The Mill on the Floss
blight were abroad, was sure to have his share of them, and who, the
more you tried to help him out of the mud, would sink the further in.
It would do him good rather than harm, now, if he were obliged to raise
this three hundred pounds; it would make him look about him better, and
not act so foolishly about his wool this year as he did the last; in
fact, Mr Tulliver had been too easy with his brother-in-law, and
because he had let the interest run on for two years, Moss was likely
enough to think that he should never be troubled about the principal.
But Mr Tulliver was determined not to encourage such shuffling people
any longer; and a ride along the Basset lanes was not likely to
enervate a man’s resolution by softening his temper. The deep-trodden
hoof-marks, made in the muddiest days of winter, gave him a shake now
and then which suggested a rash but stimulating snarl at the father of
lawyers, who, whether by means of his hoof or otherwise, had doubtless
something to do with this state of the roads; and the abundance of foul
land and neglected fences that met his eye, though they made no part of
his brother Moss’s farm, strongly contributed to his dissatisfaction
with that unlucky agriculturist. If this wasn’t Moss’s fallow, it might
have been; Basset was all alike; it was a beggarly parish, in Mr
Tulliver’s opinion, and his opinion was certainly not groundless.
Basset had a poor soil, poor roads, a poor non-resident landlord, a
poor non-resident vicar, and rather less than half a curate, also poor.
If any one strongly impressed with the power of the human mind to
triumph over circumstances will contend that the parishioners of Basset
might nevertheless have been a very superior class of people, I have
nothing to urge against that abstract proposition; I only know that, in
point of fact, the Basset mind was in strict keeping with its
circumstances. The muddy lanes, green or clayey, that seemed to the
unaccustomed eye to lead nowhere but into each other, did really lead,
with patience, to a distant high-road; but there were many feet in
Basset which they led more frequently to a centre of dissipation,
spoken of formerly as the “Markis o’ Granby,” but among intimates as
“Dickison’s.” A large low room with a sanded floor; a cold scent of
tobacco, modified by undetected beer-dregs; Mr Dickison leaning against
the door-post with a melancholy pimpled face, looking as irrelevant to
the daylight as a last night’s guttered candle,—all this may not seem a
very seductive form of temptation; but the majority of men in Basset
found it fatally alluring when encountered on their road toward four
o’clock on a wintry afternoon; and if any wife in Basset wished to
indicate that her husband was not a pleasure-seeking man, she could
hardly do it more emphatically than by saying that he didn’t spend a
shilling at Dickison’s from one Whitsuntide to another. Mrs Moss had
said so of _her_ husband more than once, when her brother was in a mood
to find fault with him, as he certainly was to-day. And nothing could
be less pacifying to Mr Tulliver than the behaviour of the farmyard
gate, which he no sooner attempted to push open with his riding-stick
than it acted as gates without the upper hinge are known to do, to the
peril of shins, whether equine or human. He was about to get down and
lead his horse through the damp dirt of the hollow farmyard, shadowed
drearily by the large half-timbered buildings, up to the long line of
tumble-down dwelling-houses standing on a raised causeway; but the
timely appearance of a cowboy saved him that frustration of a plan he
had determined on,—namely, not to get down from his horse during this
visit. If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak
from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the
command of a distant horizon. Mrs Moss heard the sound of the horse’s
feet, and, when her brother rode up, was already outside the kitchen
door, with a half-weary smile on her face, and a black-eyed baby in her
arms. Mrs Moss’s face bore a faded resemblance to her brother’s; baby’s
little fat hand, pressed against her cheek, seemed to show more
strikingly that the cheek was faded.
“Brother, I’m glad to see you,” she said, in an affectionate tone. “I
didn’t look for you to-day. How do you do?”
“Oh, pretty well, Mrs Moss, pretty well,” answered the brother, with
cool deliberation, as if it were rather too forward of her to ask that
question. She knew at once that her brother was not in a good humour;
he never called her Mrs Moss except when he was angry, and when they
were in company. But she thought it was in the order of nature that
people who were poorly off should be snubbed. Mrs Moss did not take her
stand on the equality of the human race; she was a patient, prolific,
loving-hearted woman.
“Your husband isn’t in the house, I suppose?” added Mr Tulliver after a
grave pause, during which four children had run out, like chickens
whose mother has been suddenly in eclipse behind the hen-coop.
“No,” said Mrs Moss, “but he’s only in the potato-field yonders.
Georgy, run to the Far Close in a minute, and tell father your uncle’s
come. You’ll get down, brother, won’t you, and take something?”
“No, no; I can’t get down. I must be going home again directly,” said
Mr Tulliver, looking at the distance.
“And how’s Mrs Tulliver and the children?” said Mrs Moss, humbly, not
daring to press her invitation.
“Oh, pretty well. Tom’s going to a new school at Midsummer,—a deal of
expense to me. It’s bad work for me, lying out o’ my money.”
“I wish you’d be so good as let the children come and see their cousins
some day. My little uns want to see their cousin Maggie so as never
was. And me her godmother, and so fond of her; there’s nobody ’ud make
a bigger fuss with her, according to what they’ve got. And I know she
likes to come, for she’s a loving child, and how quick and clever she
is, to be sure!”
