ELECBOOK CLASSICS

ELECBOOK CLASSICS

ebc0023. George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss

This file is free for individual use only. It must not be altered or resold.

Organisations wishing to use it must first obtain a licence.

Low cost licenses are available. Contact us through our web site

© The Electric Book Co 1998

The Electric Book Company Ltd

20 Cambridge Drive, London SE12 8AJ, UK

+44 (0)181 488 3872 www.elecbook.com

The Mill On The Floss

George Eliot

Contents

Click on numbers to go to Chapter

BOOK FIRST: Boy and Girl 8

Chapter 1. Outside Dorlcote Mill 9

Chapter 2. Mr Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares his

Resolution about Tom 12

Chapter 3. Mr Riley Gives his Advice Concerning a

School for Tom 20

Chapter 4. Tom is Expected. 38

Chapter 5. Tom Comes Home 45

Chapter 6. The Aunts and Uncles are Coming 58

Chapter 7. Enter the Aunts and Uncles 73

Chapter 8. Mr Tulliver Shows his Weaker Side 103

Chapter 9. To Garum Firs 116

Chapter 10. Maggie Behaves Worse than she Expected 135

Chapter 11. Maggie Tries to Run Away from her

Shadow 143

Chapter 12. Mr and Mrs Glegg at Home 158

Chapter 13. Mr Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of

Life 175

BOOK SECOND: School-Time. 179

Chapter 1. Tom’s “First Half.” 180

Chapter 2. The Christmas Holidays 207

Chapter 3. The New Schoolfellow 217

Chapter 4. “The Young Idea” 225

Chapter 5. Maggie’s Second Visit 239

Chapter 6. A Love Scene 246

Chapter 7. The Golden Gates are Passed 253

BOOK THIRD: The Downfall 262

Chapter 1. What had Happened at Home 263

Chapter 2. Mrs Tulliver’s Teraphim, or Household

Gods 272

Chapter 3. The Family Council 279

Chapter 4. A Vanishing Gleam 299

Chapter 5. Tom Applies his Knife to the Oyster 304

Chapter 6. Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice

against the Present of a Pocket-Knife 320

Chapter 7. How a Hen Takes to Stratagem 330

Chapter 8. Daylight on the Wreck 346

Chapter 9. An Item Added to the Family Register 357

BOOK FOURTH: The Valley of Humiliation 365

Chapter 1. A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to

Bossuet 366

Chapter 2. The Torn Nest is Pierced by the Thorns 373

Chapter 3. A Voice from the Past 380

BOOK FIFTH: Wheat and Tares 400

Chapter 1. In the Red Deeps. 401

Chapter 2. Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob’s

Thumb 417

Chapter 3. The Wavering Balance 439

Chapter 4. Another Love Scene 448

Chapter 5. The Cloven Tree 456

Chapter 6. The Hard-Won Triumph 472

Chapter 7. A Day of Reckoning 478

BOOK SIXTH: The Great Temptation 487

Chapter 1. A Duet in Paradise 488

Chapter 2. First Impressions 500

Chapter 3. Confidential Moments 518

Chapter 4. Brother and Sister 524

Chapter 5. Showing that Tom had Opened the Oyster 534

Chapter 6. Illustrating the Laws of Attraction 540

Chapter 7. Philip Re-Enters. 554

Chapter 8. Wakem in a New Light 572

Chapter 9. Charity in Full Dress 582

Chapter 10. The Spell Seems Broken 595

Chapter 11. In the Lane 603

Chapter 12. A Family Party 612

Chapter 13. Borne Along by the Tide 621

Chapter 14. Waking 639

BOOK SEVENTH: The Final Rescue 653

Chapter 1. The Return to the Mill 654

Chapter 2. St Ogg’s Passes Judgment 663

Chapter 3. Showing that Old Acquaintances are

Capable of Surprising Us 675

Chapter 4. Maggie and Lucy 684

Chapter 5. The Last Conflict 693

Conclusion 708

BOOK FIRST

Boy and Girl

Chapter 1

Outside Dorlcote Mill

wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships—laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal—are borne along to the town of St Ogg’s, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river-brink, tingeing the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures, and the patches of dark earth, made ready for the seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn. There is a remnant still of the last year’s golden clusters of bee-hive ricks rising at intervals beyond the hedgerows; and everywhere the hedgerows are studded with trees: the distant ships seem to be lifting their masts and stretching their red-brown sails close among the branches of the spreading ash. Just by the red-roofed town the tributary Ripple flows with a lively current into the Floss. How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank and listen to its low placid voice, as to the voice of one who is deaf and loving. I remember those large dipping willows. I remember the stone

bridge.

And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two here on the bridge and look at it, though the clouds are threatening, and it is far on in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of departing February it is pleasant to look at—perhaps the chill damp season adds a charm to the trimly-kept comfortable dwelling-house, as old as the elms and chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast. The stream is brimful now, and lies high in this little withy plantation, and half drowns the grassy fringe of the croft in front of the house. As I look at the full stream, the vivid grass, the delicate bright-green powder softening the outline of the great trunks and branches that gleam from under the bare purple boughs, I am in love with moistness, and envy the white ducks that are dipping their heads far into the water here among the withes, unmindful of the awkward appearance they make in the drier world above.

The rush of the water, and the booming of the mill, bring a dreamy deafness, which seems to heighten the peacefulness of the scene. They are like a great curtain of sound, shutting one out from the world beyond. And now there is the thunder of the huge covered wagon coming home with sacks of grain. That honest waggoner is thinking of his dinner, getting sadly dry in the oven at this late hour; but he will not touch it till he has fed his horses,— the strong, submissive, meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at him from between their blinkers, that he should crack his whip at them in that awful manner as if they needed that hint! See how they stretch their shoulders up the slope towards the bridge, with all the more energy because they are so near home. Look at their grand shaggy feet that seem to grasp the firm earth, at the patient strength of their necks, bowed under the heavy collar, at the mighty muscles of their struggling haunches! I

should like well to hear them neigh over their hardly-earned feed of corn, and see them, with their moist necks freed from the harness, dipping their eager nostrils into the muddy pond. Now they are on the bridge, and down they go again at a swifter pace, and the arch of the covered wagon disappears at the turning behind the trees.

Now I can turn my eyes towards the Mill again, and watch the unresting wheel sending out its diamond jets of water. That little girl is watching it too: she has been standing on just the same spot at the edge of the water ever since I paused on the bridge. And that queer white cur with the brown ear seems to be leaping and barking in ineffectual remonstrance with the wheel; perhaps he is jealous, because his playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so rapt in its movement. It is time the little playfellow went in, I think; and there is a very bright fire to tempt her: the red light shines out under the deepening grey of the sky. It is time, too, for me to leave off resting my arms on the cold stone of this bridge . . .

Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been pressing my elbows on the arms of my chair, and dreaming that I was standing on the bridge in front of Dorlcote Mill, as it looked one February afternoon many years ago. Before I dozed off, I was going to tell you what Mr and Mrs Tulliver were talking about, as they sat by the bright fire in the left-hand parlour, on that very afternoon I have been dreaming of.

Chapter 2

Mr Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares his Resolution about Tom

hat I want, you know,” said Mr Tulliver—“what I want is to give Tom a good eddication; an eddication as’ll be a bread to him. That was what I

was thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave the ’cademy at Ladyday. I mean to put him to a downright good school at Midsummer. The two years at th’ ’cademy ’ud ha’ done well enough, if I’d meant to make a miller and farmer of him, for he’s had a fine sight more schoolin’ nor I ever got: all the learnin’ my father ever paid for was a bit o’ birch at one end and the alphabet at th’ other. But I should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard, so as he might be up to the tricks o’ these fellows as talk fine and write with a flourish. It ’ud be a help to me wi’ these lawsuits, and arbitrations, and things. I wouldn’t make a downright lawyer o’ the lad—I should be sorry for him to be a raskilll—but a sort o’ engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Riley, or one of them smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big watch-chain and a high stool. They’re pretty nigh all one, and they’re not far off being even wi’ the law, I believe; for Riley looks Lawyer Wakem i’ the face as hard as one cat looks another. He’s none frightened at him.”

Mr Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blond comely woman in a fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to think how long it is since fan- shaped caps were worn—they must be so near coming in again. At

that time, when Mrs Tulliver was nearly forty, they were new at St Ogg’s, and considered sweet things).

“Well, Mr Tulliver, you know best: I’ve no objections. But hadn’t I better kill a couple o’ fowl and have th’ aunts and uncles to dinner next week, so as you may hear what sister Glegg and sister Pullet have got to say about it? There’s a couple o’ fowl wants killing!”

“You may kill every fowl i’ the yard, if you like, Bessy; but I shall ask neither aunt nor uncle what I’m to do wi’ my own lad,” said Mr Tulliver, defiantly.

“Dear heart!” said Mrs Tulliver shocked at this sanguinary rhetoric, “how can you talk so, Mr Tulliver? But it’s your way to speak disrespectful o’ my family; and sister Glegg throws all the blame upo’ me, though I’m sure I’m as innocent as the babe unborn. For nobody’s ever heard me say as it wasn’t lucky for my children to have aunts and uncles as can live independent. Howiver, if Tom’s to go to a new school, I should like him to go where I can wash him and mend him; else he might as well have calico as linen, for they’d be one as yallow as th’ other before they’d been washed half-a-dozen times. And then, when the boy is goin’ backards and forrards, I could send the lad a cake, or a pork- pie, or an apple; for he can do with an extry bit, bless him, whether they stint him at the meals or no. My children can eat as much victuals as most, thank God.”

“Well, well, we won’t send him out o’ reach o’ the carrier’s cart, if other things fit in,” said Mr Tulliver. “But you mustn’t put a spoke i’ the wheel about the washin’, if we can’t get a school near enough. That’s the fault I have to find wi’ you, Bessy; if you see a stick i’ the road, you’re allays thinkin’ you can’t step over it. You’d

want me not to hire a good waggoner, ’cause he’d got a mole on his face.”

“Dear heart!” said Mrs Tulliver, in mild surprise, “when did I iver make objections to a man because he’d got a mole on his face? I’m sure I’m rether fond o’ the moles; for my brother, as is dead an’ gone, had a mole on his brow. But I can’t remember your iver offering to hire a waggoner with a mole, Mr Tulliver. There was John Gibbs hadn’t a mole on his face no more nor you have, an’ I was all for having you hire him; an’ so you did hire him, an’ if he hadn’t died o’ th’ inflammation, as we paid Dr Turnbull for attending him, he’d very like ha’ been driving the wagon now. He might have a mole somewhere out o’ sight, but how was I to know that, Mr Tulliver?”

“No, no, Bessy; I didn’t mean justly the mole; I meant it to stand for summat else; but niver mind—it’s puzzling work, talking is. What I’m thinking on, is how to find the right sort o’ school to send Tom to, for I might be ta’en in again, as I’ve been wi’ th’ ’cademy. I’ll have nothing to do wi’ a ’cademy again: whativer school I send Tom to, it shan’t be a ’cademy; it shall be a place where the lads spend their time i’ summat else besides blacking the family’s shoes, and getting up the potatoes. It’s an uncommon puzzling thing to know what school to pick.”

Mr Tulliver paused a minute or two, and dived with both hands into his breeches-pockets as if he hoped to find some suggestion there. Apparently he was not disappointed, for he presently said, “I know what I’ll do—I’ll talk it over wi’ Riley: he’s coming tomorrow, t’ arbitrate about the dam.”

“Well, Mr Tulliver, I’ve put the sheets out for the best bed, and Kezia’s got ’em hanging at the fire. They aren’t the best sheets, but

they’re good enough for anybody to sleep in, be he who he will; for as for them best Holland sheets, I should repent buying ’em, only they’ll do to lay us out in. An’ if you was to die tomorrow, Mr Tulliver, they’re mangled beautiful, an’ all ready, an’ smell o’ lavender as it ’ud be a pleasure to lay ’em out; an’ they lie at the left-hand corner o’ the big oak linen-chest at the back: not as I should trust anybody to look ’em out but myself.”

As Mrs Tulliver uttered the last sentence, she drew a bright bunch of keys from her pocket, and singled out one, rubbing her thumb and finger up and down it with a placid smile while she looked at the clear fire. If Mr Tulliver had been a susceptible man in his conjugal relation, he might have supposed that she drew out the key to aid her imagination in anticipating the moment when he would be in a state to justify the production of the best Holland sheets. Happily he was not so; he was only susceptible in respect of his right to water-power; moreover, he had the marital habit of not listening very closely, and since his mention of Mr Riley, had been apparently occupied in a tactile examination of his woollen stockings.

“I think I’ve hit it, Bessy,” was his first remark after a short silence. “Riley’s as likely a man as any to know o’ some school; he’s had schooling himself, an’ goes about to all sorts o’ places— arbitratin’ and vallyin’ and that. And we shall have time to talk it over tomorrow night when the business is done. I want Tom to be such a sort o’ man as Riley, you know—as can talk pretty nigh as well as if it was all wrote out for him, and knows a good lot o’ words as don’t mean much, so as you can’t lay hold of ’em i’ law; and a good solid knowledge o’ business too.”

“Well,” said Mrs Tulliver, “so far as talking proper, and

knowing everything, and walking with a bend in his back, and setting his hair up, I shouldn’t mind the lad being brought up to that. But them fine-talking men from the big towns mostly wear the false shirt-fronts; they wear a frill till it’s all a mess, and then hide it with a bib; I know Riley does. And then, if Tom’s to go and live at Mudport, like Riley, he’ll have a house with a kitchen hardly big enough to turn in, an’ niver get a fresh egg for his breakfast, an’ sleep up three pair o’ stairs—or four, for what I know—and be burnt to death before he can get down.”

“No, no,” said Mr Tulliver, “I’ve no thoughts of his going to Mudport: I mean him to set up his office at St Ogg’s, close by us, an’ live at home. But,” continued Mr Tulliver after a pause, “what I’m a bit afraid on is, as Tom hasn’t got the right sort o’ brains for a smart fellow. I doubt he’s a bit slowish. He takes after your family, Bessy.”

“Yes, that he does,” said Mrs Tulliver, accepting the last proposition entirely on its own merits; “he’s wonderful for liking a deal o’ salt in his broth. That was my brother’s way, and my father’s before him.”

“It seems a bit of a pity, though,” said Mr Tulliver, “as the lad should take after the mother’s side istead o’ the little wench. That’s the worst on’t wi’ the crossing o’ breeds: you can never justly calkilate what’ll come on’t. The little un takes after my side, now: she’s twice as ’cute as Tom. Too ’cute for a woman, I’m afraid,” continued Mr Tulliver, turning his head dubiously first on one side and then on the other. “It’s no mischief much while she’s a little un, but an over-’cute woman’s no better nor a long-tailed sheep—she’ll fetch none the bigger price for that.”

“Yes, it is a mischief while she’s a little un, Mr Tulliver, for it all

runs to naughtiness. How to keep her in a clean pinafore two hours together passes my cunning. An’ now you put me i’ mind,” continued Mrs Tulliver, rising and going to the window, “I don’t know where she is now, an’ its pretty nigh tea-time. Ah, I thought so—wanderin’ up an’ down by the water, like a wild thing: she’ll tumble in some day.”

Mrs Tulliver rapped the window sharply, beckoned, and shook her head,—a process which she repeated more than once before she returned to her chair.

“You talk o’ ’cuteness, Mr Tulliver,” she observed as she sat down, “but I’m sure the child’s half an idiot i’ some things; for if I send her upstairs to fetch anything, she forgets what she’s gone for, an’ perhaps ’ull sit down on the floor i’ the sunshine an’ plait her hair an’ sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur’, all the while I’m waiting for her downstairs. That niver run i’ my family, thank God, no more nor a brown skin as makes her look like a mulatter. I don’t like to fly i’ the face o’ Providence, but it seems hard as I should have but one gell, an’ her so comical.”

“Pooh, nonsense!” said Mr Tulliver; “she’s a straight black-eyed wench as anybody need wish to see. I don’t know i’ what she’s behind other folks’s children; and she can read almost as well as the parson.”

“But her hair won’t curl all I can do with it, and she’s so franzy about having it put i’ paper, and I’ve such work as never was to make her stand and have it pinched with th’ irons.”

“Cut it off—cut it off short,” said the father, rashly.

“How can you talk so, Mr Tulliver? She’s too big a gell, gone nine, and tall of her age, to have her hair cut short; an’ there’s her cousin Lucy’s got a row o’ curls round her head, an’ not a hair out

o’ place. It seems hard as my sister Deane should have that pretty child; I’m sure Lucy takes more after me nor my own child does. Maggie, Maggie,” continued the mother, in a tone of half-coaxing fretfulness, as this small mistake of nature entered the room, “where’s the use o’ my telling you to keep away from the water? You’ll tumble in and be drownded some day, an’ then you’ll be sorry you didn’t do as mother told you.”

Maggie’s hair, as she threw off her bonnet, painfully confirmed her mother’s accusation: Mrs Tulliver, desiring her daughter to have a curled crop, “like other folks’s children,” had had it cut too short in front to be pushed behind the ears; and as it was usually straight an hour after it had been taken out of paper, Maggie was incessantly tossing her head to keep the dark heavy locks out of her gleaming black eyes—an action which gave her very much the air of a small Shetland pony.

“Oh dear, oh dear, Maggie, what are you thinkin’ of, to throw your bonnet down there? Take it upstairs, there’s a good gell, an’ let your hair be brushed, an’ put your other pinafore on, an’ change your shoes—do, for shame; an’ come an’ go on with your patchwork, like a little lady.”

“Oh, mother,” said Maggie, in a vehemently cross tone, “I don’t

want to do my patchwork.”

“What! not your pretty patchwork, to make a counterpane for your aunt Glegg?”

“It’s foolish work,” said Maggie, with a toss of her mane,— “tearing things to pieces to sew ’em together again. And I don’t want to do anything for my aunt Glegg—I don’t like her.”

Exit Maggie, dragging her bonnet by the string, while Mr Tulliver laughs audibly.

“I wonder at you, as you’ll laugh at her, Mr Tulliver,” said the mother, with feeble fretfulness in her tone. “You encourage her i’ naughtiness. An’ her aunts will have it as it’s me spoils her.”

Mrs Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered person—never cried, when she was a baby, on any slighter ground than hunger and pins; and from the cradle upwards had been healthy, fair, plump, and dull-witted; in short, the flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But milk and mildness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn only a little sour, they may disagree with young stomachs seriously. I have often wondered whether those early Madonnas of Raphael, with the blond faces and somewhat stupid expression, kept their placidity undisturbed when their strong-limbed, strong-willed boys got a little too old to do without clothing. I think they must have been given to feeble remonstrance, getting more and more peevish as it became more and more ineffectual.

Chapter 3

Mr Riley Gives his Advice Concerning a School for Tom

T

he gentleman in the ample white cravat and shirt-frill, taking his brandy-and-water so pleasantly with his good friend Tulliver, is Mr Riley, a gentleman with a waxen

complexion and fat hands, rather highly educated for an auctioneer and appraiser, but large-hearted enough to show a great deal of bonhommie towards simple country acquaintances of hospitable habits. Mr Riley spoke of such acquaintances kindly as “people of the old school.”

The conversation had come to a pause. Mr Tulliver, not without a particular reason, had abstained from a seventh recital of the cool retort by which Riley had shown himself too many for Dix, and how Wakem had had his comb cut for once in his life, now the business of the dam had been settled by arbitration, and how there never would have been any dispute at all about the height of water if everybody was what they should be, and Old Harry hadn’t made the lawyers. Mr Tulliver was, on the whole, a man of safe traditional opinions; but on one or two points he had trusted to his unassisted intellect, and had arrived at several questionable conclusions; among the rest, that rats, weevils, and lawyers were created by Old Harry. Unhappily he had no one to tell him that this was rampant Manichaeism, else he might have seen his error. But today it was clear that the good principle was triumphant: this affair of the water-power had been a tangled business somehow,

for all it seemed—look at it one way—as plain as water’s water; but, big a puzzle as it was, it hadn’t got the better of Riley. Mr Tulliver took his brandy-and-water a little stronger than usual, and, for a man who might be supposed to have a few hundreds lying idle at his banker’s, was rather incautiously open in expressing his high estimate of his friend’s business talents.

But the dam was a subject of conversation that would keep; it could always be taken up again at the same point, and exactly in the same condition; and there was another subject, as you know, on which Mr Tulliver was in pressing want of Mr Riley’s advice. This was his particular reason for remaining silent for a short space after his last draught, and rubbing his knees in a meditative manner. He was not a man to make an abrupt transition. This was a puzzling world, as he often said, and if you drive your wagon in a hurry, you may light on an awkward corner. Mr Riley, meanwhile, was not impatient. Why should he be? Even Hotspur, one would think, must have been patient in his slippers on a warm hearth, taking copious snuff, and sipping gratuitous brandy-and-water.

“There’s a thing I’ve got i’ my head,” said Mr Tulliver at last, in rather a lower tone than usual, as he turned his head and looked steadfastly at his companion.

“Ah!” said Mr Riley, in a tone of mild interest. He was a man with heavy waxen eyelids and high-arched eyebrows, looking exactly the same under all circumstances. This immovability of face, and this habit of taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an answer, made him trebly oracular to Mr Tulliver.

“It’s a very particular thing,” he went on; “it’s about my boy Tom.”

At the sound of this name, Maggie, who was seated on a low

stool close by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, shook her heavy hair back and looked up eagerly. There were few sounds that roused Maggie when she was dreaming over her book, but Tom’s name served as well as the shrillest whistle: in an instant she was on the watch, with gleaming eyes, like a Skye terrier suspecting mischief, or at all events determined to fly at any one who threatened it towards Tom.

“You see, I want to put him to a new school at Midsummer,” said Mr Tulliver; “he’s comin’ away from the ’cademy at Ladyday, an’ I shall let him run loose for a quarter; but after that I want to send him to a downright good school, where they’ll make a scholard of him.”

“Well,” said Mr Riley, “there’s no greater advantage you can give him than a good education. Not,” he added, with polite significance—“not that a man can’t be an excellent miller and farmer, and a shrewd sensible fellow into the bargain, without much help from the schoolmaster.”

“I believe you,” said Mr Tulliver, winking, and turning his head on one side, “but that’s where it is. I don’t mean Tom to be a miller and farmer. I see no fun i’ that: why, if I made him a miller an’ farmer, he’d be expectin’ to take to the Mill an’ the land, an’ a- hinting at me as it was time for me to lay by an’ think o’ my latter end. Nay, nay, I’ve seen enough o’ that wi’ sons. I’ll never pull my coat off before I go to bed. I shall give Tom an eddication an’ put him to a business, as he may make a nest for himself, an’ not want to push me out o’ mine. Pretty well if he gets it when I’m dead an’ gone. I shan’t be put off wi’ spoon-meat afore I’ve lost my teeth.”

This was evidently a point on which Mr Tulliver felt strongly, and the impetus which had given unusual rapidity and emphasis

to his speech, showed itself still unexhausted for some minutes afterwards, in a defiant motion of the head from side to side, and an occasional “Nay, nay,” like a subsiding growl.

These angry symptoms were keenly observed by Maggie, and cut her to the quick. Tom, it appeared, was supposed capable of turning his father out of doors, and of making the future in some way tragic by his wickedness. This was not to be borne; and Maggie jumped up from her stool, forgetting all about her heavy book, which fell with a bang within the fender; and going up between her father’s knees, said, in a half-crying, half-indignant voice—“Father, Tom wouldn’t be naughty to you ever; I know he wouldn’t.”

Mrs Tulliver was out of the room superintending a choice supper-dish, and Mr Tulliver’s heart was touched; so Maggie was not scolded about the book. Mr Riley quietly picked it up and looked at it, while the father laughed with a certain tenderness in his hard-lined face, and patted his little girl on the back, and then held her hands and kept her between his knees.

“What! they mustn’t say any harm o’ Tom, eh?” said Mr Tulliver, looking at Maggie with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr Riley, as though Maggie couldn’t hear, “She understands what one’s talking about so as never was. And you should hear her read—straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at her book! But it’s bad—it’s bad,” Mr Tulliver added, sadly, checking this blamable exultation; “a woman’s no business wi’ being so clever; it’ll turn to trouble, I doubt. But, bless you!”—here the exultation was clearly recovering the mastery—“she’ll read the books and understand ’em better nor half the folks as are growed up.”

Maggie’s cheeks began to flush with triumphant excitement: she thought Mr Riley would have a respect for her now; it had been evident that he thought nothing of her before.

Mr Riley was turning over the leaves of the book, and she could make nothing of his face, with its high-arched eyebrows; but he presently looked at her and said—“Come, come and tell me something about this book; here are some pictures—I want to know what they mean.”

Maggie with deepening colour went without hesitation to Mr Riley’s elbow and looked over the book, eagerly seizing one corner, and tossing back her mane, while she said—“Oh, I’ll tell you what that means. It’s a dreadful picture, isn’t it? But I can’t help looking at it. That old woman in the water’s a witch—they’ve put her in to find out whether she’s a witch or no, and if she swims she’s a witch, and if she’s drowned—and killed, you know—she’s innocent, and not a witch, but only a poor silly old woman. But what good would it do her then, you know, when she was drowned? Only, I suppose, she’d go to heaven, and God would make it up to her. And this dreadful blacksmith with his arms akimbo, laughing—oh, isn’t he ugly.—I’ll tell you what he is. He’s the devil really” (here Maggie’s voice became louder and more emphatic), “and not a right blacksmith; for the devil takes the shape of wicked men, and walks about and sets people doing wicked things, and he’s oftener in the shape of a bad man than any other, because, you know, if people saw he was the devil, and he roared at ’em, they’d run away, and he couldn’t make ’em do what he pleased.”

Mr Tulliver had listened to this exposition of Maggie’s with petrifying wonder.

“Why, what book is it the wench has got hold on?” he burst out at last.

“‘The History of the Devil,’ by Daniel Defoe; not quite the right book for a little girl,” said Mr Riley. “How came it among your books, Tulliver?”

Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her father said— “Why, it’s one o’ the books I bought at Partridge’s sale. They was all bound alike—it’s a good binding, you see—and I thought they’d be all good books. There’s Jeremy Taylor’s ‘Holy Living and Dying’ among ’em; I read in it often of a Sunday” (Mr Tulliver felt somehow a familiarity with that great writer because his name was Jeremy); “and there’s a lot more of ’em, sermons mostly, I think; but they’ve all got the same covers, and I thought they were all o’ one sample, as you may say. But it seems one mustn’t judge by th’ outside. This is a puzzlin’ world.”

“Well,” said Mr Riley, in an admonitory patronising tone, as he patted Maggie on the head, “I advise you to put by the ’History of the Devil,’ and read some prettier book. Have you no prettier books?”

“Oh yes,” said Maggie, reviving a little in the desire to vindicate the variety of her reading, “I know the reading in this book isn’t pretty—but I like the pictures, and I make stories to the pictures out of my own head, you know. But I’ve got ‘Aesop’s Fables,’ and a book about kangaroos and things, and the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’”

“Ah, a beautiful book,” said Mr Riley; “you can’t read a better.” “Well, but there’s a great deal about the devil in that,” said

Maggie, triumphantly, “and I’ll show you the picture of him in his true shape, as he fought with Christian.”

Maggie ran in an instant to the corner of the room, jumped on a

chair, and reached down from the small bookcase a shabby old copy of Bunyan, which opened at once, without the least trouble of search, at the picture she wanted.

“Here he is,” she said, running back to Mr Riley, “and Tom coloured him for me with his paints when he was at home last holidays—the body all black, you know, and the eyes red, like fire, because he’s all fire inside, and it shines out at his eyes.”

“Go, go!” said Mr Tulliver, peremptorily, beginning to feel rather uncomfortable at these free remarks on the personal appearance of a being powerful enough to create lawyers; “shut up the book, and let’s hear no more o’ such talk. It is as I thought—the child ’ull learn more mischief nor good wi’ the books. Go, go and see after your mother.”

Maggie shut up the book at once, with a sense of disgrace, but not being inclined to see after her mother, she compromised the matter by going into a dark corner behind her father’s chair, and nursing her doll, towards which she had an occasional fit of fondness in Tom’s absence, neglecting its toilet, but lavishing so many warm kisses on it that the waxen cheeks had a wasted unhealthy appearance.

“Did you ever hear the like on’t?” said Mr Tulliver, as Maggie retired. “It’s a pity but what she’d been the lad—she’d ha’ been a match for the lawyers, she would. It’s the wonderful’st thing”— here he lowered his voice—“as I picked the mother because she wasn’t o’er ’cute—bein’ a good-looking woman too, an’ come of a rare family for managing; but I picked her from her sisters o’ purpose, ’cause she was a bit weak, like; for I wasn’t agoin’ to be told the rights o’ things by my own fireside. But you see when a man’s got brains himself, there’s no knowing where they’ll run to;

an’ a pleasant sort o’ soft woman may go on breeding you stupid lads and ’cute wenches, till it’s like as if the world was turned topsy-turvy. It’s an uncommon puzzlin’ thing.”

Mr Riley’s gravity gave way, and he shook a little under the application of his pinch of snuff, before he said—“But your lad’s not stupid, is he? I saw him, when I was here last, busy making fishing-tackle; he seemed quite up to it.”

“Well, he isn’t not to say stupid—he’s got a notion o’ things out o’ door, an’ a sort o’ common-sense, as he’d lay hold o’ things by the right handle. But he’s slow with his tongue, you see, and he reads but poorly, and can’t abide the books, and spells all wrong, they tell me, an’ as shy as can be wi’ strangers, an’ you never hear him say ’cute things like the little wench. Now, what I want is to send him to a school where they’ll make him a bit nimble with his tongue and his pen, and make a smart chap of him. I want my son to be even wi’ these fellows as have got the start o’ me with having better schooling. Not but what, if the world had been left as God made it, I could ha’ seen my way, and held my own wi’ the best of ’em; but things have got so twisted round and wrapped up i’ unreasonable words, as aren’t a bit like ’em, as I’m clean at fault, often an’ often. Everything winds about so—the more straight- forrard you are, the more you’re puzzled.”

Mr Tulliver took a draught, swallowed it slowly, and shook his head in a melancholy manner, conscious of exemplifying the truth that a perfectly sane intellect is hardly at home in this insane world.

“You’re quite in the right of it, Tulliver,” observed Mr Riley. “Better spend an extra hundred or two on your son’s education, than leave it him in your will. I know I should have tried to do so

by a son of mine, if I’d had one, though, God knows, I haven’t your ready-money to play with, Tulliver; and I have a houseful of daughters into the bargain.”

“I daresay, now, you know of a school as ’ud be just the thing for Tom,” said Mr Tulliver, not diverted from his purpose by any sympathy with Mr Riley’s deficiency of ready cash.

Mr Riley took a pinch of snuff, and kept Mr Tulliver in suspense by a silence that seemed deliberative, before he said—“I know of a very fine chance for any one that’s got the necessary money, and that’s what you have, Tulliver. The fact is, I wouldn’t recommend any friend of mine to send a boy to a regular school, if he could afford to do better. But if any one wanted his boy to get superior instruction and training, where he would be the companion of his master, and that master a first-rate fellow—I know his man. I wouldn’t mention the chance to everybody, because I don’t think everybody would succeed in getting it, if he were to try; but I mention it to you, Tulliver—between ourselves.”

The fixed inquiring glance with which Mr Tulliver had been watching his friend’s oracular face became quite eager.

“Ay, now, let’s hear,” he said, adjusting himself in his chair with the complacency of a person who is thought worthy of important communications.

“He’s an Oxford man,” said Mr Riley, sententiously, shutting his mouth close, and looking at Mr Tulliver to observe the effect of this stimulating information.

“What! a parson?” said Mr Tulliver, rather doubtfully.

“Yes, and an M.A. The bishop, I understand, thinks very highly of him: why, it was the bishop who got him his present curacy.”

“Ah?” said Mr Tulliver, to whom one thing was as wonderful as

another concerning these unfamiliar phenomena. “But what can he want wi’ Tom, then?”

“Why, the fact is, he’s fond of teaching, and wishes to keep up his studies, and a clergyman has but little opportunity for that in his parochial duties. He’s willing to take one or two boys as pupils to fill up his time profitably. The boys would be quite of the family—the finest thing in the world for them; under Stelling’s eye continually.”

“But do you think they’d give the poor lad twice o’ pudding?” said Mrs Tulliver, who was now in her place again. “He’s such a boy for pudding as never was; an’ a growing boy like that—it’s dreadful to think o’ their stintin’ him.”

“And what money ’ud he want?” said Mr Tulliver, whose instinct told him that the services of this admirable M.A. would bear a high price.

“Why, I know of a clergyman who asks a hundred and fifty with his youngest pupils, and he’s not to be mentioned with Stelling, the man I speak of. I know, on good authority, that one of the chief people at Oxford said, Stelling might get the highest honours if he chose. But he didn’t care about university honours. He’s a quiet man—not noisy.”

“Ah, a deal better—a deal better,” said Mr Tulliver; “but a hundred and fifty’s an uncommon price. I never thought o’ payin’ so much as that.”

“A good education, let me tell you, Tulliver—a good education is cheap at the money. But Stelling is moderate in his terms—he’s not a grasping man. I’ve no doubt he’d take your boy at a hundred, and that’s what you wouldn’t get many other clergymen to do. I’ll write to him about it, if you like.”

Mr Tulliver rubbed his knees, and looked at the carpet in a meditative manner.

“But belike he’s a bachelor,” observed Mrs Tulliver in the interval, “an’ I’ve no opinion o’ housekeepers. There was my brother, as is dead an’ gone, had a housekeeper once, an’ she took half the feathers out o’ the best bed, an’ packed ’em up an’ sent ’em away. An’ it’s unknown the linen she made away with—Stott her name was. It ’ud break my heart to send Tom where there’s a housekeeper, an’ I hope you won’t think of it, Mr Tulliver.”

“You may set your mind at rest on that score, Mrs Tulliver,” said Mr Riley, “for Stelling is married to as nice a little woman as any man need wish for a wife. There isn’t a kinder little soul in the world; I know her family well. She has very much your complexion—light curly hair. She comes of a good Mudport family, and it’s not every offer that would have been acceptable in that quarter. But Stelling’s not an everyday man. Rather a particular fellow as to the people he chooses to be connected with. But I think he would have no objection to take your son—I think he would not, on my representation.”

“I don’t know what he could have against the lad,” said Mrs Tulliver, with a slight touch of motherly indignation; “a nice fresh- skinned lad as anybody need wish to see.”

“But there’s one thing I’m thinking on,” said Mr Tulliver, turning his head on one side and looking at Mr Riley, after a long perusal of the carpet. “Wouldn’t a parson be almost too high- learnt to bring up a lad to be a man o’ business? My notion o’ the parsons was as they’d got a sort o’ learning as lay mostly out o’ sight. And that isn’t what I want for Tom. I want him to know figures, and write like print, and see into things quick, and know

what folks mean, and how to wrap things up in words as aren’t actionable. It’s an uncommon fine thing, that is,” concluded Mr Tulliver, shaking his head, “when you can let a man know what you think of him without paying for it.”

