The Mill on the Floss
be as it was before?” Mrs Pullet said, just before parting.
“Yes, you may, Sophy,” said Mrs Glegg; “you may tell Mr Tulliver, and
Bessy too, as I’m not going to behave ill because folks behave ill to
me; I know it’s my place, as the eldest, to set an example in every
respect, and I do it. Nobody can say different of me, if they’ll keep
to the truth.”
Mrs Glegg being in this state of satisfaction in her own lofty
magnanimity, I leave you to judge what effect was produced on her by
the reception of a short letter from Mr Tulliver that very evening,
after Mrs Pullet’s departure, informing her that she needn’t trouble
her mind about her five hundred pounds, for it should be paid back to
her in the course of the next month at farthest, together with the
interest due thereon until the time of payment. And furthermore, that
Mr Tulliver had no wish to behave uncivilly to Mrs Glegg, and she was
welcome to his house whenever she liked to come, but he desired no
favours from her, either for himself or his children.
It was poor Mrs Tulliver who had hastened this catastrophe, entirely
through that irrepressible hopefulness of hers which led her to expect
that similar causes may at any time produce different results. It had
very often occurred in her experience that Mr Tulliver had done
something because other people had said he was not able to do it, or
had pitied him for his supposed inability, or in any other way piqued
his pride; still, she thought to-day, if she told him when he came in
to tea that sister Pullet was gone to try and make everything up with
sister Glegg, so that he needn’t think about paying in the money, it
would give a cheerful effect to the meal. Mr Tulliver had never
slackened in his resolve to raise the money, but now he at once
determined to write a letter to Mrs Glegg, which should cut off all
possibility of mistake. Mrs Pullet gone to beg and pray for _him_
indeed! Mr Tulliver did not willingly write a letter, and found the
relation between spoken and written language, briefly known as
spelling, one of the most puzzling things in this puzzling world.
Nevertheless, like all fervid writing, the task was done in less time
than usual, and if the spelling differed from Mrs Glegg’s,—why, she
belonged, like himself, to a generation with whom spelling was a matter
of private judgment.
Mrs Glegg did not alter her will in consequence of this letter, and cut
off the Tulliver children from their sixth and seventh share in her
thousand pounds; for she had her principles. No one must be able to say
of her when she was dead that she had not divided her money with
perfect fairness among her own kin. In the matter of wills, personal
qualities were subordinate to the great fundamental fact of blood; and
to be determined in the distribution of your property by caprice, and
not make your legacies bear a direct ratio to degrees of kinship, was a
prospective disgrace that would have embittered her life. This had
always been a principle in the Dodson family; it was one form of that
sense of honour and rectitude which was a proud tradition in such
families,—a tradition which has been the salt of our provincial
society.
But though the letter could not shake Mrs Glegg’s principles, it made
the family breach much more difficult to mend; and as to the effect it
produced on Mrs Glegg’s opinion of Mr Tulliver, she begged to be
understood from that time forth that she had nothing whatever to say
about him; his state of mind, apparently, was too corrupt for her to
contemplate it for a moment. It was not until the evening before Tom
went to school, at the beginning of August, that Mrs Glegg paid a visit
to her sister Tulliver, sitting in her gig all the while, and showing
her displeasure by markedly abstaining from all advice and criticism;
for, as she observed to her sister Deane, “Bessy must bear the
consequence o’ having such a husband, though I’m sorry for her,” and
Mrs Deane agreed that Bessy was pitiable.
That evening Tom observed to Maggie: “Oh my! Maggie, aunt Glegg’s
beginning to come again; I’m glad I’m going to school. _You’ll_ catch
it all now!”
Maggie was already so full of sorrow at the thought of Tom’s going away
from her, that this playful exultation of his seemed very unkind, and
she cried herself to sleep that night.
Mr Tulliver’s prompt procedure entailed on him further promptitude in
finding the convenient person who was desirous of lending five hundred
pounds on bond. “It must be no client of Wakem’s,” he said to himself;
and yet at the end of a fortnight it turned out to the contrary; not
because Mr Tulliver’s will was feeble, but because external fact was
stronger. Wakem’s client was the only convenient person to be found. Mr
Tulliver had a destiny as well as Œdipus, and in this case he might
plead, like Œdipus, that his deed was inflicted on him rather than
committed by him.
BOOK SECOND.
SCHOOL-TIME.
Chapter I.
