The Mill on the Floss
thought of before affected her as a new trouble; the bare idea of Tom’s
being always lame overpowered the assurance that such a misfortune was
not likely to befall him, and she clung to him and cried afresh.
“Don’t be a little silly, Magsie,” said Tom, tenderly, feeling very
brave now. “I shall soon get well.”
“Good-by, Tulliver,” said Philip, putting out his small, delicate hand,
which Tom clasped immediately with his more substantial fingers.
“I say,” said Tom, “ask Mr Stelling to let you come and sit with me
sometimes, till I get up again, Wakem; and tell me about Robert Bruce,
you know.”
After that, Philip spent all his time out of school-hours with Tom and
Maggie. Tom liked to hear fighting stories as much as ever, but he
insisted strongly on the fact that those great fighters who did so many
wonderful things and came off unhurt, wore excellent armor from head to
foot, which made fighting easy work, he considered. He should not have
hurt his foot if he had had an iron shoe on. He listened with great
interest to a new story of Philip’s about a man who had a very bad
wound in his foot, and cried out so dreadfully with the pain that his
friends could bear with him no longer, but put him ashore on a desert
island, with nothing but some wonderful poisoned arrows to kill animals
with for food.
“I didn’t roar out a bit, you know,” Tom said, “and I dare say my foot
was as bad as his. It’s cowardly to roar.”
But Maggie would have it that when anything hurt you very much, it was
quite permissible to cry out, and it was cruel of people not to bear
it. She wanted to know if Philoctetes had a sister, and why _she_
didn’t go with him on the desert island and take care of him.
One day, soon after Philip had told this story, he and Maggie were in
the study alone together while Tom’s foot was being dressed. Philip was
at his books, and Maggie, after sauntering idly round the room, not
caring to do anything in particular, because she would soon go to Tom
again, went and leaned on the table near Philip to see what he was
doing, for they were quite old friends now, and perfectly at home with
each other.
“What are you reading about in Greek?” she said. “It’s poetry, I can
see that, because the lines are so short.”
“It’s about Philoctetes, the lame man I was telling you of yesterday,”
he answered, resting his head on his hand, and looking at her as if he
were not at all sorry to be interrupted. Maggie, in her absent way,
continued to lean forward, resting on her arms and moving her feet
about, while her dark eyes got more and more fixed and vacant, as if
she had quite forgotten Philip and his book.
“Maggie,” said Philip, after a minute or two, still leaning on his
elbow and looking at her, “if you had had a brother like me, do you
think you should have loved him as well as Tom?”
Maggie started a little on being roused from her reverie, and said,
“What?” Philip repeated his question.
“Oh, yes, better,” she answered immediately. “No, not better; because I
don’t think I _could_ love you better than Tom. But I should be so
sorry,—_so sorry_ for you.”
Philip coloured; he had meant to imply, would she love him as well in
spite of his deformity, and yet when she alluded to it so plainly, he
winced under her pity. Maggie, young as she was, felt her mistake.
Hitherto she had instinctively behaved as if she were quite unconscious
of Philip’s deformity; her own keen sensitiveness and experience under
family criticism sufficed to teach her this as well as if she had been
directed by the most finished breeding.
“But you are so very clever, Philip, and you can play and sing,” she
added quickly. “I wish you _were_ my brother. I’m very fond of you. And
you would stay at home with me when Tom went out, and you would teach
me everything; wouldn’t you,—Greek and everything?”
“But you’ll go away soon, and go to school, Maggie,” said Philip, “and
then you’ll forget all about me, and not care for me any more. And then
I shall see you when you’re grown up, and you’ll hardly take any notice
of me.”
“Oh, no, I sha’n’t forget you, I’m sure,” said Maggie, shaking her head
very seriously. “I never forget anything, and I think about everybody
when I’m away from them. I think about poor Yap; he’s got a lump in his
throat, and Luke says he’ll die. Only don’t you tell Tom, because it
will vex him so. You never saw Yap; he’s a queer little dog,—nobody
cares about him but Tom and me.”
“Do you care as much about me as you do about Yap, Maggie?” said
Philip, smiling rather sadly.
“Oh, yes, I should think so,” said Maggie, laughing.
“I’m very fond of _you_, Maggie; I shall never forget _you_,” said
Philip, “and when I’m very unhappy, I shall always think of you, and
wish I had a sister with dark eyes, just like yours.”
“Why do you like my eyes?” said Maggie, well pleased. She had never
heard any one but her father speak of her eyes as if they had merit.
“I don’t know,” said Philip. “They’re not like any other eyes. They
seem trying to speak,—trying to speak kindly. I don’t like other people
to look at me much, but I like you to look at me, Maggie.”
“Why, I think you’re fonder of me than Tom is,” said Maggie, rather
sorrowfully. Then, wondering how she could convince Philip that she
could like him just as well, although he was crooked, she said:
“Should you like me to kiss you, as I do Tom? I will, if you like.”
“Yes, very much; nobody kisses me.”
Maggie put her arm round his neck and kissed him quite earnestly.
“There now,” she said, “I shall always remember you, and kiss you when
I see you again, if it’s ever so long. But I’ll go now, because I think
Mr Askern’s done with Tom’s foot.”
