood, had sat in the schoolroom half an hour one morning, when Miss
Tulliver was giving her lessons; nay, he had sat there every morning: he had
once walked home with her - he almost always walked home with her - and if not,
he went to see her in the evening. What an artful creature she was! What a
mother for those children! It was enough to make poor Mrs. Kenn turn in her
grave, that they should be put under the care of this girl only a few weeks
after her death. Would he be so lost to propriety as to marry her before the
year was out? The masculine mind was sarcastic, and thought not.
    The Miss Guests saw an alleviation to the sorrow of witnessing a folly in
their Rector: at least their brother would be safe; and their knowledge of
Stephen's tenacity was a constant ground of alarm to them, lest he should come
back and marry Maggie. They were not among those who disbelieved their brother's
letter; but they had no confidence in Maggie's adherence to her renunciation of
him; they suspected that she had shrunk rather from the elopement than from the
marriage, and that she lingered in St Ogg's, relying on his return to her. They
had always thought her disagreeable; they now thought her artful and proud;
having quite as good grounds for that judgment as you and I probably have for
many strong opinions of the same kind. Formerly they had not altogether
delighted in the contemplated match with Lucy, but now their dread of a marriage
between Stephen and Maggie added its momentum to their genuine pity and
indignation on behalf of the gentle forsaken girl, in making them desire that he
should return to her. As soon as Lucy was able to leave home, she was to seek
relief from the oppressive heat of this August by going to the coast with the
Miss Guests; and it was in their plans that Stephen should be induced to join
them. On the very first hint of gossip concerning Maggie and Dr Kenn, the report
was conveyed in Miss Guest's letter to her brother.
    Maggie had frequent tidings through her mother, or aunt Glegg, or Dr Kenn,
of Lucy's gradual progress towards recovery, and her thoughts tended continually
towards her uncle Deane's house: she hungered for an interview with Lucy, if it
were only for five minutes - to utter a word of penitence, to be assured by
Lucy's own eyes and lips that she did not believe in the willing treachery of
those whom she had loved and trusted. But she knew that even if her uncle's
indignation had not closed his house against her, the agitation of such an
interview would have been forbidden to Lucy. Only to have seen her without
speaking, would have been some relief; for Maggie was haunted by a face cruel in
its very gentleness: a face that had been turned on hers with glad sweet looks
of trust and love from the twilight time of memory; changed now to a sad and
weary face by a first heart-stroke. And as the days passed on, that pale image
became more and more distinct; the picture grew and grew into more speaking
definiteness under the avenging hand of remorse; the soft hazel eyes, in their
look of pain, were bent for ever on Maggie, and pierced her the more because she
could see no anger in them. But Lucy was not yet able to go to church, or any
place where Maggie could see her; and even the hope of that departed, when the
news was told her by aunt Glegg, that Lucy was really going away in a few days
to Scarborough with the Miss Guests, who had been heard to say that they
expected their brother to meet them there.
    Only those who have known what hardest inward conflict is, can know what
Maggie felt as she sat in her loneliness the evening after hearing that news
from Mrs. Glegg - only those who have known what it is to dread their own
selfish desires as the watching mother would dread the sleeping-potion that was
to still her own pain.
    She sat without candle in the twilight, with the window wide open towards
the river; the sense of oppressive heat adding itself undistinguishably to the
burden of her lot. Seated on a chair against the window, with her arm on the
window-sill, she was looking blankly at the flowing river, swift with the
backward-rushing tide - struggling to see still the sweet face in its
unreproaching sadness, that seemed now from moment to moment to sink away and be
hidden behind a form that thrust itself between, and made darkness. Hearing the
door open, she thought Mrs. Jakin was coming in with her supper, as usual; and
with that repugnance to trivial speech which comes with languor and
wretchedness, she shrank from turning round and saying she wanted nothing: good
little Mrs. Jakin would be sure to make some well-meant remarks. But the next
moment, without her having discerned the sound of a footstep, she felt a light
hand on her shoulder, and heard a voice close to her saying, »Maggie!«
    The face was there - changed, but all the sweeter: the hazel eyes were
there, with their heart-piercing tenderness.
