The Mill on the Floss
Mr Tulliver threw himself backward again, losing the childlike outward
glance under a rush of new ideas, which diverted him from external
impressions.
“Ay, ay,” he said, after a minute or two, “I’ve paid a deal o’ money—I
was determined my son should have a good eddication; I’d none myself,
and I’ve felt the miss of it. And he’ll want no other fortin, that’s
what I say—if Wakem was to get the better of me again——”
The thought of Wakem roused new vibrations, and after a moment’s pause
he began to look at the coat he had on, and to feel in his side-pocket.
Then he turned to Tom, and said in his old sharp way, “Where have they
put Gore’s letter?”
It was close at hand in a drawer, for he had often asked for it before.
“You know what there is in the letter, father?” said Tom, as he gave it
to him.
“To be sure I do,” said Mr Tulliver, rather angrily. “What o’ that? If
Furley can’t take to the property, somebody else can; there’s plenty o’
people in the world besides Furley. But it’s hindering—my not being
well—go and tell ’em to get the horse in the gig, Luke; I can get down
to St Ogg’s well enough—Gore’s expecting me.”
“No, dear father!” Maggie burst out entreatingly; “it’s a very long
while since all that; you’ve been ill a great many weeks,—more than two
months; everything is changed.”
Mr Tulliver looked at them all three alternately with a startled gaze;
the idea that much had happened of which he knew nothing had often
transiently arrested him before, but it came upon him now with entire
novelty.
“Yes, father,” said Tom, in answer to the gaze. “You needn’t trouble
your mind about business until you are quite well; everything is
settled about that for the present,—about the mill and the land and the
debts.”
“What’s settled, then?” said his father, angrily.
“Don’t you take on too much about it, sir,” said Luke. “You’d ha’ paid
iverybody if you could,—that’s what I said to Master Tom,—I said you’d
ha’ paid iverybody if you could.”
Good Luke felt, after the manner of contented hard-working men whose
lives have been spent in servitude, that sense of natural fitness in
rank which made his master’s downfall a tragedy to him. He was urged,
in his slow way, to say something that would express his share in the
family sorrow; and these words, which he had used over and over again
to Tom when he wanted to decline the full payment of his fifty pounds
out of the children’s money, were the most ready to his tongue. They
were just the words to lay the most painful hold on his master’s
bewildered mind.
“Paid everybody?” he said, with vehement agitation, his face flushing,
and his eye lighting up. “Why—what—have they made me a _bankrupt?_”
“Oh, father, dear father!” said Maggie, who thought that terrible word
really represented the fact; “bear it well, because we love you; your
children will always love you. Tom will pay them all; he says he will,
when he’s a man.”
She felt her father beginning to tremble; his voice trembled too, as he
said, after a few moments:
“Ay, my little wench, but I shall never live twice o’er.”
“But perhaps you will live to see me pay everybody, father,” said Tom,
speaking with a great effort.
“Ah, my lad,” said Mr Tulliver, shaking his head slowly, “but what’s
broke can never be whole again; it ’ud be your doing, not mine.” Then
looking up at him, “You’re only sixteen; it’s an up-hill fight for you,
but you mustn’t throw it at your father; the raskills have been too
many for him. I’ve given you a good eddication,—that’ll start you.”
Something in his throat half choked the last words; the flush, which
had alarmed his children because it had so often preceded a recurrence
of paralysis, had subsided, and his face looked pale and tremulous. Tom
said nothing; he was still struggling against his inclination to rush
away. His father remained quiet a minute or two, but his mind did not
seem to be wandering again.
“Have they sold me up, then?” he said more calmly, as if he were
possessed simply by the desire to know what had happened.
“Everything is sold, father; but we don’t know all about the mill and
the land yet,” said Tom, anxious to ward off any question leading to
the fact that Wakem was the purchaser.
“You must not be surprised to see the room look very bare downstairs,
father,” said Maggie; “but there’s your chair and the bureau; _they’re_
not gone.”
“Let us go; help me down, Luke,—I’ll go and see everything,” said Mr
Tulliver, leaning on his stick, and stretching out his other hand
toward Luke.
“Ay, sir,” said Luke, as he gave his arm to his master, “you’ll make up
your mind to’t a bit better when you’ve seen iverything; you’ll get
used to’t. That’s what my mother says about her shortness o’
breath,—she says she’s made friends wi’t now, though she fought again’
it sore when it just come on.”
Maggie ran on before to see that all was right in the dreary parlour,
where the fire, dulled by the frosty sunshine, seemed part of the
general shabbiness. She turned her father’s chair, and pushed aside the
table to make an easy way for him, and then stood with a beating heart
to see him enter and look round for the first time. Tom advanced before
him, carrying the leg-rest, and stood beside Maggie on the hearth. Of
those two young hearts Tom’s suffered the most unmixed pain, for
Maggie, with all her keen susceptibility, yet felt as if the sorrow
made larger room for her love to flow in, and gave breathing-space to
her passionate nature. No true boy feels that; he would rather go and
slay the Nemean lion, or perform any round of heroic labours, than
endure perpetual appeals to his pity, for evils over which he can make
no conquest.
Mr Tulliver paused just inside the door, resting on Luke, and looking
round him at all the bare places, which for him were filled with the
shadows of departed objects,—the daily companions of his life. His
faculties seemed to be renewing their strength from getting a footing
on this demonstration of the senses.
