The Mill on the Floss
to pay five hundred o’ Mrs Glegg’s, and there’ll be Tom an expense to
me. I should find myself short, even saying I’d got back all as is my
own. You must look about and see how you can pay me the three hundred
pound.”
“Well, if that’s what you mean,” said Mr Moss, looking blankly before
him, “we’d better be sold up, and ha’ done with it; I must part wi’
every head o’ stock I’ve got, to pay you and the landlord too.”
Poor relations are undeniably irritating,—their existence is so
entirely uncalled for on our part, and they are almost always very
faulty people. Mr Tulliver had succeeded in getting quite as much
irritated with Mr Moss as he had desired, and he was able to say
angrily, rising from his seat,—
“Well, you must do as you can. _I_ can’t find money for everybody else
as well as myself. I must look to my own business and my own family. I
can’t lie out o’ my money any longer. You must raise it as quick as you
can.”
Mr Tulliver walked abruptly out of the arbour as he uttered the last
sentence, and, without looking round at Mr Moss, went on to the kitchen
door, where the eldest boy was holding his horse, and his sister was
waiting in a state of wondering alarm, which was not without its
alleviations, for baby was making pleasant gurgling sounds, and
performing a great deal of finger practice on the faded face. Mrs Moss
had eight children, but could never overcome her regret that the twins
had not lived. Mr Moss thought their removal was not without its
consolations. “Won’t you come in, brother?” she said, looking anxiously
at her husband, who was walking slowly up, while Mr Tulliver had his
foot already in the stirrup.
“No, no; good-by,” said he, turning his horse’s head, and riding away.
No man could feel more resolute till he got outside the yard gate, and
a little way along the deep-rutted lane; but before he reached the next
turning, which would take him out of sight of the dilapidated
farm-buildings, he appeared to be smitten by some sudden thought. He
checked his horse, and made it stand still in the same spot for two or
three minutes, during which he turned his head from side to side in a
melancholy way, as if he were looking at some painful object on more
sides than one. Evidently, after his fit of promptitude, Mr Tulliver
was relapsing into the sense that this is a puzzling world. He turned
his horse, and rode slowly back, giving vent to the climax of feeling
which had determined this movement by saying aloud, as he struck his
horse, “Poor little wench! she’ll have nobody but Tom, belike, when I’m
gone.”
Mr Tulliver’s return into the yard was descried by several young
Mosses, who immediately ran in with the exciting news to their mother,
so that Mrs Moss was again on the door-step when her brother rode up.
She had been crying, but was rocking baby to sleep in her arms now, and
made no ostentatious show of sorrow as her brother looked at her, but
merely said:
“The father’s gone to the field, again, if you want him, brother.”
“No, Gritty, no,” said Mr Tulliver, in a gentle tone. “Don’t you
fret,—that’s all,—I’ll make a shift without the money a bit, only you
must be as clever and contriving as you can.”
Mrs Moss’s tears came again at this unexpected kindness, and she could
say nothing.
“Come, come!—the little wench shall come and see you. I’ll bring her
and Tom some day before he goes to school. You mustn’t fret. I’ll
allays be a good brother to you.”
“Thank you for that word, brother,” said Mrs Moss, drying her tears;
then turning to Lizzy, she said, “Run now, and fetch the coloured egg
for cousin Maggie.” Lizzy ran in, and quickly reappeared with a small
paper parcel.
“It’s boiled hard, brother, and coloured with thrums, very pretty; it
was done o’ purpose for Maggie. Will you please to carry it in your
pocket?”
“Ay, ay,” said Mr Tulliver, putting it carefully in his side pocket.
“Good-by.”
And so the respectable miller returned along the Basset lanes rather
more puzzled than before as to ways and means, but still with the sense
of a danger escaped. It had come across his mind that if he were hard
upon his sister, it might somehow tend to make Tom hard upon Maggie at
some distant day, when her father was no longer there to take her part;
for simple people, like our friend Mr Tulliver, are apt to clothe
unimpeachable feelings in erroneous ideas, and this was his confused
way of explaining to himself that his love and anxiety for “the little
wench” had given him a new sensibility toward his sister.
Chapter IX.
To Garum Firs
While the possible troubles of Maggie’s future were occupying her
father’s mind, she herself was tasting only the bitterness of the
present. Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no
memories of outlived sorrow.
The fact was, the day had begun ill with Maggie. The pleasure of having
Lucy to look at, and the prospect of the afternoon visit to Garum Firs,
where she would hear uncle Pullet’s musical box, had been marred as
early as eleven o’clock by the advent of the hair-dresser from St
Ogg’s, who had spoken in the severest terms of the condition in which
he had found her hair, holding up one jagged lock after another and
saying, “See here! tut, tut, tut!” in a tone of mingled disgust and
pity, which to Maggie’s imagination was equivalent to the strongest
expression of public opinion. Mr Rappit, the hair-dresser, with his
well-anointed coronal locks tending wavily upward, like the simulated
pyramid of flame on a monumental urn, seemed to her at that moment the
most formidable of her contemporaries, into whose street at St Ogg’s
she would carefully refrain from entering through the rest of her life.
