The Mill on the Floss
indeed, Bob; thank you heartily, but I can’t take it.” And Maggie,
taking it between her fingers, held it up to Bob and said, more
persuasively:
“Not now, but perhaps another time. If ever Tom or my father wants help
that you can give, we’ll let you know; won’t we, Tom? That’s what you
would like,—to have us always depend on you as a friend that we can go
to,—isn’t it, Bob?”
“Yes, Miss, and thank you,” said Bob, reluctantly taking the money;
“that’s what I’d like, anything as you like. An’ I wish you good-by,
Miss, and good-luck, Mr Tom, and thank you for shaking hands wi’ me,
_though_ you wouldn’t take the money.”
Kezia’s entrance, with very black looks, to inquire if she shouldn’t
bring in the tea now, or whether the toast was to get hardened to a
brick, was a seasonable check on Bob’s flux of words, and hastened his
parting bow.
Chapter VII.
How a Hen Takes to Stratagem
The days passed, and Mr Tulliver showed, at least to the eyes of the
medical man, stronger and stronger symptoms of a gradual return to his
normal condition; the paralytic obstruction was, little by little,
losing its tenacity, and the mind was rising from under it with fitful
struggles, like a living creature making its way from under a great
snowdrift, that slides and slides again, and shuts up the newly made
opening.
Time would have seemed to creep to the watchers by the bed, if it had
only been measured by the doubtful, distant hope which kept count of
the moments within the chamber; but it was measured for them by a
fast-approaching dread which made the nights come too quickly. While Mr
Tulliver was slowly becoming himself again, his lot was hastening
toward its moment of most palpable change. The taxing-masters had done
their work like any respectable gunsmith conscientiously preparing the
musket, that, duly pointed by a brave arm, will spoil a life or two.
Allocaturs, filing of bills in Chancery, decrees of sale, are legal
chain-shot or bomb-shells that can never hit a solitary mark, but must
fall with widespread shattering. So deeply inherent is it in this life
of ours that men have to suffer for each other’s sins, so inevitably
diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and
we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in
pulsations of unmerited pain.
By the beginning of the second week in January, the bills were out
advertising the sale, under a decree of Chancery, of Mr Tulliver’s
farming and other stock, to be followed by a sale of the mill and land,
held in the proper after-dinner hour at the Golden Lion. The miller
himself, unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in that
first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought of; and
often in his conscious hours talked in a feeble, disjointed manner of
plans he would carry out when he “got well.” The wife and children were
not without hope of an issue that would at least save Mr Tulliver from
leaving the old spot, and seeking an entirely strange life. For uncle
Deane had been induced to interest himself in this stage of the
business. It would not, he acknowledged, be a bad speculation for Guest
& Co. to buy Dorlcote Mill, and carry on the business, which was a good
one, and might be increased by the addition of steam power; in which
case Tulliver might be retained as manager. Still, Mr Deane would say
nothing decided about the matter; the fact that Wakem held the mortgage
on the land might put it into his head to bid for the whole estate, and
further, to outbid the cautious firm of Guest & Co., who did not carry
on business on sentimental grounds. Mr Deane was obliged to tell Mrs
Tulliver something to that effect, when he rode over to the mill to
inspect the books in company with Mrs Glegg; for she had observed that
“if Guest & Co. would only think about it, Mr Tulliver’s father and
grandfather had been carrying on Dorlcote Mill long before the oil-mill
of that firm had been so much as thought of.”
Mr Deane, in reply, doubted whether that was precisely the relation
between the two mills which would determine their value as investments.
As for uncle Glegg, the thing lay quite beyond his imagination; the
good-natured man felt sincere pity for the Tulliver family, but his
money was all locked up in excellent mortgages, and he could run no
risk; that would be unfair to his own relatives; but he had made up his
mind that Tulliver should have some new flannel waistcoats which he had
himself renounced in favour of a more elastic commodity, and that he
would buy Mrs Tulliver a pound of tea now and then; it would be a
journey which his benevolence delighted in beforehand, to carry the tea
and see her pleasure on being assured it was the best black.
Still, it was clear that Mr Deane was kindly disposed toward the
Tullivers. One day he had brought Lucy, who was come home for the
Christmas holidays, and the little blond angel-head had pressed itself
against Maggie’s darker cheek with many kisses and some tears. These
fair slim daughters keep up a tender spot in the heart of many a
respectable partner in a respectable firm, and perhaps Lucy’s anxious,
pitying questions about her poor cousins helped to make uncle Deane
more prompt in finding Tom a temporary place in the warehouse, and in
putting him in the way of getting evening lessons in book-keeping and
calculation.
That might have cheered the lad and fed his hopes a little, if there
had not come at the same time the much-dreaded blow of finding that his
father must be a bankrupt, after all; at least, the creditors must be
asked to take less than their due, which to Tom’s untechnical mind was
the same thing as bankruptcy. His father must not only be said to have
“lost his property,” but to have “failed,”—the word that carried the
worst obloquy to Tom’s mind. For when the defendant’s claim for costs
had been satisfied, there would remain the friendly bill of Mr Gore,
and the deficiency at the bank, as well as the other debts which would
make the assets shrink into unequivocal disproportion; “not more than
ten or twelve shillings in the pound,” predicted Mr Deane, in a decided
tone, tightening his lips; and the words fell on Tom like a scalding
liquid, leaving a continual smart.
