The Mill on the Floss
twelve. Perhaps she would never love him; perhaps no woman ever _could_
love him. Well, then, he would endure that; he should at least have the
happiness of seeing her, of feeling some nearness to her. And he
clutched passionately the possibility that she _might_ love him;
perhaps the feeling would grow, if she could come to associate him with
that watchful tenderness which her nature would be so keenly alive to.
If any woman could love him, surely Maggie was that woman; there was
such wealth of love in her, and there was no one to claim it all. Then,
the pity of it, that a mind like hers should be withering in its very
youth, like a young forest-tree, for want of the light and space it was
formed to flourish in! Could he not hinder that, by persuading her out
of her system of privation? He would be her guardian angel; he would do
anything, bear anything, for her sake—except not seeing her.
Chapter II.
Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob’s Thumb
While Maggie’s life-struggles had lain almost entirely within her own
soul, one shadowy army fighting another, and the slain shadows forever
rising again, Tom was engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare, grappling
with more substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite conquests.
So it has been since the days of Hecuba, and of Hector, Tamer of
horses; inside the gates, the women with streaming hair and uplifted
hands offering prayers, watching the world’s combat from afar, filling
their long, empty days with memories and fears; outside, the men, in
fierce struggle with things divine and human, quenching memory in the
stronger light of purpose, losing the sense of dread and even of wounds
in the hurrying ardor of action.
From what you have seen of Tom, I think he is not a youth of whom you
would prophesy failure in anything he had thoroughly wished; the wagers
are likely to be on his side, notwithstanding his small success in the
classics. For Tom had never desired success in this field of
enterprise; and for getting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity
there is nothing like pouring out on a mind a good amount of subjects
in which it feels no interest. But now Tom’s strong will bound together
his integrity, his pride, his family regrets, and his personal
ambition, and made them one force, concentrating his efforts and
surmounting discouragements. His uncle Deane, who watched him closely,
soon began to conceive hopes of him, and to be rather proud that he had
brought into the employment of the firm a nephew who appeared to be
made of such good commercial stuff. The real kindness of placing him in
the warehouse first was soon evident to Tom, in the hints his uncle
began to throw out, that after a time he might perhaps be trusted to
travel at certain seasons, and buy in for the firm various vulgar
commodities with which I need not shock refined ears in this place; and
it was doubtless with a view to this result that Mr Deane, when he
expected to take his wine alone, would tell Tom to step in and sit with
him an hour, and would pass that hour in much lecturing and catechising
concerning articles of export and import, with an occasional excursus
of more indirect utility on the relative advantages to the merchants of
St Ogg’s of having goods brought in their own and in foreign bottoms,—a
subject on which Mr Deane, as a ship-owner, naturally threw off a few
sparks when he got warmed with talk and wine.
Already, in the second year, Tom’s salary was raised; but all, except
the price of his dinner and clothes, went home into the tin box; and he
shunned comradeship, lest it should lead him into expenses in spite of
himself. Not that Tom was moulded on the spoony type of the Industrious
Apprentice; he had a very strong appetite for pleasure,—would have
liked to be a Tamer of horses and to make a distinguished figure in all
neighbouring eyes, dispensing treats and benefits to others with
well-judged liberality, and being pronounced one of the finest young
fellows of those parts; nay, he determined to achieve these things
sooner or later; but his practical shrewdness told him that the means
to such achievements could only lie for him in present abstinence and
self-denial; there were certain milestones to be passed, and one of the
first was the payment of his father’s debts. Having made up his mind on
that point, he strode along without swerving, contracting some rather
saturnine sternness, as a young man is likely to do who has a premature
call upon him for self-reliance. Tom felt intensely that common cause
with his father which springs from family pride, and was bent on being
irreproachable as a son; but his growing experience caused him to pass
much silent criticism on the rashness and imprudence of his father’s
past conduct; their dispositions were not in sympathy, and Tom’s face
showed little radiance during his few home hours. Maggie had an awe of
him, against which she struggled as something unfair to her
consciousness of wider thoughts and deeper motives; but it was of no
use to struggle. A character at unity with itself—that performs what it
intends, subdues every counteracting impulse, and has no visions beyond
the distinctly possible—is strong by its very negations.
You may imagine that Tom’s more and more obvious unlikeness to his
father was well fitted to conciliate the maternal aunts and uncles; and
Mr Deane’s favourable reports and predictions to Mr Glegg concerning
Tom’s qualifications for business began to be discussed amongst them
with various acceptance. He was likely, it appeared, to do the family
credit without causing it any expense and trouble. Mrs Pullet had
always thought it strange if Tom’s excellent complexion, so entirely
that of the Dodsons, did not argue a certainty that he would turn out
well; his juvenile errors of running down the peacock, and general
disrespect to his aunts, only indicating a tinge of Tulliver blood
which he had doubtless outgrown. Mr Glegg, who had contracted a
cautious liking for Tom ever since his spirited and sensible behaviour
when the execution was in the house, was now warming into a resolution
to further his prospects actively,—some time, when an opportunity
offered of doing so in a prudent manner, without ultimate loss; but Mrs
Glegg observed that she was not given to speak without book, as some
people were; that those who said least were most likely to find their
words made good; and that when the right moment came, it would be seen
who could do something better than talk. Uncle Pullet, after silent
meditation for a period of several lozenges, came distinctly to the
conclusion, that when a young man was likely to do well, it was better
not to meddle with him.
