The Mill on the Floss
under all circumstances. This immovability of face, and the habit of
taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an answer, made him trebly
oracular to Mr Tulliver.
“It’s a very particular thing,” he went on; “it’s about my boy Tom.”
At the sound of this name, Maggie, who was seated on a low stool close
by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, shook her heavy hair
back and looked up eagerly. There were few sounds that roused Maggie
when she was dreaming over her book, but Tom’s name served as well as
the shrillest whistle; in an instant she was on the watch, with
gleaming eyes, like a Skye terrier suspecting mischief, or at all
events determined to fly at any one who threatened it toward Tom.
“You see, I want to put him to a new school at Midsummer,” said Mr
Tulliver; “he’s comin’ away from the ’cademy at Lady-day, an’ I shall
let him run loose for a quarter; but after that I want to send him to a
downright good school, where they’ll make a scholard of him.”
“Well,” said Mr Riley, “there’s no greater advantage you can give him
than a good education. Not,” he added, with polite significance,—“not
that a man can’t be an excellent miller and farmer, and a shrewd,
sensible fellow into the bargain, without much help from the
schoolmaster.”
“I believe you,” said Mr Tulliver, winking, and turning his head on one
side; “but that’s where it is. I don’t _mean_ Tom to be a miller and
farmer. I see no fun i’ that. Why, if I made him a miller an’ farmer,
he’d be expectin’ to take to the mill an’ the land, an’ a-hinting at me
as it was time for me to lay by an’ think o’ my latter end. Nay, nay,
I’ve seen enough o’ that wi’ sons. I’ll never pull my coat off before I
go to bed. I shall give Tom an eddication an’ put him to a business, as
he may make a nest for himself, an’ not want to push me out o’ mine.
Pretty well if he gets it when I’m dead an’ gone. I sha’n’t be put off
wi’ spoon-meat afore I’ve lost my teeth.”
This was evidently a point on which Mr Tulliver felt strongly; and the
impetus which had given unusual rapidity and emphasis to his speech
showed itself still unexhausted for some minutes afterward in a defiant
motion of the head from side to side, and an occasional “Nay, nay,”
like a subsiding growl.
These angry symptoms were keenly observed by Maggie, and cut her to the
quick. Tom, it appeared, was supposed capable of turning his father out
of doors, and of making the future in some way tragic by his
wickedness. This was not to be borne; and Maggie jumped up from her
stool, forgetting all about her heavy book, which fell with a bang
within the fender, and going up between her father’s knees, said, in a
half-crying, half-indignant voice,—
“Father, Tom wouldn’t be naughty to you ever; I know he wouldn’t.”
Mrs Tulliver was out of the room superintending a choice supper-dish,
and Mr Tulliver’s heart was touched; so Maggie was not scolded about
the book. Mr Riley quietly picked it up and looked at it, while the
father laughed, with a certain tenderness in his hard-lined face, and
patted his little girl on the back, and then held her hands and kept
her between his knees.
“What! they mustn’t say any harm o’ Tom, eh?” said Mr Tulliver, looking
at Maggie with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr
Riley, as though Maggie couldn’t hear, “She understands what one’s
talking about so as never was. And you should hear her read,—straight
off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at her book! But
it’s bad—it’s bad,” Mr Tulliver added sadly, checking this blamable
exultation. “A woman’s no business wi’ being so clever; it’ll turn to
trouble, I doubt. But bless you!”—here the exultation was clearly
recovering the mastery,—“she’ll read the books and understand ’em
better nor half the folks as are growed up.”
Maggie’s cheeks began to flush with triumphant excitement. She thought
Mr Riley would have a respect for her now; it had been evident that he
thought nothing of her before.
Mr Riley was turning over the leaves of the book, and she could make
nothing of his face, with its high-arched eyebrows; but he presently
looked at her, and said,—
“Come, come and tell me something about this book; here are some
pictures,—I want to know what they mean.”
Maggie, with deepening colour, went without hesitation to Mr Riley’s
elbow and looked over the book, eagerly seizing one corner, and tossing
back her mane, while she said,—
“Oh, I’ll tell you what that means. It’s a dreadful picture, isn’t it?
But I can’t help looking at it. That old woman in the water’s a
witch,—they’ve put her in to find out whether she’s a witch or no; and
if she swims she’s a witch, and if she’s drowned—and killed, you
know—she’s innocent, and not a witch, but only a poor silly old woman.
But what good would it do her then, you know, when she was drowned?
Only, I suppose, she’d go to heaven, and God would make it up to her.
And this dreadful blacksmith with his arms akimbo, laughing,—oh, isn’t
he ugly?—I’ll tell you what he is. He’s the Devil _really_” (here
Maggie’s voice became louder and more emphatic), “and not a right
blacksmith; for the Devil takes the shape of wicked men, and walks
about and sets people doing wicked things, and he’s oftener in the
shape of a bad man than any other, because, you know, if people saw he
was the Devil, and he roared at ’em, they’d run away, and he couldn’t
make ’em do what he pleased.”
Mr Tulliver had listened to this exposition of Maggie’s with petrifying
wonder.
“Why, what book is it the wench has got hold on?” he burst out at last.
“‘The History of the Devil,’ by Daniel Defoe,—not quite the right book
for a little girl,” said Mr Riley. “How came it among your books, Mr
Tulliver?”
Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her father said,—
“Why, it’s one o’ the books I bought at Partridge’s sale. They was all
bound alike,—it’s a good binding, you see,—and I thought they’d be all
good books. There’s Jeremy Taylor’s ‘Holy Living and Dying’ among ’em.
