The Mill on the Floss
Mrs Tulliver gave a little scream as she saw her, and felt such a
“turn” that she dropped the large gravy-spoon into the dish, with the
most serious results to the table-cloth. For Kezia had not betrayed the
reason of Maggie’s refusal to come down, not liking to give her
mistress a shock in the moment of carving, and Mrs Tulliver thought
there was nothing worse in question than a fit of perverseness, which
was inflicting its own punishment by depriving Maggie of half her
dinner.
Mrs Tulliver’s scream made all eyes turn towards the same point as her
own, and Maggie’s cheeks and ears began to burn, while uncle Glegg, a
kind-looking, white-haired old gentleman, said,—
“Heyday! what little gell’s this? Why, I don’t know her. Is it some
little gell you’ve picked up in the road, Kezia?”
“Why, she’s gone and cut her hair herself,” said Mr Tulliver in an
undertone to Mr Deane, laughing with much enjoyment. “Did you ever know
such a little hussy as it is?”
“Why, little miss, you’ve made yourself look very funny,” said Uncle
Pullet, and perhaps he never in his life made an observation which was
felt to be so lacerating.
“Fie, for shame!” said aunt Glegg, in her loudest, severest tone of
reproof. “Little gells as cut their own hair should be whipped and fed
on bread and water,—not come and sit down with their aunts and uncles.”
“Ay, ay,” said uncle Glegg, meaning to give a playful turn to this
denunciation, “she must be sent to jail, I think, and they’ll cut the
rest of her hair off there, and make it all even.”
“She’s more like a gypsy nor ever,” said aunt Pullet, in a pitying
tone; “it’s very bad luck, sister, as the gell should be so brown; the
boy’s fair enough. I doubt it’ll stand in her way i’ life to be so
brown.”
“She’s a naughty child, as’ll break her mother’s heart,” said Mrs
Tulliver, with the tears in her eyes.
Maggie seemed to be listening to a chorus of reproach and derision. Her
first flush came from anger, which gave her a transient power of
defiance, and Tom thought she was braving it out, supported by the
recent appearance of the pudding and custard. Under this impression, he
whispered, “Oh, my! Maggie, I told you you’d catch it.” He meant to be
friendly, but Maggie felt convinced that Tom was rejoicing in her
ignominy. Her feeble power of defiance left her in an instant, her
heart swelled, and getting up from her chair, she ran to her father,
hid her face on his shoulder, and burst out into loud sobbing.
“Come, come, my wench,” said her father, soothingly, putting his arm
round her, “never mind; you was i’ the right to cut it off if it
plagued you; give over crying; father’ll take your part.”
Delicious words of tenderness! Maggie never forgot any of these moments
when her father “took her part”; she kept them in her heart, and
thought of them long years after, when every one else said that her
father had done very ill by his children.
“How your husband does spoil that child, Bessy!” said Mrs Glegg, in a
loud “aside,” to Mrs Tulliver. “It’ll be the ruin of her, if you don’t
take care. _My_ father never brought his children up so, else we should
ha’ been a different sort o’ family to what we are.”
Mrs Tulliver’s domestic sorrows seemed at this moment to have reached
the point at which insensibility begins. She took no notice of her
sister’s remark, but threw back her capstrings and dispensed the
pudding, in mute resignation.
With the dessert there came entire deliverance for Maggie, for the
children were told they might have their nuts and wine in the
summer-house, since the day was so mild; and they scampered out among
the budding bushes of the garden with the alacrity of small animals
getting from under a burning glass.
Mrs Tulliver had her special reason for this permission: now the dinner
was despatched, and every one’s mind disengaged, it was the right
moment to communicate Mr Tulliver’s intention concerning Tom, and it
would be as well for Tom himself to be absent. The children were used
to hear themselves talked of as freely as if they were birds, and could
understand nothing, however they might stretch their necks and listen;
but on this occasion Mrs Tulliver manifested an unusual discretion,
because she had recently had evidence that the going to school to a
clergyman was a sore point with Tom, who looked at it as very much on a
par with going to school to a constable. Mrs Tulliver had a sighing
sense that her husband would do as he liked, whatever sister Glegg
said, or sister Pullet either; but at least they would not be able to
say, if the thing turned out ill, that Bessy had fallen in with her
husband’s folly without letting her own friends know a word about it.
“Mr Tulliver,” she said, interrupting her husband in his talk with Mr
Deane, “it’s time now to tell the children’s aunts and uncles what
you’re thinking of doing with Tom, isn’t it?”
“Very well,” said Mr Tulliver, rather sharply, “I’ve no objections to
tell anybody what I mean to do with him. I’ve settled,” he added,
looking toward Mr Glegg and Mr Deane,—“I’ve settled to send him to a Mr
Stelling, a parson, down at King’s Lorton, there,—an uncommon clever
fellow, I understand, as’ll put him up to most things.”
There was a rustling demonstration of surprise in the company, such as
you may have observed in a country congregation when they hear an
allusion to their week-day affairs from the pulpit. It was equally
astonishing to the aunts and uncles to find a parson introduced into Mr
Tulliver’s family arrangements. As for uncle Pullet, he could hardly
have been more thoroughly obfuscated if Mr Tulliver had said that he
was going to send Tom to the Lord Chancellor; for uncle Pullet belonged
to that extinct class of British yeoman who, dressed in good
broadcloth, paid high rates and taxes, went to church, and ate a
particularly good dinner on Sunday, without dreaming that the British
constitution in Church and State had a traceable origin any more than
the solar system and the fixed stars.
