The Mill on the Floss
made part of his feeling as to the relation between himself and his
dubious schoolfellow, whom he could neither like nor dislike, that the
mere utterance did not make such an epoch to him as it did to Philip.
And he had a right to say so when Philip hectored over _him_, and
called him names. But perceiving that his first advances toward amity
were not met, he relapsed into his least favourable disposition toward
Philip, and resolved never to appeal to him either about drawing or
exercise again. They were only so far civil to each other as was
necessary to prevent their state of feud from being observed by Mr
Stelling, who would have “put down” such nonsense with great vigor.
When Maggie came, however, she could not help looking with growing
interest at the new schoolfellow, although he was the son of that
wicked Lawyer Wakem, who made her father so angry. She had arrived in
the middle of school-hours, and had sat by while Philip went through
his lessons with Mr Stelling. Tom, some weeks ago, had sent her word
that Philip knew no end of stories,—not stupid stories like hers; and
she was convinced now from her own observation that he must be very
clever; she hoped he would think _her_ rather clever too, when she came
to talk to him. Maggie, moreover, had rather a tenderness for deformed
things; she preferred the wry-necked lambs, because it seemed to her
that the lambs which were quite strong and well made wouldn’t mind so
much about being petted; and she was especially fond of petting objects
that would think it very delightful to be petted by her. She loved Tom
very dearly, but she often wished that he _cared_ more about her loving
him.
“I think Philip Wakem seems a nice boy, Tom,” she said, when they went
out of the study together into the garden, to pass the interval before
dinner. “He couldn’t choose his father, you know; and I’ve read of very
bad men who had good sons, as well as good parents who had bad
children. And if Philip is good, I think we ought to be the more sorry
for him because his father is not a good man. _You_ like him, don’t
you?”
“Oh, he’s a queer fellow,” said Tom, curtly, “and he’s as sulky as can
be with me, because I told him his father was a rogue. And I’d a right
to tell him so, for it was true; and _he_ began it, with calling me
names. But you stop here by yourself a bit, Maggie, will you? I’ve got
something I want to do upstairs.”
“Can’t I go too?” said Maggie, who in this first day of meeting again
loved Tom’s shadow.
“No, it’s something I’ll tell you about by-and-by, not yet,” said Tom,
skipping away.
In the afternoon the boys were at their books in the study, preparing
the morrow’s lessons that they might have a holiday in the evening in
honour of Maggie’s arrival. Tom was hanging over his Latin grammar,
moving his lips inaudibly like a strict but impatient Catholic
repeating his tale of paternosters; and Philip, at the other end of the
room, was busy with two volumes, with a look of contented diligence
that excited Maggie’s curiosity; he did not look at all as if he were
learning a lesson. She sat on a low stool at nearly a right angle with
the two boys, watching first one and then the other; and Philip,
looking off his book once toward the fire-place, caught the pair of
questioning dark eyes fixed upon him. He thought this sister of
Tulliver’s seemed a nice little thing, quite unlike her brother; he
wished _he_ had a little sister. What was it, he wondered, that made
Maggie’s dark eyes remind him of the stories about princesses being
turned into animals? I think it was that her eyes were full of
unsatisfied intelligence, and unsatisfied beseeching affection.
“I say, Magsie,” said Tom at last, shutting his books and putting them
away with the energy and decision of a perfect master in the art of
leaving off, “I’ve done my lessons now. Come upstairs with me.”
“What is it?” said Maggie, when they were outside the door, a slight
suspicion crossing her mind as she remembered Tom’s preliminary visit
upstairs. “It isn’t a trick you’re going to play me, now?”
“No, no, Maggie,” said Tom, in his most coaxing tone; “It’s something
you’ll like _ever so_.”
He put his arm round her neck, and she put hers round his waist, and
twined together in this way, they went upstairs.
“I say, Magsie, you must not tell anybody, you know,” said Tom, “else I
shall get fifty lines.”
“Is it alive?” said Maggie, whose imagination had settled for the
moment on the idea that Tom kept a ferret clandestinely.
“Oh, I sha’n’t tell you,” said he. “Now you go into that corner and
hide your face, while I reach it out,” he added, as he locked the
bedroom door behind them. “I’ll tell you when to turn round. You
mustn’t squeal out, you know.”
“Oh, but if you frighten me, I shall,” said Maggie, beginning to look
rather serious.
“You won’t be frightened, you silly thing,” said Tom. “Go and hide your
face, and mind you don’t peep.”
“Of course I sha’n’t peep,” said Maggie, disdainfully; and she buried
her face in the pillow like a person of strict honour.
But Tom looked round warily as he walked to the closet; then he stepped
into the narrow space, and almost closed the door. Maggie kept her face
buried without the aid of principle, for in that dream-suggestive
attitude she had soon forgotten where she was, and her thoughts were
busy with the poor deformed boy, who was so clever, when Tom called
out, “Now then, Magsie!”
