The Mill on the Floss
Those abrupt questions sounded rather oddly. Philip thought them
queer.”
“Nonsense, child!” said Mr Deane, willing to justify his social
demeanour, with which he had taken some pains in his upward progress.
“There’s a report that Wakem’s mill and farm on the other side of the
river—Dorlcote Mill, your uncle Tulliver’s, you know—isn’t answering so
well as it did. I wanted to see if your friend Philip would let
anything out about his father’s being tired of farming.”
“Why? Would you buy the mill, papa, if he would part with it?” said
Lucy, eagerly. “Oh, tell me everything; here, you shall have your
snuff-box if you’ll tell me. Because Maggie says all their hearts are
set on Tom’s getting back the mill some time. It was one of the last
things her father said to Tom, that he must get back the mill.”
“Hush, you little puss,” said Mr Deane, availing himself of the
restored snuff-box. “You must not say a word about this thing; do you
hear? There’s very little chance of their getting the mill or of
anybody’s getting it out of Wakem’s hands. And if he knew that we
wanted it with a view to the Tulliver’s getting it again, he’d be the
less likely to part with it. It’s natural, after what happened. He
behaved well enough to Tulliver before; but a horsewhipping is not
likely to be paid for with sugar-plums.”
“Now, papa,” said Lucy, with a little air of solemnity, “will you trust
me? You must not ask me all my reasons for what I’m going to say, but I
have very strong reasons. And I’m very cautious; I am, indeed.”
“Well, let us hear.”
“Why, I believe, if you will let me take Philip Wakem into our
confidence,—let me tell him all about your wish to buy, and what it’s
for; that my cousins wish to have it, and why they wish to have it,—I
believe Philip would help to bring it about. I know he would desire to
do it.”
“I don’t see how that can be, child,” said Mr Deane, looking puzzled.
“Why should _he_ care?”—then, with a sudden penetrating look at his
daughter, “You don’t think the poor lad’s fond of you, and so you can
make him do what you like?” (Mr Deane felt quite safe about his
daughter’s affections.)
“No, papa; he cares very little about me,—not so much as I care about
him. But I have a reason for being quite sure of what I say. Don’t you
ask me. And if you ever guess, don’t tell me. Only give me leave to do
as I think fit about it.”
Lucy rose from her stool to seat herself on her father’s knee, and
kissed him with that last request.
“Are you sure you won’t do mischief, now?” he said, looking at her with
delight.
“Yes, papa, quite sure. I’m very wise; I’ve got all your business
talents. Didn’t you admire my accompt-book, now, when I showed it you?”
“Well, well, if this youngster will keep his counsel, there won’t be
much harm done. And to tell the truth, I think there’s not much chance
for us any other way. Now, let me go off to sleep.”
Chapter VIII.
Wakem in a New Light
Before three days had passed after the conversation you have just
overheard between Lucy and her father she had contrived to have a
private interview with Philip during a visit of Maggie’s to her aunt
Glegg. For a day and a night Philip turned over in his mind with
restless agitation all that Lucy had told him in that interview, till
he had thoroughly resolved on a course of action. He thought he saw
before him now a possibility of altering his position with respect to
Maggie, and removing at least one obstacle between them. He laid his
plan and calculated all his moves with the fervid deliberation of a
chess-player in the days of his first ardor, and was amazed himself at
his sudden genius as a tactician. His plan was as bold as it was
thoroughly calculated. Having watched for a moment when his father had
nothing more urgent on his hands than the newspaper, he went behind
him, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said,—
“Father, will you come up into my sanctum, and look at my new sketches?
I’ve arranged them now.”
“I’m getting terrible stiff in the joints, Phil, for climbing those
stairs of yours,” said Wakem, looking kindly at his son as he laid down
his paper. “But come along, then.”
“This is a nice place for you, isn’t it, Phil?—a capital light that
from the roof, eh?” was, as usual, the first thing he said on entering
the painting-room. He liked to remind himself and his son too that his
fatherly indulgence had provided the accommodation. He had been a good
father. Emily would have nothing to reproach him with there, if she
came back again from her grave.
“Come, come,” he said, putting his double eye-glass over his nose, and
seating himself to take a general view while he rested, “you’ve got a
famous show here. Upon my word, I don’t see that your things aren’t as
good as that London artist’s—what’s his name—that Leyburn gave so much
money for.”
Philip shook his head and smiled. He had seated himself on his
painting-stool, and had taken a lead pencil in his hand, with which he
was making strong marks to counteract the sense of tremulousness. He
watched his father get up, and walk slowly round, good-naturedly
dwelling on the pictures much longer than his amount of genuine taste
for landscape would have prompted, till he stopped before a stand on
which two pictures were placed,—one much larger than the other, the
smaller one in a leather case.
“Bless me! what have you here?” said Wakem, startled by a sudden
transition from landscape to portrait. “I thought you’d left off
figures. Who are these?”
“They are the same person,” said Philip, with calm promptness, “at
different ages.”
“And what person?” said Wakem, sharply fixing his eyes with a growing
look of suspicion on the larger picture.