It is melancholy, but true, that Mr Pullet had the most confused idea
of a bishop as a sort of a baronet, who might or might not be a
clergyman; and as the rector of his own parish was a man of high family
and fortune, the idea that a clergyman could be a schoolmaster was too
remote from Mr Pullet’s experience to be readily conceivable. I know it
is difficult for people in these instructed times to believe in uncle
Pullet’s ignorance; but let them reflect on the remarkable results of a
great natural faculty under favouring circumstances. And uncle Pullet
had a great natural faculty for ignorance. He was the first to give
utterance to his astonishment.
“Why, what can you be going to send him to a parson for?” he said, with
an amazed twinkling in his eyes, looking at Mr Glegg and Mr Deane, to
see if they showed any signs of comprehension.
“Why, because the parsons are the best schoolmasters, by what I can
make out,” said poor Mr Tulliver, who, in the maze of this puzzling
world, laid hold of any clue with great readiness and tenacity. “Jacobs
at th’ academy’s no parson, and he’s done very bad by the boy; and I
made up my mind, if I send him to school again, it should be to
somebody different to Jacobs. And this Mr Stelling, by what I can make
out, is the sort o’ man I want. And I mean my boy to go to him at
Midsummer,” he concluded, in a tone of decision, tapping his snuff-box
and taking a pinch.
“You’ll have to pay a swinging half-yearly bill, then, eh, Tulliver?
The clergymen have highish notions, in general,” said Mr Deane, taking
snuff vigorously, as he always did when wishing to maintain a neutral
position.
“What! do you think the parson’ll teach him to know a good sample o’
wheat when he sees it, neighbour Tulliver?” said Mr Glegg, who was fond
of his jest, and having retired from business, felt that it was not
only allowable but becoming in him to take a playful view of things.
“Why, you see, I’ve got a plan i’ my head about Tom,” said Mr Tulliver,
pausing after that statement and lifting up his glass.
“Well, if I may be allowed to speak, and it’s seldom as I am,” said Mrs
Glegg, with a tone of bitter meaning, “I should like to know what good
is to come to the boy by bringin’ him up above his fortin.”
“Why,” said Mr Tulliver, not looking at Mrs Glegg, but at the male part
of his audience, “you see, I’ve made up my mind not to bring Tom up to
my own business. I’ve had my thoughts about it all along, and I made up
my mind by what I saw with Garnett and _his_ son. I mean to put him to
some business as he can go into without capital, and I want to give him
an eddication as he’ll be even wi’ the lawyers and folks, and put me up
to a notion now an’ then.”
Mrs Glegg emitted a long sort of guttural sound with closed lips, that
smiled in mingled pity and scorn.
“It ’ud be a fine deal better for some people,” she said, after that
introductory note, “if they’d let the lawyers alone.”
“Is he at the head of a grammar school, then, this clergyman, such as
that at Market Bewley?” said Mr Deane.
“No, nothing of that,” said Mr Tulliver. “He won’t take more than two
or three pupils, and so he’ll have the more time to attend to ’em, you
know.”
“Ah, and get his eddication done the sooner; they can’t learn much at a
time when there’s so many of ’em,” said uncle Pullet, feeling that he
was getting quite an insight into this difficult matter.
“But he’ll want the more pay, I doubt,” said Mr Glegg.
“Ay, ay, a cool hundred a year, that’s all,” said Mr Tulliver, with
some pride at his own spirited course. “But then, you know, it’s an
investment; Tom’s eddication ’ull be so much capital to him.”
“Ay, there’s something in that,” said Mr Glegg. “Well well, neighbour
Tulliver, you may be right, you may be right:
‘When land is gone and money’s spent,
Then learning is most excellent.’
“I remember seeing those two lines wrote on a window at Buxton. But us
that have got no learning had better keep our money, eh, neighbour
Pullet?” Mr Glegg rubbed his knees, and looked very pleasant.
“Mr Glegg, I wonder _at_ you,” said his wife. “It’s very unbecoming in
a man o’ your age and belongings.”
“What’s unbecoming, Mrs G.?” said Mr Glegg, winking pleasantly at the
company. “My new blue coat as I’ve got on?”
“I pity your weakness, Mr Glegg. I say it’s unbecoming to be making a
joke when you see your own kin going headlongs to ruin.”
“If you mean me by that,” said Mr Tulliver, considerably nettled, “you
needn’t trouble yourself to fret about me. I can manage my own affairs
without troubling other folks.”
“Bless me!” said Mr Deane, judiciously introducing a new idea, “why,
now I come to think of it, somebody said Wakem was going to send _his_
son—the deformed lad—to a clergyman, didn’t they, Susan?” (appealing to
his wife).
“I can give no account of it, I’m sure,” said Mrs Deane, closing her
lips very tightly again. Mrs Deane was not a woman to take part in a
scene where missiles were flying.
“Well,” said Mr Tulliver, speaking all the more cheerfully, that Mrs
Glegg might see he didn’t mind her, “if Wakem thinks o’ sending his son
to a clergyman, depend on it I shall make no mistake i’ sending Tom to
one. Wakem’s as big a scoundrel as Old Harry ever made, but he knows
the length of every man’s foot he’s got to deal with. Ay, ay, tell me
who’s Wakem’s butcher, and I’ll tell you where to get your meat.”
“But lawyer Wakem’s son’s got a hump-back,” said Mrs Pullet, who felt
as if the whole business had a funereal aspect; “it’s more nat’ral to
send _him_ to a clergyman.”
“Yes,” said Mr Glegg, interpreting Mrs Pullet’s observation with
erroneous plausibility, “you must consider that, neighbour Tulliver;
Wakem’s son isn’t likely to follow any business. Wakem ’ull make a