If Mrs Moss had been one of the most astute women in the world, instead
of being one of the simplest, she could have thought of nothing more
likely to propitiate her brother than this praise of Maggie. He seldom
found any one volunteering praise of “the little wench”; it was usually
left entirely to himself to insist on her merits. But Maggie always
appeared in the most amiable light at her aunt Moss’s; it was her
Alsatia, where she was out of the reach of law,—if she upset anything,
dirtied her shoes, or tore her frock, these things were matters of
course at her aunt Moss’s. In spite of himself, Mr Tulliver’s eyes got
milder, and he did not look away from his sister as he said,—
“Ay; she’s fonder o’ you than o’ the other aunts, I think. She takes
after our family: not a bit of her mother’s in her.”
“Moss says she’s just like what I used to be,” said Mrs Moss, “though I
was never so quick and fond o’ the books. But I think my Lizzy’s like
her; _she’s_ sharp. Come here, Lizzy, my dear, and let your uncle see
you; he hardly knows you, you grow so fast.”
Lizzy, a black-eyed child of seven, looked very shy when her mother
drew her forward, for the small Mosses were much in awe of their uncle
from Dorlcote Mill. She was inferior enough to Maggie in fire and
strength of expression to make the resemblance between the two entirely
flattering to Mr Tulliver’s fatherly love.
“Ay, they’re a bit alike,” he said, looking kindly at the little figure
in the soiled pinafore. “They both take after our mother. You’ve got
enough o’ gells, Gritty,” he added, in a tone half compassionate, half
reproachful.
“Four of ’em, bless ’em!” said Mrs Moss, with a sigh, stroking Lizzy’s
hair on each side of her forehead; “as many as there’s boys. They’ve
got a brother apiece.”
“Ah, but they must turn out and fend for themselves,” said Mr Tulliver,
feeling that his severity was relaxing and trying to brace it by
throwing out a wholesome hint “They mustn’t look to hanging on their
brothers.”
“No; but I hope their brothers ’ull love the poor things, and remember
they came o’ one father and mother; the lads ’ull never be the poorer
for that,” said Mrs Moss, flashing out with hurried timidity, like a
half-smothered fire.
Mr Tulliver gave his horse a little stroke on the flank, then checked
it, and said angrily, “Stand still with you!” much to the astonishment
of that innocent animal.
“And the more there is of ’em, the more they must love one another,”
Mrs Moss went on, looking at her children with a didactic purpose. But
she turned toward her brother again to say, “Not but what I hope your
boy ’ull allays be good to his sister, though there’s but two of ’em,
like you and me, brother.”
The arrow went straight to Mr Tulliver’s heart. He had not a rapid
imagination, but the thought of Maggie was very near to him, and he was
not long in seeing his relation to his own sister side by side with
Tom’s relation to Maggie. Would the little wench ever be poorly off,
and Tom rather hard upon her?
“Ay, ay, Gritty,” said the miller, with a new softness in his tone;
“but I’ve allays done what I could for you,” he added, as if
vindicating himself from a reproach.
“I’m not denying that, brother, and I’m noways ungrateful,” said poor
Mrs Moss, too fagged by toil and children to have strength left for any
pride. “But here’s the father. What a while you’ve been, Moss!”
“While, do you call it?” said Mr Moss, feeling out of breath and
injured. “I’ve been running all the way. Won’t you ’light, Mr
Tulliver?”
“Well, I’ll just get down and have a bit o’ talk with you in the
garden,” said Mr Tulliver, thinking that he should be more likely to
show a due spirit of resolve if his sister were not present.
He got down, and passed with Mr Moss into the garden, toward an old
yew-tree arbour, while his sister stood tapping her baby on the back
and looking wistfully after them.
Their entrance into the yew-tree arbour surprised several fowls that
were recreating themselves by scratching deep holes in the dusty
ground, and at once took flight with much pother and cackling. Mr
Tulliver sat down on the bench, and tapping the ground curiously here
and there with his stick, as if he suspected some hollowness, opened
the conversation by observing, with something like a snarl in his
tone,—
“Why, you’ve got wheat again in that Corner Close, I see; and never a
bit o’ dressing on it. You’ll do no good with it this year.”
Mr Moss, who, when he married Miss Tulliver, had been regarded as the
buck of Basset, now wore a beard nearly a week old, and had the
depressed, unexpectant air of a machine-horse. He answered in a
patient-grumbling tone, “Why, poor farmers like me must do as they can;
they must leave it to them as have got money to play with, to put half
as much into the ground as they mean to get out of it.”
“I don’t know who should have money to play with, if it isn’t them as
can borrow money without paying interest,” said Mr Tulliver, who wished
to get into a slight quarrel; it was the most natural and easy
introduction to calling in money.
“I know I’m behind with the interest,” said Mr Moss, “but I was so
unlucky wi’ the wool last year; and what with the Missis being laid up
so, things have gone awk’arder nor usual.”
“Ay,” snarled Mr Tulliver, “there’s folks as things ’ull allays go
awk’ard with; empty sacks ’ull never stand upright.”
“Well, I don’t know what fault you’ve got to find wi’ me, Mr Tulliver,”
said Mr Moss, deprecatingly; “I know there isn’t a day-labourer works
harder.”
“What’s the use o’ that,” said Mr Tulliver, sharply, “when a man
marries, and’s got no capital to work his farm but his wife’s bit o’
fortin? I was against it from the first; but you’d neither of you
listen to me. And I can’t lie out o’ my money any longer, for I’ve got