The Mill on the Floss
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
sha’n’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,—and 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 a pity, though,” said Mr Tulliver, “as the lad should
take after the mother’s side instead o’ the little wench. That’s the
worst on’t wi’ 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
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 upstairs 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 creatur’, all the while I’m waiting
for her downstairs. 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
drownded 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.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear, Maggie, what are you thinkin’ of, to throw your
bonnet down there? Take it upstairs, 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 patchwork, like a little
lady.”
“Oh, 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 upward 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 _bonhomie_ toward 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; amongst 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