The Mill on the Floss
the door-steps; Sally’s bringing the old mat and the duster, to rub
their shoes.”
Mrs Pullet’s front-door mats were by no means intended to wipe shoes
on; the very scraper had a deputy to do its dirty work. Tom rebelled
particularly against this shoewiping, which he always considered in the
light of an indignity to his sex. He felt it as the beginning of the
disagreeables incident to a visit at aunt Pullet’s, where he had once
been compelled to sit with towels wrapped round his boots; a fact which
may serve to correct the too hasty conclusion that a visit to Garum
Firs must have been a great treat to a young gentleman fond of
animals,—fond, that is, of throwing stones at them.
The next disagreeable was confined to his feminine companions; it was
the mounting of the polished oak stairs, which had very handsome
carpets rolled up and laid by in a spare bedroom, so that the ascent of
these glossy steps might have served, in barbarous times, as a trial by
ordeal from which none but the most spotless virtue could have come off
with unbroken limbs. Sophy’s weakness about these polished stairs was
always a subject of bitter remonstrance on Mrs Glegg’s part; but Mrs
Tulliver ventured on no comment, only thinking to herself it was a
mercy when she and the children were safe on the landing.
“Mrs Gray has sent home my new bonnet, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet, in a
pathetic tone, as Mrs Tulliver adjusted her cap.
“Has she, sister?” said Mrs Tulliver, with an air of much interest.
“And how do you like it?”
“It’s apt to make a mess with clothes, taking ’em out and putting ’em
in again,” said Mrs Pullet, drawing a bunch of keys from her pocket and
looking at them earnestly, “but it ’ud be a pity for you to go away
without seeing it. There’s no knowing what may happen.”
Mrs Pullet shook her head slowly at this last serious consideration,
which determined her to single out a particular key.
“I’m afraid it’ll be troublesome to you getting it out, sister,” said
Mrs Tulliver; “but I _should_ like to see what sort of a crown she’s
made you.”
Mrs Pullet rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one wing of a very
bright wardrobe, where you may have hastily supposed she would find a
new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition could only have arisen from
a too superficial acquaintance with the habits of the Dodson family. In
this wardrobe Mrs Pullet was seeking something small enough to be
hidden among layers of linen,—it was a door-key.
“You must come with me into the best room,” said Mrs Pullet.
“May the children come too, sister?” inquired Mrs Tulliver, who saw
that Maggie and Lucy were looking rather eager.
“Well,” said aunt Pullet, reflectively, “it’ll perhaps be safer for ’em
to come; they’ll be touching something if we leave ’em behind.”
So they went in procession along the bright and slippery corridor,
dimly lighted by the semi-lunar top of the window which rose above the
closed shutter; it was really quite solemn. Aunt Pullet paused and
unlocked a door which opened on something still more solemn than the
passage,—a darkened room, in which the outer light, entering feebly,
showed what looked like the corpses of furniture in white shrouds.
Everything that was not shrouded stood with its legs upward. Lucy laid
hold of Maggie’s frock, and Maggie’s heart beat rapidly.
Aunt Pullet half-opened the shutter and then unlocked the wardrobe,
with a melancholy deliberateness which was quite in keeping with the
funereal solemnity of the scene. The delicious scent of rose-leaves
that issued from the wardrobe made the process of taking out sheet
after sheet of silver paper quite pleasant to assist at, though the
sight of the bonnet at last was an anticlimax to Maggie, who would have
preferred something more strikingly preternatural. But few things could
have been more impressive to Mrs Tulliver. She looked all round it in
silence for some moments, and then said emphatically, “Well, sister,
I’ll never speak against the full crowns again!”
It was a great concession, and Mrs Pullet felt it; she felt something
was due to it.
“You’d like to see it on, sister?” she said sadly. “I’ll open the
shutter a bit further.”
“Well, if you don’t mind taking off your cap, sister,” said Mrs
Tulliver.
Mrs Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown silk scalp with a
jutting promontory of curls which was common to the more mature and
judicious women of those times, and placing the bonnet on her head,
turned slowly round, like a draper’s lay-figure, that Mrs Tulliver
might miss no point of view.
“I’ve sometimes thought there’s a loop too much o’ ribbon on this left
side, sister; what do you think?” said Mrs Pullet.
Mrs Tulliver looked earnestly at the point indicated, and turned her
head on one side. “Well, I think it’s best as it is; if you meddled
with it, sister, you might repent.”
“That’s true,” said aunt Pullet, taking off the bonnet and looking at
it contemplatively.
“How much might she charge you for that bonnet, sister?” said Mrs
Tulliver, whose mind was actively engaged on the possibility of getting
a humble imitation of this _chef-d’œuvre_ made from a piece of silk she
had at home.
Mrs Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her head, and then whispered,
“Pullet pays for it; he said I was to have the best bonnet at Garum
Church, let the next best be whose it would.”
She began slowly to adjust the trimmings, in preparation for returning
it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts seemed to have taken
a melancholy turn, for she shook her head.
“Ah,” she said at last, “I may never wear it twice, sister; who knows?”
“Don’t talk o’ that sister,” answered Mrs Tulliver. “I hope you’ll have
your health this summer.”
“Ah! but there may come a death in the family, as there did soon after
I had my green satin bonnet. Cousin Abbott may go, and we can’t think
o’ wearing crape less nor half a year for him.”