“Oh my dear Tulliver,” said Mr Riley, “you’re quite under a mistake about the clergy; all the best schoolmasters are of the clergy. The schoolmasters who are not clergymen, are a very low set of men generally”

“Ay, that Jacobs is, at the ’cademy,” interposed Mr Tulliver.

“To be sure—men who have failed in other trades, most likely. Now a clergyman is a gentleman by profession and education; and besides that, he has the knowledge that will ground a boy, and prepare him for entering on any career with credit. There may be some clergymen who are mere book-men; but you may depend upon it, Stelling is not one of them—a man that’s wide awake, let me tell you. Drop him a hint, and that’s enough. You talk of figures, now; you have only to say to Stelling, ‘I want my son to be a thorough arithmetician,’ and you may leave the rest to him.”

Mr Riley paused a moment, while Mr Tulliver, somewhat reassured as to clerical tutorship, was inwardly rehearsing to an imaginary Mr Stelling the statement, “I want my son to know ’rethmetic.”

“You see, my dear Tulliver,” Mr Riley continued, “when you get a thoroughly educated man, like Stelling, he’s at no loss to take up any branch of instruction. When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window.”

“Ay, that’s true,” said Mr Tulliver, almost convinced now that the clergy must be the best of schoolmasters.

“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you,” said Mr Riley, “and I

wouldn’t do it for everybody. I’ll see Stelling’s father-in-law, or drop him a line when I get back to Mudport, to say that you wish to place your boy with his son-in-law, and I daresay Stelling will write to you, and send you his terms.”

“But there’s no hurry, is there?” said Mrs Tulliver; “for I hope, Mr Tulliver, you won’t let Tom begin at his new school before Midsummer. He began at the ’cademy at the Ladyday quarter, and you see what good’s come of it.”

“Ay, ay, Bessy, never brew wi’ bad malt upo’ Michaelmas-day, else you’ll have a poor tap,” said Mr Tulliver, winking and smiling at Mr Riley with the natural pride of a man who has a buxom wife conspicuously his inferior in intellect. “But it’s true there’s no hurry—you’ve hit it there, Bessy.”

“It might be as well not to defer the arrangement too long,” said Mr Riley, quietly, “for Stelling may have propositions from other parties, and I know he would not take more than two or three boarders, if so many. If I were you, I think I would enter on the subject with Stelling at once: there’s no necessity for sending the boy before Midsummer, but I would be on the safe side, and make sure that nobody forestalls you.”

“Ay, there’s summat in that,” said Mr Tulliver.

“Father,” broke in Maggie, who had stolen unperceived to her father’s elbow again, listening with parted lips, while she held her doll topsy-turvy, and crushed its nose against the wood of the chair—“Father, is it a long way off where Tom is to go? shan’t we ever go to see him?”

“I don’t know, my wench,” said the father, tenderly. “Ask Mr Riley; he knows.”

Maggie came round promptly in front of Mr Riley, and said,

“How far is it, please, sir.”

“Oh, a long long way off,” that gentleman answered, being of opinion that children, when they are not naughty, should always be spoken to jocosely. “You must borrow the seven-leagued boots to get to him.”

“That’s nonsense!” said Maggie, tossing her head haughtily, and turning away, with the tears springing in her eyes. She began to dislike Mr Riley: it was evident he thought her silly and of no consequence.

“Hush, Maggie! for shame of you, asking questions and chattering,” said her mother. “Come and sit down on your little stool and hold your tongue, do. But,” added Mrs Tulliver, who had her own alarm awakened, “is it so far off as I couldn’t wash him and mend him?”

“About fifteen miles, that’s all,” said Mr Riley. “You can drive there and back in a day quite comfortably. Or—Stelling is a hospitable, pleasant man—he’d be glad to have you stay.”

“But it’s too far off for the linen, I doubt,” said Mrs Tulliver, sadly.

The entrance of supper opportunely adjourned this difficulty, and relieved Mr Riley from the labour of suggesting some solution or compromise—a labour which he would otherwise doubtless have undertaken; for, as you perceive, he was a man of very obliging manners. And he had really given himself the trouble of recommending Mr Stelling to his friend Tulliver without any positive expectation of a solid, definite advantage resulting to himself, notwithstanding the subtle indications to the contrary which might have misled a too sagacious observer. For there is nothing more widely misleading than sagacity if it happens to get

on a wrong scent; and sagacity, persuaded that men usually act and speak from distinct motives, with a consciously proposed end in view, is certain to waste its energies on imaginary game. Plotting covetousness, and deliberate contrivance, in order to compass a selfish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist: they demand too intense a mental action for many of our fellow-parishioners to be guilty of them. It is easy enough to spoil the lives of our neighbours without taking so much trouble: we can do it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralised by small extravagancies, by maladroit flatteries, and clumsily improvised insinuations. We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family of immediate desires—we do little else than snatch a morsel to satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or the next year’s crop.

Mr Riley was a man of business, and not cold towards his own interest, yet even he was more under the influence of small promptings than of far-sighted designs. He had no private understanding with the Rev. Walter Stelling; on the contrary, he knew very little of that M.A. and his acquirements—not quite enough perhaps to warrant so strong a recommendation of him as he had given to his friend Tulliver. But he believed Mr Stelling to be an excellent classic, for Gadsby had said so, and Gadsby’s first cousin was an Oxford tutor; which was better ground for the belief even than his own immediate observation would have been, for though Mr Riley had received a tincture of the classics at the great Mudport Free School, and had a sense of understanding Latin generally, his comprehension of any particular Latin was not ready. Doubtless there remained a subtle aroma from his juvenile

contact with the ‘De Senectute’ and the Fourth Book of the ‘Aeneid,’ but it had ceased to be distinctly recognisable as classical, and was only perceived in the higher finish and force of his auctioneering style. Then, Stelling was an Oxford man, and the Oxford men were always—no, no, it was the Cambridge men who were always good mathematicians. But a man who had had a university education could teach anything he liked; especially a man like Stelling who had made a speech at a Mudport dinner on a political occasion, and had acquitted himself so well that it was generally remarked, this son-in-law of Timpson’s wag a sharp fellow. It was to be expected of a Mudport man, from the parish of St Ursula, that he would not omit to do a good turn to a son-in-law of Timpson’s, for Timpson was one of the most useful and influential men in the parish, and had a good deal of business, which he knew how to put into the right hands. Mr Riley liked such men, quite apart from any money which might be diverted, through their good judgment, from less worthy pockets into his own; and it would be a satisfaction to him to say to Timpson on his return home, “I’ve secured a good pupil for your son-in-law.” Timpson had a large family of daughters; Mr Riley felt for him; besides, Louisa Timpson’s face, with its light curls, had been a familiar object to him over the pew wainscot on a Sunday for nearly fifteen years: it was natural her husband should be a commendable tutor. Moreover, Mr Riley knew of no other schoolmaster whom he had any ground for recommending in preference: why then should he not recommend Stelling? His friend Tulliver had asked him for an opinion: it is always chilling in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give. And if you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with

an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it. Thus Mr Riley, knowing no harm of Stelling to begin with, and wishing him well, so far as he had any wishes at all concerning him, had no sooner recommended him than he began to think with admiration of a man recommended on such high authority, and would soon have gathered so warm an interest on the subject, that if Mr Tulliver had in the end declined to send Tom to Stelling, Mr Riley would have thought his “friend of the old school” a thoroughly pig- headed fellow.

If you blame Mr Riley very severely for giving a recommendation on such slight grounds, I must say you are rather hard upon him. Why should an auctioneer and appraiser thirty years ago, who had as good as forgotten his free-school Latin, be expected to manifest a delicate scrupulosity which is not always exhibited by gentlemen of the learned professions even in our present advanced stage of morality?

Besides, a man with the milk of human kindness in him can scarcely abstain from doing a good-natured action, and one cannot be good-natured all round. Nature herself occasionally quarters an inconvenient parasite on an animal towards whom she has otherwise no ill-will. What then? We admire her care for the parasite. If Mr Riley had shrunk from giving a recommendation that was not based on valid evidence, he would not have helped Mr Stelling to a paying pupil, and that would not have been so well for the reverend gentleman. Consider, too, that all the pleasant little dim ideas and complacencies—of standing well with Timpson, of dispensing advice when he was asked for it, of impressing his friend Tulliver with additional respect, of saying

something, and saying it emphatically, with other inappreciably minute ingredients that went along with the warm hearth and the brandy-and-water to make up Mr Riley’s consciousness on this occasion—would have been a mere blank.

Chapter 4

Tom is Expected

t was a heavy disappointment to Maggie that she was not allowed to go with her father in the gig when he went to fetch Tom home from the Academy; but the morning was too wet, Mrs Tulliver said, for a little girl to go out in her best bonnet. Maggie took the opposite view very strongly, and it was a direct consequence of this difference of opinion, that when her mother was in the act of brushing out the reluctant black crop, Maggie suddenly rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of water standing near,—in the vindictive determination that there should be no more chance of curls that day. “Maggie,

Maggie,” exclaimed Mrs Tulliver, sitting stout and helpless with the brushes on her lap, “what is to become of you, if you’re so naughty? I’ll tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt Pullet when they come next week, and they’ll never love you any more. Oh dear, Oh dear, look at your clean pinafore, wet from top to bottom. Folks ’ull think it’s a judgment on me as I’ve got such a child—they’ll think I’ve done summat wicked.”

Before this remonstrance was finished Maggie was already out of hearing, making her way towards the great attic that ran under the old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Maggie’s favourite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold: here she fretted out all her ill-humours, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves and the dark

rafters festooned with cobwebs, and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks, but was now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering. Three nails driven into the head commemorated as many crises in Maggie’s nine years of earthly struggle; that luxury of vengeance having been suggested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in the old Bible. The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than usual, for the Fetish on that occasion represented aunt Glegg. But immediately afterwards Maggie had reflected that if she drove many nails in, she would not be so well able to fancy that the head was hurt when she knocked it against the wall, nor to comfort it, and make believe to poultice it when her fury was abated; for even aunt Glegg would be pitiable when she had been hurt very much, and thoroughly humiliated, so as to beg her niece’s pardon. Since then, she had driven no more nails in, but had soothed herself by alternately grinding and beating the wooden head against the rough brick of the great chimneys that made two square pillars supporting the roof. That was what she did this morning on reaching the attic, sobbing all the while with a passion that expelled every other form of consciousness—even the memory of the grievance that had caused it. As at last the sobs were getting quieter and the grinding less fierce, a sudden beam of sunshine, falling through the wire lattice across the worm-eaten shelves, made her throw away the Fetish and run to the window. The sun was really breaking out, the sound of the Mill seemed cheerful again, the granary doors were open, and there was Yap, the queer white and brown terrier with one ear turned back, trotting about and sniffing vaguely as if

he were in search of a companion. It was irresistible: Maggie tossed her hair back and ran downstairs, seized her bonnet without putting it on, peeped and then dashed along the passage lest she should encounter her mother, and was quickly out in the yard, whirling round like a Pythoness and singing as she whirled, “Yap, Yap, Tom’s coming home,” while Yap pranced and barked round her, as much as to say, if there was any noise wanted, he was the dog for it.

“Hegh, hegh, Miss, you’ll make yourself giddy an’ tumble down i’ the dirt,” said Luke, the head miller, a tall broad-shouldered man of forty, black-eyed and black-haired, subdued by a general mealiness, like an auricula.

Maggie paused in her whirling and said, staggering a little, “Oh no, it doesn’t make me giddy. Luke, may I go into the Mill with you?”

Maggie loved to linger in the great spaces of the mill, and often came out with her black hair powdered to a soft whiteness that made her dark eyes flash out with new fire. The resolute din, the unresting motion of the great stones giving her a dim delicious awe as at the presence of an uncontrollable force, the meal for ever pouring, pouring, the fine white powder softening all surfaces and making the very spider-nets look like faëry lace-work, the sweet pure scent of the meal—all helped to make Maggie feel that the Mill was a little world apart from her outside everyday life. The spiders were especially a subject of speculation with her: she wondered if they had any relations outside the mill, for in that case there must be a painful difficulty in their family intercourse: a fat and floury spider, accustomed to take his fly well dusted with meal, must suffer a little at a cousin’s table where the fly was au

naturel, and the lady spiders must be mutually shocked at each others appearance. But the part of the Mill she liked best was the topmost story—the corn-hutch where there were the great heaps of grain which she could sit on and slide down continually. She was in the habit of taking this recreation as she conversed with Luke, to whom she was very communicative, wishing him to think well of her understanding, as her father did.

Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her position with him on the present occasion, for, as she sat sliding on the heap of grain near which he was busying himself, she said, at that shrill pitch which was requisite in mill-society, “I think you never read any book but the Bible, did you, Luke?”

“Nay, Miss—an’ not much o’ that,” said Luke, with great frankness. “I’m no reader, I arn’t.”

“But if I lent you one of my books, Luke? I’ve not got any very pretty books that would be easy for you to read; but there’s ’Pug’s Tour of Europe’—that would tell you all about the different sorts of people in the world, and if you didn’t understand the reading, the pictures would help you—they show the looks and ways of the people and what they do. There are the Dutchmen, very fat, and smoking, you know—and one sitting on a barrel.”

“Nay, Miss, I’n no opinion o’ Dutchmen. There ben’t much good i’ knowin’ about them.”

“But they’re our fellow-creatures, Luke—we ought to know about our fellow-creatures.”

“Not much o’ fellow-creaturs, I think, Miss: all I know—my old master, as war a knowin’ man, used to say, says he, “If e’er I sow my wheat wi’out brinin’, I’m a Dutchman,” says he; an’ that war as much as to say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next door. Nay, nay, I

arn’t goin’ to bother mysen about Dutchmen. There’s fools enow— an’ rogues enow—wi’out lookin’ i’ books for ’em.”

“Oh well,” said Maggie, rather foiled by Luke’s unexpectedly decided views about Dutchmen, “perhaps you would like ‘Animated Nature’ better—that’s not Dutchmen, you know, but elephants, and kangaroos, and the civet cat, and the sun-fish, and a bird sitting on its tail—I forget its name. There are countries full of those creatures, instead of horses and cows, you know. Shouldn’t you like to know about them, Luke?”

“Nay, Miss, I’n got to keep ’count o’ the flour an’ corn—I can’t do wi’ knowin’ so many things besides my work. That’s what brings folk to the gallows—knowin’ everything but what they’n got to get their bread by. An’ they’re mostly lies, I think, what’s printed i’ the books: them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men cry i’ the streets.”

“Why you’re like my brother Tom, Luke,” said Maggie, wishing to turn the conversation agreeably, “Tom’s not fond of reading. I love Tom so dearly, Luke—better than anybody else in the world. When he grows up, I shall keep his house, and we shall always live together. I can tell him everything he doesn’t know. But I think Tom’s clever, for all he doesn’t like books: he makes beautiful whipcord and rabbit-pens.”

“Ah,” said Luke, “but he’ll be fine an’ vexed as the rabbits are all dead.”

“Dead!” screamed Maggie, jumping up from her sliding seat on the corn. “Oh, dear Luke! What, the lop-eared one, and the spotted doe, that Tom spent all his money to buy?”

“As dead as moles,” said Luke, fetching his comparison from the unmistakable corpses nailed to the stable wall.

“Oh dear Luke,” said Maggie, in a piteous tone, while the big tears rolled down her cheek, “Tom told me to take care of ’em, and I forgot. What shall I do?”

“Well, you see, Miss, they war in that far toll-house, an’ it was nobody’s business to see to ’em. I reckon Master Tom told Harry to feed ’em, but there’s no countin’ on Harry—he’s a offal creatur as iver come about the primises, he is. He remembers nothin’ but his own inside—an’ I wish it ’ud gripe him.”

“Oh Luke, Tom told me to be sure and remember the rabbits every day—but how could I, when they did not come into my head, you know? Oh, he will be so angry with me, I know he will, and so sorry about his rabbits—and so am I sorry. Oh what shall I do?”

“Don’t you fret, Miss,” said Luke, soothingly, “they’re nash things, them lop-eared rabbits—they’d happen ha’ died, if they’d been fed. Things out o’ natur niver thrive. God A’mighty doesn’t like ’em. He made the rabbits’ ears to lie back, an’ it’s nothin’ but contrairiness to make ’em hing down like a mastiff dog’s. Master Tom ’ull know better nor buy such things another time. Don’t you fret, Miss. Will you come along home wi’ me, and see my wife? I’m agoin’ this minute.”

The invitation offered an agreeable distraction to Maggie’s grief, and her tears gradually subsided as she trotted along by Luke’s side to his pleasant cottage, which stood with its apple and pear trees, and with the added dignity of a lean-to pig-sty, close by the brink of the Ripple. Mrs Moggs, Luke’s wife, was a decidedly agreeable acquaintance: she exhibited her hospitality in bread and treacle and possessed various works of art. Maggie actually forgot that she had any special cause of sadness this morning, as she stood on a chair to look at a remarkable series of pictures

representing the Prodigal Son in the costume of Sir Charles Grandison, except that, as might have been expected from his defective moral character, he had not, like that accomplished hero, the taste and strength of mind to dispense with a wig. But the indefinable weight the dead rabbits had left on her mind caused her to feel more than usual pity for the career of this weak young man, particularly when she looked at the picture where he leaned against a tree with a flaccid appearance, his knee-breeches unbuttoned and his wig awry, while the swine, apparently of some foreign breed, seemed to insult him by their good spirits over their feast of husks.

“I’m very glad his father took him back again aren’t you, Luke?” she said. “For he was very sorry, you know, and wouldn’t do wrong again.”

“Eh, Miss,” said Luke, “he’d be no great shakes, I doubt, let’s feyther do what he would for him.”

That was a painful thought to Maggie, and she wished much that the subsequent history of the young man had not been left a blank.

Chapter 5

Tom Comes Home

T

om was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was another fluttering heart besides Maggie’s when it was late enough for the sound of the gig wheels to be expected; for

if Mrs Tulliver had a strong feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the sound came—that quick light bowling of the gig wheels— and in spite of the wind which was blowing the clouds about, and was not likely to respect Mrs Tulliver’s curls and cap-strings, she came outside the door, and even held her hand on Maggie’s offending head, forgetting all the griefs of the morning. “There he is, my sweet lad! But, Lord ha’ mercy, he’s got never a collar on; it’s been lost on the road, I’ll be bound, and spoilt the set.”

Mrs Tulliver stood with her arms open; Maggie jumped first on one leg and then on the other; while Tom descended from the gig and said, with masculine reticence as to the tender emotions, “Hallo! Yap—what, are you there?”

Nevertheless, he submitted to be kissed willingly enough, though Maggie hung on his neck in rather a strangling fashion, while his blue-grey eyes wandered towards the croft and the lambs and the river where he promised himself that he would begin to fish the first thing tomorrow morning. He was one of those lads that grow everywhere in England, and, at twelve or thirteen years of age, look as much alike as goslings:—a lad with light brown hair, cheeks of cream and roses, full lips, indeterminate nose and eyebrows—a physiognomy in which it

seems impossible to discern anything but the generic character of boyhood; as different as possible from poor Maggie’s phiz, which Nature seemed to have moulded and coloured with the most decided intention. But that same Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies. Under these average boyish physiognomies that she seems to turn off by the gross, she conceals some of her most rigid inflexible purposes, some of her most unmodifiable characters, and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl may after all turn out to be a passive being compared with this pink and white bit of masculinity with indeterminate features.

“Maggie,” said Tom, confidentially, taking her into a corner, as soon as his mother was gone out to examine his box, and the warm parlour had taken off the chill he had felt from the long drive, “you don’t know what I’ve got in my pockets”—nodding his head up and down as a means of rousing her sense of mystery.

“No,” said Maggie. “How stodgy they look, Tom! Is it marls (marbles)—or cobnuts?” Maggie’s heart sank a little, because Tom always said it was “no good” playing with her at those games—she played so badly.

“Marls! no—I’ve swapped all my marls with little fellows. And cobnuts are no fun, you silly, only when the nuts are green. But see here!” He drew something half out of his right-hand pocket.

“What is it?” said Maggie, in a whisper. “I can see nothing but a bit of yellow.”

“Why it’s . . . a . . . new . . . guess, Maggie!”

“Oh, I can’t guess, Tom,” said Maggie, impatiently.

“Don’t be a spitfire, else I won’t tell you,” said Tom, thrusting his hand back into his pocket, and looking determined.

“No, Tom,” said Maggie, imploringly, laying hold of the arm that was held stiffly in the pocket. “I’m not cross, Tom—it was only because I can’t bear guessing. Please be good to me.”

Tom’s arm slowly relaxed, and he said, “Well, then; it’s a new fish-line—two new ’uns—one for you, Maggie, all to yourself. I wouldn’t go halves in the toffee and gingerbread o’ purpose to save the money; and Gibson and Spouncer fought with me because I wouldn’t. And here’s hooks; see here! . . . I say, won’t we go and fish tomorrow down by the Round Pool? And you shall catch your own fish, Maggie, and put the worms on and everything—won’t it be fun?”

Maggie’s answer was to throw her arms round Tom’s neck and hug and him and hold her cheek against his without speaking, while he slowly unwound some of the line, saying, after a pause, “Wasn’t I a good brother, now, to buy you a line all to yourself? You know, I needn’t have bought it, if hadn’t liked.”

“Yes, very, very good . . . I do love you, Tom.”

Tom had put the line back in his pocket, and was looking at the hooks one by one, before he spoke again.

“And the fellows fought me, because I wouldn’t give in about the toffee.”

“Oh dear, I wish they wouldn’t fight at your school, Tom. Didn’t it hurt you?”

“Hurt me? no,” said Tom, putting up the hooks again, taking out a large pocket-knife, and slowly opening the largest blade, which he looked at meditatively as he rubbed his finger along it. Then he added—

“I gave Spouncer a black eye, I know—that’s what he got by wanting to leather me: I wasn’t going to go halves because anybody leathered me.”

“Oh how brave you are, Tom—I think you’re like Samson. If there came a lion roaring at me, I think you’d fight him—wouldn’t you, Tom?”

“How can a lion come roaring at you, you silly thing? There’s no lions only in the shows.”

“No: but if we were in the lion countries, I mean, in Africa, where it’s very hot—the lions eat people there. I can show it you in the book where I read it.”

“Well, I should get a gun and shoot him.”

“But if you hadn’t got a gun—we might have gone out, you know, not thinking—just as we go fishing—and then a great lion might run towards us roaring, and we couldn’t get away from him. What should you do, Tom?”

Tom paused, and at last turned away contemptuously, saying, “But the lion isn’t coming. What’s the use of talking?”

“But I like to fancy how it would be,” said Maggie, following him. “Just think what you would do, Tom.”

“Oh don’t bother, Maggie! you’re such a silly. I shall go and see my rabbits.”

Maggie’s heart began to flutter with fear. She dared not tell the sad truth at once, but she walked after Tom in trembling silence as he went out, thinking how she could tell him the news so as to soften at once his sorrow and his anger. For Maggie dreaded Tom’s anger of all things: it was quite a different anger from her own.

“Tom,” she said, timidly, when they were out of doors, “how

much money did you give for your rabbits?”

“Two half-crowns and a sixpence,” said Tom, promptly.

“I think I’ve got a great deal more than that in my steel purse upstairs. I’ll ask mother to give it you.”

“What for?” said Tom. “I don’t want your money, you silly thing. I’ve got a great deal more money than you, because I’m a boy. I always have half-sovereigns and sovereigns for my Christmas boxes, because I shall be a man, and you only have five- shilling pieces, because you’re only a girl.”

“Well, but, Tom—if mother would let me give you two half- crowns and a sixpence out of my purse to put into your pocket and spend, you know—and buy some more rabbits with it?”

“More rabbits? I don’t want any more.” “Oh, but Tom, they’re all dead.”

Tom stopped immediately in his walk and turned round towards Maggie. “You forgot to feed ’em then, and Harry forgot,” he said, his colour heightening for a moment, but soon subsiding. “I’ll pitch into Harry—I’ll have him turned away. And I don’t love you, Maggie. You shan’t go fishing with me tomorrow. I told you to go and see the rabbits every day.” He walked on again.

“Yes, but I forgot—and I couldn’t help it, indeed, Tom. I’m so very sorry,” said Maggie, while the tears rushed fast.

“You’re a naughty girl,” said Tom, severely, “and I’m sorry I bought you the fish-line. I don’t love you.”

“Oh Tom, it’s very cruel,” sobbed Maggie, “I’d forgive you, if you forgot anything—I wouldn’t mind what you did—I’d forgive you and love you.”

“Yes, you’re a silly. But I never do forget things, I don’t.”

“Oh, please forgive me, Tom; my heart will break,” said Maggie,

shaking with sobs, clinging to Tom’s arm, and laying her wet cheek on his shoulder.

Tom shook her off, and stopped again, saying in a peremptory tone, “Now, Maggie, you just listen. Aren’t I a good brother to you?”

“Ye-ye-es,” sobbed Maggie, her chin rising and falling convulsedly.

“Didn’t I think about your fish-line all this quarter, and mean to buy it, and saved my money o’ purpose, and wouldn’t go halves in the toffee, and Spouncer fought me because I wouldn’t?”

“Ye-ye-es . . . and I . . . lo-lo-love you so, Tom.”

“But you’re a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off my lozenge-box, and the holidays before that, you let the boat drag my fish-line down when I’d set you to watch it, and you pushed your head through my kite all for nothing.”

“But I didn’t mean,” said Maggie. “I couldn’t help it.”

“Yes, you could,” said Tom, “if you’d minded what you were doing. And you’re a naughty girl, and you shan’t go fishing with me tomorrow.”

With this terrible conclusion, Tom ran away from Maggie towards the mill, meaning to greet Luke there, and complain to him of Harry.

Maggie stood motionless, except from her sobs, for a minute or two; then she turned round and ran into the house and up to her attic, where she sat on the floor and laid her head against the worm-eaten shelf, with a crushing sense of misery. Tom was come home and she had thought how happy she should be—and now he was cruel to her. What use was anything if Tom didn’t love her? Oh, he was very cruel! Hadn’t she wanted to give him the money

and said how very sorry she was? She knew she was naughty to her mother, but she had never been naughty to Tom—had never meant to be naughty to him.

“Oh he is cruel!” Maggie sobbed aloud, finding a wretched pleasure in the hollow resonance that came through the long empty space of the attic. She never thought of beating or grinding her Fetish; she was too miserable to be angry.

These bitter sorrows of childhood!—when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.

Maggie soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and it must be tea-time, and they were all having their tea, and not thinking of her. Well, then, she would stay up there and starve herself—hide herself behind the tub and stay there all night, and then they would all be frightened and Tom would be sorry. Thus Maggie thought in the pride of her heart, as she crept behind the tub; but presently she began to cry again at the idea that they didn’t mind her being there. If she went down again to Tom now— would he forgive her?—perhaps her father would be there and he would take her part. But then, she wanted Tom to forgive her because he loved her, not because his father told him. No, she would never go down if Tom didn’t come to fetch her. This resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes behind the tub; but then the need of being loved, the strongest need in poor Maggie’s nature, began to wrestle with her pride and soon threw it. She crept from behind her tub into the twilight of the long attic, but just then she heard a quick footstep on the stairs.

Tom had been too much interested in his talk with Luke, in

going the round of the premises, walking in and out where he pleased, and whittling sticks without any particular reason except that he didn’t whittle sticks at school, to think of Maggie and the effect his anger had produced on her. He meant to punish her, and that business having been performed, he occupied himself with other matters like a practical person. But when he had been called in to tea, his father said, “Why, where’s the little wench?” and Mrs Tulliver, almost at the same moment, said, “Where’s your little sister?” both of them having supposed that Maggie and Tom had been together all the afternoon. “I don’t know,” said Tom. He didn’t want to “tell” of Maggie, though he was angry with her, for Tom Tulliver was a lad of honour.

“What, hasn’t she been playing with you all this while?” said the father. “She’d been thinking o’ nothing but your coming home.”

“I haven’t seen her this two hours,” says Tom, Commencing on the plum-cake.

“Goodness heart! She’s got drownded,” exclaimed Mrs Tulliver, rising from her seat and running to the window. “How could you let her do so?” she added, as became a fearful woman, accusing she didn’t know whom of she didn’t know what.

“Nay, nay, she’s none drownded,” said Mr Tulliver. “You’ve been naughty to her, I doubt, Tom?”

“I’m sure I haven’t, father,” said Tom, indignantly. “I think she’s in the house.”

“Perhaps up in that attic,” said Mrs Tulliver, “a-singing and talking to herself, and forgetting all about meal-times.”

“You go and fetch her down, Tom,” said Mr Tulliver, rather sharply, his perspicacity or his fatherly fondness for Maggie

making him suspect that the lad had been hard upon “the little un,” else she would never have left his side. “And be good to her, do you hear? Else I’ll let you know better.”

Tom never disobeyed his father, for Mr Tulliver was a peremptory man, and, as he said, would never let anybody get hold of his whip-hand; but he went out rather sullenly, carrying his piece of plum-cake, and not intending to reprieve Maggie’s punishment, which was no more than she deserved. Tom was only thirteen, and had no decided views in grammar and arithmetic, regarding them for the most part as open questions, but he was particularly clear and positive on one point, namely that he would punish everybody who deserved it: why, he wouldn’t have minded being punished himself if he deserved it, but then, he never did deserve it.

It was Tom’s step, then, that Maggie heard on the stairs, when her need of love had triumphed over her pride, and she was going down with her swollen eyes and dishevelled hair to beg for pity. At least, her father would stroke her head and say, “Never mind, my wench.” It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love, this hunger of the heart: as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the Yoke, and change the face of the world.

But she knew Tom’s step and her heart began to beat violently with the sudden shock of hope. He only stood still at the top of the stairs and said, “Maggie, you’re to come down.” But she rushed to him and clung round his neck, sobbing, “Oh Tom, please forgive me—I can’t bear it—I will always be good—always remember things—do love me—please, dear Tom.”

We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart when we have quarrelled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases,

and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our behaviour to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but conduct ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civilised society. Maggie and Tom were still very much like young animals, and so she could rub her cheek against his, and kiss his ear in a random, sobbing way, and there were tender fibres in the lad that had been used to answer to Maggie’s fondling: so that he behaved with a weakness quite inconsistent with his resolution to punish her as much as she deserved: he actually began to kiss her in return and say,

“Don’t cry then, Magsie:—here, eat a bit o’ cake.”

Maggie’s sobs began to subside, and she put out her mouth for the cake and bit a piece; and then Tom bit a piece, just for company, and they ate together and rubbed each other’s cheeks and brows and noses together while they ate, with a humiliating resemblance to two friendly ponies.

“Come along, Magsie, and have tea,” said Tom at last, when there was no more cake except what was downstairs.

So ended the sorrows of this day, and the next morning Maggie was trotting with her own fishing-rod in one hand, and a handle of the basket in the other, stepping always by a peculiar gift in the muddiest places and looking darkly radiant from under her beaver-bonnet because Tom was good to her. She had told Tom, however, that she should like him to put the worms on the hook for her, although she accepted his word when he assured her that worms couldn’t feel (it was Tom’s private opinion that it didn’t much matter if they did). He knew all about worms and fish and those things; and what birds were mischievous and how padlocks

opened, and which way the handles of the gates were to be lifted. Maggie thought this sort of knowledge was very wonderful—much more difficult than remembering what was in the books; and she was rather in awe of Tom’s superiority, for he was the only person who called her knowledge “stuff” and did not feel surprised at her cleverness. Tom, indeed, was of opinion that Maggie was a silly little thing: all girls were silly—they couldn’t throw a stone so as to hit anything, couldn’t do anything with a pocket-knife, and were frightened at frogs. Still, he was very fond of his sister, and meant always to take care of her, make her his housekeeper, and punish her when she did wrong.

They were on their way to the Round Pool—that wonderful pool, which the floods had made a long while ago: no one knew how deep it was; and it was mysterious too that it should be almost a perfect round, framed in with willows and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be seen when you got close to the brink. The sight of the old favourite spot always heightened Tom’s good- humour, and he spoke to Maggie in the most amicable whispers, as he opened the precious basket and prepared their tackle. He threw her line for her, and put the rod into her hand. Maggie thought it probable that the small fish would come to her hook, and the large ones to Tom’s. But she had forgotten all about the fish and was looking dreamily at the glassy water, when Tom said, in a loud whisper, “Look, look, Maggie!” and came running to prevent her from snatching her line away.

Maggie was frightened lest she had been doing something wrong, as usual, but presently Tom drew out her line and brought a large tench bouncing on the grass.

Tom was excited.

“Oh Magsie! you little duck! Empty the basket.”

Maggie was not conscious of unusual merit, but it was enough that Tom called her Magsie, and was pleased with her. There was nothing to mar her delight in the whispers and the dreamy silences, when she listened to the light dipping sounds of the rising fish and the gentle rustling, as if the willows and the reeds and the water had their happy whisperings also. Maggie thought it would make a very nice heaven to sit by the pool in that way, and never be scolded. She never knew she had a bite till Tom told her, but she liked fishing very much.

It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down together with no thought that life would ever change much for them: they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would always be like the holidays; they would always live together and be fond of each other, and the Mill with its booming—the great chestnut-tree under which they played at houses, their own little river, the Ripple, where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing the water-rats, while Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds which she forgot and dropped afterwards, above all, the great Floss along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring tide, the awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man—these things would always be just the same to them. Tom thought people were at a disadvantage who lived on any other spot of the globe, and Maggie when she read about Christiana passing “the river over which there is no bridge” always saw the Floss between the green pastures by the Great Ash.

Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were not

wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it,—if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass—the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows—the same redbreasts that we used to call “God’s birds” because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?

The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet—what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home-scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows—such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep bladed grass today, might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which still live in us and transform our perception into love.

Chapter 6

The Aunts and Uncles are Coming

t was Easter week and Mrs Tulliver’s cheese-cakes were more exquisitely light than usual: “a puff o’ wind ’ud make ’em blow about like feathers,” Kezia, the housemaid said, feeling proud

to live under a mistress who could make such pastry; so that no season or circumstances could have been more propitious for a family party, even if it had not been advisable to consult sister Glegg and sister Pullet about Tom’s going to school. “I’d as lief not invite sister Deane this time,” said Mrs Tulliver, “for she’s as jealous and having as can be, and ’s allays trying to make the worst o’ my poor children to their aunts and uncles.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr Tulliver. “Ask her to come. I never hardly get a bit o’ talk with Deane now: we haven’t had him this six months. What’s it matter what she says?—my children need be beholding to nobody.”