Moreover, the preparation for a visit being always a serious affair in
the Dodson family, Martha was enjoined to have Mrs Tulliver’s room
ready an hour earlier than usual, that the laying out of the best
clothes might not be deferred till the last moment, as was sometimes
the case in families of lax views, where the ribbon-strings were never
rolled up, where there was little or no wrapping in silver paper, and
where the sense that the Sunday clothes could be got at quite easily
produced no shock to the mind. Already, at twelve o’clock, Mrs Tulliver
had on her visiting costume, with a protective apparatus of brown
holland, as if she had been a piece of satin furniture in danger of
flies; Maggie was frowning and twisting her shoulders, that she might
if possible shrink away from the prickliest of tuckers, while her
mother was remonstrating, “Don’t, Maggie, my dear; don’t make yourself
so ugly!” and Tom’s cheeks were looking particularly brilliant as a
relief to his best blue suit, which he wore with becoming calmness,
having, after a little wrangling, effected what was always the one
point of interest to him in his toilet: he had transferred all the
contents of his everyday pockets to those actually in wear.
As for Lucy, she was just as pretty and neat as she had been yesterday;
no accidents ever happened to her clothes, and she was never
uncomfortable in them, so that she looked with wondering pity at
Maggie, pouting and writhing under the exasperating tucker. Maggie
would certainly have torn it off, if she had not been checked by the
remembrance of her recent humiliation about her hair; as it was, she
confined herself to fretting and twisting, and behaving peevishly about
the card-houses which they were allowed to build till dinner, as a
suitable amusement for boys and girls in their best clothes. Tom could
build perfect pyramids of houses; but Maggie’s would never bear the
laying on the roof. It was always so with the things that Maggie made;
and Tom had deduced the conclusion that no girls could ever make
anything. But it happened that Lucy proved wonderfully clever at
building; she handled the cards so lightly, and moved so gently, that
Tom condescended to admire her houses as well as his own, the more
readily because she had asked him to teach her. Maggie, too, would have
admired Lucy’s houses, and would have given up her own unsuccessful
building to contemplate them, without ill temper, if her tucker had not
made her peevish, and if Tom had not inconsiderately laughed when her
houses fell, and told her she was “a stupid.”
“Don’t laugh at me, Tom!” she burst out angrily; “I’m not a stupid. I
know a great many things you don’t.”
“Oh, I dare say, Miss Spitfire! I’d never be such a cross thing as you,
making faces like that. Lucy doesn’t do so. I like Lucy better than
you; _I_ wish Lucy was _my_ sister.”
“Then it’s very wicked and cruel of you to wish so,” said Maggie,
starting up hurriedly from her place on the floor, and upsetting Tom’s
wonderful pagoda. She really did not mean it, but the circumstantial
evidence was against her, and Tom turned white with anger, but said
nothing; he would have struck her, only he knew it was cowardly to
strike a girl, and Tom Tulliver was quite determined he would never do
anything cowardly.
Maggie stood in dismay and terror, while Tom got up from the floor and
walked away, pale, from the scattered ruins of his pagoda, and Lucy
looked on mutely, like a kitten pausing from its lapping.
“Oh, Tom,” said Maggie, at last, going half-way toward him, “I didn’t
mean to knock it down, indeed, indeed I didn’t.”
Tom took no notice of her, but took, instead, two or three hard peas
out of his pocket, and shot them with his thumbnail against the window,
vaguely at first, but presently with the distinct aim of hitting a
superannuated blue-bottle which was exposing its imbecility in the
spring sunshine, clearly against the views of Nature, who had provided
Tom and the peas for the speedy destruction of this weak individual.
Thus the morning had been made heavy to Maggie, and Tom’s persistent
coldness to her all through their walk spoiled the fresh air and
sunshine for her. He called Lucy to look at the half-built bird’s nest
without caring to show it Maggie, and peeled a willow switch for Lucy
and himself, without offering one to Maggie. Lucy had said, “Maggie,
shouldn’t _you_ like one?” but Tom was deaf.
Still, the sight of the peacock opportunely spreading his tail on the
stackyard wall, just as they reached Garum Firs, was enough to divert
the mind temporarily from personal grievances. And this was only the
beginning of beautiful sights at Garum Firs. All the farmyard life was
wonderful there,—bantams, speckled and top-knotted; Friesland hens,
with their feathers all turned the wrong way; Guinea-fowls that flew
and screamed and dropped their pretty spotted feathers; pouter-pigeons
and a tame magpie; nay, a goat, and a wonderful brindled dog, half
mastiff, half bull-dog, as large as a lion. Then there were white
railings and white gates all about, and glittering weathercocks of
various design, and garden-walks paved with pebbles in beautiful
patterns,—nothing was quite common at Garum Firs; and Tom thought that
the unusual size of the toads there was simply due to the general
unusualness which characterised uncle Pullet’s possessions as a
gentleman farmer. Toads who paid rent were naturally leaner. As for the
house, it was not less remarkable; it had a receding centre, and two
wings with battlemented turrets, and was covered with glittering white
stucco.
Uncle Pullet had seen the expected party approaching from the window,
and made haste to unbar and unchain the front door, kept always in this
fortified condition from fear of tramps, who might be supposed to know
of the glass case of stuffed birds in the hall, and to contemplate
rushing in and carrying it away on their heads. Aunt Pullet, too,
appeared at the doorway, and as soon as her sister was within hearing
said, “Stop the children, for God’s sake! Bessy; don’t let ’em come up