    »Maggie!« the soft voice said. »Lucy!« answered a voice with a sharp ring of
anguish in it; and Lucy threw her arms round Maggie's neck, and leaned her pale
cheek against the burning brow.
    »I stole out,« said Lucy, almost in a whisper, while she sat down close to
Maggie and held her hand, »when papa and the rest were away. Alice is come with
me. I asked her to help me. But I must only stay a little while, because it is
so late.«
    It was easier to say that at first than to say anything else. They sat
looking at each other. It seemed as if the interview must end without more
speech, for speech was very difficult. Each felt that there would be something
scorching in the words that would recall the irretrievable wrong. But soon, as
Maggie looked, every distinct thought began to be overflowed by a wave of loving
penitence, and words burst forth with a sob.
    »God bless you for coming, Lucy.«
    The sobs came thick on each other after that.
    »Maggie, dear, be comforted,« said Lucy now, putting her cheek against
Maggie's again. »Don't grieve.« And she sat still, hoping to soothe Maggie with
that gentle caress.
    »I didn't mean to deceive you, Lucy,« said Maggie, as soon as she could
speak. »It always made me wretched that I felt what I didn't like you to know
.... It was because I thought it would all be conquered, and you might never see
anything to wound you.«
    »I know, dear,« said Lucy. »I know you never meant to make me unhappy .....
It is a trouble that has come on us all: - you have more to bear than I have -
and you gave him up, when .... you did what it must have been very hard to do.«
    They were silent again a little while, sitting with clasped hands, and
cheeks leaned together.
    »Lucy,« Maggie began again, »he struggled too. He wanted to be true to you.
He will come back to you. Forgive him - he will be happy then ....«
    These words were wrung forth from Maggie's deepest soul, with an effort like
the convulsed clutch of a drowning man. Lucy trembled and was silent.
    A gentle knock came at the door. It was Alice, the maid, who entered and
said -
    »I daredn't stay any longer, Miss Deane. They'll find it out, and there'll
be such anger at your coming out so late.«
    Lucy rose and said, »Very well, Alice - in a minute.«
    »I'm to go away on Friday, Maggie,« she added, when Alice had closed the
door again. »When I come back, and am strong, they will let me do as I like. I
shall come to you when I please then.«
    »Lucy,« said Maggie, with another great effort, »I pray to God continually
that I may never be the cause of sorrow to you any more.«
    She pressed the little hand that she held between hers, and looked up into
the face that was bent over hers. Lucy never forgot that look.
    »Maggie,« she said, in a low voice, that had the solemnity of confession in
it, »you are better than I am. I can't ....«
    She broke off there, and said no more. But they clasped each other again in
a last embrace.
 

                                   Chapter V

                               The Last Conflict

In the second week of September, Maggie was again sitting in her lonely room,
battling with the old shadowy enemies that were for ever slain and rising again.
It was past midnight, and the rain was beating heavily against the window,
driven with fitful force by the rushing, loud-moaning wind. For, the day after
Lucy's visit, there had been a sudden change in the weather: the heat and
drought had given way to cold variable winds, and heavy falls of rain at
intervals; and she had been forbidden to risk the contemplated journey until the
weather should become more settled. In the counties higher up the Floss, the
rains had been continuous, and the completion of the harvest had been arrested.
And now, for the last two days, the rains on this lower course of the river had
been incessant, so that the old men had shaken their heads and talked of sixty
years ago, when the same sort of weather, happening about the equinox, brought
on the great floods, which swept the bridge away, and reduced the town to great
misery. But the younger generation, who had seen several small floods, thought
lightly of these sombre recollections and forebodings; and Bob Jakin, naturally
prone to take a hopeful view of his own luck, laughed at his mother when she
regretted their having taken a house by the river-side; observing that but for
that they would have had no boats, which were the most lucky of possessions in
case of a flood that obliged them to go to a distance for food.