He was sadly in want of something to keep up his spirits a little in
the unpleasant newness of his position,—suddenly transported from the
easy carpeted _ennui_ of study-hours at Mr Stelling’s, and the busy
idleness of castle-building in a “last half” at school, to the
companionship of sacks and hides, and bawling men thundering down heavy
weights at his elbow. The first step toward getting on in the world was
a chill, dusty, noisy affair, and implied going without one’s tea in
order to stay in St Ogg’s and have an evening lesson from a one-armed
elderly clerk, in a room smelling strongly of bad tobacco. Tom’s young
pink-and-white face had its colours very much deadened by the time he
took off his hat at home, and sat down with keen hunger to his supper.
No wonder he was a little cross if his mother or Maggie spoke to him.
But all this while Mrs Tulliver was brooding over a scheme by which
she, and no one else, would avert the result most to be dreaded, and
prevent Wakem from entertaining the purpose of bidding for the mill.
Imagine a truly respectable and amiable hen, by some portentous
anomaly, taking to reflection and inventing combinations by which she
might prevail on Hodge not to wring her neck, or send her and her
chicks to market; the result could hardly be other than much cackling
and fluttering. Mrs Tulliver, seeing that everything had gone wrong,
had begun to think she had been too passive in life; and that, if she
had applied her mind to business, and taken a strong resolution now and
then, it would have been all the better for her and her family. Nobody,
it appeared, had thought of going to speak to Wakem on this business of
the mill; and yet, Mrs Tulliver reflected, it would have been quite the
shortest method of securing the right end. It would have been of no
use, to be sure, for Mr Tulliver to go,—even if he had been able and
willing,—for he had been “going to law against Wakem” and abusing him
for the last ten years; Wakem was always likely to have a spite against
him. And now that Mrs Tulliver had come to the conclusion that her
husband was very much in the wrong to bring her into this trouble, she
was inclined to think that his opinion of Wakem was wrong too. To be
sure, Wakem had “put the bailies in the house, and sold them up”; but
she supposed he did that to please the man that lent Mr Tulliver the
money, for a lawyer had more folks to please than one, and he wasn’t
likely to put Mr Tulliver, who had gone to law with him, above
everybody else in the world. The attorney might be a very reasonable
man; why not? He had married a Miss Clint, and at the time Mrs Tulliver
had heard of that marriage, the summer when she wore her blue satin
spencer, and had not yet any thoughts of Mr Tulliver, she knew no harm
of Wakem. And certainly toward herself, whom he knew to have been a
Miss Dodson, it was out of all possibility that he could entertain
anything but good-will, when it was once brought home to his
observation that she, for her part, had never wanted to go to law, and
indeed was at present disposed to take Mr Wakem’s view of all subjects
rather than her husband’s. In fact, if that attorney saw a respectable
matron like herself disposed “to give him good words,” why shouldn’t he
listen to her representations? For she would put the matter clearly
before him, which had never been done yet. And he would never go and
bid for the mill on purpose to spite her, an innocent woman, who
thought it likely enough that she had danced with him in their youth at
Squire Darleigh’s, for at those big dances she had often and often
danced with young men whose names she had forgotten.
Mrs Tulliver hid these reasonings in her own bosom; for when she had
thrown out a hint to Mr Deane and Mr Glegg that she wouldn’t mind going
to speak to Wakem herself, they had said, “No, no, no,” and “Pooh,
pooh,” and “Let Wakem alone,” in the tone of men who were not likely to
give a candid attention to a more definite exposition of her project;
still less dared she mention the plan to Tom and Maggie, for “the
children were always so against everything their mother said”; and Tom,
she observed, was almost as much set against Wakem as his father was.
But this unusual concentration of thought naturally gave Mrs Tulliver
an unusual power of device and determination; and a day or two before
the sale, to be held at the Golden Lion, when there was no longer any
time to be lost, she carried out her plan by a stratagem. There were
pickles in question, a large stock of pickles and ketchup which Mrs
Tulliver possessed, and which Mr Hyndmarsh, the grocer, would certainly
purchase if she could transact the business in a personal interview, so
she would walk with Tom to St Ogg’s that morning; and when Tom urged
that she might let the pickles be at present,—he didn’t like her to go
about just yet,—she appeared so hurt at this conduct in her son,
contradicting her about pickles which she had made after the family
receipts inherited from his own grandmother, who had died when his
mother was a little girl, that he gave way, and they walked together
until she turned toward Danish Street, where Mr Hyndmarsh retailed his
grocery, not far from the offices of Mr Wakem.
That gentleman was not yet come to his office; would Mrs Tulliver sit
down by the fire in his private room and wait for him? She had not long
to wait before the punctual attorney entered, knitting his brow with an
examining glance at the stout blond woman who rose, curtsying