“That _would_ be unlucky,” said Mrs Tulliver, entering thoroughly into
the possibility of an inopportune decease. “There’s never so much
pleasure i’ wearing a bonnet the second year, especially when the
crowns are so chancy,—never two summers alike.”
“Ah, it’s the way i’ this world,” said Mrs Pullet, returning the bonnet
to the wardrobe and locking it up. She maintained a silence
characterised by head-shaking, until they had all issued from the
solemn chamber and were in her own room again. Then, beginning to cry,
she said, “Sister, if you should never see that bonnet again till I’m
dead and gone, you’ll remember I showed it you this day.”
Mrs Tulliver felt that she ought to be affected, but she was a woman of
sparse tears, stout and healthy; she couldn’t cry so much as her sister
Pullet did, and had often felt her deficiency at funerals. Her effort
to bring tears into her eyes issued in an odd contraction of her face.
Maggie, looking on attentively, felt that there was some painful
mystery about her aunt’s bonnet which she was considered too young to
understand; indignantly conscious, all the while, that she could have
understood that, as well as everything else, if she had been taken into
confidence.
When they went down, uncle Pullet observed, with some acumen, that he
reckoned the missis had been showing her bonnet,—that was what had made
them so long upstairs. With Tom the interval had seemed still longer,
for he had been seated in irksome constraint on the edge of a sofa
directly opposite his uncle Pullet, who regarded him with twinkling
gray eyes, and occasionally addressed him as “Young sir.”
“Well, young sir, what do you learn at school?” was a standing question
with uncle Pullet; whereupon Tom always looked sheepish, rubbed his
hands across his face, and answered, “I don’t know.” It was altogether
so embarrassing to be seated _tête-à-tête_ with uncle Pullet, that Tom
could not even look at the prints on the walls, or the flycages, or the
wonderful flower-pots; he saw nothing but his uncle’s gaiters. Not that
Tom was in awe of his uncle’s mental superiority; indeed, he had made
up his mind that he didn’t want to be a gentleman farmer, because he
shouldn’t like to be such a thin-legged, silly fellow as his uncle
Pullet,—a molly-coddle, in fact. A boy’s sheepishness is by no means a
sign of overmastering reverence; and while you are making encouraging
advances to him under the idea that he is overwhelmed by a sense of
your age and wisdom, ten to one he is thinking you extremely queer. The
only consolation I can suggest to you is, that the Greek boys probably
thought the same of Aristotle. It is only when you have mastered a
restive horse, or thrashed a drayman, or have got a gun in your hand,
that these shy juniors feel you to be a truly admirable and enviable
character. At least, I am quite sure of Tom Tulliver’s sentiments on
these points. In very tender years, when he still wore a lace border
under his outdoor cap, he was often observed peeping through the bars
of a gate and making minatory gestures with his small forefinger while
he scolded the sheep with an inarticulate burr, intended to strike
terror into their astonished minds; indicating thus early that desire
for mastery over the inferior animals, wild and domestic, including
cockchafers, neighbours’ dogs, and small sisters, which in all ages has
been an attribute of so much promise for the fortunes of our race. Now,
Mr Pullet never rode anything taller than a low pony, and was the least
predatory of men, considering firearms dangerous, as apt to go off of
themselves by nobody’s particular desire. So that Tom was not without
strong reasons when, in confidential talk with a chum, he had described
uncle Pullet as a nincompoop, taking care at the same time to observe
that he was a very “rich fellow.”
The only alleviating circumstance in a _tête-à-tête_ with uncle Pullet
was that he kept a variety of lozenges and peppermint-drops about his
person, and when at a loss for conversation, he filled up the void by
proposing a mutual solace of this kind.
“Do you like peppermints, young sir?” required only a tacit answer when
it was accompanied by a presentation of the article in question.
The appearance of the little girls suggested to uncle Pullet the
further solace of small sweet-cakes, of which he also kept a stock
under lock and key for his own private eating on wet days; but the
three children had no sooner got the tempting delicacy between their
fingers, than aunt Pullet desired them to abstain from eating it till
the tray and the plates came, since with those crisp cakes they would
make the floor “all over” crumbs. Lucy didn’t mind that much, for the
cake was so pretty, she thought it was rather a pity to eat it; but
Tom, watching his opportunity while the elders were talking, hastily
stowed it in his mouth at two bites, and chewed it furtively. As for
Maggie, becoming fascinated, as usual, by a print of Ulysses and
Nausicaa, which uncle Pullet had bought as a “pretty Scripture thing,”
she presently let fall her cake, and in an unlucky movement crushed it
beneath her foot,—a source of so much agitation to aunt Pullet and
conscious disgrace to Maggie, that she began to despair of hearing the
musical snuff-box to-day, till, after some reflection, it occurred to
her that Lucy was in high favour enough to venture on asking for a
tune. So she whispered to Lucy; and Lucy, who always did what she was
desired to do, went up quietly to her uncle’s knee, and blushing all
over her neck while she fingered her necklace, said, “Will you please
play us a tune, uncle?”
Lucy thought it was by reason of some exceptional talent in uncle
Pullet that the snuff-box played such beautiful tunes, and indeed the
thing was viewed in that light by the majority of his neighbours in