    But the careless and the fearful were alike sleeping in their beds now.
There was hope that the rain would abate by the morrow; threatenings of a worse
kind, from sudden thaws after falls of snow, had often passed off in the
experience of the younger ones; and at the very worst, the banks would be sure
to break lower down the river when the tide came in with violence, and so the
waters would be carried off, without causing more than temporary inconvenience,
and losses that would be felt only by the poorer sort, whom charity would
relieve.
    All were in their beds now, for it was past midnight: all, except some
solitary watchers such as Maggie. She was seated in her little parlour towards
the river with one candle, that left everything dim in the room, except a letter
which lay before her on the table. That letter which had come to her to-day, was
one of the causes that had kept her up far on into the night - unconscious how
the hours were going - careless of seeking rest - with no image of rest coming
across her mind, except of that far, far off rest, from which there would be no
more waking for her into this struggling earthly life.
    Two days before Maggie received that letter, she had been to the Rectory for
the last time. The heavy rain would have prevented her from going since; but
there was another reason. Dr Kenn, at first enlightened only by a few hints as
to the new turn which gossip and slander had taken in relation to Maggie, had
recently been made more fully aware of it by an earnest remonstrance from one of
his male parishioners against the indiscretion of persisting in the attempt to
overcome the prevalent feeling in the parish by a course of resistance. Dr Kenn,
having a conscience void of offence in the matter, was still inclined to
persevere - was still averse to give way before a public sentiment that was
odious and contemptible; but he was finally wrought upon by the consideration of
the peculiar responsibility attached to his office, of avoiding the appearance
of evil - an »appearance« that is always dependent on the average quality of
surrounding minds. Where these minds are low and gross, the area of that
»appearance« is proportionately widened. Perhaps he was in danger of acting from
obstinacy; perhaps it was his duty to succumb: conscientious people are apt to
see their duty in that which is the most painful course; and to recede was
always painful to Dr Kenn. He made up his mind that he must advise Maggie to go
away from St Ogg's for a time; and he performed that difficult task with as much
delicacy as he could, only stating in vague terms that he found his attempt to
countenance her stay was a source of discord between himself and his
parishioners, that was likely to obstruct his usefulness as a clergyman. He
begged her to allow him to write to a clerical friend of his, who might possibly
take her into his own family as governess; and, if not, would probably know of
some other available position for a young woman in whose welfare Dr Kenn felt a
strong interest.
    Poor Maggie listened with a trembling lip: she could say nothing but a faint
»thank you - I shall be grateful;« and she walked back to her lodgings, through
the driving rain, with a new sense of desolation. She must be a lonely wanderer;
she must go out among fresh faces, that would look at her wonderingly, because
the days did not seem joyful to her; she must begin a new life, in which she
would have to rouse herself to receive new impressions - and she was so
unspeakably, sickeningly weary! There was no home, no help for the erring: even
those who pitied were constrained to hardness. But ought she to complain? Ought
she to shrink in this way from the long penance of life, which was all the
possibility she had of lightening the load to some other sufferers, and so
changing that passionate error into a new force of unselfish human love? All the
next day she sat in her lonely room, with a window darkened by the cloud and the
driving rain, thinking of that future, and wrestling for patience: - for what
repose could poor Maggie ever win except by wrestling?
    And on the third day - this day of which she had just sat out the close -
the letter had come which was lying on the table before her.
    The letter was from Stephen. He was come back from Holland: he was at
Mudport again, unknown to any of his friends; and had written to her from that
place, enclosing the letter to a person whom he trusted in St Ogg's. From
beginning to end it was a passionate cry of reproach: an appeal against her
useless sacrifice of him - of herself: against that perverted notion of right
which led her to crush all his hopes, for the sake of a mere idea, and not any
substantial good - his hopes, whom she loved, and who loved her with that single
overpowering passion, that worship, which a man never gives to a woman more than
once in his life.