“That’s what you allays say, Mr Tulliver; but I’m sure there’s nobody o’ your side, neither aunt nor uncle, to leave ’em so much as a five-pound note for a leggicy. And there’s sister Glegg, and sister Pullet too, saving money unknown—for they put by all their own interest and butter-money too—their husbands buy ’em everything.” Mrs Tulliver was a mild woman, but even a sheep will face about a little when she has lambs.

“Tchuh!” said Mr Tulliver. “It takes a big loaf when there’s many to breakfast. What signifies your sisters’ bits o’ money when they’ve got half-a-dozen nevvies and nieces to divide it among?

And your sister Deane won’t get ’em to leave all to one, I reckon, and make the country cry shame on ’em when they are dead?”

“I don’t know what she won’t get ’em to do,” said Mrs Tulliver, “for my children are so awk’ard wi’ their aunts and uncles. Maggie’s ten times naughtier when they come than she is other days, and Tom doesn’t like ’em, bless him—though it’s more nat’ral in a boy than a gell—And there’s Lucy Deane’s such a good child—you may set her on a stool, and there she’ll sit for an hour together and never offer to get off—I can’t help loving the child as if she was my own, and I’m sure she’s more like my child than sister Deane’s, for she’d allays a very poor colour for one of our family, sister Deane had.”

“Well, well, if you’re fond o’ the child, ask her father and mother to bring her with ’em. And won’t you ask their aunt and uncle Moss too? and some o’ their children?”

“Oh dear, Mr Tulliver, why, there’d be eight people besides the children, and I must put two more leaves i’ the table, besides reaching down more o’ the dinner service. And you know as well as I do, as my sisters and your sister don’t suit well together.”

“Well, well, do as you like, Bessy,” said Mr Tulliver, taking up his hat and walking out to the mill. Few wives were more submissive than Mrs Tulliver on all points unconnected with her family relations; but she had been a Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable family indeed—as much looked up to as any in their own parish or the next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always been thought to hold up their heads very high, and no one was surprised the two eldest had married so well—not at an early age, for that was not the practice of the Dodson family. There were particular ways of doing everything in

that family: particular ways of bleaching the linen, of making the cowslip wine curing the hams and keeping the bottled gooseberries, so that no daughter of that house could be indifferent to the privilege of having been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were always conducted with peculiar propriety in the Dodson family: the hatbands were never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the thumb, everybody was mourner who ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated: if the illness or trouble was the sufferer’s own fault, it was not in the practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short, there was in this family a peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household management and social demeanour, and the only bitter circumstance attending this superiority was a painful inability to approve the condiments or the conduct of families ungoverned by the Dodson tradition. A female Dodson, when in “strange houses,” always ate dry bread with her tea and declined any sort of preserves, having no confidence in the butter and thinking that the preserves had probably begun to ferment from want of due sugar and boiling. There were some Dodsons less like the family than others—that was admitted—but in so far as they were “kin,” they were of necessity better than those who were “no kin.” And it is remarkable that while no individual Dodson was satisfied with any other individual Dodson, each was satisfied, not only with him or herself, but with the Dodsons collectively. The feeblest member of a family—the one who has the least character—is often the

merest epitome of the family habits and traditions, and Mrs Tulliver was a thorough Dodson, though a mild one, as small beer, so long as it is anything, is only describable as very weak ale. And though she had groaned a little in her youth under the yoke of her elder sisters, and still shed occasional tears at their sisterly reproaches, it was not in Mrs Tulliver to be an innovator on the family ideas: she was thankful to have been a Dodson, and to have one child who took after her own family, at least in his features and complexion, in liking salt, and in eating beans, which a Tulliver never did.

In other respects the true Dodson was partly latent in Tom, and he was as far from appreciating his “kin’ on the mother’s side as Maggie herself, generally absconding for the day with a large supply of the most portable food when he received timely warning that his aunts and uncles were coming: a moral symptom from which his aunt Glegg deduced the gloomiest views of his future. It was rather hard on Maggie that Tom always absconded without letting her into the secret, but the weaker sex are acknowledged to be serious impedimenta in cases of flight.

On Wednesday, the day before the aunts and uncles were coming, there were such various and suggestive scents, as of plum- cakes in the oven and jellies in the hot state, mingled with the aroma of gravy, that it was impossible to feel altogether gloomy: there was hope in the air. Tom and Maggie made several inroads into the kitchen, and, like other marauders, were induced to keep aloof for a time only by being allowed to carry away a sufficient load of booty.

“Tom,” said Maggie, as they sat on the boughs of the elder tree, eating their jam puffs, “shall you run away tomorrow?”

“No,” said Tom, slowly, when he had finished his puff, and was eyeing the third, which was to be divided between them. “No. I shan’t.”

“Why, Tom? Because Lucy’s coming?”

“No, said Tom, opening his pocket-knife and holding it over the puff, with his head on one side in a dubitative manner. (It was a difficult problem to divide that very irregular polygon into two equal parts.) “What do I care about Lucy? She’s only a girl—she can’t play at bandy.”

“Is it the tipsy-cake, then?” said Maggie, exerting her hypothetic powers, while she leaned forward towards Tom with her eyes fixed on the hovering knife.

“No, you silly, that’ll be good the day after. It’s the pudden. I know what the pudden’s to be—apricot roll-up—Oh my buttons!”

With his interjection, the knife descended on the puff and it was in two, but the result was not satisfactory to Tom, for he still eyed the halves doubtfully. At last he said, “Shut your eyes, Maggie.”

“What for?”

“You never mind what for. Shut ’em when I tell you.” Maggie obeyed.

“Now, which’ll you have Maggie—right hand or left?”

“I’ll have that with the jam run out,” said Maggie, keeping her eyes shut to please Tom. “Why, you don’t like that, you silly. You may have it if it comes to you fair, but I shan’t give it you without. Right or left—you choose, now. Ha-a-a!” said Tom, in a tone of exasperation, as Maggie peeped. “You keep your eyes shut, now, else you shan’t have any.”

Maggie’s power of sacrifice did not extend so far, indeed I fear she cared less that Tom should enjoy the utmost possible amount

of puff than that he should be pleased with her for giving him the best bit. So she shut her eyes quite close, till Tom told her to “say which,” and then she said, “Left-hand.”

“You’ve got it,” said Tom, in rather a bitter tone. “What, the bit with the jam run out?”

“No: here, take it,” said Tom firmly, handing decidedly the best piece to Maggie.

“Oh, please, Tom, have it: I don’t mind—I like the other: please take this.”

“No, I shan’t,” said Tom, almost crossly, beginning on his own inferior piece.

Maggie, thinking it was no use to contend further, began too, and ate up her half-puff with considerable relish as well as rapidity. But Tom had finished first, and had to look on while Maggie ate her last morsel or two, feeling in himself a capacity for more. Maggie didn’t know Tom was looking at her: she was seesawing on the elder bough, lost to almost everything but a vague sense of jam and idleness.

“Oh, you greedy thing!” said Tom, when she had swallowed the last morsel. He was conscious of having acted very fairly, and thought she ought to have considered this and made up to him for it. He would have refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a different point of view before and after one’s own share of puff is swallowed.

Maggie turned quite pale. “Oh Tom, why didn’t you ask me?”

“I wasn’t going to ask you for a bit, you greedy. You might have thought of it without, when you knew I gave you the best bit.”

“But I wanted you to have it—you know I did,” said Maggie in an injured tone.

“Yes, but I wasn’t going to do what wasn’t fair, like Spouncer. He always takes the best bit, if you don’t punch him for it, and if you choose the best with your eyes shut, he changes his hands. But if I go halves I’ll go ’em fair—only I wouldn’t be a greedy.”

With this cutting innuendo, Tom jumped down from his bough and threw a stone, with a “hoigh!” as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been looking on while the eatables vanished with an agitation of his ears and feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the excellent dog accepted Tom’s attention with as much alacrity as if he had been treated quite generously.

But Maggie, gifted with that superior power of misery which distinguishes the human being and places him at a proud distance from the most melancholy chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have given the world not to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some of it for Tom. Not but that the puff was very nice, for Maggie’s palate was not at all obtuse, but she would have gone without it many times over, sooner than Tom should call her greedy and be cross with her. And he had said he wouldn’t have it—and she ate it without thinking—how could she help it? The tears flowed so plentifully that Maggie saw nothing around her for the next ten minutes; but by that time resentment began to give way to the desire of reconciliation and she jumped from her bough to look for Tom. He was no longer in the paddock behind the rickyard—where was he likely to be gone, and Yap with him? Maggie ran to the high bank against the great holly tree, where she could see far away towards the Floss. There was Tom; but her heart sank again as she saw how far off he was on his way to the great river and that he had another companion besides Yap—

naughty Bob Jakin, whose official, if not natural function, of frightening the birds, was just now at a standstill. Maggie felt sure that Bob was wicked, without very distinctly knowing why: unless it was because Bob’s mother was a dreadfully large fat woman, who lived at a queer round house down the river, and once, when Maggie and Tom had wandered thither there rushed out a brindled dog that wouldn’t stop barking, and when Bob’s mother came out after it, and screamed above the barking to tell them not to be frightened, Maggie though she was scolding them fiercely and her heart beat with terror. Maggie thought it very likely that the round house had snakes on the floor, and bats in the bedroom; for she had seen Bob take off his cap to show Tom a little snake that was inside it, and another time he had a handful of young bats: altogether, he was an irregular character, perhaps even slightly diabolical, judging from his intimacy with snakes and bats; and to crown all, when Tom had Bob for a companion he didn’t mind about Maggie, and would never let her go with him.

It must be owned that Tom was fond of Bob’s company. How could it be otherwise? Bob knew, directly he saw a bird’s egg, whether it was a swallow’s or a tomtit’s or a yellowhammer’s; he found out all the wasps’ nests and could set all sorts of traps; he could climb the trees like a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting hedge-hogs and stoats; and he had courage to do things that were rather naughty, such as making gaps in the hedge-rows, throwing stones after sheep, and killing a cat that was wandering incognito. Such qualities in an inferior who could always be treated with authority in spite of his superior knowingness, had necessarily a fatal fascination for Tom; and every holiday-time Maggie was sure to have days of grief because

he had gone off with Bob.

Well! there was no hope for it: he was gone now, and Maggie could think of no comfort but to sit down by the holly or wander by the hedgerow, and fancy it was all different, refashioning her little world into just what she should like it to be. Maggie’s was a troublous life, and this was the form in which she took her opium.

Meanwhile Tom, forgetting all about Maggie and the sting of reproach which he had left in her heart, was hurrying along with Bob whom he had met accidentally, to the scene of a great rat- catching in a neighbouring barn. Bob knew all about this particular affair, and spoke of the sport with an enthusiasm which no one, who is not either divested of all manly feeling or pitiably ignorant of rat-catching, can fail to imagine. For a person suspected of preternatural wickedness, Bob was really not so very villainous-looking; there was even something agreeable in his snub-nosed face with its close-curled border of red hair. But then his trousers were always rolled up at the knee for the convenience of wading on the slightest notice, and his virtue, supposing it to exist, was undeniably “virtue in rags” which, on the authority even of bilious philosophers, who think all well-dressed merit overpaid, is notoriously likely to remain unrecognised (perhaps because it is seen so seldom).

“I know the chap as owns the ferrets,” said Bob in a hoarse treble voice, as he shuffled along, keeping his blue eyes fixed on the river, like an amphibious animal who foresaw occasion for darting in. “He lives up the Kennel Yard at Sut Ogg’s—he does. He’s the biggest rot-catcher anywhere—he is. I’d sooner be a rot- catcher nor anything—I would. The moles is nothing to the rots. But Lors! you mun ha’ ferrets. Dogs is no good. Why, there’s that

dog, now,” Bob continued, pointing with an air of disgust towards Yap, “he’s no more good wi’ a rot nor nothin’. I see it myself—I did—at the rot-catchin’ i’ your feyther’s barn.”

Yap, feeling the withering influence of this scorn, tucked his tail in and shrank close to Tom’s leg, who felt a little hurt for him, but had not the superhuman courage to seem behindhand with Bob in contempt for a dog who made so poor a figure.

“No, no,” he said, “Yap’s no good at sport. I’ll have regular good dogs for rats and everything, when I’ve done school.”

“Hev ferrets, Measter Tom,” said Bob, eagerly, “them white ferrets wi’ pink eyes—Lors, you might catch your own rots, an’ you might put a rot in a cage wi’ a ferret, an’ see ’em fight—you might. That’s what I’d do, I know. An’ it ’ud be better fun a’most nor seein’ two chaps fight—if it wasn’t them chaps as sell cakes an’ oranges at the Fair, as the things flew out o’ their baskets, an’ some o’ the cakes was smashed . . . But they tasted just as good,” added Bob, by way of note or addendum, after a moment’s pause.

“But, I say, Bob,” said Tom, in a tone of deliberation, “ferrets are nasty biting things—they’ll bite a fellow without being set on.”

“Lors, why that’s the beauty on ’em. If a chap lays hold o’ your ferret, he won’t be long before he hollows out a good un—he won’t.”

At this moment a striking incident made the boys pause suddenly in their walk. It was the plunging of some small body in the water from among the neighbouring bulrushes—if it was not a water-rat Bob intimated that he was ready to undergo the most unpleasant consequences.

“Hoigh! Yap—hoigh! there he is,” said Tom, clapping his hands, as the little black snout made its arrowy course to the opposite

bank. “Seize him, lad, seize him!”

Yap agitated his ears and wrinkled his brows, but declined to plunge, trying whether barking would not answer the purpose just as well.

“Ugh! you coward!” said Tom, and kicked him over, feeling humiliated as a sportsman to possess so poor-spirited an animal. Bob abstained from remark and passed on, choosing however to walk in the shallow edge of the overflowing river by way of change.

“He’s none so full now, the Floss isn’t,” said Bob, as he kicked the water up before him, with an agreeable sense of being insolent to it. “Why, last ’ear, the meadows was all one sheet o’ water, they was.”

“Ay, but,” said Tom, whose mind was prone to see an opposition between statements that were really quite accordant, “but there was a big flood once when the Round Pool was made. I know there was, ’cause father says so. And the sheep and cows were all drowned, and the boats went all over the fields ever such a way.”

“I don’t care about a flood comin’,” said Bob, “I don’t mind the water, no more nor the land. I’d swim—I would.”

“Ah, but if you got nothing to eat for ever so long?” said Tom, his imagination becoming quite active under the stimulus of that dread. “When I’m a man, I shall make a boat with a wooden house on the top of it, like Noah’s ark, and keep plenty to eat in it— rabbits and things—all ready. And then if the flood came, you know, Bob, I shouldn’t mind . . . And I’d take you in, if I saw you swimming,” he added, in the tone of a benevolent patron.

“I aren’t frighted,” said Bob, to whom hunger did not appear so

appalling. “But I’d get in, an’ knock the rabbits on th’ head when you wanted to eat ’em.”

“Ah, and I should have half-pence, and we’d play at heads and tails,” said Tom, not contemplating the possibility that this recreation might have fewer charms for his mature age. “I’d divide fair to begin with, and then we’d see who’d win.”

“I’n got a halfpenny o’ my own,” said Bob, proudly, coming out of the water and tossing his halfpenny in the air. “Yeads or tails?”

“Tails,” said Tom, instantly fired with the desire to win.

“It’s yeads,” said Bob, hastily, snatching up the halfpenny as it fell.

“It wasn’t,” said Tom, loudly and peremptorily. “You give me the halfpenny—I’ve won it fair.”

“I shan’t,” said Bob, holding it tight in his pocket. “Then I’ll make you—see if I don’t,” said Tom.

“You can’t make me do nothing, you can’t,” said Bob. “Yes, I can.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I’m master.”

“I don’t care for you.”

“But I’ll make you care, you cheat,” said Tom, collaring Bob and shaking him.

“You get out wi’ you,” said Bob, giving Tom a kick.

Tom’s blood was thoroughly up: he went at Bob with a lunge and threw him down, but Bob seized hold and kept it like a cat, and pulled Tom down after him. They struggled fiercely on the ground for a moment or two, till Tom, pinning Bob down by the shoulders, thought he had the mastery.

“You say you’ll give me the halfpenny now,” he said, with

difficulty, while he exerted himself to keep the command of Bob’s arms.

But at this moment, Yap, who had been running on before, returned barking to the scene of action, and saw a favourable opportunity for biting Bob’s bare leg not only with impunity but with honour. The pain from Yap’s teeth, instead of surprising Bob into a relaxation of his hold, gave it a fiercer tenacity, and with a new exertion of his force he pushed Tom backward and got uppermost. But now Yap, who could get no sufficient purchase before, set his teeth in a new place, so that Bob, harassed in this way, let go his hold of Tom and almost throttling Yap, flung him into the river. By this time Tom was up again, and before Bob had quite recovered his balance after the act of swinging Yap, Tom fell upon him, threw him down and got his knee firmly on Bob’s chest.

“You give me the halfpenny now,” said Tom. “Take it,” said Bob, sulkily.

“No, I shan’t take it—you give it me.”

Bob took the halfpenny out of his pocket and threw it away from him on the ground.

Tom loosed his hold and left Bob to rise.

“There the halfpenny lies,” he said, “I don’t want your halfpenny; I wouldn’t have kept it. But you wanted to cheat: I hate a cheat. I shan’t go along with you any more,” he added, turning round homeward, not without casting a regret towards the rat- catching and other pleasures which he must relinquish along with Bob’s society.

“You may let it alone, then,” Bob called out after him. “I shall cheat if I like—there’s no fun i’ playing, else. And I know where there’s goldfinch’s nest, but I’ll take care you don’t . . . An’ you’re a

nasty fightin’ turkey-cock, you are . . .”

Tom walked on without looking round, and Yap followed his example, the cold bath having moderated his passions.

“Go along wi’ you, then, wi’ your drownded dog—I wouldn’t own such a dog, I wouldn’t,” said Bob, getting louder, in a last effort to sustain his defiance. But Tom was not to be provoked into turning round, and Bob’s voice began to falter a little as she said, “An’ I’n gi’en you everything an’ showed you everything, an’ niver wanted nothin’ from you . . . An’ there’s your horn-handed knife, then, as you gi’en me” . . . Here Bob flung the knife as far as he could after Tom’s retreating footsteps. But it produced no effect, except the sense in Bob’s mind that there was a terrible void in his lot, now that knife was gone.

He stood still till Tom had passed through the gate and disappeared behind the hedge. The knife would do no good on the ground there—it wouldn’t vex Tom, and pride or resentment was a feeble passion in Bob’s mind compared with the love of a pocket- knife. His very fingers sent entreating thrills that he would go and clutch that familiar rough buck’s-horn handle, which they had so often grasped for mere affection as it lay idle in his pocket. And there were two blades—and they had just been sharpened. What is life without a pocket-knife to him who has once tasted a higher existence? No: to throw the handle after the hatchet is a comprehensible act of desperation, but to throw one’s pocket-knife after an implacable friend is clearly in every sense a hyperbole or throwing beyond the mark. So Bob shuffled back to the spot where the beloved knife lay in the dirt, and felt quite a new pleasure in clutching it again after the temporary separation, in opening one blade after the other and feeling their edge with his

well-hardened thumb. Poor Bob! he was not sensitive on the point of honour—not a chivalrous character. That fine moral aroma would not have been thought much of by the public opinion of Kennel Yard, which was the very focus or heart of Bob’s world, even if it could have made itself perceptible there. Yet, for all that, he was not utterly a sneak and a thief, as our friend Tom had hastily decided.

But Tom, you perceive, was rather a Rhadamanthine personage, having more than the usual share of boys’ justice in him—the justice that desires to hurt culprits as much as they deserve to be hurt, and is troubled with no doubts concerning the exact amount of their deserts. Maggie saw a cloud on his brow when he came home, which checked her joy at his coming so much sooner than she had expected, and she dared hardly speak to him as he stood silently throwing the small gravel stones into the mill-dam. It is not pleasant to give up a rat-catching when you have set your mind on it. But if Tom had told his strongest feeling at that moment, he would have said, “I’d do just the same again.” That was his usual mode of viewing his past actions; whereas Maggie was always wishing she had done something different.

Chapter 7

Enter the Aunts and Uncles

T

he Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs Glegg was not the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs Tulliver’s armchair, no impartial observer could

have denied that for a woman of fifty she had a very comely face and figure, though Tom and Maggie considered their aunt Glegg as the type of ugliness. It is true she despised the advantages of costume, for though, as she often observed, no woman had better clothes, it was not her way to wear her new things out before her old ones. Other women, if they liked, might have their best thread lace in every wash, but when Mrs Glegg died, it would be found that she had better lace laid by in the right-hand drawer of her wardrobe, in the Spotted Chamber, than ever Mrs Wooll of St Ogg’s had bought in her life, although Mrs Wooll wore her lace before it was paid for. So of her curled fronts. Mrs Glegg had doubtless the glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in various degrees of fuzzy laxness; but to look out on the weekday world from under a crisp and glossy front would be to introduce a most dream-like and unpleasant confusion between the sacred and the secular. Occasionally, indeed, Mrs Glegg wore one of her third-best fronts on a weekday visit, but not at a sister’s house; especially not at Mrs Tulliver’s, who since her marriage had hurt her sisters’ feelings greatly by wearing her own hair, though, as Mrs Glegg observed to Mrs Deane, a mother of a family, like Bessy, with a husband always going to law, might have been

expected to know better. But Bessy was always weak!

So if Mrs Glegg’s front today was more fuzzy and lax than usual, she had a design under it: she intended the most pointed and cutting allusion to Mrs Tulliver’s bunches of blond curls separated from each other by a due wave of smoothness on each side of the parting. Mrs Tulliver had shed tears several times at sister Glegg’s unkindness on the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the consciousness of looking the handsomer for them naturally administered support. Mrs Glegg chose to wear her bonnet in the house today—united and tilted slightly, of course—a frequent practice of hers when she was on a visit and happened to be in a severe humour: she didn’t know what draughts there might be in strange houses. For the same reason she wore a small sable tippet which reached just to her shoulders and was very far from meeting across her well-formed chest, while her long neck was protected by a chevaux-de-frise of miscellaneous frilling. One would need to be learned in the fashions of those times to know how far in the rear of them Mrs Glegg’s slate-coloured silk gown must have been, but from certain constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odour about it suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that it belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come recently into wear.

Mrs Glegg held her large gold watch in her hand with the many-doubled chain round her fingers, and observed to Mrs Tulliver who had just returned from a visit to the kitchen, that whatever it might be by other people’s clocks and watches, it was gone half-past twelve by hers.

“I don’t know what ails sister Pullet,” she continued. “It used to be the way in our family for one to be as early as another—I’m

sure it was so in my poor father’s time—and not for one sister to sit half an hour before the others came. But if the ways o’ the family are altered it shan’t be my fault—I’ll never be the one to come into a house when all the rest are going away. I wonder at sister Deane—she used to be more like me. But if you’ll take my advice, Bessy, you’ll put the dinner forrard a bit, sooner than put it back, because folks are late as ought to ha’ known better.”

“Oh dear, there’s no fear but what they’ll be all here in time, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver, in her mild-peevish tone. “The dinner won’t be ready till half-past one. But if it’s long for you to wait, let me fetch you a cheese-cake and a glass o’ wine.”

“Well, Bessy!” said Mrs Glegg, with a bitter smile and a scarcely perceptible toss of her head, “I should ha’ thought you’d know your own sister better. I never did eat between meals, and I’m not going to begin. Not but what I hate that nonsense of having your dinner at half-past one when you might have it at one. You was never brought up in that way, Bessy.”

“Why, Jane, what can I do? Mr Tulliver doesn’t like his dinner before two o’clock, but I put it half an hour earlier because o’ you.” “Yes, yes, I know how it is wi’ husbands—they’re for putting everything off—they’ll put the dinner off till after tea, if they’ve got wives as are weak enough to give in to such work: but it’s a pity for you, Bessy, as you haven’t got more strength o’ mind. It’ll be well if your children don’t suffer for it. And I hope you’ve not gone and got a great dinner for us—going to expense for your sisters as ’ud sooner eat a crust o’ dry bread nor help to ruin you with extravagance—I wonder you don’t take pattern by your sister Deane—she’s far more sensible. And here you’ve got two children to provide for, and your husband’s spent your fortin i’ going to law,

and’s like to spend his own too. A boiled joint, as you could make broth of for the kitchen,” Mrs Glegg added, in a tone of emphatic protest, “and a plain pudding with a spoonful o’ sugar and no spice, ’ud be far more becoming.”

With sister Glegg in this humour, there was a cheerful prospect for the day. Mrs Tulliver never went the length of quarrelling with her, any more than a waterfowl that puts out its leg in a deprecating manner can be said to quarrel with a boy who throws stones. But this point of the dinner was a tender one, and not at all new, so that Mrs Tulliver could make the same answer she had often made before.

“Mr Tulliver says he always will have a good dinner for his friends while he can pay for it,” she said, “and he’s a right to do as he likes in his own house, sister.”

“Well, Bessy, I can’t leave your children enough out o’ my savings, to keep ’em from ruin. And you mustn’t look to having any o’ Mr Glegg’s money for it’s well if I don’t go first—he comes of a long-lived family—and if he was to die and leave me well for my life, he’d tie all the money up to go back to his own kin.”

The sound of wheels while Mrs Glegg was speaking was an interruption highly welcome to Mrs Tulliver, who hastened out to receive sister Pullet—it must be sister Pullet because the sound was that of a four-wheel.

Mrs Glegg tossed her head and looked rather sour about the mouth at the thought of the “four-wheel.” She had a strong opinion on that subject.

Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped before Mrs Tulliver’s door, and it was apparently requisite that she should shed a few more before getting out, for though her

husband and Mrs Tulliver stood ready to support her, she sat still and shook her head sadly as she looked through her tears at the vague distance.

“Why, whativer is the matter, sister?” said Mrs Tulliver. She was not an imaginative woman, but it occurred to her that the large toilet glass in sister Pullet’s best bedroom was possibly broken for the second time.

There was no reply but a further shake of the head, as Mrs Pullet slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without casting a glance at Mr Pullet to see that he was guarding her handsome silk dress from injury. Mr Pullet was a small man with a high nose, small twinkling eyes and thin lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black and a white cravat that seemed to have been tied very tight on some higher principle than that of mere personal ease. He bore about the same relation to his tall, good-looking wife, with her balloon sleeves, abundant mantle and large befeathered and beribboned bonnet, as a small fishing-smack bears to a brig with all its sails spread.

It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilisation—the sight of a fashionably dressed female in grief. From the sorrow of a Hottentot to that of a woman in large buckram sleeves, with several bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet and delicate ribbon-strings—what a long series of gradations! In the enlightened child of civilisation the abandonment characteristic of grief is checked and varied in the subtlest manner, so as to present an interesting problem to the analytic mind. If with a crushed heart and eyes half-blinded by the mist of tears, she were to walk with a too devious step through a door-place, she might crush her

buckram sleeves too, and the deep consciousness of this possibility produces a composition of forces by which she takes a line that just clears the doorpost. Perceiving that the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and throws them languidly backward—a touching gesture, indicative, even in the deepest gloom, of the hope in future dry moments when cap-strings will once more have a charm. As the tears subside a little and with her head leaning backward at the angle that will not injure her bonnet, she endures that terrible moment when grief which has made all things else a weariness has itself become weary, she looks down pensively at her bracelets and adjusts their clasps with that pretty studied fortuity which would be gratifying to her mind if it were once more in a calm and healthy state.

Mrs Pullet brushed each doorpost with great nicety, about the latitude of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly ridiculous to an instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and a half across the shoulders), and having done that sent the muscles of her face in quest of fresh tears as she advanced into the parlour where Mrs Glegg was seated.

“Well, sister, you’re late: what’s the matter?” said Mrs Glegg, rather sharply, as they shook hands.

Mrs Pullet sat down—lifting up her mantle carefully behind before she answered, “She’s gone,” unconsciously using an impressive figure of rhetoric.

“It isn’t the glass this time, then,” thought Mrs Tulliver.

“Died the day before yesterday,” continued Mrs Pullet. “An’ her legs was as thick as my body,” she added, with deep sadness, after a pause. “They’d tapped her no end o’ times, they say you might ha’ swum in the water as came from her.”

“Well, Sophy, it’s a mercy she’s gone, then, whoever she may be,” said Mrs Glegg with the promptitude and emphasis of a mind naturally clear and decided; “but I can’t think who you’re talking of, for my part.”

“But I know,” said Mrs Pullet, sighing and shaking her head, “and there isn’t another such a dropsy in the parish. I know as it’s old Mrs Sutton o’ the Twentylands.”

“Well, she’s no kin o’ yours, nor much acquaintance as I’ve ever heared of,” said Mrs Glegg, who always cried just as much as was proper when anything happened to her own “kin’ but not on other occasions.

“She’s so much acquaintance as I’ve seen her legs when they was like bladders . . . And an old lady as had doubled her money over and over again, and kept it all in her own management to the last, and had her pocket with her keys in under her pillow constant. There isn’t many old parish’ners like her, I doubt.”

“And they say she’d took as much physic as ’ud fill a wagon,” observed Mr Pullet.

“Ah,” sighed Mrs Pullet, “she’d another complaint ever so many years before she had the dropsy, and the doctors couldn’t make out what it was. And she said to me, when I went to see her last Christmas, she said, ’Mrs Pullet, if iver you have the dropsy, you’ll think o’ me.’ She did say so,” added Mrs Pullet, beginning to cry bitterly again, “those were her very words. And she’s to be buried o’ Saturday, and Pullet’s bid to the funeral.”

“Sophy,” said Mrs Glegg, unable any longer to contain her spirit of rational remonstrance, “Sophy, I wonder at you, fretting and injuring your health about people as don’t belong to you. Your poor father never did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any o’

the family as I ever heared of. You couldn’t fret no more than this, if we’d heared as our cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his will.”

Mrs Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much. It was not everybody who could afford to cry so much about their neighbours who had left them nothing; but Mrs Pullet had married a gentleman farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her crying and everything else to the highest pitch of respectability.

“Mrs Sutton didn’t die without making her will, though,” said Mr Pullet, with a confused sense that he was saying something to sanction his wife’s tears; “ours is a rich parish, but they say there’s nobody else to leave as many thousands behind ’em as Mrs Sutton. And she’s left no leggicies, to speak on—left it all in a lump to her husband’s nevvy.”

“There wasn’t much good i’ being so rich, then,” said Mrs Glegg, “if she’d got none but husband’s kin to leave it to. It’s poor work when that’s all you’ve got to pinch yourself for—not as I’m one o’ those as ’ud like to die without leaving more money out at interest than other folks had reckoned. But it’s a poor tale when it must go out o’ your own family.”

“I’m sure, sister,” said Mrs Pullet, who had recovered sufficiently to take off her veil and fold it carefully, “it’s a nice sort o’ man as Mrs Sutton has left her money to, for he’s troubled with the asthmy and goes to bed every night at eight o’clock. He told me about it himself, as free as could be, one Sunday when he came to our church. He wears a hare-skin on his chest, and has a trembling in his talk—quite a gentleman sort o’ man. I told him

there wasn’t many months in the year as I wasn’t under the doctor’s hands. And he said, “Mrs Pullet I can feel for you.” That was what he said—the very words. Ah!” sighed Mrs Pullet, shaking her head at the idea that there were few who could enter fully into her experiences in pink mixture and white mixture, strong stuff in small bottles, and weak stuff in large bottles, damp boluses at a shilling, and draughts at eighteenpence. “Sister, I may as well go and take my bonnet off now. Did you see as the cap-box was put out?” she added, turning to her husband.

Mr Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten it. He hastened out with a stricken conscience to remedy the omission.

“They’ll bring it upstairs, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver, wishing to go at once, lest Mrs Glegg should begin to explain her feelings about Sophy’s being the first Dodson who ever ruined her constitution with doctor’s stuff.

Mrs Tulliver was fond of going upstairs with her sister Pullet, and looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head and discussing millinery in general. This was part of Bessy’s weakness that stirred Mrs Glegg’s sisterly compassion: Bessy went far too well-dressed, considering; and she was too proud to dress her child in the good clothing her sister Glegg gave her from the primeval strata of her wardrobe; it was a sin and a shame to buy anything to dress that child, if it wasn’t a pair of shoes. In this particular however, Mrs Glegg did her sister Bessy some injustice, for Mrs Tulliver had really made great efforts to induce Maggie to wear a leghorn bonnet and a dyed silk frock made out of her aunt Glegg’s but the results had been such that Mrs Tulliver was obliged to bury them in her maternal bosom; for Maggie, declaring

that the frock smelt of nasty dye, had taken an opportunity of basting it together with the roast beef the first Sunday she wore it, and finding this scheme answer, she had subsequently pumped on the bonnet with its green ribbons so as to give it a general resemblance to a sage cheese garnished with withered lettuces. I must urge in excuse for Maggie that Tom had laughed at her in the bonnet and said she looked like an old Judy. Aunt Pullet, too, made presents of clothes, but these were always new and pretty enough to please Maggie as well as her mother. Of all her sisters Mrs Tulliver certainly preferred her sister Pullet, not without a return of preference; but Mrs Pullet was sorry Bessy had those naughty awkward children; she would do the best she could by them, but it was a pity they weren’t as good and as pretty as sister Deane’s child. Maggie and Tom, on their part, thought their aunt Pullet tolerable chiefly because she was not their aunt Glegg. Tom always declined to go more than once during his holidays to see either of them: both his uncles tipped him that once, of course, but at his aunt Pullet’s there were a great many toads to pelt in the cellar area, so that he preferred the visit to her. Maggie shuddered at the toads and dreamed of them horribly, but she liked her uncle Pullet’s musical snuff-box. Still, it was agreed by the sisters in Mrs Tulliver’s absence that the Tulliver blood did not mix well with the Dodson blood, that, in fact, poor Bessy’s children were Tullivers and that Tom, notwithstanding he had the Dodson complexion, was likely to be as “contrairy” as his father. As for Maggie, she was the picture of her aunt Moss, Mr Tulliver’s sister, a large-boned woman who had married as poorly as could be, had no china, and had a husband who had much ado to pay his rent. But when Mrs Pullet was alone with Mrs Tulliver upstairs, the remarks were

naturally to the disadvantage of Mrs Glegg, and they agreed in confidence that there was no knowing what sort of fright sister Jane would come out next. But their tête-à-tête was curtailed by the appearance of Mrs Deane with little Lucy, and Mrs Tulliver had to look on with a silent pang while Lucy’s blond curls were adjusted. It was quite unaccountable that Mrs Deane, the thinnest and sallowest of all the Miss Dodsons, should have had this child who might have been taken for Mrs Tulliver’s any day. And Maggie always looked twice as dark as usual when she was by the side of Lucy.