Nothing but long meditation and preconcerted arrangement of effects
could have enabled Tom to present so striking a figure as he did to
Maggie when she looked up. Dissatisfied with the pacific aspect of a
face which had no more than the faintest hint of flaxen eyebrow,
together with a pair of amiable blue-gray eyes and round pink cheeks
that refused to look formidable, let him frown as he would before the
looking-glass (Philip had once told him of a man who had a horseshoe
frown, and Tom had tried with all his frowning might to make a
horseshoe on his forehead), he had had recourse to that unfailing
source of the terrible, burnt cork, and had made himself a pair of
black eyebrows that met in a satisfactory manner over his nose, and
were matched by a less carefully adjusted blackness about the chin. He
had wound a red handkerchief round his cloth cap to give it the air of
a turban, and his red comforter across his breast as a scarf,—an amount
of red which, with the tremendous frown on his brow, and the decision
with which he grasped the sword, as he held it with its point resting
on the ground, would suffice to convey an approximate idea of his
fierce and bloodthirsty disposition.
Maggie looked bewildered for a moment, and Tom enjoyed that moment
keenly; but in the next she laughed, clapped her hands together, and
said, “Oh, Tom, you’ve made yourself like Bluebeard at the show.”
It was clear she had not been struck with the presence of the sword,—it
was not unsheathed. Her frivolous mind required a more direct appeal to
its sense of the terrible, and Tom prepared for his master-stroke.
Frowning with a double amount of intention, if not of corrugation, he
(carefully) drew the sword from its sheath, and pointed it at Maggie.
“Oh, Tom, please don’t!” exclaimed Maggie, in a tone of suppressed
dread, shrinking away from him into the opposite corner. “I _shall_
scream—I’m sure I shall! Oh, don’t I wish I’d never come upstairs!”
The corners of Tom’s mouth showed an inclination to a smile of
complacency that was immediately checked as inconsistent with the
severity of a great warrior. Slowly he let down the scabbard on the
floor, lest it should make too much noise, and then said sternly,—
“I’m the Duke of Wellington! March!” stamping forward with the right
leg a little bent, and the sword still pointing toward Maggie, who,
trembling, and with tear-filled eyes, got upon the bed, as the only
means of widening the space between them.
Tom, happy in this spectator of his military performances, even though
the spectator was only Maggie, proceeded, with the utmost exertion of
his force, to such an exhibition of the cut and thrust as would
necessarily be expected of the Duke of Wellington.
“Tom, I _will not_ bear it, I _will_ scream,” said Maggie, at the first
movement of the sword. “You’ll hurt yourself; you’ll cut your head
off!”
“One—two,” said Tom, resolutely, though at “two” his wrist trembled a
little. “Three” came more slowly, and with it the sword swung downward,
and Maggie gave a loud shriek. The sword had fallen, with its edge on
Tom’s foot, and in a moment after he had fallen too. Maggie leaped from
the bed, still shrieking, and immediately there was a rush of footsteps
toward the room. Mr Stelling, from his upstairs study, was the first to
enter. He found both the children on the floor. Tom had fainted, and
Maggie was shaking him by the collar of his jacket, screaming, with
wild eyes. She thought he was dead, poor child! and yet she shook him,
as if that would bring him back to life. In another minute she was
sobbing with joy because Tom opened his eyes. She couldn’t sorrow yet
that he had hurt his foot; it seemed as if all happiness lay in his
being alive.
Chapter VI.
A Love-Scene
Poor Tom bore his severe pain heroically, and was resolute in not
“telling” of Mr Poulter more than was unavoidable; the five-shilling
piece remained a secret even to Maggie. But there was a terrible dread
weighing on his mind, so terrible that he dared not even ask the
question which might bring the fatal “yes”; he dared not ask the
surgeon or Mr Stelling, “Shall I be lame, Sir?” He mastered himself so
as not to cry out at the pain; but when his foot had been dressed, and
he was left alone with Maggie seated by his bedside, the children
sobbed together, with their heads laid on the same pillow. Tom was
thinking of himself walking about on crutches, like the wheelwright’s
son; and Maggie, who did not guess what was in his mind, sobbed for
company. It had not occurred to the surgeon or to Mr Stelling to
anticipate this dread in Tom’s mind, and to reassure him by hopeful
words. But Philip watched the surgeon out of the house, and waylaid Mr
Stelling to ask the very question that Tom had not dared to ask for
himself.
“I beg your pardon, sir,—but does Mr Askern say Tulliver will be lame?”
“Oh, no; oh, no,” said Mr Stelling, “not permanently; only for a little
while.”
“Did he tell Tulliver so, sir, do you think?”
“No; nothing was said to him on the subject.”
“Then may I go and tell him, sir?”
“Yes, to be sure; now you mention it, I dare say he may be troubling
about that. Go to his bedroom, but be very quiet at present.”
It had been Philip’s first thought when he heard of the accident,—“Will
Tulliver be lame? It will be very hard for him if he is”; and Tom’s
hitherto unforgiven offences were washed out by that pity. Philip felt
that they were no longer in a state of repulsion, but were being drawn
into a common current of suffering and sad privation. His imagination
did not dwell on the outward calamity and its future effect on Tom’s
life, but it made vividly present to him the probable state of Tom’s
feeling. Philip had only lived fourteen years, but those years had,
most of them, been steeped in the sense of a lot irremediably hard.
“Mr Askern says you’ll soon be all right again, Tulliver, did you
know?” he said rather timidly, as he stepped gently up to Tom’s bed.
“I’ve just been to ask Mr Stelling, and he says you’ll walk as well as
ever again by-and-day.”
Tom looked up with that momentary stopping of the breath which comes
with a sudden joy; then he gave a long sigh, and turned his blue-gray
eyes straight on Philip’s face, as he had not done for a fortnight or
more. As for Maggie, this intimation of a possibility she had not