The Mill on the Floss
“You have been drinking, I suppose,” said Wakem, really believing that
this was the meaning of Tulliver’s flushed face and sparkling eyes.
“No, I’ve not been drinking,” said Tulliver; “I want no drinking to
help me make up my mind as I’ll serve no longer under a scoundrel.”
“Very well! you may leave my premises to-morrow, then; hold your
insolent tongue and let me pass.” (Tulliver was backing his horse
across the road to hem Wakem in.)
“No, I _sha’n’t_ let you pass,” said Tulliver, getting fiercer. “I
shall tell you what I think of you first. You’re too big a raskill to
get hanged—you’re——”
“Let me pass, you ignorant brute, or I’ll ride over you.”
Mr Tulliver, spurring his horse and raising his whip, made a rush
forward; and Wakem’s horse, rearing and staggering backward, threw his
rider from the saddle and sent him sideways on the ground. Wakem had
had the presence of mind to loose the bridle at once, and as the horse
only staggered a few paces and then stood still, he might have risen
and remounted without more inconvenience than a bruise and a shake. But
before he could rise, Tulliver was off his horse too. The sight of the
long-hated predominant man down, and in his power, threw him into a
frenzy of triumphant vengeance, which seemed to give him preternatural
agility and strength. He rushed on Wakem, who was in the act of trying
to recover his feet, grasped him by the left arm so as to press Wakem’s
whole weight on the right arm, which rested on the ground, and flogged
him fiercely across the back with his riding-whip. Wakem shouted for
help, but no help came, until a woman’s scream was heard, and the cry
of “Father, father!”
Suddenly, Wakem felt, something had arrested Mr Tulliver’s arm; for the
flogging ceased, and the grasp on his own arm was relaxed.
“Get away with you—go!” said Tulliver, angrily. But it was not to Wakem
that he spoke. Slowly the lawyer rose, and, as he turned his head, saw
that Tulliver’s arms were being held by a girl, rather by the fear of
hurting the girl that clung to him with all her young might.
“Oh, Luke—mother—come and help Mr Wakem!” Maggie cried, as she heard
the longed-for footsteps.
“Help me on to that low horse,” said Wakem to Luke, “then I shall
perhaps manage; though—confound it—I think this arm is sprained.”
With some difficulty, Wakem was heaved on to Tulliver’s horse. Then he
turned toward the miller and said, with white rage, “You’ll suffer for
this, sir. Your daughter is a witness that you’ve assaulted me.”
“I don’t care,” said Mr Tulliver, in a thick, fierce voice; “go and
show your back, and tell ’em I thrashed you. Tell ’em I’ve made things
a bit more even i’ the world.”
“Ride my horse home with me,” said Wakem to Luke. “By the Tofton Ferry,
not through the town.”
“Father, come in!” said Maggie, imploringly. Then, seeing that Wakem
had ridden off, and that no further violence was possible, she
slackened her hold and burst into hysteric sobs, while poor Mrs
Tulliver stood by in silence, quivering with fear. But Maggie became
conscious that as she was slackening her hold her father was beginning
to grasp her and lean on her. The surprise checked her sobs.
“I feel ill—faintish,” he said. “Help me in, Bessy—I’m giddy—I’ve a
pain i’ the head.”
He walked in slowly, propped by his wife and daughter and tottered into
his arm-chair. The almost purple flush had given way to paleness, and
his hand was cold.
“Hadn’t we better send for the doctor?” said Mrs Tulliver.
He seemed to be too faint and suffering to hear her; but presently,
when she said to Maggie, “Go and seek for somebody to fetch the
doctor,” he looked up at her with full comprehension, and said,
“Doctor? No—no doctor. It’s my head, that’s all. Help me to bed.”
Sad ending to the day that had risen on them all like a beginning of
better times! But mingled seed must bear a mingled crop.
In half an hour after his father had lain down Tom came home. Bob Jakin
was with him, come to congratulate “the old master,” not without some
excusable pride that he had had his share in bringing about Mr Tom’s
good luck; and Tom had thought his father would like nothing better, as
a finish to the day, than a talk with Bob. But now Tom could only spend
the evening in gloomy expectation of the unpleasant consequences that
must follow on this mad outbreak of his father’s long-smothered hate.
After the painful news had been told, he sat in silence; he had not
spirit or inclination to tell his mother and sister anything about the
dinner; they hardly cared to ask it. Apparently the mingled thread in
the web of their life was so curiously twisted together that there
could be no joy without a sorrow coming close upon it. Tom was dejected
by the thought that his exemplary effort must always be baffled by the
wrong-doing of others; Maggie was living through, over and over again,
the agony of the moment in which she had rushed to throw herself on her
father’s arm, with a vague, shuddering foreboding of wretched scenes to
come. Not one of the three felt any particular alarm about Mr
Tulliver’s health; the symptoms did not recall his former dangerous
attack, and it seemed only a necessary consequence that his violent
passion and effort of strength, after many hours of unusual excitement,
should have made him feel ill. Rest would probably cure him.
Tom, tired out by his active day, fell asleep soon, and slept soundly;
it seemed to him as if he had only just come to bed, when he waked to
see his mother standing by him in the gray light of early morning.
“My boy, you must get up this minute; I’ve sent for the doctor, and
your father wants you and Maggie to come to him.”
“Is he worse, mother?”
“He’s been very ill all night with his head, but he doesn’t say it’s
worse; he only said suddenly, ‘Bessy, fetch the boy and girl. Tell ’em
to make haste.’”