She did today, when she and Tom came in from the garden with their father and their uncle Glegg. Maggie had thrown her bonnet off very carelessly and coming in with her hair rough as well as out of curl, rushed at once to Lucy, who was standing by her mother’s knee. Certainly the contrast between the cousins was conspicuous and to superficial eyes was very much to the disadvantage of Maggie, though a connoisseur might have seen “points” in her which had a higher promise for maturity than Lucy’s natty completeness: it was like the contrast between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten. Lucy put up the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed: everything about her was neat—her little round neck with the row of coral beads, her little straight nose, not at all snubby, her little clear eyebrows, rather darker than her curls, to match her hazel eyes which looked up with shy pleasure at Maggie, taller by the head, though scarcely a year older. Maggie always looked at Lucy with delight. She was fond of fancying a world where the people never got any larger than children of their own age, and she made the queen of it just like Lucy with a little crown on her head and a little sceptre in her

hand . . . only the queen was Maggie herself in Lucy’s form.

“Oh Lucy,” she burst out, after kissing her, “You’ll stay with Tom and me, won’t you? Oh kiss her, Tom.”

Tom, too, had come up to Lucy, but he was not going to kiss her—no—he came up to her with Maggie because it seemed easier on the whole than saying, how do you do to all those aunts and uncles: he stood looking at nothing in particular, with the blushing awkward air and semi-smile which are common to shy boys when in company—very much as if they had come into the world by mistake and found it in a degree of undress that was quite embarrassing.

“Heyday!” said aunt Glegg with loud emphasis, “do little boys and gells come into a room without taking notice o’ their uncles and aunts? That wasn’t the way when I was a little gell.”

“Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my dears,” said Mrs Tulliver, looking anxious and melancholy. She wanted to whisper to Maggie a command to go and have her hair brushed.

“Well, and how do you do? And I hope you’re good children, are you?” said aunt Glegg, in the same loud emphatic way, as she took their hands, hurting them with her large rings and kissing their cheeks much against their desire. “Look up, Tom, look up. Boys as go to boarding-schools should hold their heads up. Look at me, now.” Tom declined that pleasure, apparently, for he tried to draw his hand away. “Put your hair behind your ears, Maggie, and keep your frock on your shoulder.”

Aunt Glegg always spoke to them in this loud emphatic way, as if she considered them deaf or perhaps rather idiotic: it was a means, she thought, of making them feel that they were accountable creatures, and might be a salutary check on naughty

tendencies. Bessy’s children were so spoiled—they’d need have somebody to make them feel their duty.

“Well, my dears,” said aunt Pullet, in a compassionate voice, “you grow, wonderful fast. I doubt they’ll outgrow their strength,” she added, looking over their heads with a melancholy expression at their mother. “I think the gell has too much hair. I’d have it thinned and cut shorter, sister, if I was you: it isn’t good for her health. It’s that as makes her skin so brown, I shouldn’t wonder. Don’t you think so, sister Deane?”

I can’t say, I’m sure, sister,” said Mrs Deane, shutting her lips close again, and looking at Maggie with a critical eye.

“No, no,” said Mr Tulliver, “the child’s healthy enough—there’s nothing ails her. There’s red wheat as well as white, for that matter, and some like the dark grain best. But it ’ud be as well if Bessy ’ud have the child’s hair cut, so as it ’ud lie smooth.” A dreadful resolve was gathering in Maggie’s breast, but it was arrested by the desire to know from her aunt Deane whether she would leave Lucy behind: aunt Deane would hardly ever let Lucy come to see them. After various reasons for refusal, Mrs Deane appealed to Lucy herself.

“You wouldn’t like to stay behind without mother, should you, Lucy?”

“Yes, please, mother,” said Lucy, timidly, blushing very pink all over her little neck.

“Well done, Lucy! Let her stay, Mrs Deane, let her stay,” said Mr Deane, a large but alert-looking man with a type of physique to be seen in all ranks of English society—bald crown, red whiskers, full forehead, and general solidity without heaviness. You may see nobleman like Mr Deane, and you may see grocers or day-

labourers like him; but the keenness of his brown eyes was less common than his contour. He held a silver snuff-box very tightly in his hand, and now and then exchanged a pinch with Mr Tulliver, whose box was only silver-mounted, so that it was naturally a joke between them that Mr Tulliver wanted to exchange snuff-boxes also. Mr Deane’s box had been given him by the superior partners in the firm to which he belonged, at the same time that they gave him a share in the business in acknowledgment of his valuable services as manager. No man was thought more highly of in St Ogg’s than Mr Deane, and some persons were even of opinion that Miss Susan Dodson, who was held to have made the worst match of all the Dodson sisters, might one day ride in a better carriage and live in a better house even than her sister Pullet. There was no knowing where a man would stop, who had got his foot into a great mill-owning, ship-owning business like that of Guest & Co. with a banking concern attached. And Mrs Deane, as her intimate female friends observed, was proud and having enough: she wouldn’t let her husband stand still in the world for want of spurring.

“Maggie,” said Mrs Tulliver, beckoning Maggie to her and whispering in her ear as soon as this point of Lucy’s staying was settled, “go and get your hair brushed—do, for shame. I told you not to come in without going to Martha first, you know I did.”

“Tom, come out with me,” whispered Maggie, pulling his sleeve as she passed him, and Tom followed willingly enough.

“Come upstairs with me, Tom,” she whispered when they were outside the door. “There’s something I want to do before dinner.”

“There’s no time to play at anything before dinner,” said Tom, whose imagination was impatient of any intermediate prospect.

“Oh yes, there’s time for this—do come, Tom.”

Tom followed Maggie upstairs into her mother’s room, and saw her go at once to a drawer from which she took out a large pair of scissors.

“What are they for, Maggie?” said Tom, feeling his curiosity awakened.

Maggie answered by seizing her front locks and cutting them straight across the middle of her forehead.

“Oh, my buttons, Maggie—you’ll catch it!” exclaimed Tom. “You’d better not cut any more off.”

Snip! went the great scissors again while Tom was speaking, and he couldn’t help feeling it was rather good fun: Maggie would look so queer.

“Here Tom, cut it behind for me,” said Maggie, excited by her own daring and anxious to finish the deed.

“You’ll catch it, you know,” said Tom, nodding his head in an admonitory manner, and hesitating a little as he took the scissors.

“Never mind—make haste!” said Maggie, giving a little stamp with her foot. Her cheeks were quite flushed.

The black locks were so thick—nothing could be more tempting to a lad who had already tasted the forbidden pleasure of cutting the pony’s mane. I speak to those who know the satisfaction of making a pair of shears meet through a duly resisting mass of hair. One delicious grinding snip, and then another and another, and the hinder locks fell heavily on the floor, and Maggie stood cropped in a jagged uneven manner, but with a sense of clearness and freedom, as if she had emerged from a wood into the open plain.

“Oh Maggie,” said Tom, jumping round her and slapping his

knees as he laughed, “Oh, my buttons, what a queer thing you look! Look at yourself in the glass—you look like the idiot we throw our nutshells to at school.”

Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly of her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it, and something also of the triumph she should have over her mother and her aunts by this very decided course of action: she didn’t want her hair to look pretty—that was out of the question—she only wanted people to think her a clever little girl and not to find fault with her. But now when Tom began to laugh at her and say she was like the idiot, the affair had quite a new aspect. She looked in the glass, and still Tom laughed and clapped his hands, and Maggie’s flushed cheeks began to pale, and her lips to tremble a little.

“Oh Maggie, you’ll have to go down to dinner directly,” said Tom. “Oh my!”

“Don’t laugh at me, Tom,” said Maggie, in a passionate tone, with an outburst of angry tears, stamping and giving him a push.

“Now then spitfire!” said Tom. “What did you cut it off for then? I shall go down: I can smell the dinner going in.”

He hurried downstairs and left poor Maggie to that bitter sense of the irrevocable which was almost an everyday experience of her small soul. She could see clearly enough now the thing was done that it was very foolish, and that she should have to hear and think more about her hair than ever; for Maggie rushed to her deeds with passionate impulse, and then saw not only their consequences, but what would have happened if they had not been done, with all the detail and exaggerated circumstances of an active imagination. Tom never did the same sort of foolish things

as Maggie, having a wonderful, instinctive discernment of what would turn to his advantage or disadvantage, and so it happened that though he was much more wilful and inflexible than Maggie, his mother hardly ever called him naughty. But if Tom did make a mistake of that sort he espoused it and stood by it: he “didn’t mind.” If he broke the lash of his father’s gig-whip by lashing the gate, he couldn’t help it—the whip shouldn’t have got caught in the hinge. If Tom Tulliver whipped a gate he was convinced, not that the whipping of gates by all boys was a justifiable act, but that he Tom Tulliver was justifiable in whipping that particular gate, and he wasn’t going to be sorry. But Maggie, as she stood crying before the glass, felt it impossible that she should go down to dinner and endure the severe eyes and severe words of her aunts, while Tom, and Lucy, and Kezia who waited at table, and perhaps her father and her uncles, would laugh at her—for if Tom had laughed at her of course every one else would: and if she had only let her hair alone, she could have sat with Tom and Lucy and had the apricot pudding and the custard! What could she do but sob? She sat as helpless and despairing among her black locks as Ajax among the slaughtered sheep. Very trivial, perhaps, this anguish seems to weatherworn mortals who have to think of Christmas bills, dead loves and broken friendships, but it was not less bitter to Maggie—perhaps it was even more bitter—than what we are fond of calling antithetically the real troubles of mature life. “Ah, my child, you will have real troubles to fret about by-and-by,” is the consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in our childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have been grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our

mother or nurse in some strange place, but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment till we weep over it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments has left its trace and lives in us still, but such traces have blent themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture of our youth and manhood; and so it comes that we can look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory of what he did and what happened to him, of what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and trousers, but with an intimate penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then—when it was so long from one Midsummer to another?—what he felt when his schoolfellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day in the holidays when he didn’t know how to amuse himself and fell from idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to let him have a tailed coat that “half,” although every other boy of his age had gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless conception of life that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children.

“Miss Maggie, you’re to come down this minute,” said Kezia, entering the room hurriedly. “Lawks! what have you been a- doing? I niver see such a fright.”

“Don’t, Kezia,” said Maggie, angrily. “Go away!”

“But I tell you, you’re to come down, Miss, this minute: your mother says so,” said Kezia, going up to Maggie and taking her by

the hand to raise her from the floor.

“Get away, Kezia, I don’t want any dinner,” said Maggie, resisting Kezia’s arm, “I shan’t come.”

“Oh well, I can’t stay: I’ve got to wait at dinner,” said Kezia, going out again.

“Maggie, you little silly,” said Tom, peeping into the room ten minutes after, “why don’t you come and have your dinner? There’s lots o’ goodies, and my mother says you’re to come. What are you crying for, you little spooney?”

Oh it was dreadful! Tom was so hard and unconcerned: if he had been crying on the floor, Maggie would have cried too. And there was the dinner, so nice; and she was so hungry. It was very bitter.

But Tom was not altogether hard. He was not inclined to cry, and did not feel that Maggie’s grief spoiled his prospect of the sweets; but he went and put his head near her, and said in a lower, comforting tone, “Won’t you come, then, Magsie? Shall I bring you a bit o’ pudding when I’ve had mine? . . . and a custard and things?”

“Ye-e-es,” said Maggie, beginning to feel life a little more tolerable.

“Very well,” said Tom, going away. But he turned again at the door and said, “But you’d better come, you know. There’s the dessert—nuts, you know—and cowslip wine.”

Maggie’s tears had ceased, and she looked reflective as Tom left her. His good nature had taken off the keenest edge of her suffering, and nuts with cowslip wine began to assert their legitimate influence.

Slowly she rose from amongst her scattered locks and slowly

she made her way downstairs. Then she stood leaning with one shoulder against the frame of the dining parlour door, peeping in when it was ajar. She saw Tom and Lucy with an empty chair between them, and there were the custards on a side table—it was too much. She slipped in and went towards the empty chair. But she had no sooner sat down than she repented and wished herself back again.

Mrs Tulliver gave a little scream as she saw her, and felt such a “turn” that she drooped the large gravy spoon into the dish with the most serious results to the tablecloth. For Kezia had not betrayed the reason of Maggie’s refusal to come down, not liking to give her mistress a shock in the moment of carving, and Mrs Tulliver thought there was nothing worse in question than a fit of perverseness which was inflicting its own punishment, by depriving Maggie of half her dinner.

Mrs Tulliver’s scream made all eyes turn towards the same point as her own, and Maggie’s cheeks and ears began to burn, while uncle Glegg, a kind-looking, white-haired old gentleman, said—“Heyday! what little gell’s this—why, I don’t know her. It is some little gell you’ve picked up in the road, Kezia?”

“Why, she’s gone and cut her hair herself,” said Mr Tulliver in an undertone to Mr Deane, laughing with much enjoyment. “Did you ever know such a little hussy as it is?”

“Why, little miss. You’ve made yourself look very funny,” said uncle Pullet, and perhaps he never in his life made an observation which was felt to be so lacerating. “Fie, for shame!” said aunt Glegg, in her loudest, severest tone of reproof. “Little gells as cut their own hair should be whipped and fed on bread and water— not come and sit down with their aunts and uncles.”

“Ay, ay,” said uncle Glegg, Meaning to give a playful turn to this denunciation, “she must be sent to gaol, I think, and they’ll cut the rest of her hair off there, and make it all even.”

“She’s more like a gypsy nor ever,” said aunt Pullet, in a pitying tone, “It’s very bad luck, sister, as the gell should be so brown— the boy’s fair enough. I doubt it’ll stand in her way i’ life, to be so brown.”

“She’s a naughty child, as’ll break her mother’s heart,” said Mrs Tulliver, with tears in her eyes.

Maggie seemed to be listening to a chorus of reproach and derision. Her first flush came from anger which gave her a transient power of defiance, and Tom thought she was braving it out, supported by the recent appearance of the pudding and custard. Under this impression, he whispered, “Oh my! Maggie, I told you you’d catch it.” He meant to be friendly, but Maggie felt convinced that Tom was rejoicing in her ignominy. Her feeble power of defiance left her in an instant, her heart swelled, and getting up from her chair, she ran to her father, hid her face on his shoulder and burst out into loud sobbing.

“Come, come, my wench,” said her father soothingly putting his arms round her, “never mind. You was i’ the right to cut it off if it plagued you. Give over crying: father’ll take your part.”

Delicious words of tenderness! Maggie never forgot any of these moments when her father “took her part:” she kept them in her heart and thought of them long years after, when every one else said that her father had done very ill by his children.

“How your husband does spoil that child, Bessy!” said Mrs Glegg, in a loud “aside” to Mrs Tulliver. “It’ll be the ruin of her, if you don’t take care. My father niver brought his children up so,

else we should ha’ been a different sort o’ family to what we are.”

Mrs Tulliver’s domestic sorrows seemed at this moment to have reached the point at which insensibility begins. She took no notice of her sister’s remark, but threw back her cap-strings and dispensed the pudding, in mute resignation.

With the dessert there came entire deliverance for Maggie, for the children were told they might have their nuts and wine in the summer-house, since the day was so mild, and they scampered out among the budding bushes of the garden, with the alacrity of small animals getting from under a burning-glass.

Mrs Tulliver had her special reason for this permission: now the dinner was despatched and every one’s mind disengaged, it was the right moment to communicate Mr Tulliver’s intention concerning Tom, and it would be as well for Tom himself to be absent. The children were used to hear themselves talked of as freely as if they were birds and could understand nothing, however they might stretch their necks and listen; but on this occasion Mrs Tulliver manifested an unusual discretion because she had recently had evidence that the going to school to a clergyman was a sore point with Tom, who looked at it as very much on a par with going to school to a constable. Mrs Tulliver had a sighing sense that her husband would do as he liked, whatever sister Glegg said, or sister Pullet either, but at least they would not be able to say, if the thing turned out ill, that Bessy had fallen in with her husband’s folly without letting her own friends know a word about it.

“Mr Tulliver,” she said, interrupting her husband in his talk with Mr Deane, “It’s time now to tell the children’s aunts and uncles what you’re thinking of doing with Tom, isn’t it?”

“Very well,” said Mr Tulliver, rather sharply, “I’ve no objections to tell anybody what I mean to do with him. I’ve settled,” he added, looking towards Mr Glegg and Mr Deane, “I’ve settled to send him to a Mr Stelling, a parson, down at King’s Lorton, there, an uncommon clever fellow, I understand, as’ll put him up to most things.”

There was a rustling demonstration of surprise in the company, such as you may have observed in a country congregation when they hear an allusion to their weekday affairs from the pulpit. It was equally astonishing to the aunts and uncles to find a parson introduced into Mr Tulliver’s family arrangements. As for uncle Pullet, he could hardly have been more thoroughly obfuscated if Mr Tulliver had said that he was going to send Tom to the Lord Chancellor: for uncle Pullet belonged to that extinct class of British yeomen who dressed in good broadcloth, paid high rates and taxes, went to church, and ate a particularly good dinner on Sunday, without dreaming that the British constitution in Church and State had a traceable origin any more than the solar system and the fixed stars. It is melancholy, but true, that Mr Pullet had the most confused idea of a bishop as a sort of a baronet, who might or might not be a clergyman; and as the rector of his own parish was a man of high family and fortune, the idea that a clergyman could be a schoolmaster was too remote from Mr Pullet’s experience to be readily conceivable. I know it is difficult for people in these instructed times to believe in uncle Pullet’s ignorance; but let them reflect on the remarkable results of a great natural faculty under favouring circumstances. And uncle Pullet had a great natural faculty for ignorance. He was the first to give utterance to his astonishment.

“Why, what can you be going to send him to a parson for?” he said, with an amazed twinkling in his eyes, looking at Mr Glegg and Mr Deane, to see if they showed any signs of comprehension.

“Why, because the parsons are the best schoolmasters by what I can make out,” said poor Mr Tulliver, who in the maze of this puzzling world, laid hold of any clue with great readiness and tenacity. “Jacobs at th’ Academy’s no parson, and he’s done very bad by the boy, and I made up my mind if I sent him to school again, It should be to somebody different to Jacobs. And this Mr Stelling, by what I can make out, is the sort o’ man I want. And I mean my boy to go to him at Midsummer,” he concluded, in a tone of decision, tapping his snuff-box and taking a pinch.

“You’ll have to pay a swinging half-yearly bill then, eh, Tulliver? The clergymen have highish notions, in general,” said Mr Deane, taking snuff vigorously, as he always did when wishing to maintain a neutral position.

“What, do you think the parson’ll teach him to know a good sample o’ wheat when he sees it, neighbour Tulliver?” said Mr Glegg, who was fond of his jest, and, having retired from business, felt that it was not only allowable but becoming in him to take a playful view of things.

“Why, you see, I’ve got a plan i’ my head about Tom,” said Mr Tulliver, pausing after that statement and lifting up his glass.

“Well, if I may be allowed to speak, and it’s seldom as I am,” said Mrs Glegg, with a tone of bitter meaning, “I should like to know what good is to come to the boy, by bringin’ him up above his fortin.”

“Why,” said Mr Tulliver, not looking at Mrs Glegg, but at the male part of his audience, “you see, I’ve made up my mind not to

bring Tom up to my own business. I’ve had my thoughts about it all along, and I made up my mind by what I saw with Garnett and his son. I mean to put him to some business, as he can go into without capital, and I want to give him an eddication as he’ll be even wi’ the lawyers and folks, and put me up to a notion now an’ then.”

Mrs Glegg emitted a long sort of guttural sound with closed lips that smiled in mingled pity and scorn.

“It ’ud be a fine deal better for some people,” she said, after that introductory note, “if they’d let the lawyers alone.”

“Is he at the head of a grammar school, then, this clergyman— such as that at Market Bewley?” said Mr Deane.

“No—nothing o’ that,” said Mr Tulliver. “He won’t take more than two or three pupils—and so he’ll have the more time to attend to ’em, you know.”

“Ah, and get his eddication done the sooner; they can’t learn much at a time when there’s so many of ’em,” said uncle Pullet, feeling that he was getting quite an insight into this difficult matter.

“But he’ll want the more pay, I doubt,” said Mr Glegg.

“Ay, ay, a cool hundred a year—that’s all,” said Mr Tulliver, with some pride at his own spirited course. “But then, you know, it’s an investment, like; Tom’s eddication ’ull be so much capital to him.”

“Ay, there’s something in that,” said Mr Glegg. “Well, well, neighbour Tulliver, you may be right, you may be right:

‘When land is gone and money’s spent, Then learning is most excellent.’

I remember seeing those two lines wrote on a window at Buxton. But us that have got no learning had better keep our money, eh, neighbour Pullet?” Mr Glegg rubbed his knees and looked very pleasant.

“Mr Glegg, I wonder at you,” said his wife. “It’s very unbecoming in a man o’ your age and belongings.”

“What’s unbecoming, Mrs G.?” said Mr Glegg, winking pleasantly at the company. “My new blue coat as I’ve got on?”

“I pity your weakness, Mr Glegg. I say, it’s unbecoming to be making a joke when you see your own kin going headlongs to ruin.”

“If you mean me by that,” said Mr Tulliver, considerably nettled, “You needn’t trouble yourself to fret about me. I can manage my own affairs without troubling other folks.”

“Bless me,” said Mr Deane, Judiciously introducing a new idea, “why, now I come to think of it, somebody said Wakem was going to send his son—the deformed lad—to a clergyman, didn’t they, Susan?” (appealing to his wife).

“I can give no account of it, I’m sure,” said Mrs Deane, closing her lips very tightly again. Mrs Deane was not a woman to take part in a scene where missiles were flying.

“Well,” said Mr Tulliver, speaking all the more cheerfully that Mrs Glegg might see he didn’t mind her, “if Wakem thinks o’ sending his son to a clergyman, depend on it I shall make no mistake i’ sending Tom to one. Wakem’s as big a scoundrel as Old Harry ever made, but he knows the length of every man’s foot he’s got to deal with. Ay, ay, tell me who’s Wakem’s butcher, and I’ll tell you where to get your meat.”

“But lawyer Wakem’s son’s got a hump-back,” said Mrs Pullet who felt as if the whole business had a funereal aspect, “it’s more nat’ral to send him to a clergyman.”

“Yes,” said Mr Glegg, interpreting Mrs Pullet’s observation with erroneous plausibility, “you must consider that, neighbour Tulliver; Wakem’s son isn’t likely to follow any business. Wakem ’ull make a gentleman of him, poor fellow.”

“Mr Glegg,” said Mrs G., in a tone which implied that her indignation would fizz and ooze a little, though she was determined to keep it corked up, “you’d far better hold your tongue. Mr Tulliver doesn’t want to know your opinion nor mine neither. There’s folks in the world as know better than everybody else.”

“Why, I should think that’s you, if we’re to trust your own tale, said Mr Tulliver, beginning to boil up again.

“Oh, I say nothing,” said Mrs Glegg, sarcastically. “My advice has never been asked, and I don’t give it.”

“It’ll be the first time, then,” said Mr Tulliver. “It’s the only thing you’re over-ready at giving.”

“I’ve been over-ready at lending, then, if haven’t been over- ready at giving,” said Mrs Glegg. “There’s folks I’ve lent money to, as perhaps I shall repent o’ lending money to kin.”

“Come, come, come,” said Mr Glegg soothingly. But Mr Tulliver was not to be hindered of his retort.

“You’ve got a bond for it, I reckon,” he said. “And you’ve had your five per cent, kin or no kin.”

“Sister,” said Mrs Tulliver pleadingly, “drink your wine, and let me give you some almonds and raisins.”

“Bessy, I’m sorry for you,” said Mrs Glegg, very much with the

feeling of a cur that seizes the opportunity of diverting his bark towards the man who carries no stick. “It’s poor work talking o’ almonds and raisins.”

“Lors, sister Glegg, don’t be so quarrelsome,” said Mrs Pullet, beginning to cry a little. “You may be struck with a fit, getting so red in the face after dinner, and we are but just out o’ mourning, all of us—and all wi’ gowns craped alike and just put by—it’s very bad among sisters.”

“I should think it is bad,” said Mrs Glegg. “Things are come to a fine pass when one sister invites the other to her house o’ purpose to quarrel with her and abuse her.”

“Softly, softly, Jane—be reasonable—be reasonable,” said Mr Glegg.

But while he was speaking, Mr Tulliver, who had by no means said enough to satisfy his anger, burst out again.

“Who wants to quarrel with you?” he said. “It’s you as can’t let people alone, but must be gnawing at ’em for ever. I should never want to quarrel with any woman, if she kept her place.”

“My place, indeed!” said Mrs Glegg, getting rather more shrill. “There’s your betters, Mr Tulliver, as are dead and in their grave, treated me with a different sort o’ respect to what you do—though I’ve got a husband as’ll sit by and see me abused by them as ’ud never ha’ had the chance if there hadn’t been them in our family as married worse than they might ha’ done.”

“If you talk o’ that,” said Mr Tulliver, “my family’s as good as yours—and better, for it hasn’t got a damned ill-tempered woman in it.”

“Well!” said Mrs Glegg, rising from her chair, “I don’t know whether you think it’s a fine thing to sit by and hear me swore at,

Mr Glegg, but I’m not going to stay a minute longer in this house. You can stay behind, and come home with the gig, and I’ll walk home.”

“Dear heart, dear heart!” said Mr Glegg in a melancholy tone, as he followed his wife out of the room.

“Mr Tulliver, how could you talk so?” said Mrs Tulliver, with the tears in her eyes.

“Let her go,” said Mr Tulliver, too hot to be damped by any amount of tears. “Let her go, and the sooner the better: she won’t be trying to domineer over me again in a hurry.”

“Sister Pullet,” said Mrs Tulliver, helplessly, “do you think it ’ud be any use for you to go after her and try to pacify her?”

“Better not, better not,” said Mr Deane. “You’ll make it up another day.”

“Then, sisters, shall we go and look at the children?” said Mrs Tulliver, drying her eyes.

No proposition could have been more seasonable. Mr Tulliver felt very much as if the air had been cleared of obtrusive flies now the women were out of the room. There were few things he liked better than a chat with Mr Deane, whose close application to business allowed the pleasure very rarely. Mr Deane, he considered, was the “knowingest” man of his acquaintance and he had besides a ready causticity of tongue which made an agreeable supplement to Mr Tulliver’s own tendency that way, which had remained in rather an embryonic or inarticulate condition. And now the women were gone, they could carry on their serious talk without frivolous interruption. They could exchange their views concerning the Duke of Wellington whose conduct in the Catholic Question had thrown such an entirely new light on his character,

and speak slightingly of his conduct at the battle of Waterloo, which he would never have won if there hadn’t been a great many Englishmen at his back, not to speak of Blucher and the Prussians, who, as Mr Tulliver had heard from a person of particular knowledge in that matter, had come up in the very nick of time; though here there was a slight dissidence, Mr Deane remarking that he was not disposed to give much credit to the Prussians, the build of their vessels together with the unsatisfactory character of transactions in Dantzic beer, inclining him to form rather a low view of Prussian pluck generally. Rather beaten on this ground, Mr Tulliver proceeded to express his fears that the country could never again be what it used to be; but Mr Deane, attached to a firm of which the returns were on the increase, naturally took a more lively view of the present, and had some details to give concerning the state of the imports especially in hides and spelter, which soothed Mr Tulliver’s imagination by throwing into more distant perspective the period when the country would become utterly the prey of Papists and Radicals and there would be no more chance for honest men.

Uncle Pullet sat by and listened with twinkling eyes to these high matters. He didn’t understand politics himself—thought they were a natural gift—but by what he could make out, this Duke of Wellington was no better than he should be.

Chapter 8

Mr Tulliver Shows his Weaker Side

uppose sister Glegg should call her money in—it ’ud be very awkward for you to have to raise five hundred pounds now,” said Mrs Tulliver to her husband that

evening, as she took a plaintive review of the day. Mrs Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married life a facility of saying things which drove him in the opposite direction to the one she desired. Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal gold-fish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling glass. Mrs Tulliver was an amiable fish of this kind, and after running her head against the same resisting medium for thirteen years would go at it again today with undulled alacrity.

This observation of hers tended directly to convince Mr Tulliver that it would not be at all awkward for him to raise five hundred pounds, and when Mrs Tulliver became rather pressing to know how he would raise it without mortgaging the Mill and the house which he had said he never would mortgage, since nowadays people were none so ready to lend money without security, Mr Tulliver, getting warm, declared that Mrs Glegg might do as she liked about calling in her money—he should pay it in, whether or not. He was not going to be beholding to his wife’s sisters. When a man had married into a family where there was a whole litter of women, he might have plenty to put up with if he choose. But Mr

Tulliver did not choose.

Mrs Tulliver cried a little in a trickling quiet way as she put on her nightcap; but presently sank into a comfortable sleep, lulled by the thought that she would talk everything over with her sister Pullet tomorrow when she was to take the children to Garum Firs to tea. Not that she looked forward to any distinct issue from that talk, but it seemed impossible that past events should be so obstinate as to remain unmodified when they were complained against.

Her husband lay awake rather longer, for he too was thinking of a visit he would pay on the morrow, and his ideas on the subject were not of so vague and soothing a kind as those of his amiable partner.

Mr Tulliver, when under the influence of a strong feeling, had a promptitude in action that may seem inconsistent with that painful sense of the complicated puzzling nature of human affairs under which his more dispassionate deliberations were conducted; but it is really not improbable that there was a direct relation between these apparently contradictory phenomena, since I have observed that for getting a strong impression that a skein is tangled, there is nothing like snatching hastily at a single thread. It was owing to this promptitude that Mr Tulliver was on horseback soon after dinner the next day—(he was not dyspeptic)—on his way to Basset to see his sister Moss and her husband. For having made up his mind irrevocably that he would pay Mrs Glegg her loan of five hundred pounds, it naturally occurred to him that he had a promissory note for three hundred pounds lent to his brother-in-law Moss, and if said brother-in-law could manage to pay in the money within a given time, it would go

far to lessen the fallacious air of inconvenience which Mr Tulliver’s spirited step might have worn in the eyes of weak people who require to know precisely how a thing is to be done before they are strongly confident that it will be easy.

For Mr Tulliver was in a position neither new nor striking but, like other everyday things, sure to have a cumulative effect that will be felt in the long run: he was held to be a much more substantial man than he really was. And as we are all apt to believe what the world believes about us, it was his habit to think of failure and ruin with the same sort of remote pity with which a spare long-necked man hears that his plethoric short-necked neighbour is stricken with apoplexy. He had been always used to hear pleasant jokes about his advantages as a man who worked his own mill and owned a pretty bit of land; and these jokes naturally kept up his sense that he was a man of considerable substance. They gave a pleasant flavour to his glass on a market-day, and if it had not been for the recurrence of half-yearly payments Mr Tulliver would really have forgotten that there was a mortgage of two thousand pounds on his Mill and homestead. That was not altogether his own fault, since one of the thousand pounds was his sister’s fortune, which he had had to pay on her marriage, and a man who has neighbours that will go to law with him is not likely to pay off his mortgages, especially if he enjoys the good opinion of acquaintances who want to borrow a hundred pounds on security too lofty to be represented by parchment. Our friend Mr Tulliver had a good-natured fibre in him, and did not like to give harsh refusals even to a sister, who had not only come into the world in that superfluous way characteristic of sisters, creating a necessity for mortgages, but had quite thrown herself away in marriage and

had crowned her mistakes by having an eighth baby. On this point Mr Tulliver was conscious of being a little weak, but he apologised to himself by saying that poor Gritty had been a good-looking wench before she married Moss—he would sometimes say this even with a slight tremulousness in his voice. But this morning he was in a mood more becoming a man a business, and in the course of his ride along the Basset lanes, with their deep ruts, lying so far away from a market-town that the labour of drawing produce and manure was enough to take away the best part of the profits on such poor land as that parish was made of, he got up a due amount of irritation against Moss as a man without capital, who if murrain and blight were abroad was sure to have his share of them, and who, the more you tried to help him out of the mud, would sink the further in. It would do him good rather than harm, now, if he were obliged to raise this three hundred pounds: it would make him look about him better, and not act so foolishly about his wool this year as he did the last: in fact, Mr Tulliver had been too easy with his brother-in-law, and because he had let the interest run on for two years, Moss was likely enough to think that he should never be troubled about the principal. But Mr Tulliver was determined not to encourage such shuffling people any longer, and a ride along the Basset lanes was not likely to enervate a man’s resolution by softening his temper. The deep-trodden hoof- marks made in the muddiest days of winter gave him a shake now and then which suggested a rash but stimulating snarl at the father of lawyers who, whether by means of his hoof or otherwise, had doubtless something to do with this state of the roads; and the abundance of foul land and neglected fences that met his eye, though they made no part of his brother Moss’s farm, strongly

contributed to his dissatisfaction with that unlucky agriculturist. If this wasn’t Moss’s fallow, it might have been: Basset was all alike; it was a beggarly parish in Mr Tulliver’s opinion, and his opinion was certainly not groundless. Basset had a poor soil, poor roads, a poor non-resident landlord, a poor non-resident vicar, and rather less than half a curate, also poor. If any one strongly impressed with the power of the human mind to triumph over circumstances, will contend that the parishioners of Basset might nevertheless have been a very superior class of people, I have nothing to urge against that abstract proposition: I only know that in point of fact the Basset mind was in strict keeping with its circumstances. The muddy lanes, green or clayey, that seemed to the unaccustomed eye to lead nowhere but into each other, did really lead, with patience, to a distant high-road, but there were many feet in Basset which they led more frequently to a centre of dissipation spoken of formally as the “Markis o’ Granby” but among intimates as “Dickison’s.” A large low room with a sanded floor, a cold scent of tobacco modified by undetected beer-dregs, Mr Dickison leaning against the doorpost with a melancholy pimpled face looking as irrelevant to the daylight as a last night’s guttered candle—all this may not seem a very seductive form of temptation; but the majority of men in Basset found it fatally alluring when encountered on their road towards four o’clock on a wintry afternoon; and if any wife in Basset wished to indicate that her husband was not a pleasure-seeking man, she could hardly do it more emphatically than by saying that he didn’t spend a shilling at Dickison’s from one Whitsuntide to another. Mrs Moss had said so of her husband more than once, when her brother was in a mood to find fault with him, as he certainly was today. And nothing

could be less pacifying to Mr Tulliver than the behaviour of the farmyard gate, which he no sooner attempted to push open with his riding stick than it acted as gates without the upper hinge are known to do, to the peril of shins, whether equine or human. He was about to get down and lead his horse through the damp dirt of the hollow farmyard, shadowed drearily by the large half-timbered buildings, up to the long line of tumble-down dwelling-house standing on a raised causeway, but the timely appearance of a cowboy saved him that frustration of a plan he had determined on, namely not to get down from his horse during this visit. If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant horizon. Mrs Moss heard the sound of the horse’s feet and when her brother rode up, was already outside the kitchen door with a half-weary smile on her face, and a black-eyed baby in her arms. Mrs Moss’s face bore a faded resemblance to her brother’s: baby’s little fat hand pressed against her cheek seemed to show more strikingly that the cheek was faded.