“Miss Tulliver. The small one is something like what she was when I was
at school with her brother at King’s Lorton; the larger one is not
quite so good a likeness of what she was when I came from abroad.”
Wakem turned round fiercely, with a flushed face, letting his eye-glass
fall, and looking at his son with a savage expression for a moment, as
if he was ready to strike that daring feebleness from the stool. But he
threw himself into the armchair again, and thrust his hands into his
trouser-pockets, still looking angrily at his son, however. Philip did
not return the look, but sat quietly watching the point of his pencil.
“And do you mean to say, then, that you have had any acquaintance with
her since you came from abroad?” said Wakem, at last, with that vain
effort which rage always makes to throw as much punishment as it
desires to inflict into words and tones, since blows are forbidden.
“Yes; I saw a great deal of her for a whole year before her father’s
death. We met often in that thicket—the Red Deeps—near Dorlcote Mill. I
love her dearly; I shall never love any other woman. I have thought of
her ever since she was a little girl.”
“Go on, sir! And you have corresponded with her all this while?”
“No. I never told her I loved her till just before we parted, and she
promised her brother not to see me again or to correspond with me. I am
not sure that she loves me or would consent to marry me. But if she
would consent,—if she _did_ love me well enough,—I should marry her.”
“And this is the return you make me for all the indulgences I’ve heaped
on you?” said Wakem, getting white, and beginning to tremble under an
enraged sense of impotence before Philip’s calm defiance and
concentration of purpose.
“No, father,” said Philip, looking up at him for the first time; “I
don’t regard it as a return. You have been an indulgent father to me;
but I have always felt that it was because you had an affectionate wish
to give me as much happiness as my unfortunate lot would admit, not
that it was a debt you expected me to pay by sacrificing all my chances
of happiness to satisfy feelings of yours which I can never share.”
“I think most sons would share their father’s feelings in this case,”
said Wakem, bitterly. “The girl’s father was an ignorant mad brute, who
was within an inch of murdering me. The whole town knows it. And the
brother is just as insolent, only in a cooler way. He forbade her
seeing you, you say; he’ll break every bone in your body, for your
greater happiness, if you don’t take care. But you seem to have made up
your mind; you have counted the consequences, I suppose. Of course you
are independent of me; you can marry this girl to-morrow, if you like;
you are a man of five-and-twenty,—you can go your way, and I can go
mine. We need have no more to do with each other.”
Wakem rose and walked toward the door, but something held him back, and
instead of leaving the room, he walked up and down it. Philip was slow
to reply, and when he spoke, his tone had a more incisive quietness and
clearness than ever.
“No; I can’t marry Miss Tulliver, even if she would have me, if I have
only my own resources to maintain her with. I have been brought up to
no profession. I can’t offer her poverty as well as deformity.”
“Ah, _there_ is a reason for your clinging to me, doubtless,” said
Wakem, still bitterly, though Philip’s last words had given him a pang;
they had stirred a feeling which had been a habit for a quarter of a
century. He threw himself into the chair again.
“I expected all this,” said Philip. “I know these scenes are often
happening between father and son. If I were like other men of my age, I
might answer your angry words by still angrier; we might part; I should
marry the woman I love, and have a chance of being as happy as the
rest. But if it will be a satisfaction to you to annihilate the very
object of everything you’ve done for me, you have an advantage over
most fathers; you can completely deprive me of the only thing that
would make my life worth having.”
Philip paused, but his father was silent.
“You know best what satisfaction you would have, beyond that of
gratifying a ridiculous rancor worthy only of wandering savages.”
“Ridiculous rancor!” Wakem burst out. “What do you mean? Damn it! is a
man to be horsewhipped by a boor and love him for it? Besides, there’s
that cold, proud devil of a son, who said a word to me I shall not
forget when we had the settling. He would be as pleasant a mark for a
bullet as I know, if he were worth the expense.”
“I don’t mean your resentment toward them,” said Philip, who had his
reasons for some sympathy with this view of Tom, “though a feeling of
revenge is not worth much, that you should care to keep it. I mean your
extending the enmity to a helpless girl, who has too much sense and
goodness to share their narrow prejudices. _She_ has never entered into
the family quarrels.”
“What does that signify? We don’t ask what a woman does; we ask whom
she belongs to. It’s altogether a degrading thing to you, to think of
marrying old Tulliver’s daughter.”
For the first time in the dialogue, Philip lost some of his
self-control, and coloured with anger.
“Miss Tulliver,” he said, with bitter incisiveness, “has the only
grounds of rank that anything but vulgar folly can suppose to belong to
the middle class; she is thoroughly refined, and her friends, whatever
else they may be, are respected for irreproachable honour and
integrity. All St Ogg’s, I fancy, would pronounce her to be more than
my equal.”
Wakem darted a glance of fierce question at his son; but Philip was not
looking at him, and with a certain penitent consciousness went on, in a
few moments, as if in amplification of his last words,—
“Find a single person in St Ogg’s who will not tell you that a
beautiful creature like her would be throwing herself away on a
pitiable object like me.”
“Not she!” said Wakem, rising again, and forgetting everything else in
a burst of resentful pride, half fatherly, half personal. “It would be