Maggie and Tom threw on their clothes hastily in the chill gray light,
and reached their father’s room almost at the same moment. He was
watching for them with an expression of pain on his brow, but with
sharpened, anxious consciousness in his eyes. Mrs Tulliver stood at the
foot of the bed, frightened and trembling, looking worn and aged from
disturbed rest. Maggie was at the bedside first, but her father’s
glance was toward Tom, who came and stood next to her.
“Tom, my lad, it’s come upon me as I sha’n’t get up again. This world’s
been too many for me, my lad, but you’ve done what you could to make
things a bit even. Shake hands wi’ me again, my lad, before I go away
from you.”
The father and son clasped hands and looked at each other an instant.
Then Tom said, trying to speak firmly,—
“Have you any wish, father—that I can fulfil, when——”
“Ay, my lad—you’ll try and get the old mill back.”
“Yes, father.”
“And there’s your mother—you’ll try and make her amends, all you can,
for my bad luck—and there’s the little wench——”
The father turned his eyes on Maggie with a still more eager look,
while she, with a bursting heart, sank on her knees, to be closer to
the dear, time-worn face which had been present with her through long
years, as the sign of her deepest love and hardest trial.
“You must take care of her, Tom—don’t you fret, my wench—there’ll come
somebody as’ll love you and take your part—and you must be good to her,
my lad. I was good to _my_ sister. Kiss me, Maggie.—Come, Bessy.—You’ll
manage to pay for a brick grave, Tom, so as your mother and me can lie
together.”
He looked away from them all when he had said this, and lay silent for
some minutes, while they stood watching him, not daring to move. The
morning light was growing clearer for them, and they could see the
heaviness gathering in his face, and the dulness in his eyes. But at
last he looked toward Tom and said,—
“I had my turn—I beat him. That was nothing but fair. I never wanted
anything but what was fair.”
“But, father, dear father,” said Maggie, an unspeakable anxiety
predominating over her grief, “you forgive him—you forgive every one
now?”
He did not move his eyes to look at her, but he said,—
“No, my wench. I don’t forgive him. What’s forgiving to do? I can’t
love a raskill——”
His voice had become thicker; but he wanted to say more, and moved his
lips again and again, struggling in vain to speak. At length the words
forced their way.
“Does God forgive raskills?—but if He does, He won’t be hard wi’ me.”
His hands moved uneasily, as if he wanted them to remove some
obstruction that weighed upon him. Two or three times there fell from
him some broken words,—
“This world’s—too many—honest man—puzzling——”
Soon they merged into mere mutterings; the eyes had ceased to discern;
and then came the final silence.
But not of death. For an hour or more the chest heaved, the loud, hard
breathing continued, getting gradually slower, as the cold dews
gathered on the brow.
At last there was total stillness, and poor Tulliver’s dimly lighted
soul had forever ceased to be vexed with the painful riddle of this
world.
Help was come now; Luke and his wife were there, and Mr Turnbull had
arrived, too late for everything but to say, “This is death.”
Tom and Maggie went downstairs together into the room where their
father’s place was empty. Their eyes turned to the same spot, and
Maggie spoke,—
“Tom, forgive me—let us always love each other”; and they clung and
wept together.
BOOK SIXTH
THE GREAT TEMPTATION.
Chapter I.
A Duet in Paradise
The well-furnished drawing-room, with the open grand piano, and the
pleasant outlook down a sloping garden to a boat-house by the side of
the Floss, is Mr Deane’s. The neat little lady in mourning, whose
light-brown ringlets are falling over the coloured embroidery with
which her fingers are busy, is of course Lucy Deane; and the fine young
man who is leaning down from his chair to snap the scissors in the
extremely abbreviated face of the “King Charles” lying on the young
lady’s feet is no other than Mr Stephen Guest, whose diamond ring,
attar of roses, and air of _nonchalant_ leisure, at twelve o’clock in
the day, are the graceful and odoriferous result of the largest
oil-mill and the most extensive wharf in St Ogg’s. There is an apparent
triviality in the action with the scissors, but your discernment
perceives at once that there is a design in it which makes it eminently
worthy of a large-headed, long-limbed young man; for you see that Lucy
wants the scissors, and is compelled, reluctant as she may be, to shake
her ringlets back, raise her soft hazel eyes, smile playfully down on
the face that is so very nearly on a level with her knee, and holding
out her little shell-pink palm, to say,—
“My scissors, please, if you can renounce the great pleasure of
persecuting my poor Minny.”
The foolish scissors have slipped too far over the knuckles, it seems,
and Hercules holds out his entrapped fingers hopelessly.
“Confound the scissors! The oval lies the wrong way. Please draw them
off for me.”
“Draw them off with your other hand,” says Miss Lucy, roguishly.
“Oh, but that’s my left hand; I’m not left-handed.”
Lucy laughs, and the scissors are drawn off with gentle touches from
tiny tips, which naturally dispose Mr Stephen for a repetition _da
capo_. Accordingly, he watches for the release of the scissors, that he
may get them into his possession again.
“No, no,” said Lucy, sticking them in her band, “you shall not have my
scissors again,—you have strained them already. Now don’t set Minny
growling again. Sit up and behave properly, and then I will tell you
some news.”
“What is that?” said Stephen, throwing himself back and hanging his
right arm over the corner of his chair. He might have been sitting for
his portrait, which would have represented a rather striking young man