“Brother, I’m glad to see you,” she said, in an affectionate tone. “I didn’t look for you today. How do you do?”

“Oh . . . pretty well, Mrs Moss . . . pretty well,” answered the brother, with cool deliberateness, as if it were rather too forward of her to ask that question. She knew at once that her brother was not in a good humour: he never called her Mrs Moss expect when he was angry and when they were in company. But she thought it was in the order of nature that people who were poorly off should be snubbed. Mrs Moss did not take her stand on the equality of the human race: she was a patient, loosely-hung, child-producing woman.

“Your husband isn’t in the house, I suppose?” added Mr Tulliver, after a grave pause, during which four children had run out, like chickens whose mother has been suddenly in eclipse behind the hen-coop.

“No,” said Mrs Moss, “but he’s only in the potato-field yonders. Georgy, run to the Far Close in a minute and tell father your uncle’s come. You’ll get down, brother, won’t you, and take something?”

“No, no; I can’t get down—I must be going home again directly,” said Mr Tulliver, looking at the distance.

“And how’s Mrs Tulliver and the children?” said Mrs Moss humbly, not daring to press her invitation.

“Oh . . . pretty well. Tom’s going to a new school at Midsummer—a deal of expense to me. It’s bad work for me lying out o’ my money.”

“I wish you’d be so good as let the children come and see their cousins some day. My little uns want to see their cousin Maggie, so as never was. And me her god-mother and so fond of her—there’s nobody ’ud make a bigger fuss with her according to what they’ve got. And I know she likes to come—for she’s a loving child, and how quick and clever she is, to be sure!”

If Mrs Moss had been one of the most astute women in the world instead of being one of the simplest, she could have thought of nothing more likely to propitiate her brother than this praise of Maggie. He seldom found any one volunteering praise of “the little wench:” it was usually left entirely to himself to insist on her merits. But Maggie always appeared in the most amiable light at her aunt Moss’s: it was her Alsatia, where she was out of the reach of law—if she upset anything, dirtied her shoes, or tore her frock,

these things were matters of course at her aunt Moss’s. In spite of himself, Mr Tulliver’s eyes got milder, and he did not look away from his sister as he said, “Ay: she’s fonder o’ you than o’ the other aunts, I think. She takes after our family: not a bit of her mother’s in her.”

“Moss says, she’s just like what I used to be,” said Mrs Moss, “though I was never so quick and fond o’ the books. But I think my Lizzy’s like her—she’s sharp. Come here, Lizzy my dear, and let your uncle see you: he hardly knows you, you grow so fast.”

Lizzy, a black-eyed child of seven, looked very shy when her mother drew her forward, for the small Mosses were much in awe of their uncle from Dorlcote Mill. She was inferior enough to Maggie in fire and strength of expression to make the resemblance between the two entirely flattering to Mr Tulliver’s fatherly love.

“Ay, they’re a bit alike,” he said, looking kindly at the little figure in the soiled pinafore. “They both take after our mother. You’ve got enough o’ gells, Gritty,” he added in a tone half compassionate, half reproachful.

“Four of ’em, bless ’em,” said Mrs Moss, with a sigh, stroking Lizzy’s hair on each side of her forehead, “as many as there’s boys. They’ve got a brother apiece.”

“Ah, but they must turn out and fend for themselves,” said Mr Tulliver, feeling that his severity was relaxing and trying to brace it by throwing out a wholesome hint. “They mustn’t look to hanging on their brothers.”

“No: but I hope their brothers ’ull love the poor things and remember they came o’ one father and mother: the lads ’ull never be the poorer for that,” said Mrs Moss, flashing out with hurried timidity, like a half-smothered fire.

Mr Tulliver gave his horse a little stroke on the flank, then checked it and said angrily, “Stand still with you!” much to the astonishment of that innocent animal.

“And the more there is of ’em, the more they must love one another,” Mrs Moss went on, looking at her children with a didactic purpose. But she turned towards her brother again to say, “Not but what I hope your boy ’ull allays be good to his sister, though there’s but two of ’em, like you and me, brother.”

That arrow went straight to Mr Tulliver’s heart. He had not a rapid imagination, but the thought of Maggie was very near to him, and he was not long in seeing his relation to his own sister side by side with Tom’s relation to Maggie. Would the little wench ever be poorly off, and Tom rather hard upon her?

“Ay, ay, Gritty,” said the miller, with a new softness in his tone. “But I’ve allays done what I could for you,” he added, as if vindicating himself from a reproach.

“I’m not denying that, brother, and I’m noways ungrateful,” said poor Mrs Moss, too fagged by toil and children to have strength left for any pride. “But here’s the father. What a while you’ve been, Moss.”

“While, do you call it?” said Mr Moss, feeling out of breath and injured. “I’ve been running all the way. Won’t you ’light, Mr Tulliver?”

“Well, I’ll just get down and have a bit o’ talk with you in the garden,” said Mr Tulliver, feeling that he should be more likely to show a due spirit of resolve if his sister were not present.

He got down and passed with Mr Moss into the garden towards an old yew-tree arbour, while his sister stood tapping her baby on the back and looking wistfully after them.

Their entrance into the yew-tree arbour surprised several fowls, that were recreating themselves by scratching deep holes in the dusty ground, and at once took flight with much pother and cackling. Mr Tulliver sat down on the bench, and tapping the ground curiously here and there with his stick, as if he suspected some hollowness, opened the conversation by observing, with something like a snarl in his tone, “Why, you’ve got wheat again in that Corner Close, I see? and never a bit o’ dressing on it. You’ll do no good with it this year.”

Mr Moss, who when he married Miss Tulliver had been regarded as the buck of Basset, now wore a beard nearly a week old and had the depressed, unexpectant air of a machine horse. He answered in a patient-grumbling tone, “Why, poor farmers like me must do as they can: they must leave it to them as have got money to play with to put half as much into the ground as they mean to get out of it.”

“I don’t know who should have money to play with, if it isn’t them as can borrow money without paying interest,” said Mr Tulliver, who wished to get into a slight quarrel: it was the most natural and easy introduction to calling in money.

“I know I’m behind with the interest,” said Mr Moss, “but I was so unlucky wi’ the wool last year, and what with the Missis being laid up so, things have gone awkarder nor usual.”

“Ay,” snarled Mr Tulliver, “there’s folks as things ’ull allays go awk’ard with: empty sacks ’ull never stand upright.”

“Well, I don’t know what fault you’ve got to find wi’ me, Mr Tulliver,” said Mr Moss deprecatingly, “I know there isn’t a day- labourer works harder.”

“What’s the use o’ that,” said Mr Tulliver, sharply, “when a man

marries and’s got no capital to work his farm, but his wife’s bit o’ fortin? I was against it from the first; but you’d neither of you listen to me. And I can’t lie out o’ My money any longer; for I’ve got to pay five hundred o’ Mrs Glegg’s, and there ’ull be Tom an expense to me, as I should find myself short, even saying I’d got back all as is my own. You must look about and see how you can pay me the three hundred pounds.”

“Well, if that’s what you mean,” said Mr Moss, looking blankly before him, “we’d better be sold up and ha’ done with it; I must part wi’ every head o’ stock I’n got, to pay you and the landlord too.”

Poor relations are undeniably irritating: their existence is so entirely uncalled for on our part, and they are almost always very faulty people. Mr Tulliver had succeeded in getting quite as much irritated with Mr Moss as he had desired and he was able to say angrily, rising from his seat, “Well, you must do as you can. I can’t find money for everybody else as well as myself. I must look to my own business and my own family. I can’t lie out o’ my money any longer. You must raise it as quick as you can.”

Mr Tulliver walked abruptly out of the arbour as he uttered the last sentence and without looking round at Mr Moss went on to the kitchen door where the eldest boy was holding his horse, and his sister was waiting in a state of wondering alarm, which was not without its alleviations, for baby was making pleasant gurgling sounds and performing a great deal of finger practice on the faded face. Mrs Moss had eight children, but could never overcome her regret that the twins had not lived: Mr Moss thought their removal was not without its consolations. “Won’t you come in, brother?” she said, looking anxiously at her husband, who was walking

slowly up, while Mr Tulliver had his foot already in the stirrup. “No, no; good-bye,” said he, turning his horse’s head and riding

away.

No man could feel more resolute till he got outside the yard- gate and a little way along the deep-rutted lane; but before he reached the next turning, which would take him out of sight of the dilapidated farm-buildings, he appeared to be smitten by some sudden thought, for he checked his horse and made it stand still in the same spot for two or three minutes, during which he turned his head from side to side in a melancholy way, as if he were looking at some painful object on more sides than one. Evidently, after his fit of promptitude, Mr Tulliver was relapsing into the sense that this is a puzzling world. He turned his horse and rode slowly back, giving vent to the climax of feeling which had determined this movement by saying aloud, as he struck his horse, “Poor little wench! she’ll have nobody but Tom, belike, when I’m gone.”

Mr Tulliver’s return into the yard was descried by several young Mosses, who immediately ran in with the exciting news to their mother, so that Mrs Moss was again on the doorstep when her brother rode up. She had been crying, but was rocking baby to sleep in her arms now, and made no ostentatious show of sorrow as her brother looked at her, but merely said, “The father’s gone to the field again, if you want him, brother.”

“No, Gritty, no,” said Mr Tulliver, in a gentle tone. “Don’t you fret—that’s all—I’ll make a shift without the money a bit—only you must be as clever and contriving as you can.”

Mrs Moss’s tears came again at this unexpected kindness, and she could say nothing.

“Come, come!—the little wench shall come and see you. I’ll bring her and Tom some day before he goes to school. You mustn’t fret . . . I’ll allays be a good brother to you.”

“Thank you for that word, brother,” said Mrs Moss, drying her tears; then turning to Lizzy, she said, “Run now, and fetch the coloured egg for cousin Maggie.” Lizzy ran in, and quickly reappeared with a small paper parcel.

“It’s boiled hard, brother, and coloured with thrums—very pretty: it was done o’ purpose for Maggie. Will you please to carry it in your pocket?”

“Ay, ay,” said Mr Tulliver, putting it carefully in his side-pocket. “Good-bye.”

And so the respectable miller returned along the Basset lanes rather more puzzled than before as to ways and means, but still with the sense of a danger escaped. It had come across his mind that if he were hard upon his sister, it might somehow tend to make Tom hard upon Maggie at some distant day, when her father was no longer there to take her part; for simple people, like our friend Mr Tulliver, are apt to clothe unimpeachable feelings in erroneous ideas, and this was his confused way of explaining to himself that his love and anxiety for “the little wench” had given him a new sensibility towards his sister.

Chapter 9

To Garum Firs

hile the possible troubles of Maggie’s future were occupying her father’s mind, she herself was tasting only the bitterness of the present. Childhood has no

forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow. The fact was, the day had begun ill with Maggie. The pleasure of having Lucy to look at, and the prospect of the afternoon visit to Garum Firs where she would hear uncle Pullet’s musical-box had been marred as early as eleven o’clock by the advent of the hairdresser from St Ogg’s who had spoken in the severest terms of the condition in which he had found her hair, holding up one jagged lock after another and saying, “See here! tut—tut—tut!” in a tone of mingled disgust and pity, which to Maggie’s imagination was equivalent to the strongest expression of public opinion. Mr Rappit, the hairdresser, with his well- anointed coronal locks tending wavily upward, like the simulated pyramid of flame on a monumental urn, seemed to her at that moment the most formidable of her contemporaries, into whose street at St Ogg’s she would carefully refrain from entering through the rest of her life.

Moreover, the preparation for a visit being always a serious affair in the Dodson family, Martha was enjoined to have Mrs Tulliver’s room ready an hour earlier than usual, that the laying- out of the best clothes might not be deferred till the last moment, as was sometimes the case in families of lax views where the

ribbon-strings were never rolled up, where there was little or no wrapping in silver paper, and where the sense that the Sunday clothes could be got at quite easily produced no shock to the mind. Already at twelve o’clock, Mrs Tulliver had on her visiting costume with a protective apparatus of brown holland, as if she had been a piece of stain furniture in danger of flies; Maggie was frowning and twisting her shoulders that she might if possible shrink away from the prickliest of tuckers, while her mother was remonstrating, “Don’t, Maggie, my dear—don’t look so ugly!” and Tom’s cheeks were looking particularly brilliant as a relief to his best blue suit, which he wore with becoming calmness, having, after a little wrangling, effected what was always the one point of interest to him in his toilette—he had transferred all the contents of his everyday pockets to those actually in wear.

As for Lucy, she was just as pretty and neat as she had been yesterday: no accidents ever happened to her clothes, and she was never uncomfortable in them, so that she looked with wondering pity at Maggie, pouting and writhing under the exasperating tucker. Maggie would certainly have torn it off, if she had not been checked by the remembrance of her recent humiliation about her hair: as it was, she confined herself to fretting and twisting and behaving peevishly about the card-houses which they were allowed to build till dinner, as a suitable amusement for boys and girls in their best clothes. Tom build perfect pyramids of houses; but Maggie’s would never bear the laying-on of the roof:—it was always so with the things that Maggie made, and Tom had deduced the conclusion that no girls could ever make anything. But it happened that Lucy proved wonderfully clever at building: she handled the cards so lightly and moved so gently that Tom

condescended to admire her houses as well as his own, the more readily because she had asked him to teach her. Maggie too would have admired Lucy’s houses, and would have given up her own unsuccessful building to contemplate them, without ill-temper, if her tucker had not made her peevish and if Tom had not inconsiderately laughed when her houses fell, and told her she was “a stupid.”

“Don’t laugh at me, Tom!” she burst out, angrily. “I’m not a stupid. I know a great many things you don’t.”

“Oh, I daresay, Miss Spitfire! I’d never be such a cross thing as you—making faces like that. Lucy doesn’t do so. I like Lucy better than you: I wish Lucy was my sister.”

“Then it’s very wicked and cruel of you to wish so,” said Maggie, starting up hurriedly from her place on the floor and upsetting Tom’s wonderful pagoda. She really did not mean it, but the circumstantial evidence was against her, and Tom turned white with anger, but said nothing: he would have struck her, only he knew it was cowardly to strike a girl, and Tom Tulliver was quite determined he would never do anything cowardly.

Maggie stood in dismay and terror while Tom got up from the floor and walked away, pale, from the scattered ruins of his pagoda, and Lucy looked on mutely, like a kitten pausing from its lapping.

“Oh Tom,” said Maggie, at last, going half-way towards him, “I didn’t mean to knock it down—indeed, indeed I didn’t.”

Tom took no notice of her, but took, instead, two or three hard peas out of his pocket and shot them with his thumbnail against the window—vaguely at first, but presently with the distinct aim of hitting a superannuated blue-bottle which was exposing its

imbecility in the spring sunshine, clearly against the views of nature, who had provided Tom and the peas for the speedy destruction of this weak individual.

Thus the morning had been made heavy to Maggie, and Tom’s persistent coldness to her all through their walk spoiled the fresh air and sunshine for her. He called Lucy to look at the half-built bird’s nest without caring to show it Maggie, and peeled a willow switch for Lucy and himself without offering one to Maggie. Lucy had said, “Maggie, shouldn’t you like one?” But Tom was deaf.

Still the sight of the peacock opportunely spreading his tail on the stackyard wall, just as they reached Garum Firs was enough to divert the mind temporarily from personal grievances. And this was only the beginning of beautiful sights at Garum Firs. All the farmyard life was wonderful there—bantams, speckled and top- knotted; Friesland hens, with their feathers all turned the wrong way; Guinea-fowls that flew and screamed and dropped their pretty-spotted feathers—pouter pigeons and a tame magpie; nay, a goat, and a wonderful brindled dog, half mastiff, half bull-dog, as large as a lion. Then there were white railings and white gates all about, and glittering weathercocks of various design, and garden- walks paved with pebbles in beautiful patterns—nothing was quite common at Garum Firs; and Tom thought that the unusual size of the toads there was simply due to the general unusualness which characterised uncle Pullet’s possessions as a gentleman farmer. Toads who paid rent were naturally leaner. As for the house, it was not less remarkable: it had a receding centre, and two wings with battlemented turrets, and was covered with glittering white stucco.

Uncle Pullet had seen the expected party approaching from the

window, and made haste to unbar and unchain the front door, kept always in this fortified condition from fear of tramps who might be supposed to know of the glass-case of stuffed birds in the hall and to contemplate rushing in and carrying it away on their heads. Aunt Pullet too appeared at the doorway, and as soon as her sister was within hearing said, “Stop the children, for God’s sake, Bessy—don’t let ’em come up the doorsteps: Sally’s bringing the old mat and the duster, to rub their shoes.”

Mrs Pullet’s front-door mats were by no means intended to wipe shoes on: the very scraper had a deputy to do its dirty work. Tom rebelled particularly against this shoe-wiping, which he always considered in the light of an indignity to his sex. He felt it as the beginning of the disagreeables incident to a visit at aunt Pullet’s, where he had once been compelled to sit with towels wrapped round his boots; a fact which may serve to correct the too hasty conclusion that a visit to Garum Firs must have been a great treat to a young gentleman fond of animals—fond, that is, of throwing stones at them.

The next disagreeable was confined to his feminine companions: it was the mounting of the polished oak stairs, which had very handsome carpets rolled up and laid by in a spare bedroom, so that the ascent of these glossy steps might have served in barbarous times as a trial by ordeal from which none but the most spotless virtue could have come off with unbroken limbs. Sophy’s weakness about these polished stairs was always a subject of bitter remonstrance on Mrs Glegg’s part, but Mrs Tulliver ventured on no comment, only thinking to herself it was a mercy, when she and the children were safe on the landing.

“Mrs Gray has sent home my new bonnet, Bessy,” said Mrs

Pullet, in a pathetic tone as Mrs Tulliver adjusted her cap.

“Has she, sister?” said Mrs Tulliver, with an air of much interest. “And how do you like it?”

“It’s apt to make a mess with clothes, taking ’em out and putting ’em in again,” said Mrs Pullet, drawing a bunch of keys from her pocket and looking at them earnestly, “but it ’ud be a pity for you to go away without seeing it. There’s no knowing what may happen.”

Mrs Pullet shook her head slowly at this last serious consideration, which determined her to single out a particular key. “I’m afraid it’ll be troublesome to you—getting it out, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver, “but I should like to see what sort of a crown

she’s made you.”

Mrs Pullet rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one wing of a very bright wardrobe, where you may have hastily supposed she would find the new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition could only have arisen from a too superficial acquaintance with the habits of the Dodson family. In this wardrobe Mrs Pullet was seeking something small enough to be hidden among layers of linen—it was a door-key.

“You must come with me into the best room,” said Mrs Pullet. “May the children come too, sister?” inquired Mrs Tulliver,

who saw that Maggie and Lucy were looking rather eager.

“Well,” said aunt Pullet, reflectively, “it’ll perhaps be safer for ’em to come—they’ll be touching something, if we leave ’em behind.”

So they went in procession along the bright and slippery corridor, dimly lighted by the semi-lunar top of the window, which rose above the closed shutter: it was really quite solemn. Aunt

Pullet paused and unlocked a door which opened on something still more solemn than the passage—a darkened room, in which the outer light, entering feebly, showed what looked like the corpses of furniture in white shrouds. Everything that was not shrouded stood with its legs upwards. Lucy laid hold of Maggie’s frock, and Maggie’s heart beat rapidly.

Aunt Pullet half-opened the shutter and then unlocked the wardrobe, with a melancholy deliberateness which was quite in keeping with the funereal solemnity of the scene. The delicious scent of rose-leaves that issued from the wardrobe made the process of taking out sheet after sheet of silver-paper quite pleasant to assist at, though the sight of the bonnet at last was an anticlimax to Maggie, who would have preferred something more strikingly preternatural. But few things could have been more impressive to Mrs Tulliver. She looked all round it in silence for some moments and then said emphatically, “Well, sister, I’ll never speak against the full crowns again!”

It was a great concession, and Mrs Pullet felt it: she felt something was due to it.

“You’d like to see it on, sister?” she said, sadly. “I’ll open the shutter a bit further.”

“Well, if you don’t mind taking off your cap, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver.

Mrs Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown silk scalp with a jutting promontory of curls which was common to the more mature and judicious women of those times, and placing the bonnet on her head, turned slowly round, like a draper’s lay- figure, that Mrs Tulliver might miss no point of view.

I’ve sometimes thought there’s a loop too much o’ ribbon on

this left side, sister: what do you think?” said Mrs Pullet.

Mrs Tulliver looked earnestly at the pointed indicated and turned her head to one side. “Well, I think it’s best as it is: if you meddled with it, sister, you might repent.”

“That’s true,” said aunt Pullet, taking off the bonnet and looking at it contemplatively.

“How much might she charge you for that bonnet, sister?” said Mrs Tulliver, whose mind was actively engaged on the possibility of getting a humble imitation of this chef-d’oeuvre made from a piece of silk she had at home.

Mrs Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her head, and then whispered: “Pullet pays for it: he said I was to have the best bonnet at Garum Church, let the next best be whose it would.”

She began slowly to adjust the trimmings in preparation for returning it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts seemed to have taken a melancholy turn, for she shook her head.

“Ah,” she said at last, “I may never wear it twice, sister; who knows?”

“Don’t talk o’ that, sister,” answered Mrs Tulliver. “I hope you’ll have your health this summer.”

“Ah! but there may come a death in the family, as there did soon after I had my green satin bonnet. Cousin Abbott may go, and we can’t think o’ wearing crape less nor half a year for him.”

“That would be unlucky,” said Mrs Tulliver, entering thoroughly into the possibility of an inopportune decease. “There’s never so much pleasure i’ wearing a bonnet the second year, especially when the crowns are so chancy—never two summers alike.”

“Ah, it’s the way i’ this world,” said Mrs Pullet, returning the

bonnet to the wardrobe and locking it up. She maintained a silence characterised by head-shaking, until they had all issued from the solemn chamber and were in her own room again. Then, beginning to cry, she said, “Sister, if you should never see that bonnet again till I’m dead and gone, you’ll remember I showed it you this day.”

Mrs Tulliver felt that she ought to be affected, but she was a woman of sparse tears, stout and healthy—she couldn’t cry so much as her sister Pullet did, and had often felt her deficiency at funerals. Her effort to bring tears into her eyes issued in an odd contraction of her face. Maggie, looking on attentively, felt that there was some painful mystery about her aunt’s bonnet which she was considered too young to understand; indignantly conscious, all the while, that she could have understood that, as well as everything else, if she had been taken into confidence.

When they went down, uncle Pullet observed, with some acumen, that he reckoned the missis had been showing her bonnet—that was what had made them so long upstairs. With Tom the interval had seemed still longer, for he had been seated in irksome constraint on the edge of a sofa directly opposite his uncle Pullet, who regarded him with twinkling grey eyes and occasionally addressed him as “Young sir.”

“Well, young sir, what do you learn at school?” was a standing question with uncle Pullet; whereupon Tom always looked sheepish, rubbed his hand across his face and answered, “I don’t know.” It was altogether so embarrassing to be seated tête-à-tête with uncle Pullet, that Tom could not even look at the prints on the walls, or the fly-cages, or the wonderful flower-pots: he saw nothing but his uncle’s gaiters. Not that Tom was in awe of his

uncle’s mental superiority: indeed, he had made up his mind that he didn’t want to be a gentleman farmer, because he shouldn’t like to be such a thin-legged silly fellow as his uncle Pullet—a molly- coddle, in fact. A boy’s sheepishness is by no means a sign of overmastering reverence: and while you are making encouraging advances to him under the idea that he is overwhelmed by a sense of your age and wisdom, ten to one he is thinking you extremely queer. The only consolation I can suggest to you is, that the Greek boys probably thought the same of Aristotle. It is only when you have mastered a restive horse, or thrashed a drayman, or have got a gun in your hand, that these shy juniors feel you to be a truly admirable and enviable character. At least, I am quite sure of Tom Tulliver’s sentiments on these points. In very tender years, when he still wore a lace border under his out-door cap, he was often observed peeping through the bars of a gate and making minatory gestures with his small forefinger while he scolded the sheep with an inarticulate burr, intended to strike terror into their astonished minds: indicating, thus early, that desire for mastery over the inferior animals wild and domestic, including cockchafers, neighbours’ dogs, and small sisters, which in all ages has been an attribute of so much promise for the fortunes of our race. Now Mr Pullet never rode anything taller than a low pony, and was the least predatory of men, considering firearms dangerous as apt to go off themselves by nobody’s particular desire. So that Tom was not without strong reasons when, in confidential talk with a chum, he had described uncle Pullet as a nincompoop, taking care at the same time to observe that he was a very “rich fellow.”

The only alleviating circumstance in a tête-à-tête with uncle Pullet was that he kept a variety of lozenges and peppermint

drops about his person, and when at a loss for conversation, he filled up the void by proposing a mutual solace of this kind.

“Do you like peppermints, young sir?” required only a tacit answer when it was accompanied by a presentation of the article in question.

The appearance of the little girls suggested to uncle Pullet the further solace of small sweet cakes, of which he also kept a stock under lock and key for his own private eating on wet days: but the three children had no sooner got the tempting delicacy between their fingers, than aunt Pullet desired them to abstain from eating it till the tray and the plates came, since with those crisp cakes they would make the floor “all over” crumbs. Lucy didn’t mind that much, for the cake was so pretty, she thought it was rather a pity to eat it, but Tom, watching his opportunity while the elders were talking, hastily stowed it in his mouth at two bites, and chewed it furtively. As for Maggie, becoming fascinated, as usual, by a print of Ulysses and Nausicaa, which uncle Pullet had bought as a “pretty Scripture thing,” she presently let fall her cake and in an unlucky movement, crushed it beneath her foot—a source of so much agitation to aunt Pullet and conscious disgrace to Maggie that she began to despair of hearing the musical snuff-box today, till after some reflection, it occurred to her that Lucy was in high favour enough to venture on asking for a tune. So she whispered to Lucy, and Lucy, who always did what she was desired to do, went up quietly to her uncle’s knee and blushing all over her neck while she fingered her necklace, said, “Will you please play us a tune, uncle?”

Lucy thought it was by reason of some exceptional talent in uncle Pullet that the snuff-box played such beautiful tunes, and

indeed the thing was viewed in that light by the majority of his neighbours in Garum. Mr Pullet had bought the box, to begin with, and he understood winding it up, and knew which tune it was going to play beforehand: altogether, the possession of this unique “piece of music” was a proof that Mr Pullet’s character was not of that entire nullity which might otherwise have been attributed to it.

But uncle Pullet when entreated to exhibit his accomplishment, never depreciated it by a too ready consent. “We’ll see about it,” was the answer he always gave, carefully abstaining from any sign of compliance till a suitable number of minutes had passed. Uncle Pullet had a programme for all great social occasions, and in this way fenced himself in from much painful confusion and perplexing freedom of will.

Perhaps the suspense did heighten Maggie’s enjoyment when the fairy tune began: for the first time she quite forgot that she had a load on her mind—that Tom was angry with her; and by the time “Hush, ye pretty warbling choir” had been played, her face wore that bright look of happiness, while she sat immovable with her hands clasped, which sometimes comforted her mother with the sense that Maggie could look rather pretty now and then in spite of her brown skin. But when the magic music ceased, she jumped up and running towards Tom, put her arm round his neck and said, “Oh Tom, isn’t it pretty?”

Lest you should think it showed a revolting insensibility in Tom that he felt any new anger towards Maggie for this uncalled for and to him inexplicable caress, I must tell you that he had his glass of cowslip wine in his hand, and that she jerked him so as to make him spill half of it. He must have been an extreme milksop not to

say angrily, “Look there, now!” especially when his resentment was sanctioned, as it was, by general disapprobation of Maggie’s behaviour.

“Why don’t you sit still, Maggie?” her mother said peevishly. “Little gells mustn’t come to see me if they behave in that way,”

said aunt Pullet.

“Why, you’re too rough, little miss,” said uncle Pullet.

Poor Maggie sat down again, with the music all chased out of her soul, and the seven small demons all in again.

Mrs Tulliver, foreseeing nothing but misbehaviour while the children remained indoors, took an early opportunity of suggesting, that now they were rested after their walk, they might go and play out of doors, and aunt Pullet gave permission, only enjoining them not to go off the paved walks in the garden, and if they wanted to see the poultry fed, to view them from a distance on the horse-block: a restriction which had been imposed ever since Tom had been found guilty of running after the peacock with an illusory idea that fright would make one of its feathers drop off. Mrs Tulliver’s thoughts had been temporarily diverted from the quarrel with Mrs Glegg by millinery and maternal cares, but now the great theme of the bonnet was thrown into perspective and the children were out of the way, yesterday’s anxieties recurred.

“It weighs on my mind so as never was,” she said, by way of opening the subject, “sister Glegg’s leaving the house in that way. I’m sure I’d no wish t’ offend a sister.”

“Ah,” said aunt Pullet, “there’s no accounting for what Jane ’ull do. I wouldn’t speak of it out o’ the family—if it wasn’t to Dr Turnbull—but it’s my belief Jane lives too low. I’ve said so to Pullet, often and often, and he knows it.”

“Why, you said so last Monday was a week, when we came away from drinking tea with ’em,” said Mr Pullet, beginning to nurse his knee and shelter it with his pocket handkerchief, as was his way when the conversation took an interesting turn.

“Very like I did,” said Mrs Pullet, “for you remember when I said things, better than I can remember myself. He’s got a wonderful memory, Pullet has,” she continued, looking pathetically at her sister. “I should be poorly off if he was to have a stroke, for he always remembers when I’ve got to take my doctor’s stuff—and I’m taking three sorts now.”

“There’s the ‘pills as before’ every other night, and the new drops at eleven and four, and the ’fervescing mixture ‘when agreeable,’” rehearsed Mr Pullet, with a punctuation determined by a lozenge on his tongue.

“Ah, perhaps it ’ud be better for sister Glegg, if she’d go to the doctor sometimes, instead o’ chewing Turkey rhubarb whenever there’s anything the matter with her,” said Mrs Tulliver, who naturally saw the wide subject of medicine chiefly in relation to Mrs Glegg.

“It’s dreadful to think on,” said aunt Pullet, raising her hands and letting them fall again, “people playing with their own insides in that way! And it’s flying i’ the face o’ Providence; for what are the doctors for, if we aren’t to call ’em in? And when folks have got the money to pay for a doctor—it isn’t respectable, as I’ve told Jane many a time. I’m ashamed of acquaintance knowing it.”

“Well, we’ve no call to be ashamed,” said Mr Pullet, “for Doctor Turnbull hasn’t got such another patient as you i’ this parish, now old Mrs Sutton’s gone.”

“Pullet keeps all my physic-bottles—did you know, Bessy?”

said Mrs Pullet. “He won’t have one sold. He says it’s nothing but right, folks should see ’em when I’m gone. They fill two o’ the long store-room shelves a’ready—but,” she added beginning to cry, “it’s well if they ever fill three. I may go before I’ve made up the dozen o’ these last sizes. The pill-boxes are in the closet in my room— you’ll remember that, sister—but there’s nothing to show for the boluses, if it isn’t the bills.”

“Don’t talk o’ your going, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver; “I should have nobody to stand between me and sister Glegg if you was gone. And there’s nobody but you can get her to make it up wi’ Mr Tulliver, for sister Deane’s never o’ my side, and if she was, it’s not to be looked for as she can speak like them as have got an independent fortin.”

“Well, your husband is awk’ard, you know, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet, good-naturedly ready to use her deep depression on her sister’s account as well as her own. “He’s never behaved quite so pretty to our family as he should do. And the children take after him—the boy’s very mischievous and runs away from his aunts and uncles, and the gell’s rude and brown. It’s your bad luck, and I’m sorry for you, Bessy; for you was allays my favourite sister, and we allays liked the same patterns.”

“I know Tulliver’s hasty and says odd things,” said Mrs Tulliver, wiping away one small tear from the corner of her eye, “but I’m sure he’s never been the man since he married me to object to my making the friends o’ my side o’ the family welcome to the house.”

“I don’t want to make the worst of you, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet, compassionately, “for I doubt you’ll have trouble enough without that—and your husband’s got that poor sister and her children

hanging on him, and so given to lawing, they say—I doubt he’ll leave you poorly off when he dies. Not as I’d have it said out o’ the family.”

This views of her position was naturally far from cheering to Mrs Tulliver. Her imagination was not easily acted on, but she could not help thinking that her case was a hard one—since it appeared that other people thought it hard.

“I’m sure, sister, I can’t help myself,” she said, urged by the fear lest her anticipated misfortunes might be held retributive, to take a comprehensive review of her past conduct. “There’s no woman strives more for her children; and I’m sure at scouring time this Ladyday as I’ve had all the bed-hangings taken down, I did as much as the two gells put together, and there’s this last elder- flower wine I’ve made—beautiful! I allays offer it along with the sherry, though sister Glegg will have it I’m so extravagant, and as for liking to have my clothes tidy and not go a fright about the house, there’s nobody in the parish can say anything against me in respect o’ backbiting and making mischief, for I don’t wish anybody any harm, and nobody loses by sending me a porkpie, for my pies are fit to show with the best o’ my neighbours, and the linen’s so in order, as if I was to die tomorrow I shouldn’t be ashamed. A woman can do no more nor she can.”

“But it’s all o’ no use, you know, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet, holding her head on one side and fixing her eyes pathetically on her sister, “if your husband makes away with his money. Not but what if you was sold up, and other folks bought your furniture, it’s a comfort to think as you’ve kept it well rubbed. And there’s the linen with your maiden mark on, might go all over the country. It ’ud be a sad pity for our family.” Mrs Pullet shook her head slowly.

“But what can I do, sister?” said Mrs Tulliver. “Mr Tulliver’s not a man to be dictated to—not if I was to go to the parson and get by heart what I should tell my husband for the best. And I’m sure I don’t pretend to know anything about putting out money and all that. I could never see into men’s business as sister Glegg does.”

“Well, you’re like me in that, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet. “And I think it ’ud be a deal more becoming o’ Jane if she’d have that pier-glass rubbed oftener—there was ever so many spots on it last week—instead o’ dictating to folks as have more comings in than she ever had and telling ’em what they’ve to do with their money. But Jane and me were allays contrairy: she would have striped things, and I like spots. You like a spot too, Bessy: we allays hung together i’ that.”

Mrs Pullet, affected by this last reminiscence, looked at her sister pathetically.

“Yes, Sophy,” said Mrs Tulliver, “I remember our having a blue ground with a white spot both alike—I’ve got a bit in a bed-quilt now—and if you would but go and see sister Glegg and persuade her to make it up with Tulliver, I should take it very kind of you. You was allays a good sister to me.”

“But the right thing ’ud be for Tulliver to go and make it up with her himself and say he was sorry for speaking so rash. If He’s borrowed money of her, he shouldn’t be above that,” said Mrs Pullet, whose partiality did not blind her to principles: she did not forget what was due to people of independent fortune.