When their father came the second time, Maggie said to him, “Oh,
father, Philip Wakem is so very good to Tom; he is such a clever boy,
and I _do_ love him. And you love him too, Tom, don’t you? _Say_ you
love him,” she added entreatingly.
Tom coloured a little as he looked at his father, and said: “I sha’n’t
be friends with him when I leave school, father; but we’ve made it up
now, since my foot has been bad, and he’s taught me to play at
draughts, and I can beat him.”
“Well, well,” said Mr Tulliver, “if he’s good to you, try and make him
amends, and be good to _him_. He’s a poor crooked creature, and takes
after his dead mother. But don’t you be getting too thick with him;
he’s got his father’s blood in him too. Ay, ay, the gray colt may
chance to kick like his black sire.”
The jarring natures of the two boys effected what Mr Tulliver’s
admonition alone might have failed to effect; in spite of Philip’s new
kindness, and Tom’s answering regard in this time of his trouble, they
never became close friends. When Maggie was gone, and when Tom
by-and-by began to walk about as usual, the friendly warmth that had
been kindled by pity and gratitude died out by degrees, and left them
in their old relation to each other. Philip was often peevish and
contemptuous; and Tom’s more specific and kindly impressions gradually
melted into the old background of suspicion and dislike toward him as a
queer fellow, a humpback, and the son of a rogue. If boys and men are
to be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be
made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the
heat dies out.
Chapter VII.
The Golden Gates Are Passed
So Tom went on even to the fifth half-year—till he was turned
sixteen—at King’s Lorton, while Maggie was growing with a rapidity
which her aunts considered highly reprehensible, at Miss Firniss’s
boarding-school in the ancient town of Laceham on the Floss, with
cousin Lucy for her companion. In her early letters to Tom she had
always sent her love to Philip, and asked many questions about him,
which were answered by brief sentences about Tom’s toothache, and a
turf-house which he was helping to build in the garden, with other
items of that kind. She was pained to hear Tom say in the holidays that
Philip was as queer as ever again, and often cross. They were no longer
very good friends, she perceived; and when she reminded Tom that he
ought always to love Philip for being so good to him when his foot was
bad, he answered: “Well, it isn’t my fault; _I_ don’t do anything to
him.” She hardly ever saw Philip during the remainder of their
school-life; in the Midsummer holidays he was always away at the
seaside, and at Christmas she could only meet him at long intervals in
the street of St Ogg’s. When they did meet, she remembered her promise
to kiss him, but, as a young lady who had been at a boarding-school,
she knew now that such a greeting was out of the question, and Philip
would not expect it. The promise was void, like so many other sweet,
illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden
before the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms grew side
by side with the ripening peach,—impossible to be fulfilled when the
golden gates had been passed.
But when their father was actually engaged in the long-threatened
lawsuit, and Wakem, as the agent at once of Pivart and Old Harry, was
acting against him, even Maggie felt, with some sadness, that they were
not likely ever to have any intimacy with Philip again; the very name
of Wakem made her father angry, and she had once heard him say that if
that crook-backed son lived to inherit his father’s ill-gotten gains,
there would be a curse upon him. “Have as little to do with him at
school as you can, my lad,” he said to Tom; and the command was obeyed
the more easily because Mr Sterling by this time had two additional
pupils; for though this gentleman’s rise in the world was not of that
meteor-like rapidity which the admirers of his extemporaneous eloquence
had expected for a preacher whose voice demanded so wide a sphere, he
had yet enough of growing prosperity to enable him to increase his
expenditure in continued disproportion to his income.
As for Tom’s school course, it went on with mill-like monotony, his
mind continuing to move with a slow, half-stifled pulse in a medium of
uninteresting or unintelligible ideas. But each vacation he brought
home larger and larger drawings with the satiny rendering of landscape,
and water-colours in vivid greens, together with manuscript books full
of exercises and problems, in which the handwriting was all the finer
because he gave his whole mind to it. Each vacation he brought home a
new book or two, indicating his progress through different stages of
history, Christian doctrine, and Latin literature; and that passage was
not entirely without results, besides the possession of the books.
Tom’s ear and tongue had become accustomed to a great many words and
phrases which are understood to be signs of an educated condition; and
though he had never really applied his mind to any one of his lessons,
the lessons had left a deposit of vague, fragmentary, ineffectual
notions. Mr Tulliver, seeing signs of acquirement beyond the reach of
his own criticism, thought it was probably all right with Tom’s
education; he observed, indeed, that there were no maps, and not enough
“summing”; but he made no formal complaint to Mr Stelling. It was a
puzzling business, this schooling; and if he took Tom away, where could
he send him with better effect?
By the time Tom had reached his last quarter at King’s Lorton, the
years had made striking changes in him since the day we saw him
returning from Mr Jacobs’s academy. He was a tall youth now, carrying
himself without the least awkwardness, and speaking without more
shyness than was a becoming symptom of blended diffidence and pride; he
wore his tail-coat and his stand-up collars, and watched the down on
his lip with eager impatience, looking every day at his virgin razor,