Tom, meanwhile, had shown no disposition to rely on any one but
himself, though, with a natural sensitiveness toward all indications of
favourable opinion, he was glad to see his uncle Glegg look in on him
sometimes in a friendly way during business hours, and glad to be
invited to dine at his house, though he usually preferred declining on
the ground that he was not sure of being punctual. But about a year
ago, something had occurred which induced Tom to test his uncle Glegg’s
friendly disposition.
Bob Jakin, who rarely returned from one of his rounds without seeing
Tom and Maggie, awaited him on the bridge as he was coming home from St
Ogg’s one evening, that they might have a little private talk. He took
the liberty of asking if Mr Tom had ever thought of making money by
trading a bit on his own account. Trading, how? Tom wished to know.
Why, by sending out a bit of a cargo to foreign ports; because Bob had
a particular friend who had offered to do a little business for him in
that way in Laceham goods, and would be glad to serve Mr Tom on the
same footing. Tom was interested at once, and begged for full
explanation, wondering he had not thought of this plan before.
He was so well pleased with the prospect of a speculation that might
change the slow process of addition into multiplication, that he at
once determined to mention the matter to his father, and get his
consent to appropriate some of the savings in the tin box to the
purchase of a small cargo. He would rather not have consulted his
father, but he had just paid his last quarter’s money into the tin box,
and there was no other resource. All the savings were there; for Mr
Tulliver would not consent to put the money out at interest lest he
should lose it. Since he had speculated in the purchase of some corn,
and had lost by it, he could not be easy without keeping the money
under his eye.
Tom approached the subject carefully, as he was seated on the hearth
with his father that evening, and Mr Tulliver listened, leaning forward
in his arm-chair and looking up in Tom’s face with a sceptical glance.
His first impulse was to give a positive refusal, but he was in some
awe of Tom’s wishes, and since he had the sense of being an “unlucky”
father, he had lost some of his old peremptoriness and determination to
be master. He took the key of the bureau from his pocket, got out the
key of the large chest, and fetched down the tin box,—slowly, as if he
were trying to defer the moment of a painful parting. Then he seated
himself against the table, and opened the box with that little
padlock-key which he fingered in his waistcoat pocket in all vacant
moments. There they were, the dingy bank-notes and the bright
sovereigns, and he counted them out on the table—only a hundred and
sixteen pounds in two years, after all the pinching.
“How much do you want, then?” he said, speaking as if the words burnt
his lips.
“Suppose I begin with the thirty-six pounds, father?” said Tom.
Mr Tulliver separated this sum from the rest, and keeping his hand over
it, said:
“It’s as much as I can save out o’ my pay in a year.”
“Yes, father; it is such slow work, saving out of the little money we
get. And in this way we might double our savings.”
“Ay, my lad,” said the father, keeping his hand on the money, “but you
might lose it,—you might lose a year o’ my life,—and I haven’t got
many.”
Tom was silent.
“And you know I wouldn’t pay a dividend with the first hundred, because
I wanted to see it all in a lump,—and when I see it, I’m sure on’t. If
you trust to luck, it’s sure to be against me. It’s Old Harry’s got the
luck in his hands; and if I lose one year, I shall never pick it up
again; death ’ull o’ertake me.”
Mr Tulliver’s voice trembled, and Tom was silent for a few minutes
before he said:
“I’ll give it up, father, since you object to it so strongly.”
But, unwilling to abandon the scheme altogether, he determined to ask
his uncle Glegg to venture twenty pounds, on condition of receiving
five per cent. of the profits. That was really a very small thing to
ask. So when Bob called the next day at the wharf to know the decision,
Tom proposed that they should go together to his uncle Glegg’s to open
the business; for his diffident pride clung to him, and made him feel
that Bobs’ tongue would relieve him from some embarrassment.
Mr Glegg, at the pleasant hour of four in the afternoon of a hot August
day, was naturally counting his wall-fruit to assure himself that the
sum total had not varied since yesterday. To him entered Tom, in what
appeared to Mr Glegg very questionable companionship,—that of a man
with a pack on his back,—for Bob was equipped for a new journey,—and of
a huge brindled bull-terrier, who walked with a slow, swaying movement
from side to side, and glanced from under his eye-lids with a surly
indifference which might after all be a cover to the most offensive
designs.
Mr Glegg’s spectacles, which had been assisting him in counting the
fruit, made these suspicious details alarmingly evident to him.