“It’s no use talking o’ that,” said poor Mrs Tulliver, almost peevishly. “If I was to go down on my bare knees on the gravel to Tulliver, he’d never humble himself.”

“Well, you can’t expect me to persuade Jane to beg pardon,” said Mrs Pullet. “Her temper’s beyond everything—it’s well if it doesn’t carry her off her mind—though there never was any of our family went to a madhouse.”

“I’m not thinking of her begging pardon,” said Mrs Tulliver. “But if she’d just take no notice and not call her money in—as it’s not so much for one sister to ask of another—time ’ud mend things and Tulliver ’ud forget all about it, and they’d be friends again.”

Mrs Tulliver, you perceive, was not aware of her husband’s irrevocable determination to pay in the five hundred pounds: at least, such a determination exceeded her powers of belief.

“Well, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet, mournfully, “I don’t want to help you on to ruin. I won’t be behindhand i’ doing you a good turn, if it is to be done. And I don’t like it said among acquaintance as we’ve got quarrels in the family. I shall tell Jane that: and I don’t mind driving to Jane’s tomorrow, if Pullet doesn’t mind. What do you say, Mr Pullet?”

“I’ve no objections,” said Mr Pullet, who was perfectly contented with any course the quarrel might take, so that Mr Tulliver did not apply to him for money. Mr Pullet was nervous about his investments, and did not see how a man could have any security for his money unless he turned it into land.

After a little further discussion as to whether it would not be better for Mrs Tulliver to accompany them on a visit to sister Glegg, Mrs Pullet, observing that it was tea-time, turned to reach from a drawer a delicate damask napkin, which she pinned before her in the fashion of an apron. The door did, in fact, soon open, but instead of the tea-tray, Sally introduced an object so startling that both Mrs Pullet and Mrs Tulliver gave a scream, causing

uncle Pullet to swallow his lozenge—for the fifth time in his life, as he afterwards noted.

Chapter 10

Maggie Behaves Worse than she Expected

he startling object which thus made an epoch for uncle Pullet was no other than little Lucy, with one side of her person, from her small foot to her bonnet-crown, wet and discoloured with mud, holding out two tiny blackened hands and making a very piteous face. To account for this unprecedented apparition in aunt Pullet’s parlour, we must return to the moment when the three children went to play out of doors and the small demons who had taken possession of Maggie’s soul at an early period of the day had returned in all the greater force after a temporary absence. All the disagreeable recollections of the morning were thick upon her, when Tom, whose displeasure towards her had been considerably refreshed by her foolish trick of causing him to upset his cowslip wine, said, “Here, Lucy, you come along with me,” and walked off to the area where the toads were, as if there were no Maggie in existence. Seeing this Maggie lingered at a distance looking like a small Medusa with her snakes cropped. Lucy was naturally pleased that cousin Tom was so good to her, and it was very amusing to see him tickling a fat toad with a piece of string when the toad was safe down the area with an iron

grating over him. Still Lucy wished Maggie to enjoy the spectacle also, especially as she would doubtless find a name for the toad and say what had been his past history; for Lucy had a delighted semi-belief in Maggie’s stories about the live things they came upon by accident—how Mrs Earwig had a wash at home, and one

of her children had fallen into the hot copper, for which reason, she was running so fast to fetch the doctor. Tom had a profound contempt for this nonsense of Maggie’s, smashing the earwig at once as a superfluous yet easy means of proving the entire unreality of such a story; but Lucy, for the life of her, could not help fancying there was something in it, and at all events thought it was very pretty make-believe. So now the desire to know the history of a very portly toad, added to her habitual affectionateness, made her run back to Maggie and say, “Oh, there is such a big, funny toad, Maggie! Do come and see.” Maggie said nothing, but turned away from her with a deeper frown. As long as Tom seemed to prefer Lucy to her, Lucy made part of his unkindness. Maggie would have thought a little while ago that she could never be cross with pretty little Lucy, any more than she could be cruel to a little white mouse; but then, Tom had always been quite indifferent to Lucy before, and it had been left to Maggie to pet and make much of her. As it was, she was actually beginning to think that she should like to make Lucy cry, by slapping or pinching her, especially as it might vex Tom, whom it was of no use to slap even if she dared, because he didn’t mind it. And if Lucy hadn’t been there, Maggie was sure he would have got friends with her sooner.

Tickling a fat toad who is not highly sensitive is an amusement that it is possible to exhaust, and Tom by-and-by began to look round for some other mode of passing the time. But in so prim a garden where they were not to go off the paved walks, there was not a great choice of sport. The only great pleasure such a restriction allowed was the pleasure of breaking it, and Tom began to meditate an insurrectionary visit to the pond, about a field’s

length beyond the garden.

“I say, Lucy,” he began, nodding his head up and down with great significance as he coiled up his string again. “What do you think I mean to do?”

“What, Tom?” said Lucy, with curiosity.

“I mean to go to the pond, and look at the pike. You may go with me if you like,” said the young Sultan.

“Oh, Tom, dare you?” said Lucy. “Aunt said we mustn’t go out of the garden.”

“Oh, I shall go out at the other end of the garden,” said Tom. “Nobody ’ull see us. Besides I don’t care if they do—I’ll run off home.”

“But I couldn’t run,” said Lucy, who had never before been exposed to such severe temptation.

“Oh, never mind—they won’t be cross with you,” said Tom. “You say I took you.”

Tom walked along, and Lucy trotted by his side timidly enjoying the rare treat of doing something naughty—excited also by the mention of that celebrity, the pike, about which she was quite uncertain whether it was a fish or a fowl. Maggie saw them leaving the garden, and could not resist the impulse to follow. Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love, and that Tom and Lucy should do or see anything of which she was ignorant would have been an intolerable idea to Maggie. So she kept a few yards behind them, unobserved by Tom, who was presently absorbed in watching for the “jack- pike”—a highly interesting monster—he was said to be so very old, so very large, and to have such a remarkable appetite. The pike, like other celebrities did not show when he was watched for,

but Tom caught sight of something in rapid movement in the water which attracted him to another spot on the brink of the pond.

“Here, Lucy!” he said in a loud whisper, “come here! Take care! Keep on the grass—don’t step where the cows have been!” he added pointing to a peninsula of dry grass, with trodden mud on each side of it; for Tom’s contemptuous conception of a girl included the attribute of being unfit to walk in dirty places.

Lucy came carefully as she was bidden, and bent down to look at what seemed a golden arrow-head darting through the water. It was a water-snake, Tom told her, and Lucy at last could see the serpentine wave of its body, very much wondering that a snake could swim. Maggie had drawn nearer and nearer—she must see it too, though it was bitter to her like everything else, since Tom did not care about her seeing it. At last, she was close by Lucy, and Tom, who had been aware of her approach, but would not notice it till he was obliged, turned round and said, “Now, get away, Maggie. There’s no room for you on the grass here. Nobody asked you to come.”

There were passions at war in Maggie at that moment to have made a tragedy, if tragedies were made by passion only, but the essential τι μεγεθοζ which was present in the passion, was wanting to the action; the utmost Maggie could do, with a fierce thrust of her small brown arm, was to push poor little pink-and-white Lucy into the cow-trodden mud.

Then Tom could not restrain himself, and gave Maggie two smart slaps on the arm as he ran to pick up Lucy, who lay crying helplessly. Maggie retreated to the roots of a tree a few yards off and looked on impenitently. Usually her repentance came quickly

after one rash deed, but now Tom and Lucy had made her so miserable, she was glad to spoil their happiness—glad to make everybody uncomfortable. Why should she be sorry?—Tom was very slow to forgive her, however sorry she might have been.

“I shall tell mother, you know, Miss Mag,” said Tom, loudly and emphatically, as soon as Lucy was up and ready to walk away. It was not Tom’s practice to “tell,” but here justice clearly demanded that Maggie should be visited with the utmost punishment: not that Tom had learnt to put his views in that abstract form; he never mentioned “justice,” and had no idea that his desire to punish might be called by that fine name. Lucy was too entirely absorbed by the evil that had befallen her—the spoiling of her pretty best clothes, and the discomfort of being wet and dirty—to think much of the cause, which was entirely mysterious to her. She could never have guessed what she had done to make Maggie angry with her. But she felt that Maggie was very unkind and disagreeable, and made no magnanimous entreaties to Tom that he would not “tell,” only running along by his side and crying piteously, while Maggie sat on the roots of the tree and looked after them with her small Medusa face.

“Sally,” said Tom, when they reached the kitchen door, and Sally looked at them in speechless amaze, with a piece of bread- and-butter in her mouth and a toasting-fork in her hand, “Sally, tell mother it was Maggie pushed Lucy into the mud.”

“But Lors ha’ massy, how did you get near such mud as that?” said Sally, making a wry face, as she stooped down and examined the corpus delicti.

Tom’s imagination had not been rapid and capacious enough to include this question among the foreseen consequences, but it was

no sooner put than he foresaw whither it tended, and that Maggie would not be considered the only culprit in the case. He walked quietly away from the kitchen door, leaving Sally to that pleasure of guessing which active minds notoriously prefer to ready-made knowledge.

Sally, as you are aware, lost no time in presenting Lucy at the parlour door, for to have so dirty an object introduced into the house at Garum Firs was too great a weight to be sustained by a single mind.

“Goodness gracious!” aunt Pullet exclaimed after preluding by an inarticulate scream. “Keep her at the door, Sally! Don’t bring her off the oilcloth, whatever you do.”

“Why, she’s tumbled into some nasty mud,” said Mrs Tulliver, going up to Lucy to examine into the amount of damage to clothes for which she felt herself responsible to her sister Deane.

“If you please, ’um, it was Miss Maggie as pushed her in,” said Sally. “Master Tom’s been and said so. And they must ha’ been to the pond, for it’s only there they could ha’ got into such dirt.”

“There it is, Bessy—it’s what I’ve been telling you,” said Mrs Pullet, in a tone of prophetic sadness, “it’s your children—there’s no knowing what they’ll come to.”

Mrs Tulliver was mute, feeling herself a truly wretched mother. As usual, the thought pressed upon her that people would think she had done something wicked to deserve her maternal troubles, while Mrs Pullet began to give elaborate directions to Sally how to guard the premises from serious injury in the course of removing the dirt. Meantime tea was to be brought in by the cook, and the two naughty children were to have theirs in an ignominious manner in the kitchen. Mrs Tulliver went out to speak to these

naughty children, supposing them to be close at hand, but it was not until after some search that she found Tom leaning with rather a hardened careless air against the white paling of the poultry yard, and lowering his piece of string on the other side as a means of exasperating the turkey cock.

“Tom, you naughty boy, where’s your sister?” said Mrs Tulliver, in a distressed voice.

“I don’t know,” said Tom. His eagerness for justice on Maggie had diminished since he had seen clearly that it could hardly be brought about without the injustice of some blame on his own conduct.

“Why, where did you leave her?” said his mother, looking round.

“Sitting under the tree against the pond,” said Tom, apparently indifferent to everything but the string and the turkey cock.

“Then go and fetch her in this minute, you naughty boy. And how could you think o’ going to the pond, and taking your sister where there was dirt? You know she’ll do mischief if there’s mischief to be done.”

It was Mrs Tulliver’s way, if she blamed Tom, to refer his misdemeanour, somehow or other, to Maggie.

The idea of Maggie sitting alone by the pond, roused an habitual fear in Mrs Tulliver’s mind, and she mounted the horse- block to satisfy herself by a sight of that fatal child, while Tom walked—not very quickly—on his way towards her.

“They’re such children for the water, mine are,” she said aloud, without reflecting that there was no one to hear her. “They’ll be brought in dead and drownded some day. I wish that river was far enough.”

But when she not only failed to discern Maggie, but presently saw Tom returning from the pool alone, this hovering fear entered and took complete possession of her, and she hurried to meet him. “Maggie’s nowhere about the pond, mother,” said Tom, “she’s

gone away.”

You may conceive the terrified search for Maggie, and the difficulty of convincing her mother that she was not in the pond. Mrs Pullet observed, that the child might come to a worse end if she lived—there was no knowing; and Mr Pullet, confused and overwhelmed by this revolutionary aspect of things—the tea deferred and the poultry alarmed by the unusual running to and fro—took up his spud as an instrument of search, and reached down a key to unlock the goose-pen, as a likely place for Maggie to lie concealed in.

Tom, after a while, started the idea that Maggie was gone home (without thinking it necessary to state that it was what he should have done himself under the circumstances), and the suggestion was seized as a comfort by his mother.

“Sister, for goodness’ sake, let ’em put the horse in the carriage and take me home—we shall perhaps find her on the road. Lucy can’t walk in her dirty clothes,” she said, looking at that innocent victim, who was wrapped up in a shawl and sitting with naked feet on the sofa.

Aunt Pullet was quite willing to take the shortest means of restoring her premises to order and quiet, and it was not long before Mrs Tulliver was in the chaise looking anxiously at the most distant point before her. What the father would say if Maggie was lost? was a question that predominated over every other.

Chapter 11

Maggie Tries to Run Away from her Shadow

aggie’s intentions, as usual, were on a larger scale than Tom had imagined. The resolution that gathered in her mind, after Tom and Lucy had walked away, was not so

simple as that of going home. No! she would run away and go to the gypsies, and Tom should never see her any more. That was by no means a new idea to Maggie: she had been so often told she was like a gypsy and “half wild” that when she was miserable it seemed to her the only way of escaping opprobrium and being entirely in harmony with circumstances, would be to live in a little brown tent on the commons: the gypsies, she considered, would gladly receive her and pay her much respect on account of her superior knowledge. She had once mentioned her views on this point to Tom, and suggested that he should stain his face brown and they should run away together; but Tom rejected the scheme with contempt, observing that gypsies were thieves and hardly got anything to eat and had nothing to drive but a donkey. Today, however, Maggie thought her misery had reached a pitch at which gypsydom was her only refuge, and she rose from her seat on the roots of the tree with the sense that this was a great crisis in her life; she would run straight away till she came to Dunlow Common, where there would certainly be gypsies, and cruel Tom, and the rest of her relations who found fault with her, should never see her any more. She thought of her father as she ran along, but she reconciled herself to the idea of parting with him,

by determining that she would secretly send him a letter by a small gypsy who would run away without telling where she was, and just let him know that she was well and happy, and always loved him very much. Maggie soon got out of breath with running, but by the time Tom got to the pond again, she was at the distance of three long fields and was on the edge of the lane leading to the high road. She stopped to pant a little, reflecting that running away was not a pleasant thing until one had got quite to the common where the gypsies were, but her resolution had not abated: she presently passed through the gate into the lane, not knowing where it would lead her, for it was not this way that they came from Dorlcote Mill to Garum Firs, and she felt all the safer for that, because there was no chance of her being overtaken. But she was soon aware, not without trembling, that there were two men coming along the lane in front of her: she had not thought of meeting strangers—she had been too much occupied with the idea of her friends coming after her. The formidable strangers were two shabby-looking men with flushed faces, one of them carrying a bundle on a stick over his shoulder: but to her surprise, while she was dreading their disapprobation as a runaway, the man with the bundle stopped, and in a half whining half coaxing tone asked her if she had a copper to give a poor man. Maggie had a sixpence in her pocket—her uncle Glegg’s present—which she immediately drew out and gave this poor man with a polite smile, hoping he would feel very kindly towards her as a generous person. “That’s the only money I’ve got,” she said, apologetically. “Thank you, little miss,” said the man in a less respectful and grateful tone than Maggie anticipated, and she even observed that he smiled and winked at his companion. She walked on hurriedly, but was aware

that the two men were standing still, probably to look after her, and she presently heard them laughing loudly. Suddenly it occurred to her that they might think she was an idiot:—Tom had said that her cropped hair made her look like an idiot, and it was too painful an idea to be readily forgotten. Besides she had no sleeves on—only a cape and a bonnet. It was clear that she was not likely to make a favourable impression on passengers, and she thought she would turn into the fields again: but not on the same side of the lane as before, lest they should still be uncle Pullet’s fields. She turned through the first gate that was not locked, and felt a delighted sense of privacy in creeping along by the hedgerows after her recent humiliating encounter. She was used to wandering about the fields by herself, and was less timid there than on the high-road. Sometimes she had to climb over high gates, but that was a small evil; she was getting out of reach very fast, and she should probably soon come within sight of Dunlow Common, or at least of some other common, for she had heard her father say that you couldn’t go very far without coming to a common. She hoped so, for she was getting rather tired and hungry, and until she reached the gypsies there was no definite prospect of bread-and-butter. It was still broad daylight, for aunt Pullet, retaining the early habits of the Dodson family, took tea at half-past four by the sun and at five by the kitchen clock; so, though it was nearly an hour since Maggie started, there was no gathering gloom on the fields to remind her that the night would come. Still, it seemed to her that she had been walking a very great distance indeed, and it was really surprising that the common did not come within sight. Hitherto she had been in the rich parish of Garum where there was a great deal of pasture-land,

and she had only seen one labourer at a distance: that was fortunate in some respects, as labourers might be too ignorant to understand the propriety of her wanting to go to Dunlow Common; yet it would have been better if she could have met some one who would tell her the way without wanting to know anything about her private business. At last, however, the green fields came to an end and Maggie found herself looking through the bars of a gate into a lane with a wide margin of grass on each side of it. She had never seen such a wide lane before, and without her knowing why, it gave her the impression that the common could not be far off; perhaps, it was because she saw a donkey with a log to his foot feeding on the grassy margin, for she had seen a donkey with that pitiable encumbrance on Dunlow Common when she had been across it in her father’s gig. She crept through the bars of the gate and walked on with new spirit, though not without haunting images of Apollyon, and a highwayman with a pistol, and a blinking dwarf in yellow with a mouth from ear to ear, and other miscellaneous dangers. For poor little Maggie had at once the timidity of an active imagination, and the daring that comes from overmastering impulse. She had rushed into the adventure of seeking her unknown kindred, the gypsies, and now she was in this strange lane she hardly dared look on one side of her, lest she should see the diabolical blacksmith in his leathern apron grinning at her with arms akimbo. It was not without a leaping of the heart that she caught sight of a small pair of bare legs sticking up, feet uppermost, by the side of a hillock; they seemed something hideously preternatural—a diabolical kind of fungus; for she was too much agitated at the first glance to see the ragged clothes and the dark shaggy head attached to them. It was a boy

asleep, and Maggie trotted along faster and more lightly lest she should wake him: it did not occur to her that he was one of her friends the gypsies, who in all probability would have very genial manners. But the fact was so, for at the next bend in the lane, Maggie actually saw the little semicircular black tent with the blue smoke rising before it which was to be her refuge from all the blighting obloquy that had pursued her in civilised life. She even saw a tall female figure by the column of smoke—doubtless the gypsy-mother, who provided the tea and other groceries: it was astonishing to herself that she did not feel more delighted. But it was startling to find the gypsies in a lane, after all, and not on a common: indeed, it was rather disappointing; for a mysterious illimitable common where there were sand-pits to hide in, and one was out of everybody’s reach, had always made part of Maggie’s picture of gypsy life. She went on, however, and thought with some comfort that gypsies most likely knew nothing about idiots, so there was no danger of their falling into the mistake of setting her down at the first glance as an idiot. It was plain she had attracted attention, for the tall figure, who proved to be a young woman with a baby in her arm, walked slowly to meet her. Maggie looked up in the new face rather tremblingly as it approached, and was reassured by the thought that her aunt Pullet and the rest were right when they called her a gypsy, for this face with the bright dark eyes and the long hair was really something like what she used to see in the glass before she cut her hair off.

“My little lady, where are you going to?” the gypsy said, in a tone of coaxing deference.

It was delightful, and just what Maggie expected: the gypsies saw at once that she was a little lady, and were prepared to treat

her accordingly.

“Not any farther,” said Maggie, feeling as if she were saying what she had rehearsed in a dream. “I’m come to stay with you, please.”

“That’s pretty; come then. Why, what a nice little lady you are, to be sure,” said the gypsy, taking her by the hand. Maggie thought her very agreeable, but wished she had not been so dirty.

There was quite a group round the fire when they reached it. An old gypsy-woman was seated on the ground nursing her knees, and occasionally poking a skewer into the round kettle that sent forth an odorous steam: two small shock-headed children were lying prone and resting on their elbows something like small sphinxes: and a placid donkey was bending his head over a tall girl who, lying on her back, was scratching his nose and indulging him with a bite of excellent stolen hay. The slanting sunlight fell kindly upon them, and the scene was really very pretty and comfortable, Maggie thought, only she hoped they would soon set out the teacups. Everything would be quite charming when she had taught the gypsies to use a washing-basin and to feel an interest in books. It was a little confusing, though, that the young woman began to speak to the old one in a language which Maggie did not understand, while the tall girl who was feeding the donkey, sat up and stared at her without offering any salutation. At last, the old woman said, “What, my pretty lady, are you come to stay with us? Sit ye down, and tell us where you come from.”

It was just like a story: Maggie liked to be called pretty lady and treated in this way. She sat down and said, “I’m come from home, because I’m unhappy, and I mean to be a gypsy. I’ll live with you, if you like, and I can teach you a great many things.”

“Such a clever little lady,” said the woman with the baby, sitting down by Maggie, and allowing baby to crawl, “and such a pretty bonnet and frock,” she added, taking off Maggie’s bonnet and looking at it while she made an observation to the old woman, in the unknown language. The tall girl snatched the bonnet and put it on her own head hind-foremost with a grin; but Maggie was determined not to show any weakness on this subject, as if she were susceptible about her bonnet.

“I don’t want to wear a bonnet,” she said, “I’d rather wear a red handkerchief, like yours” (looking at her friend by her side). “My hair was quite long till yesterday, when I cut it off: but I dare say it will grow again very soon,” she added apologetically, thinking it probable the gypsies had a strong prejudice in favour of long hair. And Maggie had forgotten even her hunger at that moment in the desire to conciliate gypsy opinion.

“Oh what a nice little lady—and rich, I’m sure,” said the old woman. “Didn’t you live in a beautiful house at home?”

“Yes, my home is pretty, and I’m very fond of the river where we go fishing—but I’m often very unhappy. I should have liked to bring my books with me, but I came away in a hurry, you know. But I can tell you almost everything there is in my books, I’ve read them so many times—and that will amuse you. And I can tell you something about Geography too—that’s about the world we live in—very useful and interesting. Did you ever hear about Columbus?”

Maggie’s eyes had begun to sparkle and her cheeks to flush— she was really beginning to instruct the gypsies, and gaining great influence over them. The gypsies themselves were not without amazement at this talk, though their attention was divided by the

contents of Maggie’s pocket, which the friend at her right hand had by this time emptied, without attracting her notice.

“Is that where you live, my little lady?” said the old woman, at the mention of Columbus.

“Oh no!” said Maggie, with some pity, “Columbus was a very wonderful man, who found out half the world and they put chains on him and treated him very badly, you know—it’s in my Catechism of Geography—but Perhaps it’s rather too long to tell before tea . . . I want my tea so.”

The last words burst from Maggie, in spite of herself, with a sudden drop from patronising instruction to simple peevishness.

“Why, she’s hungry, poor little lady,” said the younger woman. “Give her some o’ the cold victual. You’ve been walking a good way, I’ll be bound, my dear. Where’s your home?”

“It’s Dorlcote Mill, a good way off,” said Maggie. “My father is Mr Tulliver, but we mustn’t let him know where I am, else he’ll fetch me home again. Where does the queen of the gypsies live?”

“What! do you want to go to her, my little lady?” said the younger woman. The tall girl, meanwhile, was constantly staring at Maggie and grinning. Her manners were certainly not agreeable.

“No,” said Maggie, “I’m only thinking that if she isn’t a very good queen you might be glad when she died, and you could choose another. If I was a queen, I’d be a very good queen, and kind to everybody.”

“Here’s a bit o’ nice victual, then,” said the old woman, handing to Maggie a lump of dry bread, which she had taken from a bag of scraps, and a piece of cold bacon.

“Thank you,” said Maggie, looking at the food, without taking it,

“but will you give me some bread and butter and tea instead? I don’t like bacon.”

“We’ve got no tea nor butter,” said the old woman with something like a scowl, as if she were getting tired of coaxing.

“Oh, a little bread and treacle would do,” said Maggie.

“We han’t got no treacle,” said the old woman crossly, whereupon there followed a sharp dialogue between the two woman in their unknown tongue, and one of the small sphinxes snatched at the bread-and-bacon and began to eat it. At this moment the tall girl who had gone a few yards off, came back and said something, which produced a strong effect. The old woman seeming to forget Maggie’s hunger, poked the skewer into the pot with new vigour, and the younger crept under the tent, and reached out some platters and spoons. Maggie trembled a little, and was afraid the tears would come into her eyes. Meanwhile the tall girl gave a shrill cry and presently came running up the boy whom Maggie had passed as he was sleeping—a rough urchin about the age of Tom. He started at Maggie, and there ensued much incomprehensible chattering. She felt very lonely, and was quite sure she should begin to cry before long: the gypsies didn’t seem to mind her at all, and she felt quite weak among them. But the springing tears were checked by a new terror, When two men came up, whose approach had been the cause of the sudden excitement. The elder of the two carried a bag, which he flung down, addressing the women in a loud and scolding tone, which they answered by a shower of treble sauciness; while a black cur ran barking up to Maggie and threw her into a tremor that only found a new cause in the curses with which the younger man called the dog off, and gave him a rap with a great stick he held in

his hand.

Maggie felt that it was impossible she should ever be queen of these people, or ever communicate to them amusing and useful knowledge.

Both the men now seemed to be inquiring about Maggie, for they looked at her, and the tone of the conversation became of that pacific kind which implies curiosity on one side and the power of satisfying it on the other. At last the younger woman said in her previous deferential coaxing tone, “This nice little lady’s come to live with us: aren’t you glad?”

“Ay, very glad,” said the Younger man, who was looking at Maggie’s silver thimble and other small matters that had been taken from her pocket. He returned them all expect the thimble to the younger woman, with some observation, and she immediately restored them to Maggie’s pocket, while the men seated themselves and began to attack the contents of the kettle—a stew of meat and potatoes—which had been taken off the fire and turned out into a yellow platter.

Maggie began to think that Tom might be right about the gypsies—they must certainly be thieves, unless the man meant to return her thimble by-and-by. She would willingly have given it him, for she was not at all attached to her thimble; but the idea that she was among thieves prevented her from feeling any comfort in the revival of deference and attention towards her—all thieves except Robin Hood were wicked people. The women saw she was frightened.

“We’ve got nothing nice for a lady to eat,” said the old woman, in her coaxing tone. “And she’s so hungry, sweet little lady.”

“Here, my dear, try if you can eat a bit o’ this,” said the younger

woman, handing some of the stew on a brown dish with an iron spoon to Maggie, who remembering that the old woman had seemed angry with her for not liking the bread and bacon, dared not refuse the stew, though fear had chased away her appetite. If her father would but come by in the gig and take her up! Or even if Jack the Giantkiller or Mr Greatheart or St George who slew the dragon on the half-pennies, would happen to pass that way! But Maggie thought with a sinking heart that these heroes were never seen in the neighbourhood of St Ogg’s—nothing very wonderful ever came there.

Maggie Tulliver you perceive was by no means that well- trained, well-informed young person that a small female of eight or nine necessarily is in these days: she had only been to school a year at St Ogg’s, and had so few books that she sometimes read the dictionary; so that in travelling over her small mind you would have found the most unexpected ignorance as well as unexpected knowledge. She could have informed you that there was such a word as “polygamy” and being also acquainted with “polysyllable,” she had deduced the conclusion that “poly” meant “many;” but she had had no idea that gypsies were not well supplied with groceries, and her thoughts generally were the oddest mixture of clear-eyed acumen and blind dreams.

Her ideas about gypsies had undergone a rapid modification in the last five minutes. From having considered them very respectful companions, amenable to instruction, she had begun to think that they meant perhaps to kill her as soon as it was dark, and cut up her body for gradual cooking: the suspicion crossed her that the fierce-eyed old man was in fact the devil who might drop that transparent disguise at any moment, and turn either into the

grinning blacksmith or else a fiery-eyed monster with dragon’s wings. It was no use trying to eat the stew, and yet the thing she most dreaded was to offend the gypsies by betraying her extremely unfavourable opinion of them, and she wondered with a keenness of interest that no theologian could have exceeded, whether if the devil were really present he would know her thoughts.

“What, you don’t like the smell of it, my dear,” said the young woman, observing that Maggie did not even take a spoonful of the stew. “Try a bit, come.”

“No, thank you,” said Maggie, summoning all her force for a desperate effort, and trying to smile in a friendly way. “I haven’t time, I think—it seems getting darker. I think I must go home now, and come again another day, and then I can bring you a basket with some jam tarts and things.”

Maggie rose from her seat as she threw out this illusory prospect, devoutly hoping that Apollyon was gullible; but her hope sank when the old gypsy-woman said, “Stop a bit stop a bit, little lady—we’ll take you home, all safe, when we’ve done supper: you shall ride home, like a lady.”

Maggie sat down again, with little faith in this promise, though she presently saw the tall girl putting a bridle on the donkey and throwing a couple of bags on his back.

“Now then, little missis,” said the Younger man, rising, and leading the donkey forward, “tell us where you live—what’s the name o’ the place?”

“Dorlcote Mill is my home,” said Maggie, eagerly. “My father is Mr Tulliver—he lives there.”

“What, a big Mill a little way this side o’ St Ogg’s?”

“Yes,” said Maggie. “Is it far off? I think I should like to walk there, if you please.”

“No, no, it’ll be getting dark, we must make haste. And the donkey’ll carry you as nice as can be—you’ll see.”

He lifted Maggie as he spoke and set her on the donkey. She felt relieved that it was not the old man who seemed to be going with her, but she had only a trembling hope that she was really going home.

“Here’s your pretty bonnet,” said the Younger woman putting that recently despised but now welcome article of costume on Maggie’s head; “and you’ll say we’ve been very good to you, won’t you, and what a nice little lady we said you was.”

“Oh, yes, thank you,” said Maggie, “I’m very much obliged to you. But I wish you’d go with me too.” She thought anything was better than going with one of the dreadful men alone: it would be more cheerful to be murdered by a larger party.

“Ah, you’re fondest o’ me, aren’t you?” said the woman. “But I can’t go—you’ll go too fast for me.”

It now appeared that the man also was to be seated on the donkey holding Maggie before him, and she was as incapable of remonstrating against this arrangement as the donkey himself, though no nightmare had ever seemed to her more horrible. When the woman had patted her on the back and said goodbye, the donkey, at a strong hint from the man’s stick, set off at a rapid walk along the lane towards the point Maggie had come from an hour ago, while the tall girl and the rough urchin, also furnished with sticks, obligingly escorted them for the first hundred yards, with much screaming and thwacking.

Not Leonore, in that preternatural midnight excursion with her

phantom lover, was more terrified than poor Maggie in this entirely natural ride on a short-paced donkey, with a gypsy behind her who considered that he was earning half-a-crown. The red light of the setting sun seemed to have a portentous meaning, with which the alarming bray of the second donkey, with the log on its foot, must surely have some connection. Two low thatched cottages—the only houses they passed in this lane—seemed to add to its dreariness: they had no windows, to speak of, and the doors were closed: it was probable that they were inhabited by witches, and it was a relief to find that the donkey did not stop there.

At last—Oh sight of joy—this lane, the longest in the world, was coming to an end, was opening on a broad high road, where there was actually a coach passing! And there was finger-post at the corner: she had surely seen that finger-post before—“To St Ogg’s, 2 miles.” The gypsy really meant to take her home, then: he was probably a good man, after all, and might have been rather hurt at the thought that she didn’t like coming with him alone. This idea became stronger as she felt more and more certain that she knew the road quite well and she was considering how she might open a conversation with the injured gypsy, and not only gratify his feelings but efface the impression of her cowardice, when, as they reached a cross road, Maggie caught sight of some one coming on a white-faced horse.

“Oh stop, stop!” she cried out. “There’s my father! Oh father, father!”

The sudden joy was almost painful, and before her father reached her, she was sobbing. Great was Mr Tulliver’s wonder, for he had made a round from Basset, and had not yet been home.

“Why, what’s the meaning o’ this?” he said, checking his horse,

while Maggie slipped from the donkey and ran to her father’s stirrup.

“The little miss lost herself, I reckon,” said the gypsy, “She’d come to our tent, at the far end o’ Dunlow Lane, and I was bringing her where she said her home was. It’s a good way to come arter being on the tramp all day.”

“Oh, yes, father, he’s been very good to bring me home,” said Maggie. “A very kind, good man!”

“Here then, my man,” said Mr Tulliver, taking out five shillings. “It’s the best day’s work you ever did. I couldn’t afford to lose the little wench Here, lift her up before me.”

“Why, Maggie, how’s this, how’s this,” he said, as they rode along, while she laid her head against her father and sobbed. “How came you to be rambling about and lose yourself?”

“Oh father,” sobbed Maggie, “I ran away, because I was so unhappy—Tom was so angry with me. I couldn’t bear it.”

“Pooh, Pooh,” said Mr Tulliver, soothingly, “you mustn’t think o’ running away from father. What ’ud father do without his little wench?”

“Oh no—I never will again, father—never.”

Mr Tulliver spoke his mind very strongly when he reached home that evening, and the effect was seen in the remarkable fact that Maggie never heard one reproach from her mother, or one taunt from Tom, about this foolish business of her running away to the gypsies. Maggie was rather awe-stricken by this unusual treatment, and sometimes thought that her conduct had been too wicked to be alluded to.

Chapter 12

Mr and Mrs Glegg at Home

n order to see Mr and Mrs Glegg at home, we must enter the town of St Ogg’s—that venerable town with the red-fluted roofs and the broad warehouse gables, where the black ships unlade themselves of their burthens from the far north, and carry away, in exchange, the precious inland products, the well-crushed cheese and the soft fleeces, which my refined readers have doubtless become acquainted with through the medium of the best

classic pastorals.

It is one of those old, old towns, which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature as much as the nests of the bower birds or the winding galleries of the white ants: a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history, like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hill-side, and the longhaired sea-kings camp up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land. It is a town “familiar with forgotten years.” The shadow of the Saxon hero-king still walks there fitfully, reviewing the scenes of his youth and love-time, and is met by the gloomier shadow of the dreadful heathen Dane who was stabbed in the midst of his warriors by the sword of an invisible avenger and who rises on autumn evenings like a white mist from his tumulus on the hill and hovers in the court of the old Hall by the river-side—the spot where he was thus miraculously

slain in the days before the old Hall was built. It was the Normans who began to build that fine old Hall, which is like the town— telling of the thoughts and hands of widely-sundered generations; but it is all so old that we look with loving pardon at its inconsistencies, and are well content that they who built the stone oriel and they who built the gothic facade and towers of finest small brick-work with trefoil ornament, and the windows and battlements defined with stone, did not sacrilegiously pull down the ancient half-timbered body with its oak-roofed banqueting- hall.