Tom’s “First Half”
Tom Tulliver’s sufferings during the first quarter he was at King’s
Lorton, under the distinguished care of the Rev. Walter Stelling, were
rather severe. At Mr Jacob’s academy life had not presented itself to
him as a difficult problem; there were plenty of fellows to play with,
and Tom being good at all active games,—fighting especially,—had that
precedence among them which appeared to him inseparable from the
personality of Tom Tulliver. Mr Jacobs himself, familiarly known as Old
Goggles, from his habit of wearing spectacles, imposed no painful awe;
and if it was the property of snuffy old hypocrites like him to write
like copperplate and surround their signatures with arabesques, to
spell without forethought, and to spout “my name is Norval” without
bungling, Tom, for his part, was glad he was not in danger of those
mean accomplishments. He was not going to be a snuffy schoolmaster, he,
but a substantial man, like his father, who used to go hunting when he
was younger, and rode a capital black mare,—as pretty a bit of
horse-flesh as ever you saw; Tom had heard what her points were a
hundred times. _He_ meant to go hunting too, and to be generally
respected. When people were grown up, he considered, nobody inquired
about their writing and spelling; when he was a man, he should be
master of everything, and do just as he liked. It had been very
difficult for him to reconcile himself to the idea that his school-time
was to be prolonged and that he was not to be brought up to his
father’s business, which he had always thought extremely pleasant; for
it was nothing but riding about, giving orders, and going to market;
and he thought that a clergyman would give him a great many Scripture
lessons, and probably make him learn the Gospel and Epistle on a
Sunday, as well as the Collect. But in the absence of specific
information, it was impossible for him to imagine that school and a
schoolmaster would be something entirely different from the academy of
Mr Jacobs. So, not to be at a deficiency, in case of his finding genial
companions, he had taken care to carry with him a small box of
percussion-caps; not that there was anything particular to be done with
them, but they would serve to impress strange boys with a sense of his
familiarity with guns. Thus poor Tom, though he saw very clearly
through Maggie’s illusions, was not without illusions of his own, which
were to be cruelly dissipated by his enlarged experience at King’s
Lorton.
He had not been there a fortnight before it was evident to him that
life, complicated not only with the Latin grammar but with a new
standard of English pronunciation, was a very difficult business, made
all the more obscure by a thick mist of bashfulness. Tom, as you have
observed, was never an exception among boys for ease of address; but
the difficulty of enunciating a monosyllable in reply to Mr or Mrs
Stelling was so great, that he even dreaded to be asked at table
whether he would have more pudding. As to the percussion-caps, he had
almost resolved, in the bitterness of his heart, that he would throw
them into a neighbouring pond; for not only was he the solitary pupil,
but he began even to have a certain scepticism about guns, and a
general sense that his theory of life was undermined. For Mr Stelling
thought nothing of guns, or horses either, apparently; and yet it was
impossible for Tom to despise Mr Stelling as he had despised Old
Goggles. If there were anything that was not thoroughly genuine about
Mr Stelling, it lay quite beyond Tom’s power to detect it; it is only
by a wide comparison of facts that the wisest full-grown man can
distinguish well-rolled barrels from mere supernal thunder.
Mr Stelling was a well-sized, broad-chested man, not yet thirty, with
flaxen hair standing erect, and large lightish-gray eyes, which were
always very wide open; he had a sonorous bass voice, and an air of
defiant self-confidence inclining to brazenness. He had entered on his
career with great vigor, and intended to make a considerable impression
on his fellow-men. The Rev. Walter Stelling was not a man who would
remain among the “inferior clergy” all his life. He had a true British
determination to push his way in the world,—as a schoolmaster, in the
first place, for there were capital masterships of grammar-schools to
be had, and Mr Stelling meant to have one of them; but as a preacher
also, for he meant always to preach in a striking manner, so as to have
his congregation swelled by admirers from neighbouring parishes, and to
produce a great sensation whenever he took occasional duty for a
brother clergyman of minor gifts. The style of preaching he had chosen
was the extemporaneous, which was held little short of the miraculous
in rural parishes like King’s Lorton. Some passages of Massillon and
Bourdaloue, which he knew by heart, were really very effective when
rolled out in Mr Stelling’s deepest tones; but as comparatively feeble
appeals of his own were delivered in the same loud and impressive
manner, they were often thought quite as striking by his hearers. Mr
Stelling’s doctrine was of no particular school; if anything, it had a
tinge of evangelicalism, for that was “the telling thing” just then in
the diocese to which King’s Lorton belonged. In short, Mr Stelling was
a man who meant to rise in his profession, and to rise by merit,
clearly, since he had no interest beyond what might be promised by a
problematic relationship to a great lawyer who had not yet become Lord
Chancellor. A clergyman who has such vigorous intentions naturally gets
a little into debt at starting; it is not to be expected that he will
live in the meagre style of a man who means to be a poor curate all his
life; and if the few hundreds Mr Timpson advanced toward his daughter’s
fortune did not suffice for the purchase of handsome furniture,
together with a stock of wine, a grand piano, and the laying out of a
superior flower-garden, it followed in the most rigorous manner, either
that these things must be procured by some other means, or else that
the Rev. Mr Stelling must go without them, which last alternative would
be an absurd procrastination of the fruits of success, where success
was certain. Mr Stelling was so broad-chested and resolute that he felt
equal to anything; he would become celebrated by shaking the
consciences of his hearers, and he would by and by edit a Greek play,
and invent several new readings. He had not yet selected the play, for
having been married little more than two years, his leisure time had
been much occupied with attentions to Mrs Stelling; but he had told
that fine woman what he meant to do some day, and she felt great
confidence in her husband, as a man who understood everything of that
sort.
But the immediate step to future success was to bring on Tom Tulliver