    »They have written to me that you are to marry Kenn. As if I should believe
that! Perhaps they have told you some such fables about me. Perhaps they tell
you I have been travelling. My body has been dragged about somewhere; but I have
never travelled from the hideous place where you left me - where I started up
from the stupor of helpless rage to find you gone.
    Maggie! whose pain can have been like mine? Whose injury is like mine? Who
besides me has met that long look of love that has burnt itself into my soul, so
that no other image can come there? Maggie, call me back to you! - call me back
to life and goodness! I am banished from both now. I have no motives: I am
indifferent to everything. Two months have only deepened the certainty that I
can never care for life without you. Write me one word - say Come! In two days I
should be with you. Maggie - have you forgotten what it was to be together? - to
be within reach of a look - to be within hearing of each other's voice?«
    When Maggie first read this letter she felt as if her real temptation had
only just begun. At the entrance of the chill dark cavern, we turn with unworn
courage from the warm light; but how, when we have trodden far in the damp
darkness, and have begun to be faint and weary - how, if there is a sudden
opening above us, and we are invited back again to the life-nourishing day? The
leap of natural longing from under the pressure of pain is so strong, that all
less immediate motives are likely to be forgotten - till the pain has been
escaped from.
    For hours Maggie felt as if her struggle had been in vain. For hours every
other thought that she strove to summon was thrust aside by the image of Stephen
waiting for the single word that would bring him to her. She did not read the
letter: she heard him uttering it, and the voice shook her with its old strange
power. All the day before she had been filled with the vision of a lonely future
through which she must carry the burden of regret, upheld only by clinging
faith. And here - close within her reach - urging itself upon her even as a
claim - was another future, in which hard endurance and effort were to be
exchanged for easy delicious leaning on another's loving strength! And yet that
promise of joy in the place of sadness did not make the dire force of the
temptation to Maggie. It was Stephen's tone of misery, it was the doubt in the
justice of her own resolve, that made the balance tremble, and made her once
start from her seat to reach the pen and paper, and write »Come!«
    But close upon that decisive act, her mind recoiled; and the sense of
contradiction with her past self in her moments of strength and clearness, came
upon her like a pang of conscious degradation. No - she must wait; she must
pray; the light that had forsaken her would come again: she should feel again
what she had felt, when she had fled away, under an inspiration strong enough to
conquer agony - to conquer love: she should feel again what she had felt when
Lucy stood by her, when Philip's letter had stirred all the fibres that bound
her to the calmer past.
    She sat quite still, far on into the night: with no impulse to change her
attitude, without active force enough even for the mental act of prayer: only
waiting for the light that would surely come again. It came with the memories
that no passion could long quench: the long past came back to her, and with it
the fountains of self-renouncing pity and affection, of faithfulness and
resolve. The words that were marked by the quiet hand in the little old book
that she had long ago learned by heart, rushed even to her lips, and found a
vent for themselves in a low murmur that was quite lost in the loud driving of
the rain against the window and the loud moan and roar of the wind: »I have
received the Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear
it till death, as Thou hast laid it upon me.«
    But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a sob:
»Forgive me, Stephen! It will pass away. You will come back to her.«
    She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it burn slowly on the
hearth. To-morrow she would write to him the last word of parting.
    »I will bear it, and bear it till death ..... But how long it will be before
death comes! I am so young, so healthy. How shall I have patience and strength?
Am I to struggle and fall and repent again? - has life other trials as hard for
me still?«
    With that cry of self-despair, Maggie fell on her knees against the table,
and buried her sorrow-stricken face. Her soul went out to the Unseen Pity that
would be with her to the end. Surely there was something being taught her by
this experience of great need; and she must be learning a secret of human
tenderness and long-suffering, that the less erring could hardly know? »O God,
if my life is to be long, let me live to bless and comfort -«
    At that moment Maggie felt a startling sensation of sudden cold about her
knees and feet: it was water flowing under her. She started up: the stream was
flowing under the door that led into the passage. She was not bewildered for an
instant - she knew it was the flood!