But older even than this old Hall is Perhaps the bit of wall now built into the belfry of the parish church and said to be a remnant of the original chapel dedicated to St Ogg, the patron saint of this ancient town, of whose history I possess several manuscript versions. I incline to the briefest, since if it should not be wholly true, it is at least likely to contain the least falsehood. “Ogg the son of Beorl,” says my private hagiographer, “was a boatman who gained a scanty living by ferrying passengers across the river Floss. And it came to pass one evening when the winds were high, that there sat moaning by the bring of the river a woman with a child in her arms; and she was clad in rags, and had a worn and withered look. And she craved to be rowed across the river. And the men thereabout questioned her, and said “Wherefore dost thou desire to cross the river? Tarry till the morning, and take shelter here for the night: so shalt thou be wise, and not foolish.” Still she went on to mourn and crave. But Ogg the son of Beorl came up, and said, “I will ferry thee across: it is enough that thy heart needs it.” And he ferried her across. And it came to pass when she stepped ashore, that her rags were turned into robes of

flowing white, and her face became bright with exceeding beauty and there was a glory around it so that she shed a light on the water like the moon in its brightness. And she said “Ogg, the son of Beorl, thou art blessed, in that thou didst not question and wrangle with the heart’s need but wast smitten with pity and didst straightway relieve the same. And from henceforth whose steps into thy boat shall be in no peril from the storm, and whenever it puts forth to the rescue it shall save the lives both of men and beasts.” And when the floods came, many were saved by reason of that blessing on the boat. But when Ogg the son of Beorl died, behold, in the parting of his soul, the boat loosed itself from its moorings and was floated with the ebbing tide in great swiftness to the ocean and was seen no more. Yet it was witnessed in the floods of after-time, that at the coming on of even, Ogg the son of Beorl was always seen with his boat upon the wide-spreading waters, and the Blessed Virgin sat in the prow shedding a light around as of the moon in its brightness, so that the rowers in the gathering darkness took heart and pulled anew.”

This legend, one sees, reflects from a far-off time the visitation of the floods, which even when they left human life untouched, were widely fatal to the helpless cattle, and swept as sudden death over all smaller living things. But the town knew worse troubles even than the floods: troubles of the civil wars when it was a continual fighting place where first puritans thanked God for the blood of the loyalists and then loyalists thanked God for the blood of the puritans. Many honest citizens lost all their possessions for conscience sake in those times and went forth beggared from their native town. Doubtless there are many houses standing now on which those honest citizens turned their backs in sorrow: quaint

gabled houses looking on the river, jammed between newer warehouses and penetrated by surprising passages, which turn and turn at sharp angles till they lead you out on a muddy strand overflowed continually by the rushing tide. Everywhere the brick houses have a mellow look and in Mrs Glegg’s day there was no incongruous new-fashioned smartness, no plate-glass in shop- windows, no fresh stucco facing, or other fallacious attempt to make fine old red St Ogg’s wear the air of a town that sprang up yesterday. The shop windows were small and unpretending, for the farmers’ wives and daughters who came to do their shopping on market days, were not to be withdrawn from their regular, well- known shops; and the tradesmen had no wares intended for customers who would go on their way and be seen no more. Ah, even Mrs Glegg’s day seems far back in the past now, separated from us by changes that widen the years. War and the rumour of war had then died out from the minds of men, and if they were ever thought of by farmers in drab greatcoats who shook the grain out of their sample-bags and buzzed over it in the full market- place, it was as a state of things that belonged to a past golden age when prices were high. Surely the time was gone for ever when the broad river could bring up unwelcome ships: Russia was only the place where the linseed came from—the more the better— making grist for the great vertical millstones with their scythe-like arms, roaring and grinding and carefully sweeping as if an informing soul were in them. The Catholics, bad harvests, and the mysterious fluctuations of trade were the three evils mankind had to fear: even the floods had not been great of late years. The mind of St Ogg’s did not look extensively before or after. It inherited a long past without thinking of it, and had no eyes for the spirits that

walked the streets. Since the centuries when St Ogg with his boat and the Virgin Mother at the prow had been seen on the wide water, so many memories had been left behind and had gradually vanished like the receding hill-tops! And the present time was like the level plain where men lose their belief in volcanoes and earthquakes, thinking tomorrow will be as yesterday and the giant forces that used to shake the earth are for ever laid to sleep. The days were gone when people could be greatly wrought upon by their faith, still less change it: the Catholics were formidable because they would lay hold of government and property, and burn men alive; not because any sane and honest parishioner of St Ogg’s could be brought to believe in the Pope. One aged person remembered how a rude multitude had been swayed when John Wesley preached in the cattle-market, but for a long while it had not been expected of preachers that they should shake the souls of men. An occasional burst of fervour in dissenting pulpits on the subject of infant baptism was the only symptom of a zeal unsuited to sober times when men had done with change. Protestantism sat at ease, unmindful of schisms, careless of proselytism: dissent was an inheritance along with a superior pew and a business connection, and Churchmanship only wondered contemptuously at Dissent as a foolish habit that clung greatly to families in the grocery and chandlering lines, though not incompatible with prosperous wholesale dealing. But with the Catholic Question had come a slight wind of controversy to break the calm: the elderly rector had become occasionally historical and argumentative, and Mr Spray the Independent minister had begun to preach political sermons in which he distinguished with much subtlety between his fervent belief in the right of the Catholics to the franchise and

his fervent belief in their eternal perdition. But most of Mr Spray’s hearers were incapable of following his subtleties, and many old- fashioned dissenters were much pained by his “siding with the Catholics”; while others thought he had better let politics alone. Public spirit was not held in high esteem at St Ogg’s, and men who busied themselves with political questions were regarded with some suspicion as dangerous characters: they were usually persons who had little or no business of their own to manage, or, if they had, were likely enough to become insolvent.

This was the general aspect of things at St Ogg’s in Mrs Glegg’s day and at that particular period in her family history when she had had her quarrel with Mr Tulliver. It was a time when ignorance was much more comfortable than at present, and was received with all the honours in very good society, without being obliged to dress itself in an elaborate costume of knowledge: a time when cheap periodicals were not, and when country surgeons never thought of asking their female patients if they were fond of reading, but simply took it for granted that they preferred gossip: a time when ladies in rich silk gowns wore large pockets in which they carried a mutton bone to secure them against cramp. Mrs Glegg carried such a bone, which she had inherited from her grandmother with a brocaded gown that would stand up empty, like a suit of armour, and a silver-headed walking- stick; for the Dodson family had been respectable for many generations.

Mrs Glegg had both a front and a back parlour in her excellent house at St Ogg’s, so that she had two points of view from which she could observe the weaknesses of her fellow-beings and reinforce her thankfulness for her own exceptional strength of

mind. From her front windows she could look down the Tofton Road leading out of St Ogg’s and note the growing tendency to “gadding about” in the wives of men not retired from business, together with a practice of wearing woven cotton stockings, which opened a dreary prospect for the coming generation; and from her back windows she could look down the pleasant garden and orchard which stretched to the river, and observe the folly of Mr Glegg in spending his time among “them flowers and vegetables.” For Mr Glegg having retired from active business as a wool-stapler for the purpose of enjoying himself through the rest of his life, had found this last occupation so much more severe than his business, that he had been driven into amateur hard labour as a dissipation, and habitually relaxed by doing the work of two ordinary gardeners. The economising of a gardener’s wages might perhaps have induced Mrs Glegg to wink at this folly, if it were possible for a healthy female mind even to simulate respect for a husband’s hobby. But it is well known that this conjugal complacency belongs only to the weaker portion of the sex, who are scarcely alive to the responsibilities of a wife as a constituted check on her husband’s pleasures—which are hardly ever of a rational or commendable kind.

Mr Glegg on his side, too, had a double source of mental occupation, which gave every promise of being inexhaustible. On the one hand, he surprised himself by his discoveries in natural history, finding that his piece of garden ground contained wonderful caterpillars, slugs and insects, which, so far as he had heard, had never before attracted human observation, and he noticed remarkable coincidences between these zoological phenomena and the great events of that time, as, for example, that

before the burning of York Minster there had been mysterious serpentine marks on the leaves of the rose-trees together with an unusual prevalence of slugs which he had been puzzled to know the meaning of, until it flashed upon him with this melancholy conflagration. (Mr Glegg had an unusual amount of mental activity which when disengaged from the wool business naturally made itself a pathway in other directions.) And his second subject of meditation was the “contrairiness” of the female mind, as typically exhibited in Mrs Glegg. That a creature made—in a genealogical sense—out of a man’s rib, and in this particular case maintained in the highest respectability without any trouble of her own, should be normally in a state of contradiction to the blandest propositions and even to the most accommodating concessions, was a mystery in the scheme of things to which he had often in vain sought a clue in the early chapters of Genesis. Mr Glegg had chosen the eldest Miss Dodson as a handsome embodiment of female prudence and thrift, and being himself of a money-getting, money-keeping turn, had calculated on much conjugal harmony. But in that curious compound the feminine character, it may easily happen that the flavour is unpleasant in spite of excellent ingredients; and a fine systematic stinginess may be accompanied with a seasoning that quite spoils its relish. Now good Mr Glegg himself was stingy in the most amiable manner: his neighbours called him “near,” which always means that the person in question is a lovable skinflint. If you expressed a preference for cheese-parings, Mr Glegg would remember to save them for you with a good-natured delight in gratifying your palate, and he was given to pet all animals which required no appreciable keep. There was no humbug or hypocrisy about Mr Glegg: his eyes would have

watered with true feeling over the sale of a widow’s furniture, which a five-pound note from his side-pocket would have prevented: but a donation of five pounds to a person “in a small way of life” would have seemed to him a mad kind of lavishness rather than “charity” which had always presented itself to him as a contribution of small aids, not a neutralising of misfortune. And Mr Glegg was just as fond of saving other people’s money as his own: he would have ridden as far round to avoid a turnpike when his expenses were to be paid for him, as when they were to come out of his own pocket, and was quite zealous in trying to induce indifferent acquaintances to adopt a cheap substitute for blacking. This inalienable habit of saving, as an end in itself, belonged to the industrious men of business of a former generation, who made their fortunes slowly, almost as the tracking of the fox belongs to the harrier—it constituted them a “race,” which is nearly lost in these days of rapid money-getting, when lavishness comes close on the back of want. In old-fashioned times, an “independence” was hardly ever made without a little miserliness as a condition, and you would have found that quality in every provincial district combined with characters as various as the fruits from which we can extract acid. The true Harpagons were always marked and exceptional characters: not so the worthy taxpayers who having once pinched from real necessity retained even in the midst of their comfortable retirement, with their wall-fruit and wine-bins, the habit of regarding life as an ingenious process of nibbling out one’s livelihood without leaving any perceptible deficit, and who would have been as immediately prompted to give up a newly- taxed luxury when they had their clear five hundred a year as when they had only five hundred pounds of capital. Mr Glegg was

one of these men, found so impracticable by chancellors of the exchequer; and knowing this, you will be the better able to understand why he had not swerved from the conviction that he had made an eligible marriage, in spite of the too pungent seasoning that nature had given to the eldest Miss Dodson’s virtues. A man with an affectionate disposition, who finds a wife to concur with his fundamental idea of life, easily comes to persuade himself that no other woman would have suited him so well, and does a little daily snapping and quarrelling without any sense of alienation. Mr Glegg, being of a reflective turn, and no longer occupied with wool, had much wondering meditation on the peculiar constitution of the female mind as unfolded to him in his domestic life: and yet he thought Mrs Glegg’s household ways a model for her sex: it struck him as a pitiable irregularity in other women if they did not roll up their table-napkins with the same tightness and emphasis as Mrs Glegg did, if their pastry had a less leathery consistence, and their damson cheese a less venerable hardness than hers: nay, even the peculiar combination of grocery and drug-like odours in Mrs Glegg’s private cupboard impressed him as the only right thing in the way of cupboard-smells. I am not sure that he would not have longed for the quarrelling again, if it had ceased for an entire week; and it is certain that an acquiescent mild wife would have left his meditations comparatively jejune and barren of mystery.

Mr Glegg’s unmistakable kind-heartedness was shown in this, that it pained him more to see his wife at variance with others— even with Dolly, the servant—than to be in a state of cavil with her himself, and the quarrel between her and Mr Tulliver vexed him so much that it quite nullified the pleasure he would otherwise

have had in the state of his early cabbages as he walked in his garden before breakfast the next morning. Still he went in to breakfast with some slight hope that now Mrs Glegg had “slept upon it,” her anger might be subdued enough to give way to her usually strong sense of family decorum. She had been used to boast that there had never been any of those deadly quarrels among the Dodsons which had disgraced other families: that no Dodson had ever been “cut off with a shilling” and no cousin of the Dodsons disowned; as, indeed, why should they be? for they had no cousins who had not money out at use, or some houses of their own, at the very least.

There was one evening-cloud which had always disappeared from Mrs Glegg’s brow when she sat at the breakfast-table: it was her fuzzy front of curls; for as she occupied herself in household matters in the morning, it would have been a mere extravagance to put on anything so superfluous to the making of leathery pastry as a fuzzy curled front. By half-past ten decorum demanded the front: until then Mrs Glegg could economise it and society would never be any the wiser. But the absence of that cloud only left it more apparent that the cloud of severity remained; and Mr Glegg, perceiving this as he sat down to his milk-porridge, which it was his old frugal habit to stem his morning hunger with, prudently resolved to leave the first remark to Mrs Glegg, lest, to so delicate an article as a lady’s temper, the slightest touch should do mischief. People who seem to enjoy their ill-temper have a way of keeping it in fine condition by inflicting privations on themselves. That was Mrs Glegg’s way: she made her tea weaker than usual this morning and declined butter. It was a hard case that a vigorous mood for quarrelling, so highly capable of using any

opportunity should not meet with a single remark from Mr Glegg on which to exercise itself. But by-and-by it appeared that his silence would answer the purpose, for he heard himself apostrophised at last in that tone peculiar to the wife of one’s bosom.

“Well, Mr Glegg! it’s a poor return I get for making you the wife I’ve made you all these years. If this is the way I’m to be treated, I’d better ha’ known it before my poor father died, and then, when I’d wanted a home, I should ha’ gone elsewhere—as the choice was offered me.”

Mr Glegg paused from his porridge and looked up—not with any new amazement but simply with that quiet, habitual wonder with which we regard constant mysteries.

“Why, Mrs G., what have I done now?”

“Done now, Mr Glegg? done now? . . . I’m sorry for you.”

Not seeing his way in any pertinent answer, Mr Glegg reverted to his porridge.

“There’s husbands in the world,” continued Mrs Glegg after a pause, “as ’ud have known how to do something different to siding with everybody else against their own wives. Perhaps I’m wrong, and you can teach me better—but I’ve allays heard as it’s the husband’s place to stand by the wife, instead o’ rejoicing and triumphing when folks insult her.”

“Now, what call have you to say that?” said Mr Glegg, rather warmly, for though a kind man, he was not as meek as Moses. “When did I rejoice or triumph over you?”

“There’s ways o’ doing things worse than speaking out plain, Mr Glegg. I’d sooner you’d tell me to my face as you make light of me, than try to make out as everybody’s in the right but me, and

come to your breakfast in the morning, as I’ve hardly slept an hour this night, and sulk at me as if I was the dirt under your feet.”

“Sulk at you?” said Mr Glegg, in a tone of angry facetiousness. “You’re like a tipsy man as thinks everybody’s had too much but himself.”

“Don’t lower yourself with using coarse language to me, Mr Glegg! It makes you look very small, though you can’t see yourself,” said Mrs Glegg in a tone of energetic compassion. “A man in your place should set an example, and talk more sensible.” “Yes; but will you listen to sense?” retorted Mr Glegg, sharply. “The best sense I can talk to you is what I said last night—as you’re i’ the wrong to think o’ calling in your money, when it’s safe enough if you’d let it alone, all because of a bit of a tiff, and I was in hopes you’d ha’ altered your mind this morning. But if you’d like to call it in, don’t do it in a hurry now, and breed more enmity in the family—but wait till there’s a pretty mortgage to be had without any trouble. You’d have to set the lawyer to work now to

find an investment, and make no end o’ expense.”

Mrs Glegg felt there was really something in this, but she tossed her head and emitted a guttural interjection to indicate that her silence was only an armistice, not a peace. And, in fact, hostilities soon broke out again.

“I’ll thank you for my cup o’ tea now, Mrs G.,” said Mr Glegg, seeing that she did not proceed to give it him as usual, when he had finished his porridge. She lifted the teapot with a slight toss of the head, and said,

“I’m glad to hear you’ll thank me, Mr Glegg. It’s little thanks I get for what I do for folks i’ this world. Though there’s never a woman o’ your side i’ the family, Mr Glegg, as is fit to stand up

with me, and I’d say it if I was on my dying bed. Not but what I’ve allays conducted myself civil to your kin, and there isn’t one of ’em can say the contrary, though my equils they aren’t, and nobody shall make me say it.”

“You’d better leave finding fault wi’ my kin till you’ve left off quarrelling with your own, Mrs G.,” said Mr Glegg, with angry sarcasm. “I’ll trouble you for the milk-jug.”

“That’s as false a word as ever you spoke, Mr Glegg,” said the lady, pouring out the milk with unusual profuseness, as much as to say, if he wanted milk, he should have it with a vengeance. “And you know it’s false. I’m not the woman to quarrel with my own kin: you may, for I’ve known you do it.”

“Why, what did you call it yesterday, then, leaving your sister’s house in a tantrum?”

“I’d no quarrel wi’ my sister, Mr Glegg, and it’s false to say it. Mr Tulliver’s none o’ my blood, and it was him quarrelled with me, and drove me out o’ the house. But perhaps you’d have had me stay and be swore at, Mr Glegg; perhaps you was vexed not to hear more abuse and foul language poured out upo’ your own wife. But let me tell you, it’s your disgrace.”

“Did ever anybody hear the like i’ this parish?” said Mr Glegg, getting hot. “A woman with everything provided for her, and allowed to keep her own money the same as if it was settled on her, and with a gig new-stuffed and lined at no end o’ expense, and provided for when I die beyond anything she could expect . . . to go on i’ this way, biting and snapping like a mad dog! It’s beyond everything as God A’mighty should ha’ made women so.” (These last words were uttered in a tone of sorrowful agitation: Mr Glegg pushed his tea from him, and tapped the table with both his

hands.) “Well, Mr Glegg! if those are your feelings, it’s best they should be known,” said Mrs Glegg, taking off her napkin, and folding it in an excited manner. “But if you talk o’ my being provided for beyond what I could expect, I beg leave to tell you as I’d a right to except a many things as I don’t find. And as to my being like a mad dog, it’s well if you’re not cried shame on by the county for your treatment of me, for it’s what I can’t bear, and I won’t bear” . . .

Here Mrs Glegg’s voice intimated that she was going to cry, and breaking off from speech, she rang the bell violently.

“Sally,” she said, rising from her chair, and speaking in rather a choked voice, “light a fire upstairs, and put the blinds down. Mr Glegg, you’ll please to order what you’d like for dinner. I shall have gruel.”

Mrs Glegg walked across the room to the small bookcase, and took down Baxter’s “Saints’ Everlasting Rest’ which she carried with her upstairs. It was the book she was accustomed to lay open before her on special occasions: on wet Sunday mornings—or when she heard of a death in the family—or when, as in this case, her quarrel with Mr Glegg had been set an octave higher than usual.

But Mrs Glegg carried something else upstairs with her, which together with the “Saints’ Rest” and the gruel, may have had some influence in gradually calming her feelings and making it possible for her to endure existence on the ground-floor shortly before tea- time. This was partly Mr Glegg’s suggestion that she would do well to let her five hundred lie still until a good investment turned up, and, further, his parenthetic hint at his handsome provision for her in case of his death. Mr Glegg, like all men of his stamp, was

extremely reticent about his will, and Mrs Glegg in her gloomier moments, had forebodings that, like other husbands of whom she had heard, he might cherish the mean project of heightening her grief at his death by leaving her poorly off, in which case she was firmly resolved that she would have scarcely any weeper on her bonnet and would cry no more than if he had been a second husband. But if he had really shown her any testamentary tenderness, it would be affecting to think of him, poor man, when he was gone, and even his foolish fuss about the flowers and garden-stuff, and his insistence on the subject of snails, would be touching when it was once fairly at an end. To survive Mr Glegg and talk eulogistically of him, as a man who might have his weaknesses, but who had done the right thing by her notwithstanding his numerous poor relations—to have sums of interest coming in more frequently and secrete it in various corners baffling to the most ingenious of thieves (for, to Mrs Glegg’s mind, banks and strong boxes would have nullified the pleasure of property—she might as well have taken her food in capsules)—finally, to be looked up to by her own family and the neighbourhood, so as no woman can ever hope to be who has not the praeterite and present dignity comprised in being a “widow well left,”—all this made a flattering and conciliatory view of the future. So that when good Mr Glegg, restored to good-humour by much hoeing, and moved by the sight of his wife’s empty chair with her knitting rolled up in the corner, went upstairs to her and observed that the bell had been tolling for poor Mr Morton, Mrs Glegg answered magnanimously, quite as if she had been an uninjured woman, “Ah! then there’ll be a good business for somebody to take to.”

Baxter had been open at least eight hours by this time, for it was nearly five o’clock; and if people are to quarrel often, it follows as a corollary that their quarrels cannot be protracted beyond certain limits.

Mr and Mrs Glegg talked quite amicably about the Tullivers that evening. Mt Glegg went the length of admitting that Tulliver was a sad man for getting into hot water, and was like enough to run through his property; and Mrs Glegg, meeting this acknowledgment half-way, declared that it was beneath her to take notice of such a man’s conduct, and that, for her sister’s sake, she would let him keep the five hundred a while longer, for when she put it out on a mortgage she should only get four per cent.

Chapter 13

Mr Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life

wing to this new adjustment of Mrs Glegg’s thoughts, Mrs Pullet found her task of mediation the next day surprisingly easy. Mrs Glegg, indeed, checked her rather

sharply for thinking it would be necessary to tell her elder sister what was the right mode of behaviour in family matters. Mrs Pullet’s argument that it would look ill in the neighbourhood if people should have it in their power to say that there was a quarrel in the family, was particularly offensive. If the family name never suffered except through Mrs Glegg, Mrs Pullet might lay her head on her pillow in perfect confidence. “It’s not to be expected, I suppose,” observed Mrs Glegg, by way of winding up the subject, “as I shall go to the Mill again before Bessy comes to see me, or as I shall go and fall down o’ my knees to Mr Tulliver and ask his pardon for showing him favours; but I shall bear no malice, and when Mr Tulliver speaks civil to me, I’ll speak civil to him. Nobody has any call to tell me what’s becoming.”

Finding it unnecessary to plead for the Tullivers, it was natural that aunt Pullet should relax a little in her anxiety for them, and recur to the annoyance she had suffered yesterday from the offspring of that apparently ill-fated house. Mrs Glegg heard a circumstantial narrative, to which Mr Pullet’s remarkable memory furnished some items; and while aunt Pullet pitied poor Bessy’s bad luck with her children, and expressed a half-formed project of paying for Maggie’s being sent to a distant boarding school, which

would not prevent her being so brown, but might tend to subdue some other vices in her, aunt Glegg blamed Bessy for her weakness, and appealed to all witnesses who should be living when the Tulliver children had turned out ill, that she, Mrs Glegg, had always said how it would be from the very first, observing that it was wonderful to herself how all her words came true.

“Then I may call and tell Bessy you’ll bear no malice, and everything be as it was before?” Mrs Pullet said, just before parting.

“Yes, you may, Sophy,” said Mrs Glegg, “you may tell Mr Tulliver and Bessy too, as I’m not going to behave ill, because folks behave ill to me: I know it’s my place, as the eldest, to set an example in every respect, and I do it. Nobody can say different of me, if they’ll keep to the truth.”

Mrs Glegg being in this state of satisfaction in her own lofty magnanimity, I leave you to judge what effect was produced on her by the reception of a short letter from Mr Tulliver that very evening after Mrs Pullet’s departure,—informing her that she needn’t trouble her mind about her five hundred pounds, for it should be paid back to her in the course of the next month at farthest, together with the interest due thereon until the time of payment. And furthermore, that Mr Tulliver had no wish to behave uncivilly to Mrs Glegg, and she was welcome to his house whenever she liked to come, but he desired no favours from her, either for himself or his children.

It was poor Mrs Tulliver who had hastened this catastrophe, entirely through that irrepressible hopefulness of hers which led her to expect that similar causes may at any time produce different results. It had very often occurred in her experience that

Mr Tulliver had done something because other people had said he was not able to do it, or had pitied him for his supposed inability, or in any other way piqued his pride: still, she thought today if she told him when he came in to tea that sister Pullet was gone to try and make everything up with sister Glegg. So that he needn’t think about paying in the money, it would give a cheerful effect to the meal. Mr Tulliver had never slackened in his resolve to raise the money, but now he at once determined to write a letter to Mrs Glegg which should cut off all possibility of mistake. Mrs Pullet gone to beg and pray for him indeed! Mr Tulliver did not willingly write a letter, and found the relation between spoken and written language, briefly known as spelling, one of the most puzzling things in this puzzling world. Nevertheless, like all fervid writing, the task was done in less time than usual, and if the spelling differed from Mrs Glegg’s—why, she belonged, like himself, to a generation with whom spelling was a matter of private judgment.

Mrs Glegg did not alter her will in consequence of this letter, and cut off the Tulliver children from their sixth and seventh share in her thousand pounds for she had her principles. No one must be able to say of her when she was dead that she had not divided her money with perfect fairness among her own kin: in the matter of Wills personal qualities were subordinate to the great fundamental fact of blood; and to be determined in the distribution of your property by caprice and not make your legacies bear a direct ratio to degrees of kinship, was a prospective disgrace that would have embittered her life. This had always been a principle in the Dodson family; it was one form of that sense of honour and rectitude which was a proud tradition in such families—a tradition which has been the salt of our provincial

society.

But though the letter could not shake Mrs Glegg’s principles, it made the family breach much more difficult to mend and as to the effect it produced on Mrs Glegg’s opinion of Mr Tulliver—she begged to be understood from that time forth that she had nothing whatever to say about him: his state of mind, apparently, was too corrupt for her to contemplate it for a moment. It was not until the evening before Tom went to school, at the beginning of August, that Mrs Glegg paid a visit to her sister Tulliver, sitting in her gig all the while, and showing her displeasure by markedly abstaining from all advice and criticism, for, as she observed to her sister Deane, “Bessy must bear the consequences o’ having such a husband, though I’m sorry for her,” and Mrs Deane agreed that Bessy was pitiable.

That evening Tom observed to Maggie, “Oh my! Maggie, aunt Glegg’s beginning to come again; I’m glad I’m going to school. You’ll catch it all now!”

Maggie was already so full of sorrow at the thought of Tom’s going away from her, that this playful exultation of his seemed very unkind, and she cried herself to sleep that night.

Mr Tulliver’s prompt procedure entailed on him further promptitude in finding the convenient person who was desirous of lending five hundred pounds on bond. “It must be no client of Wakem’s,” he said to himself; and yet at the end of a fortnight it turned out to the contrary; not because Mr Tulliver’s will was feeble, but because external fact was stronger. Wakem’s client was the only convenient person to be found. Mr Tulliver had a destiny as well as Oedipus, and in this case he might plead, like Oedipus, that his deed was inflicted on him rather than committed by him.

BOOK SECOND

School-Time

Chapter 1

Tom’s “First Half.”

T

om Tulliver’s sufferings during the first quarter he was at King’s Lorton, under the distinguished care of the Rev.

Walter Stelling, were rather severe. At Mr Jacobs’s academy, life had not presented itself to him as a difficult problem: there were plenty of fellows to play with, and Tom being good at all active games—fighting especially—had that precedence among them which appeared to him inseparable from the personality of Tom Tulliver. Mr Jacobs himself, familiarly known as Old Goggles, from his habit of wearing spectacles, imposed no painful awe; and if it was the property of snuffy old hypocrites like him to write like copperplate and surround their signatures with arabesques, to spell without forethought, and to spout “my name is Norval” without bungling, Tom, for his part, was rather glad he was not in danger of those mean accomplishments. He was not going to be a snuffy schoolmaster—he; but a substantial man, like his father, who used to go hunting when he was younger, and rode a capital black mare—as pretty a bit of horse-flesh as ever you saw: Tom had heard what her points were a hundred times. He meant to go hunting too and to be generally respected. When people were grown up, he considered, nobody inquired about their writing and spelling: when he was a man, he should be master of everything and do just as he liked. It had been very difficult for him to reconcile himself to the idea that his school-time was to be prolonged, and that he was not to be brought up to his father’s

business, which he had always thought extremely pleasant, for it was nothing but riding about, giving orders, and going to market; and he thought that a clergyman would give him a great many Scripture lessons, and probably make him learn the Gospel and Epistle on a Sunday as well as the Collect. But in the absence of specific information, it was impossible for him to imagine that school and a schoolmaster would be something entirely different from the academy of Mr Jacobs. So, not to be at a deficiency in case of his finding genial companions, he had taken care to carry with him a small box of percussion-caps; not that there was anything particular to be done with them, but they would serve to impress strange boys with a sense of his familiarity with guns. Thus poor Tom, though he saw very clearly through Maggie’s illusions, was not without illusions of his own, which were to be cruelly dissipated by his enlarged experience at King’s Lorton.

He had not been there a fortnight before it was evident to him that life, complicated not only with the Latin grammar but with a new standard of English pronunciation, was a very difficult business, made all the more obscure by a thick mist of bashfulness. Tom, as you have observed, was never an exception among boys for ease of address, but the difficulty of enunciating a monosyllable in reply to Mr and Mrs Stelling was so great that he even dreaded to be asked at table whether he would have more pudding. As to the percussion-caps, he had almost resolved in the bitterness of his heart that he would throw them into a neighbouring pond, for not only was he the solitary pupil, but he began even to have a certain scepticism about guns and a general sense that his theory of life was undermined. For Mr Stelling thought nothing of guns, or horses either, apparently; and yet it

was impossible for Tom to despise Mr Stelling as he had despised Old Goggles. If there were anything that was not thoroughly genuine about Mr Stelling, it lay quite beyond Tom’s power to detect it; it is only by a wide comparison of facts that the wisest, full-grown man can distinguish well-rolled barrels from more supernal thunder.

Mr Stelling was a well-sized, broad-chested man, not yet thirty, with flaxen hair standing erect, and large lightish grey eyes, which were always very wide open; he had a sonorous bass voice and an air of defiant self-confidence inclining to brazenness. He had entered on his career with great vigour and intended to make a considerable impression on his fellow men. The Rev. Walter Stelling was not a man who would remain among the “inferior clergy” all his life. He had a true British determination to push his way in the world. As a schoolmaster in the first place, for there were capital masterships of grammar-schools to be had, and Mr Stelling meant to have one of them. But as a preacher also, for he meant always to preach in a striking manner, so as to have his congregation swelled by admirers from neighbouring parishes, and to produce a great sensation whenever he took occasional duty for a brother clergyman of minor gifts. The style of preaching he had chosen was the extemporaneous, which was held little short of the miraculous in rural parishes like King’s Lorton. Some passages of Massillon and Bourdaloue, which he knew by heart, were really very effective when rolled out in Mr Stelling’s deepest tones, but as comparatively feeble appeals of his own were delivered in the same loud and impressive manner, they were often thought quite as striking by his hearers. Mr Stelling’s doctrine was of no particular school; if anything, it had a tinge of

evangelicalism, for that was “the telling thing” just then in the diocese to which King’s Lorton belonged. In short, Mr Stelling was a man who meant to rise in his profession, and to rise by merit, clearly, since he had no interest beyond what might be promised by a problematic relationship to a great lawyer who had not yet become Lord Chancellor. A clergyman who has such vigorous intentions naturally gets a little into debt at starting; it is not to be expected that he will live in the meagre style of a man who means to be a poor curate all his life, and if the few hundreds Mr Timpson advanced towards his daughter’s fortune did not suffice for the purchase of handsome furniture, together with a stock of wine, a grand piano, and the laying-out of a superior flower- garden, it followed in the most rigorous manner either that these things must be procured by some other means or else that the Rev. Mr Stelling must go without them—which last alternative would be an absurd procrastination of the fruits of success, where success was certain. Mr Stelling was so broad-chested and resolute that he felt equal to anything; he would become celebrated by shaking the consciences of his hearers, and he would by-and-by edit a Greek play and invent several new readings. He had not yet selected the play, for, having been married little more than two years, his leisure time had been much occupied with attentions to Mrs Stelling; but he had told that fine woman what he meant to do some day, and she felt great confidence in her husband as a man who understood everything of that sort. But the immediate step to future success was to bring on Tom Tulliver during this first half-year, for by a singular coincidence there had been some negotiation concerning another pupil from the same neighbourhood, and it might further a

decision in Mr Stelling’s favour if it were understood that young Tulliver, who, Mr Stelling observed in conjugal privacy, was rather a rough cub, had made prodigious progress in a short time. It was on this ground that he was severe with Tom about his lessons; he was clearly a boy whose powers would never be developed through the medium of the Latin grammar with out application of some sternness. Not that Mr Stelling was a harsh-tempered or unkind man—quite the contrary: he was jocose with Tom at table and corrected his provincialisms and his deportment in the most playful manner; but poor Tom was only the more cowed and confused by this double novelty, for he had never been used to jokes at all like Mr Stelling’s, and for the first time in his life he had a painful sense that he was all wrong somehow. When Mr Stelling said, as the roast beef was being uncovered, “Now, Tulliver, which would you rather decline, roast beef or the Latin for it?”—Tom, to whom in his coolest moments a pun would have been a hard nut, was thrown into a state of embarrassed alarm that made everything dim to him except the feeling that he would rather not have anything to do with Latin. Of course he answered, “Roast beef,” whereupon there followed much laughter and some practical joking with the plates, from which Tom gathered that he had in some mysterious way refused beef and in fact made himself appear “a silly”. If he could have seen a fellow pupil undergo these painful operations and survive them in good spirits, he might sooner have taken them as a matter of course. But there are two expensive forms of education, either of which a parent may procure for his son by sending him as solitary pupil to a clergyman: one is the enjoyment of the reverend gentleman’s undivided neglect; the other is the endurance of the reverend

gentleman’s undivided attention. It was the latter privilege for which Mr Tulliver paid a high price in Tom’s initiatory months at King’s Lorton.