I read in it often of a Sunday” (Mr Tulliver felt somehow a familiarity
with that great writer, because his name was Jeremy); “and there’s a
lot more of ’em,—sermons mostly, I think,—but they’ve all got the same
covers, and I thought they were all o’ one sample, as you may say. But
it seems one mustn’t judge by th’ outside. This is a puzzlin’ world.”
“Well,” said Mr Riley, in an admonitory, patronizing tone as he patted
Maggie on the head, “I advise you to put by the ‘History of the Devil,’
and read some prettier book. Have you no prettier books?”
“Oh, yes,” said Maggie, reviving a little in the desire to vindicate
the variety of her reading. “I know the reading in this book isn’t
pretty; but I like the pictures, and I make stories to the pictures out
of my own head, you know. But I’ve got ‘Æsop’s Fables,’ and a book
about Kangaroos and things, and the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress....’”
“Ah, a beautiful book,” said Mr Riley; “you can’t read a better.”
“Well, but there’s a great deal about the Devil in that,” said Maggie,
triumphantly, “and I’ll show you the picture of him in his true shape,
as he fought with Christian.”
Maggie ran in an instant to the corner of the room, jumped on a chair,
and reached down from the small bookcase a shabby old copy of Bunyan,
which opened at once, without the least trouble of search, at the
picture she wanted.
“Here he is,” she said, running back to Mr Riley, “and Tom coloured him
for me with his paints when he was at home last holidays,—the body all
black, you know, and the eyes red, like fire, because he’s all fire
inside, and it shines out at his eyes.”
“Go, go!” said Mr Tulliver, peremptorily, beginning to feel rather
uncomfortable at these free remarks on the personal appearance of a
being powerful enough to create lawyers; “shut up the book, and let’s
hear no more o’ such talk. It is as I thought—the child ’ull learn more
mischief nor good wi’ the books. Go, go and see after your mother.”
Maggie shut up the book at once, with a sense of disgrace, but not
being inclined to see after her mother, she compromised the matter by
going into a dark corner behind her father’s chair, and nursing her
doll, toward which she had an occasional fit of fondness in Tom’s
absence, neglecting its toilet, but lavishing so many warm kisses on it
that the waxen cheeks had a wasted, unhealthy appearance.
“Did you ever hear the like on’t?” said Mr Tulliver, as Maggie retired.
“It’s a pity but what she’d been the lad,—she’d ha’ been a match for
the lawyers, _she_ would. It’s the wonderful’st thing”—here he lowered
his voice—“as I picked the mother because she wasn’t o’er ’cute—bein’ a
good-looking woman too, an’ come of a rare family for managing; but I
picked her from her sisters o’ purpose, ’cause she was a bit weak like;
for I wasn’t agoin’ to be told the rights o’ things by my own fireside.
But you see when a man’s got brains himself, there’s no knowing where
they’ll run to; an’ a pleasant sort o’ soft woman may go on breeding
you stupid lads and ’cute wenches, till it’s like as if the world was
turned topsy-turvy. It’s an uncommon puzzlin’ thing.”
Mr Riley’s gravity gave way, and he shook a little under the
application of his pinch of snuff before he said,—
“But your lad’s not stupid, is he? I saw him, when I was here last,
busy making fishing-tackle; he seemed quite up to it.”
“Well, he isn’t not to say stupid,—he’s got a notion o’ things out o’
door, an’ a sort o’ common sense, as he’d lay hold o’ things by the
right handle. But he’s slow with his tongue, you see, and he reads but
poorly, and can’t abide the books, and spells all wrong, they tell me,
an’ as shy as can be wi’ strangers, an’ you never hear him say ’cute
things like the little wench. Now, what I want is to send him to a
school where they’ll make him a bit nimble with his tongue and his pen,
and make a smart chap of him. I want my son to be even wi’ these
fellows as have got the start o’ me with having better schooling. Not
but what, if the world had been left as God made it, I could ha’ seen
my way, and held my own wi’ the best of ’em; but things have got so
twisted round and wrapped up i’ unreasonable words, as aren’t a bit
like ’em, as I’m clean at fault, often an’ often. Everything winds
about so—the more straightforrad you are, the more you’re puzzled.”
Mr Tulliver took a draught, swallowed it slowly, and shook his head in
a melancholy manner, conscious of exemplifying the truth that a
perfectly sane intellect is hardly at home in this insane world.
“You’re quite in the right of it, Tulliver,” observed Mr Riley. “Better
spend an extra hundred or two on your son’s education, than leave it
him in your will. I know I should have tried to do so by a son of mine,
if I’d had one, though, God knows, I haven’t your ready money to play
with, Tulliver; and I have a houseful of daughters into the bargain.”
“I dare say, now, you know of a school as ’ud be just the thing for
Tom,” said Mr Tulliver, not diverted from his purpose by any sympathy
with Mr Riley’s deficiency of ready cash.
Mr Riley took a pinch of snuff, and kept Mr Tulliver in suspense by a
silence that seemed deliberative, before he said,—
“I know of a very fine chance for any one that’s got the necessary
money and that’s what you have, Tulliver. The fact is, I wouldn’t
recommend any friend of mine to send a boy to a regular school, if he
could afford to do better. But if any one wanted his boy to get
superior instruction and training, where he would be the companion of
his master, and that master a first rate fellow, I know his man. I
wouldn’t mention the chance to everybody, because I don’t think
everybody would succeed in getting it, if he were to try; but I mention
it to you, Tulliver, between ourselves.”