    The tumult of emotion she had been enduring for the last twelve hours seemed
to have left a great calm in her: without screaming, she hurried with the candle
up-stairs to Bob Jakin's bedroom. The door was ajar; she went in and shook him
by the shoulder.
    »Bob, the flood is come! it is in the house! let us see if we can make the
boats safe.«
    She lighted his candle, while the poor wife, snatching up her baby, burst
into screams; and then she hurried down again to see if the waters were rising
fast. There was a step down into the room at the door leading from the
staircase; she saw that the water was already on a level with the step. While
she was looking, something came with a tremendous crash against the window, and
sent the leaded panes and the old wooden framework inwards in shivers, - the
water pouring in after it.
    »It is the boat!« cried Maggie. »Bob, come down to get the boats!«
    And without a moment's shudder of fear, she plunged through the water, which
was rising fast to her knees, and by the glimmering light of the candle she had
left on the stairs, she mounted on to the window-sill, and crept into the boat,
which was left with the prow lodging and protruding through the window. Bob was
not long after her, hurrying without shoes or stockings, but with the lanthorn
in his hand.
    »Why, they're both here - both the boats,« said Bob, as he got into the one
where Maggie was. »It's wonderful this fastening isn't broke too, as well as the
mooring.«
    In the excitement of getting into the other boat, unfastening it, and
mastering an oar, Bob was not struck with the danger Maggie incurred. We are not
apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger, and Bob's
mind was absorbed in possible expedients for the safety of the helpless
in-doors. The fact that Maggie had been up, had waked him, and had taken the
lead in activity, gave Bob a vague impression of her as one who would help to
protect, not need to be protected. She too had got possession of an oar, and had
pushed off, so as to release the boat from the overhanging window-frame.
    »The water's rising so fast,« said Bob, »I doubt it'll be in at the chambers
before long - th' house is so low. I've more mind to get Prissy and the child
and the mother into the boat, if I could, and trusten to the water - for th' old
house is none so safe. And if I let go the boat .... but you,« he exclaimed,
suddenly lifting the light of his lanthorn on Maggie, as she stood in the rain
with the oar in her hand and her black hair streaming.
    Maggie had no time to answer, for a new tidal current swept along the line
of the houses, and drove both the boats out on to the wide water, with a force
that carried them far past the meeting current of the river.
    In the first moments Maggie felt nothing, thought of nothing, but that she
had suddenly passed away from that life which she had been dreading: it was the
transition of death, without its agony - and she was alone in the darkness with
God.
    The whole thing had been so rapid - so dream-like - that the threads of
ordinary association were broken: she sank down on the seat clutching the oar
mechanically, and for a long while had no distinct conception of her position.
The first thing that waked her to fuller consciousness was the cessation of the
rain, and a perception that the darkness was divided by the faintest light,
which parted the overhanging gloom from the immeasurable watery level below. She
was driven out upon the flood: - that awful visitation of God which her father
used to talk of - which had made the nightmare of her childish dreams. And with
that thought there rushed in the vision of the old home - and Tom - and her
mother - they had all listened together.
    »O God, where am I? Which is the way home?« she cried out, in the dim
loneliness.
    What was happening to them at the Mill? The flood had once nearly destroyed
it. They might be in danger - in distress: her mother and her brother, alone
there, beyond reach of help! Her whole soul was strained now on that thought;
and she saw the long-loved faces looking for help into the darkness, and finding
none.
    She was floating in smooth water now - perhaps far on the over-flooded
fields. There was no sense of present danger to check the outgoing of her mind
to the old home; and she strained her eyes against the curtain of gloom that she
might seize the first sight of her whereabout - that she might catch some faint
suggestion of the spot towards which all her anxieties tended.