“Ah!” he said slowly, moving toward his chair, “they’ve sold me
up—they’ve sold me up.”
Then seating himself, and laying down his stick, while Luke left the
room, he looked round again.
“They’ve left the big Bible,” he said. “It’s got everything in,—when I
was born and married; bring it me, Tom.”
The quarto Bible was laid open before him at the fly-leaf, and while he
was reading with slowly travelling eyes Mrs Tulliver entered the room,
but stood in mute surprise to find her husband down already, and with
the great Bible before him.
“Ah,” he said, looking at a spot where his finger rested, “my mother
was Margaret Beaton; she died when she was forty-seven,—hers wasn’t a
long-lived family; we’re our mother’s children, Gritty and me are,—we
shall go to our last bed before long.”
He seemed to be pausing over the record of his sister’s birth and
marriage, as if it were suggesting new thoughts to him; then he
suddenly looked up at Tom, and said, in a sharp tone of alarm:
“They haven’t come upo’ Moss for the money as I lent him, have they?”
“No, father,” said Tom; “the note was burnt.”
Mr Tulliver turned his eyes on the page again, and presently said:
“Ah—Elizabeth Dodson—it’s eighteen year since I married her——”
“Come next Ladyday,” said Mrs Tulliver, going up to his side and
looking at the page.
Her husband fixed his eyes earnestly on her face.
“Poor Bessy,” he said, “you was a pretty lass then,—everybody said
so,—and I used to think you kept your good looks rarely. But you’re
sorely aged; don’t you bear me ill-will—I meant to do well by you—we
promised one another for better or for worse——”
“But I never thought it ’ud be so for worse as this,” said poor Mrs
Tulliver, with the strange, scared look that had come over her of late;
“and my poor father gave me away—and to come on so all at once——”
“Oh, mother!” said Maggie, “don’t talk in that way.”
“No, I know you won’t let your poor mother speak—that’s been the way
all my life—your father never minded what I said—it ’ud have been o’ no
use for me to beg and pray—and it ’ud be no use now, not if I was to go
down o’ my hands and knees——”
“Don’t say so, Bessy,” said Mr Tulliver, whose pride, in these first
moments of humiliation, was in abeyance to the sense of some justice in
his wife’s reproach. “If there’s anything left as I could do to make
you amends, I wouldn’t say you nay.”
“Then we might stay here and get a living, and I might keep among my
own sisters,—and me been such a good wife to you, and never crossed you
from week’s end to week’s end—and they all say so—they say it ’ud be
nothing but right, only you’re so turned against Wakem.”
“Mother,” said Tom, severely, “this is not the time to talk about
that.”
“Let her be,” said Mr Tulliver. “Say what you mean, Bessy.”
“Why, now the mill and the land’s all Wakem’s, and he’s got everything
in his hands, what’s the use o’ setting your face against him, when he
says you may stay here, and speaks as fair as can be, and says you may
manage the business, and have thirty shillings a-week, and a horse to
ride about to market? And where have we got to put our heads? We must
go into one o’ the cottages in the village,—and me and my children
brought down to that,—and all because you must set your mind against
folks till there’s no turning you.”
Mr Tulliver had sunk back in his chair trembling.
“You may do as you like wi’ me, Bessy,” he said, in a low voice; “I’ve
been the bringing of you to poverty—this world’s too many for me—I’m
nought but a bankrupt; it’s no use standing up for anything now.”
“Father,” said Tom, “I don’t agree with my mother or my uncles, and I
don’t think you ought to submit to be under Wakem. I get a pound a-week
now, and you can find something else to do when you get well.”
“Say no more, Tom, say no more; I’ve had enough for this day. Give me a
kiss, Bessy, and let us bear one another no ill-will; we shall never be
young again—this world’s been too many for me.”
Chapter IX.
An Item Added to the Family Register
That first moment of renunciation and submission was followed by days
of violent struggle in the miller’s mind, as the gradual access of
bodily strength brought with it increasing ability to embrace in one
view all the conflicting conditions under which he found himself.
Feeble limbs easily resign themselves to be tethered, and when we are
subdued by sickness it seems possible to us to fulfil pledges which the
old vigor comes back and breaks. There were times when poor Tulliver
thought the fulfilment of his promise to Bessy was something quite too
hard for human nature; he had promised her without knowing what she was
going to say,—she might as well have asked him to carry a ton weight on
his back. But again, there were many feelings arguing on her side,
besides the sense that life had been made hard to her by having married
him. He saw a possibility, by much pinching, of saving money out of his
salary toward paying a second dividend to his creditors, and it would
not be easy elsewhere to get a situation such as he could fill.
He had led an easy life, ordering much and working little, and had no
aptitude for any new business. He must perhaps take to day-labour, and
his wife must have help from her sisters,—a prospect doubly bitter to
him, now they had let all Bessy’s precious things be sold, probably
because they liked to set her against him, by making her feel that he
had brought her to that pass. He listened to their admonitory talk,
when they came to urge on him what he was bound to do for poor Bessy’s
sake, with averted eyes, that every now and then flashed on them
furtively when their backs were turned. Nothing but the dread of
needing their help could have made it an easier alternative to take
their advice.