    O how welcome, the widening of that dismal watery level - the gradual
uplifting of the cloudy firmament - the slowly defining blackness of objects
above the glassy dark! Yes - she must be out on the fields - those were the tops
of hedgerow trees. Which way did the river lie? Looking behind her, she saw the
lines of black trees: looking before her, there were none: then, the river lay
before her. She seized an oar and began to paddle the boat forward with the
energy of wakening hope: the dawning seemed to advance more swiftly, now she was
in action; and she could soon see the poor dumb beasts crowding piteously on a
mound where they had taken refuge. Onward she paddled and rowed by turns in the
growing twilight: her wet clothes clung round her, and her streaming hair was
dashed about by the wind, but she was hardly conscious of any bodily sensations
- except a sensation of strength, inspired by mighty emotion. Along with the
sense of danger and possible rescue for those long-remembered beings at the old
home, there was an undefined sense of reconcilement with her brother: what
quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence
of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we
are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs? Vaguely, Maggie felt
this; - in the strong resurgent love towards her brother that swept away all the
later impressions of hard, cruel offence and misunderstanding, and left only the
deep, underlying, unshakable memories of early union.
    But now there was a large dark mass in the distance, and near to her Maggie
could discern the current of the river. The dark mass must be - yes, it was - St
Ogg's. Ah, now she knew which way to look for the first glimpse of the
well-known trees - the grey willows, the now yellowing chestnuts - and above
them the old roof! But there was no colour, no shape yet: all was faint and dim.
More and more strongly the energies seemed to come and put themselves forth, as
if her life were a stored-up force that was being spent in this hour, unneeded
for any future.
    She must get her boat into the current of the Floss, else she would never be
able to pass the Ripple and approach the house: this was the thought that
occurred to her, as she imagined with more and more vividness the state of
things round the old home. But then she might be carried very far down, and be
unable to guide her boat out of the current again. For the first time distinct
ideas of danger began to press upon her; but there was no choice of courses, no
room for hesitation, and she floated into the current. Swiftly she went now,
without effort; more and more clearly in the lessening distance and the growing
light she began to discern the objects that she knew must be the well-known
trees and roofs; nay, she was not far off a rushing muddy current that must be
the strangely altered Ripple.
    Great God! there were floating masses in it, that might dash against her
boat as she passed, and cause her to perish too soon. What were those masses?
    For the first time Maggie's heart began to beat in an agony of dread. She
sat helpless - dimly conscious that she was being floated along - more intensely
conscious of the anticipated clash. But the horror was transient: it passed away
before the oncoming warehouses of St Ogg's: she had passed the mouth of the
Ripple, then: now, she must use all her skill and power to manage the boat and
get it if possible out of the current. She could see now that the bridge was
broken down: she could see the masts of a stranded vessel far out over the
watery field. But no boats were to be seen moving on the river - such as had
been laid hands on were employed in the flooded streets.
    With new resolution, Maggie seized her oar, and stood up again to paddle;
but the now ebbing tide added to the swiftness of the river, and she was carried
along beyond the bridge. She could hear shouts from the windows overlooking the
river, as if the people there were calling to her. It was not till she had
passed on nearly to Tofton that she could get the boat clear of the current.
Then with one yearning look towards her uncle Deane's house that lay farther
down the river, she took to both her oars and rowed with all her might across
the watery fields, back towards the Mill. Colour was beginning to awake now, and
as she approached the Dorlcote fields, she could discern the tints of the trees
- could see the old Scotch firs far to the right, and the home chestnuts - Oh!
how deep they lay in the water: deeper than the trees on this side the hill. And
the roof of the Mill - where was it? Those heavy fragments hurrying down the
Ripple - what had they meant? But it was not the house - the house stood firm;
drowned up to the first story, but still firm - or was it broken in at the end
towards the Mill?
    With panting joy that she was there at last - joy that overcame all distress
- Maggie neared the front of the house. At first she heard no sound: she saw no
object moving. Her boat was on a level with the up-stairs windows. She called
out in a loud piercing voice,
    »Tom, where are you? Mother, where are you? Here is Maggie!«
    Soon, from the window of the attic in the central gable, she heard Tom's
voice:
    »Who is it? Have you brought a boat?«
    »It is I, Tom - Maggie. Where is mother?«
    »She is not here: she went to Garum, the day before yesterday. I'll come
down to the lower window.«
    »Alone, Maggie?« said Tom, in a voice of deep astonishment, as he opened the
middle window on a level with the boat.
    »Yes, Tom: God has taken care of me, to bring me to you. Get in quickly. Is
there no one else?«
    »No,« said Tom, stepping into the boat, »I fear the man is drowned: he was
carried down the Ripple, I think, when part of the Mill fell with the crash of
trees and stones against it: I've shouted again and again, and there has been no
answer. Give me the oars, Maggie.«
    It was not till Tom had pushed off and they were on the wide water - he face
to face with Maggie - that the full meaning of what had happened rushed upon his
mind. It came with so overpowering a force - it was such a new revelation to his
spirit, of the depths in life, that had lain beyond his vision which he had
fancied so keen and clear - that he was unable to ask a question. They sat
mutely gazing at each other: Maggie with eyes of intense life looking out from a
weary, beaten face - Tom pale with a certain awe and humiliation. Thought was
busy though the lips were silent: and though he could ask no question, he
guessed a story of almost miraculous divinely-protected effort. But at last a
mist gathered over the blue-grey eyes, and the lips found a word they could
utter: the old childish - »Magsie!«
    Maggie could make no answer but a long deep sob of that mysterious wondrous
happiness that is one with pain.
    As soon as she could speak, she said, »We will go to Lucy, Tom: we'll go and
see if she is safe, and then we can help the rest.«
    Tom rowed with untired vigour, and with a different speed from poor
Maggie's. The boat was soon in the current of the river again, and soon they
would be at Tofton.
    »Park House stands high up out of the flood,« said Maggie. »Perhaps they
have got Lucy there.«
    Nothing else was said; a new danger was being carried towards them by the
river. Some wooden machinery had just given way on one of the wharves, and huge
fragments were being floated along. The sun was rising now, and the wide area of
watery desolation was spread out in dreadful clearness around them - in dreadful
clearness floated onwards the hurrying, threatening masses. A large company in a
boat that was working its way along under the Tofton houses, observed their
danger, and shouted, »Get out of the current!«
    But that could not be done at once, and Tom, looking before him, saw death
rushing on them. Huge fragments, clinging together in fatal fellowship, made one
wide mass across the stream.
    »It is coming, Maggie!« Tom said, in a deep hoarse voice, loosing the oars,
and clasping her.
    The next instant the boat was no longer seen upon the water - and the huge
mass was hurrying on in hideous triumph.
    But soon the keel of the boat reappeared, a black speck on the golden water.
    The boat reappeared - but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace
never to be parted: living through again in one supreme moment the days when
they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields
together.
 

                                   Conclusion

Nature repairs her ravages - repairs them with her sunshine, and with human
labour. The desolation wrought by that flood, had left little visible trace on
the face of the earth, five years after. The fifth autumn was rich in golden
corn-stacks, rising in thick clusters among the distant hedgerows; the wharves
and warehouses on the Floss were busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with
hopeful lading and unlading.
    And every man and woman mentioned in this history was still living - except
those whose end we know.
    Nature repairs her ravages - but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted
again; the parted hills are left scarred: if there is a new growth, the trees
are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear
the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is
no thorough repair.
    Dorlcote Mill was rebuilt. And Dorlcote churchyard, - where the brick grave
that held a father whom we know, was found with the stone laid prostrate upon it
after the flood, - had recovered all its grassy order and decent quiet.
    Near that brick grave there was a tomb erected, very soon after the flood,
for two bodies that were found in close embrace; and it was visited at different
moments by two men who both felt that their keenest joy and keenest sorrow were
for ever buried there.
    
    One of them visited the tomb again with a sweet face beside him - but that
was years after.
    The other was always solitary. His great companionship was among the trees
of the Red Deeps, where the buried joy seemed still to hover - like a revisiting
spirit.
    The tomb bore the names of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, and below the names it
was written -
 
»In their death they were not divided.«