That respectable miller and maltster had left Tom behind, and driven homeward in a state of great mental satisfaction. He considered that it was a happy moment for him when he had thought of asking Riley’s advice about a tutor for Tom. Mr Stelling’s eyes were so wide open, and he talked in such an off- hand, matter-of-fact way—answering every difficult slow remark of Mr Tulliver’s with, “I see, my good sir, I see;” “To be sure, to be sure;” “You want your son to be a man who will make his way in the world”—that Mr Tulliver was delighted to find in him a clergyman whose knowledge was so applicable to the everyday affairs of this life. Except Counsellor Wylde, whom he had heard at the last sessions, Mr Tulliver thought the Rev. Mr Stelling was the shrewdest fellow he had ever met with; not unlike Wylde, in fact, he had the same way of sticking his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. Mr Tulliver was not by any means an exception in mistaking brazenness for shrewdness; most laymen thought Stelling shrewd and a man of remarkable powers generally; it was chiefly by his clerical brethren that he was considered rather a dull fellow. But he told Mr Tulliver several stories about “Swing” and incendiarism, and asked his advice about feeding pigs in so thoroughly secular and judicious a manner, with so much polished glibness of tongue, that the miller thought here was the very thing he wanted for Tom. He had no doubt this first-rate man was acquainted with every branch of information and knew exactly what Tom must learn in order to become a match for the lawyers, which poor Mr Tulliver himself did not know, and so was

necessarily thrown for self-direction on this wide kind of inference. It is hardly fair to laugh at him, for I have known much more highly-instructed persons than he make inferences quite as wide, and not at all wiser.

As for Mrs Tulliver—finding that Mrs Stelling’s views as to the airing of linen and the frequent recurrence of hunger in a growing boy entirely coincided with her own; moreover, that Mrs Stelling, though so young a woman and only anticipating her second confinement, had gone through very nearly the same experience as herself with regard to the behaviour and fundamental character of the monthly nurse—she expressed great contentment to her husband, when they drove away, at leaving Tom with a woman who, in spite of her youth, seemed quite sensible and motherly, and asked advice as prettily as could be.

“They must be very well off, though,” said Mrs Tulliver, “for everything’s as nice as can be all over the house, and that watered silk she had on cost a pretty penny. Sister Pullet has got one like it.”

“Ah,” said Mr Tulliver, “he’s got some income besides the curacy, I reckon. Perhaps her father allows ’em something. There’s Tom ’ull be another hundred to him, and not much trouble either, by his own account; he says teaching comes natural to him. That’s wonderful, now,” added Mr Tulliver, turning his head on one side and giving his horse a meditative tickling on the flank.

Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally to Mr Stelling that he set about it with that uniformity of method and independence of circumstances which distinguish the actions of animals understood to be under the immediate teaching of nature.

Mr Broderip’s amiable beaver, as that charming naturalist tells us, busied himself as earnestly constructing a dam in a room up three pair of stairs in London, as if he had been laying his foundation in a stream or lake in Upper Canada. It was “Binny’s” function to build; the absence of water or of possible progeny was an accident for which he was not accountable. With the same unerring instinct Mr Stelling set to work at his natural method of instilling the Eton Grammar and Euclid into the mind of Tom Tulliver. This, he considered, was the only basis of solid instruction; all other means of education were mere charlatanism and could produce nothing better than smatterers. Fixed on this firm basis, a man might observe the display of various or special knowledge made by irregularly educated people with a pitying smile; all that sort of thing was very well, but it was impossible these people could form sound opinions. In holding this conviction Mr Stelling was not biased, as some tutors have been, by the excessive accuracy or extent of his own scholarship; and as to his views about Euclid, no opinion could have been freer from personal partiality. Mr Stelling was very far from being led astray by enthusiasm, either religious or intellectual; on the other hand, he had no secret belief that everything was humbug. He thought religion was a very excellent thing, and Aristotle a great authority, and deaneries and prebends useful institutions, and Great Britain the providential bulwark of Protestantism, and faith in the unseen a great support to afflicted minds; he believed in all these things as a Swiss hotel-keeper believes in the beauty of the scenery around him, and in the pleasure it gives to artistic visitors. And in the same way Mr Stelling believed in his method of education, he had no doubt that he was doing the very best thing for Mr Tulliver’s boy. Of course,

when the miller talked of “mapping” and “summing” in a vague and diffident manner, Mr Stelling had set his mind at rest by an assurance that he understood what was wanted, for how was it possible the good man could form any reasonable judgement about the matter? Mr Stelling’s duty was to teach the lad in the only right way—indeed, he knew no other; he had not wasted his time in the acquirement of anything abnormal.

He very soon set down poor Tom as a thoroughly stupid lad, for though by hard labour he could get particular declensions into his brain, anything so abstract as the relation between cases and terminations could by no means get such a lodgement there as to enable him to recognise a chance genitive or dative. This struck Mr Stelling as something more than natural stupidity; he suspected obstinacy, or at any rate, indifference and lectured Tom severely on his want of thorough application. “You feel no interest in what you’re doing, sir,” Mr Stelling would say, and the reproach was painfully true. Tom had never found any difficulty in discerning a pointer from a setter, when once he had been told the distinction, and his perceptive powers were not at all deficient. I fancy they were quite as strong as those of the Rev. Mr Stelling, for Tom could predict with accuracy what number of horses were cantering behind him, he could throw a stone right into the centre of a given ripple, he could guess to a fraction how many lengths of his stick it would take to reach across the playground, and could draw almost perfect squares on his slate without any measurement. But Mr Stelling took no note of these things; he only observed that Tom’s faculties failed him before the abstractions hideously symbolised to him in the pages of the Eton Grammar and that he was in a state bordering on idiocy with

regard to the demonstration that two given triangles must be equal—though he could discern with great promptitude and certainty the fact that they were equal. Whence Mr Stelling concluded that Tom’s brain, being peculiarly impervious to etymology and demonstrations, was peculiarly in need of being ploughed and harrowed by these patent implements: it was his favourite metaphor, that the classics and geometry constituted that culture of the mind which prepared it for the reception of any subsequent crop. I say nothing against Mr Stelling’s theory; if we are to have one regimen for all minds, his seems to me as good as any other. I only know it turned out as uncomfortably for Tom Tulliver as if he had been plied with cheese in order to remedy a gastric weakness which prevented him from digesting it. It is astonishing what a different result one gets by changing the metaphor! Once call the brain an intellectual stomach, and one’s ingenious conception of the classics and geometry as ploughs and harrows seems to settle nothing. But then it is open to someone else to follow great authorities, and call the mind a sheet of white paper or a mirror, in which case one’s knowledge of the digestive process becomes quite irrelevant. It was doubtless an ingenious idea to call the camel the ship of the desert, but it would hardly lead one far in training that useful beast. Oh, Aristotle, if you had had the advantage of being “the freshest modern” instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of metaphorical speech, as a sign of high intelligence, with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself in speech without metaphor,—that we can so seldom declare what a thing is except by saying it is something else?

Tom Tulliver, being abundant in no form of speech, did not use

any metaphor to declare his views as to the nature of Latin; he never called it an instrument of torture, and it was not until he had got on some way in the next half-year, and in the Delectus, that he was advanced enough to call it a “bore” and “beastly stuff”. At present, in relation to this demand that he should learn Latin declensions and conjugations, Tom was in a state of as blank unimaginativeness concerning the cause and tendency of his sufferings, as if he had been an innocent shrew-mouse imprisoned in the split trunk of an ash-tree in order to curl lameness in cattle. It is doubtless almost incredible to instructed minds of the present day that a boy of twelve, not belonging strictly to “the masses”, who are now understood to have the monopoly of mental darkness, should have had no distinct idea how there came to be such a thing as Latin on this earth; yet so it was with Tom. It would have taken a long while to make conceivable to him that there ever existed a people who bought and sold sheep and oxen, and transacted the everyday affairs of life through the medium of this language, and still longer to make him understand why he should be called upon to learn it when its connection with those affairs had become entirely latent. So far as Tom had gained any acquaintance with the Romans at Mr Jacobs’ academy, his knowledge was strictly correct, but it went no farther than the fact that they were “in the New Testament;” and Mr Stelling was not the man to enfeeble and emasculate his pupil’s mind by simplifying and explaining; or to reduce the tonic effect of etymology by mixing it with smattering, extraneous information such as is given to girls.

Yet, strange to say, under this vigorous treatment Tom became more like a girl than he had ever been in his life before. He had a

large share of pride, which had hitherto found itself very comfortable in the world, despising old Goggles and reposing in the sense of unquestioned rights, but now this same pride met with nothing but bruises and crushings. Tom was too clear-sighted not to be aware that Mr Stelling’s standard of things was quite different, was certainly something higher in the eyes of the world than that of the people he had been living amongst, and that, brought in contact with it, he, Tom Tulliver, appeared uncouth and stupid; he was by no means indifferent to this, and his pride got into an uneasy condition which quite nullified his boyish self- satisfaction and gave him something of the girl’s susceptibility. He was of a very firm, not to say obstinate, disposition, but there was no brute-like rebellion and recklessness in his nature: the human sensibilities predominated, and if it had occurred to him that he could enable himself to show some quickness at his lessons and so acquire Mr Stelling’s approbation by standing on one leg for an inconvenient length of time, or rapping his head moderately against the wall, or any voluntary action of that sort, he would certainly have tried it. But no, Tom had never heard that these measures would brighten the understanding or strengthen the verbal memory, and he was not given to hypothesis and experiment. It did occur to him that he could perhaps get some help by praying for it, but as the prayers he said every evening were forms learned by heart, he rather shrank from the novelty and irregularity of introducing an extempore passage on a topic of petition for which he was not aware of any precedent. But one day when he had broken down for the fifth time in the supines of the third conjugation, and Mr Stelling—convinced that this must be carelessness, since it transcended the bounds of possible

stupidity—had lectured him very seriously, pointing out that if he failed to seize the present golden opportunity of learning supines, he would have to regret it when he became a man, Tom, more miserable than usual, determined to try his sole resource; and that evening, after his usual form of prayer for his parents and “little sister” (he had begun to pray for Maggie when she was a baby) and that he might be able always to keep God’s commandments, he added in the same low whisper, “And please to make me always remember my Latin.” He paused a little to consider how he should pray about Euclid—whether he should ask to see what it meant or whether there was any other mental state which would be more applicable to the case. But at last he added—“And make Mr Stelling say I shan’t do Euclid any more. Amen.”

The fact that he got through his supines without mistake the next day encouraged him to persevere in this appendix to his prayers, and neutralised any scepticism that might have arisen from Mr Stelling’s continued demand for Euclid. But his faith broke down under the apparent absence of all help when he got into the irregular verbs. It seemed clear that Tom’s despair under the caprices of the present tense did not constitute a nodus worthy of interference, and since this was the climax of his difficulties, where was the use of praying for help any longer? He made up his mind to this conclusion in one of his dull, lonely evenings, which he spent in the study preparing his lessons for the morrow. His eyes were apt to get dim over the page; though he hated crying, and was ashamed of it, he couldn’t help thinking with some affection even of Spouncer, whom he used to fight and quarrel with; he would have felt at home with Spouncer, and in a condition of superiority. And then the mill, and the river, and Yap

pricking up his ears, ready to obey the least sign when Tom said “Hoigh!” would all come before him in a sort of calenture, when his fingers played absently in his pocket with his great knife and his coil of whipcord and other relics of the past. Tom, as I said, had never been so much like a girl in his life before, and at that epoch of irregular verbs his spirit was further depressed by a new means of mental development which had been thought of for him out of school hours. Mrs Stelling had lately had her second baby, and as nothing could be more salutary for a boy than to feel himself useful, Mrs Stelling considered she was doing Tom a service by setting him to watch the little cherub Laura while the nurse was occupied with the sickly baby. It was quite a pretty employment for Tom to take little Laura out in the sunniest hour of the autumn day; it would help to make him feel that Lorton Parsonage was a home for him, and that he was one of the family. The little cherub Laura, not being an accomplished walker at present, had a ribbon fastened round her waist by which Tom held her as if she had been a little dog during the minutes in which she chose to walk, but as these were rare, he was for the most part carrying this fine child round and round the garden within sight of Mrs Stelling’s window, according to orders. If anyone considers this unfair, and even oppressive, towards Tom, I beg him to consider that there are feminine virtues which are with difficulty combined, even if they are not incompatible. When the wife of a poor curate contrives under all her disadvantages to dress extremely well and to have a style of coiffure which requires that her nurse shall occasionally officiate as lady’s maid, when, moreover, her dinner- parties and her drawing-room show that effort at elegance and completeness of appointment to which ordinary women might

imagine a large income necessary, it would be unreasonable to expect of her that she should employ a second nurse, or even act as a nurse herself. Mr Stelling knew better: he saw that his wife did wonders already, and was proud of her; it was certainly not the best thing in the world for young Tulliver’s gait to carry a heavy child, but he had plenty of exercise in long walks with himself, and next half-year Mr Stelling would see about having a drilling- master. Among the many means whereby Mr Stelling intended to be more fortunate than the bulk of his fellowmen, he had entirely given up that of having his own way in his own house. What then? He had married “as kind a little soul as ever breathed,” according to Mr Riley, who had been acquainted with Mrs Stelling’s blonde ringlets and smiling demeanour throughout her maiden life, and on the strength of that knowledge would have been ready any day to pronounce that whatever domestic differences might arise in her married life must be entirely Mr Stelling’s fault.

If Tom had had a worse disposition, he would certainly have hated the little cherub Laura, but he was too kind-hearted a lad for that;—there was too much in him of the fibre that turns to true manliness, and to protecting pity for the weak. I am afraid he hated Mrs Stelling and contracted a lasting dislike to pale blonde ringlets and broad plaits as directly associated with haughtiness of manner and a frequent reference to other people’s “duty.” But he couldn’t help playing with little Laura and liking to amuse her; he even sacrificed his percussion-caps for her sake, in despair of their ever serving a greater purpose, thinking the small flash and bang would delight her, and thereby drawing down on himself a rebuke from Mrs Stelling for teaching her child to play with fire. Laura was a sort of playfellow—and oh how Tom longed for playfellows!

In his secret heart he yearned to have Maggie with him, and was almost ready to dote on her exasperating acts of forgetfulness; though, when he was at home, he always represented it as a great favour on his part to let Maggie trot by his side on his pleasure excursions.

And before this dreary half-year was ended, Maggie actually came. Mrs Stelling had given a general invitation for the little girl to come and stay with her brother; so when Mr Tulliver drove over to King’s Lorton late in October, Maggie came too, with the sense that she was taking a great journey and beginning to see the world. It was Mr Tulliver’s first visit to see Tom, for the lad must learn not to think too much about home.

“Well, my lad,” he said to Tom, when Mr Stelling had left the room to announce the arrival to his wife, and Maggie had begun to kiss Tom freely, “you look rarely! School agrees with you.”

Tom wished he had looked rather ill.

“I don’t think I am well, father,” said Tom; “I wish you’d ask Mr Stelling not to let me do Euclid—it brings on the toothache, I think.”

(The toothache was the only malady to which Tom had ever been subject.)

“Euclid, my lad—why, what’s that?” said Mr Tulliver.

“Oh, I don’t know; it’s definitions, and axioms, and triangles, and things. It’s a book I’ve got to learn in—there’s no sense in it.”

“Go, go!” said Mr Tulliver reprovingly. “You mustn’t say so. You must learn what your master tells you. He knows what it’s right for you to learn.”

“I’ll help you now, Tom,” said Maggie with a little air of patronising consolation. “I’m come to stay ever so long, if Mrs

Stelling asks me. I’ve brought my box and my pinafores, haven’t I, father?”

“You help me, you silly little thing!” said Tom, in such high spirits at this announcement that he quite enjoyed the idea of confounding Maggie by showing her a page of Euclid. “I should like to see you doing one of my lessons! Why, I learn Latin too! Girls never learn such things. They’re too silly.”

“I know what Latin is very well,” said Maggie confidently. “Latin’s a language. There are Latin words in the dictionary. There’s bonus, a gift.”

“Now, you’re just wrong there, Miss Maggie!” said Tom, secretly astonished. “You think you’re very wise! But bonus means “good”, as it happens—bonus, bona, bonum.”

“Well, that’s no reason why it shouldn’t mean ‘gift’,” said Maggie stoutly. “It may mean several things—almost every word does. There’s ‘lawn’—it means the grass-plot as well as the stuff pocket-handkerchiefs are made of.”

“Well done, little ’un,” said Mr Tulliver, laughing, while Tom felt rather disgusted with Maggie’s knowingness, though beyond measure cheerful at the thought that she was going to stay with him. Her conceit would soon be overawed by the actual inspection of his books.

Mrs Stelling in her pressing invitation did not mention a longer time than a week for Maggie’s stay, but Mr Stelling, who took her between his knees and asked her where she stole her dark eyes from, insisted that she must stay a fortnight. Maggie thought Mr Stelling was a charming man, and Mr Tulliver was quite proud to leave his little wench where she would have an opportunity of showing her cleverness to appreciating strangers. So it was agreed

that she should not be fetched home till the end of the fortnight. “Now, then, come with me into the study, Maggie,” said Tom as

their father drove away. “What do you shake and toss your head now for, you silly?” he continued, for though her hair was now under a new dispensation and was brushed smoothly behind her ears, she seemed still in imagination to be tossing it out of her eyes. “It makes you look as if you were crazy.”

“Oh, I can’t help it,” said Maggie impatiently. “Don’t tease me, Tom. Oh, what books!” she exclaimed, as she saw the bookcases in the study. “How I should like to have as many books as that!”

“Why, you couldn’t read one of ’em,” said Tom triumphantly. “They’re all Latin.”

“No, they aren’t,” said Maggie. “I can read the back of this . . . ‘History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’.”

“Well, what does that mean? You don’t know,” said Tom, wagging his head.

“But I could soon find out,” said Maggie scornfully. “Why, how?”

“I should look inside and see what it was about.”

“You’d better not, Miss Maggie,” said Tom, seeing her hand on the volume. “Mr Stelling lets nobody touch his books without leave, and I shall catch it if you take it out.”

“Oh, very well! Let me see all your books, then,” said Maggie, turning to throw her arms round Tom’s neck and rub his cheek with her small round nose.

Tom, in the gladness of his heart at having dear old Maggie to dispute with and crow over again, seized her round the waist and began to jump with her round the large library-table. Away they jumped with more and more vigour, till Maggie’s hair flew from

behind her ears and twirled about like an animated mop. But the revolutions round the table became more and more irregular in their sweep till, at last reaching Mr Stelling’s reading-stand, they sent it thundering down with its heavy lexicons to the floor. Happily it was the ground-floor, and the study was a one-storeyed wing to the house, so that the downfall made no alarming resonance, though Tom stood dizzy and aghast for a few minutes, dreading the appearance of Mr or Mrs Stelling.

“Oh, I say, Maggie,” said Tom at last, lifting up the stand, “we must keep quiet here, you know. If we break anything, Mrs Stelling’ll make us cry peccavi.”

“What’s that?” said Maggie.

“Oh, it’s Latin for a good scolding,” said Tom, not without some pride in his knowledge.

“Is she a cross woman?” said Maggie.

“I believe you!” said Tom with an emphatic nod.

“I think all women are crosser than men,” said Maggie. “Aunt Glegg’s a great deal crosser than uncle Glegg, and mother scolds me more than father does.”

“Well, you’ll be a woman some day,” said Tom, “so you needn’t talk.”

“But I shall be a clever woman,” said Maggie with a toss.

“Oh, I dare say, and a nasty conceited thing. Everybody’ll hate you.”

“But you oughtn’t to hate me, Tom; it’ll be very wicked of you, for I shall be your sister.”

“Yes, but if you’re a nasty disagreeable thing, I shall hate you.” “Oh, but Tom, you won’t! I shan’t be disagreeable. I shall be

very good to you—and I shall be good to everybody. You won’t

hate me really, will you, Tom?”

“Oh, bother! Never mind! Come, it’s time for me to learn my lessons. See here what I’ve got to do,” said Tom, drawing Maggie towards him and showing her his theorem, while she pushed her hair behind her ears and prepared herself to prove her capability of helping him in Euclid. She began to read with full confidence in her own powers, but presently, becoming quite bewildered, her face flushed with irritation. It was unavoidable; she must confess her incompetency, and she was not fond of humiliation.

“It’s nonsense!” she said. “And very ugly stuff—nobody need want to make it out.”

“Ah, there now, Miss Maggie!” said Tom, drawing the book away and wagging his head at her. “You see you’re not so clever as you thought you were.”

“Oh,” said Maggie, pouting, “I dare say I could make it out if I’d learned what goes before, as you have.”

“But that’s what you just couldn’t, Miss Wisdom,” said Tom. “For it’s all the harder when you know what goes before, for then you’ve got to say what definition 3 is and what axiom V. is. But get along with you now; I must go on with this. Here’s the Latin grammar. See what you can make of that.”

Maggie found the Latin grammar quite soothing after her mathematical mortification, for she delighted in new words and quickly found that there was an English key at the end which would make her very wise about Latin at slight expense. She presently made up her mind to skip the rules in the Syntax—the examples became so absorbing. These mysterious sentences, snatched from an unknown context—like strange horns of beasts and leaves of unknown plants, brought from some far-off region—

gave boundless scope to her imagination, and were all the more fascinating because they were in a peculiar tongue of their own, which she could learn to interpret. It was really very interesting— the Latin grammar that Tom had said no girls could learn—and she was proud because she found it interesting. The most fragmentary examples were her favourites. Mors omnibus est communis would have been jejune, only she liked to know the Latin; but the fortunate gentleman whom everyone congratulated because he had a son ‘endowed with such a disposition’ afforded her a great deal of pleasant conjecture, and she was quite lost in the ‘thick grove penetrable by no star’ when Tom called out, “Now, then, Magsie, give us the grammar!”

“Oh, Tom, it’s such a pretty book!” she said, as she jumped out of the large armchair to give it him. “It’s much prettier than the dictionary. I could learn Latin very soon. I don’t think it’s at all hard.”

“Oh, I know what you’ve been doing,” said Tom; “you’ve been reading the English at the end. Any donkey can do that.”

Tom seized the book and opened it with a determined and business-like air, as much as to say that he had a lesson to learn which no donkeys would find themselves equal to. Maggie, rather piqued, turned to the bookcases to amuse herself with puzzling out the titles.

Presently Tom called to her, “Here, Magsie, come and hear if I can say this. Stand at that end of the table, where Mr Stelling sits when he hears me.”

Maggie obeyed, and took the open book. “Where do you begin, Tom?”

“Oh, I begin at ‘Apellativa aborum’, because I say all over again

what I have been learning this week.”

Tom sailed along pretty well for three lines, and Maggie was beginning to forget her office of prompter in speculating as to what mas could mean, which came twice over, when he stuck fast at ‘sunt etiam volucrum’.

“Don’t tell me, Maggie. Sunt etiam volucrum . . . sunt etiam volucrum . . . ut ostrea, cetus . . .”

“No,” said Maggie, opening her mouth and shaking her head. “Sunt etiam volucrum,” said Tom very slowly, as if the next

words might be expected to come sooner when he gave them this strong hint that they were waited for.

“C, e, u,” said Maggie, getting impatient.

“Oh, I know—hold your tongue,” said Tom. “Ceu passer, hirundo; Ferarum . . . ferarum . . .” Tom took his pencil and made several hard dots with it on his book-cover . . . “ferarum . . .”

“Oh, dear, oh dear, Tom,” said Maggie, “what a time you are! Ut

. . . .”

“Ut, ostrea ”

“No, no,” said Maggie, “ut, tigris ”

“Oh, yes, now I can do,” said Tom; “it was tigris, vulpes, I’d forgotten, ut tigris, vulpes; et Piscium.”

With some further stammering and repetition, Tom got through the next few lines.

“Now, then,” he said, “the text is what I’ve just learnt for tomorrow. Give me hold of the book a minute.” After some whispered gabbing, assisted by the beating of his fist on the table, Tom returned the book.

“Mascula nomina in a,” he began.

“No, Tom,” said Maggie, “that doesn’t come next. It’s Nomen

non creskens genittivo ”

“Creskens genittivo,” exclaimed Tom with a derisive laugh, for Tom had learned this omitted passage for his yesterday’s lesson, and a young gentleman does not require an intimate or extensive acquaintance with Latin before he can feel the pitiable absurdity of a false quantity. “Creskens genittivo! What a little silly you are, Maggie!”

“Well, you needn’t laugh, Tom, for you didn’t remember it at all. I’m sure it’s spelled so; how was I to know?”

“Phee-e-e-h! I told you girls couldn’t learn Latin. It’s Nomen non crescens genitivo.”

“Very well, then,” said Maggie, pouting. “I can say that as well as you can. And you don’t mind your stops. For you ought to stop twice as long at a semicolon as you do at a comma, and you make the longest stops where there ought to be no stop at all.”

“Oh, well, don’t chatter. Let me go on.”

They were presently fetched to spend the rest of the evening in the drawing-room, and Maggie became so animated with Mr Stelling, who, she felt sure, admired her cleverness, that Tom was rather amazed and alarmed at her audacity. But she was suddenly subdued by Mr Stelling’s alluding to a little girl of whom he had heard that she once ran away to the gypsies.

“What a very odd little girl that must be!” said Mrs Stelling, meaning to be playful—but a playfulness that turned on her supposed oddity was not at all to Maggie’s taste. She feared that Mr Stelling, after all, did not think much of her, and went to bed in rather low spirits. Mrs Stelling, she felt, looked at her as if she thought her hair was very ugly because it hung down straight behind.

Nevertheless it was a very happy fortnight to Maggie, this visit to Tom. She was allowed to be in the study while he had his lessons, and in her various readings got very deep into the examples in the Latin grammar. The astronomer who hated women generally caused her so much puzzling speculation that she one day asked Mr Stelling if all astronomers hated women or whether it was only this particular astronomer. But, forestalling his answer, she said, “I suppose it’s all astronomers, because, you know, they live up in high towers, and if the women came there, they might talk and hinder them from looking at the stars.”

Mr Stelling liked her prattle immensely, and they were on the best terms. She told Tom she should like to go to school to Mr Stelling, as he did, and learn just the same things. She knew she could do Euclid, for she had looked into it again, and she saw what A B C meant: they were the names of the lines.

“I’m sure you couldn’t do it, now,” said Tom; “and I’ll just ask Mr Stelling if you could.”

“I don’t mind,” said the little conceited minx. “I’ll ask him myself.”

“Mr Stelling,” she said that same evening when they were in the drawing-room, “couldn’t I do Euclid, and all Tom’s lessons, if you were to teach me instead of him?”

“No; you couldn’t,” said Tom indignantly. “Girls can’t do Euclid, can they, sir?”

“They can pick up a little of everything. I dare say,” said Mr Stelling. “They’ve a great deal of superficial cleverness, but they couldn’t go far into anything. They’re quick and shallow.”

Tom, delighted with this verdict, telegraphed his triumph by wagging his head at Maggie behind Mr Stelling’s chair. As for

Maggie, she had hardly ever been so mortified. She had been so proud to be called ‘quick’ all her little life, and now it appeared that this quickness was the brand of inferiority. It would have been better to be slow, like Tom.

“Ha, ha! Miss Maggie!” said Tom when they were alone. “You see it’s not such a fine thing to be quick. You’ll never go far into anything, you know.”

And Maggie was so oppressed by this dreadful destiny that she had no spirit for a retort.

But when this small apparatus of shallow quickness was fetched away in the gig by Luke, and the study was once more quite lonely for Tom, he missed her grievously. He had really been brighter and had got through his lessons better since she had been there; and she had asked Mr Stelling so many questions about the Roman empire, and whether there really ever was a man who said in Latin, ‘I would not buy it for a farthing or a rotten nut,’ or whether that had only been turned into Latin, that Tom had actually come to a dim understanding of the fact that there had once been people upon the earth who were so fortunate as to know Latin without learning it through the medium of the Eton grammar. This luminous idea was a great addition to his historical acquirements during the half-year, which were otherwise confined to an epitomised history of the Jews.

But the dreary half-year did come to an end. How glad Tom was to see the last yellow leaves fluttering before the cold wind! The dark afternoons and the first December snow seemed to him far livelier than the August sunshine; and that he might make himself that surer about the flight of the days that were carrying him homeward, he stuck twenty-one sticks deep in a corner of the

garden, when he was three weeks from the holidays, and pulled one up every day with a great wrench, throwing it to a distance with a vigour of will which would have carried it to limbo, if it had been in the nature of sticks to travel so far.

But it was worth purchasing, even at the heavy price of the Latin grammar—the happiness of seeing the bright light in the parlour at home as the gig passed noiselessly over the snow- covered bridge, the happiness of passing from the cold air to the warmth and the kisses and the smiles of that familiar hearth where the pattern of the rug and the grate and the fire-irons were “first ideas” that it was no more possible to criticise than the solidity and extension of matter. There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born, where objects became dear to us before we had known the labour of choice, and where the outer world seemed only an extension of our own personality: we accepted and loved it as we accepted our own sense of existence and our own limbs. Very commonplace, even ugly, that furniture of our early home might look if it were put up to auction; an improved taste in upholstery scorns it; and is not the striving after something better and better in our surroundings, the grand characteristic that distinguishes man from the brute—or, to satisfy a scrupulous accuracy of definition, that distinguishes the British man from the foreign brute? But heaven knows where that striving might lead us if our affections had not a trick of twining round those old inferior things—if the loves and sanctities of our life had no deep immovable roots in memory. One’s delight in an elderberry bush overhanging the confused leafage of a hedgerow bank, as a more gladdening sight than the finest cistus or fuchsia spreading itself on the softest undulating turf, is an entirely

unjustifiable preference to a nursery-gardener, or to any of those severely regulated minds who are free from the weakness of any attachment that does not rest on a demonstrable superiority of qualities. And there is no better reason for preferring this elderberry bush than that it stirs an early memory—that it is no novelty in my life, speaking to me merely through my present sensibilities to form and colour, but the long companion of my existence that wove itself into my joys when joys were vivid.

Chapter 2

The Christmas Holidays

ine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion and had set off his rich gifts of warmth and colour with all the

heightening contrast of frost and snow.

Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undulations softer than the limbs of infancy; it lay with the neatliest finished border on every sloping roof, making the dark-red gables stand out with a new depth of colour; it weighed heavily on the laurels and fir-trees till it fell from them with a shuddering sound; it clothed the rough turnip-field with whiteness and made the sheep look like dark blotches; the gates were all blocked up with the sloping drifts, and here and there a disregarded four-footed beast stood as if petrified “in unrecumbent sadness;” there was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens too were one still, pale cloud—no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow. But old Christmas smiled as he laid this cruel- seeming spell on the outdoor world, for he meant to light up home with new brightness, to deepen all the richness of indoor colour, and give a keener edge of delight to the warm fragrance of food; he meant to prepare a sweet imprisonment that would strengthen the primitive fellowship of kindred and make the sunshine of familiar human faces as welcome as the hidden day-star. His kindness fell but hardly on the homeless, fell but hardly on the homes where the hearth was not very warm, and where the food had little

fragrance, where the human faces had no sunshine in them, but rather the leaden, blank-eyed gaze of unexpectant want. But the fine old season meant well, and if he has not learned the secret how to bless men impartially, it is because his father Time with ever-unrelenting purpose still hides that secret in his own mighty, slow-beating heart.

And yet this Christmas day, in spite of Tom’s fresh delight in home, was not, he thought, somehow or other quite so happy as it had always been before. The red berries were just as abundant on the holly, and he and Maggie had dressed all the windows and mantelpieces and picture-frames on Christmas eve with as much taste as ever, wedding the thick-set scarlet clusters with branches of the black-berried ivy. There had been singing under the windows after midnight—supernatural singing, Maggie always felt, in spite of Tom’s contemptuous insistence that the singers were old Patch, the parish clerk, and the rest of the church choir; she trembled with awe when their caroling broke in upon her dreams, and the image of men in fustian clothes was always thrust away by the vision of angels resting on the parted cloud. The midnight chant had helped as usual to lift the morning above the level of common days; and then there was the smell of hot toast and ale from the kitchen at the breakfast hour; the favourite anthem, the green boughs, and the short sermon gave the appropriate festal character to the church-going; and aunt and uncle Moss, with all their seven children, were looking like so many reflectors of the bright parlour-fire, when the church-goers came back, stamping the snow from their feet. The plum-pudding was of the same handsome roundness as ever, and came in with the symbolic blue flames around it, as if it had been heroically

snatched from the nether fires into which it had been thrown by dyspeptic Puritans; the dessert was as splendid as ever, with its golden oranges, brown nuts, and the crystalline light and dark of apple jelly and damson cheese. In all these things Christmas was as it had always been since Tom could remember; it was only distinguished, if by anything, by superior sliding and snowballs.

Christmas was cheery, but not so Mr Tulliver. He was irate and defiant, and Tom, though he espoused his father’s quarrels and shared his father’s sense of injury, was not without some of the feeling that oppressed Maggie when Mr Tulliver got louder and more angry in narration and assertion with the increased leisure of dessert. The attention that Tom might have concentrated on his nuts and wine was distracted by a sense that there were rascally enemies in the world and that the business of grown-up life could hardly be conducted without a good deal of quarrelling. Now Tom was not fond of quarrelling, unless it could soon be put an end to by a fair, stand-up fight with an adversary whom he had every chance of thrashing; and his father’s irritable talk made him uncomfortable, though he never accounted to himself for the feeling, or conceived the notion that his father was faulty in this respect.

The particular embodiment of the evil principle now exciting Mr Tulliver’s determined resistance was Mr Pivart, who, having lands higher up the Ripple, was taking measures for their irrigation, which either were, or would be, or were bound to be (on the principle that water was water), an infringement on Mr Tulliver’s legitimate share of water-power. Dix, who had a mill on the stream, was a feeble auxiliary of Old Harry compared with Pivart. Dix had been brought to his senses by arbitration, and

Wakem’s advice had not carried him far. No, Dix, Mr Tulliver considered, had been as good as nowhere in point of law; and in the intensity of his indignation against Pivart, his contempt for a baffled adversary like Dix began to wear the air of a friendly attachment. He had no male audience today except Mr Moss, who knew nothing, as he said, of the “natur’ o’ mills” and could only assent to Mr Tulliver’s arguments on the a priori ground of family relationship and monetary obligation; but Mr Tulliver did not talk with the futile intention of convincing his audience—he talked to relieve himself; while good Mr Moss made strong efforts to keep his eyes wide open in spite of the sleepiness which an unusually good dinner produced in his hard-worked frame. Mrs Moss, more alive to the subject, and interested in everything that affected her brother, listened and put in a word as often as maternal preoccupations allowed.

“Why, Pivart’s a new name hereabout, brother, isn’t it?” she said. “He didn’t own the land in father’s time, nor yours either, before I was married.”

“New name? Yes, I should think it is a new name,” said Mr Tulliver with angry emphasis. “Dorlcote Mill’s been in our family a hundred year and better, and nobody ever heard of a Pivart meddling with the river till this fellow came and bought Bincome’s farm out of hand before anybody else could so much as say ‘snap’. But I’ll Pivart him!” added Mr Tulliver, lifting his glass with a sense that he had defined his resolution in an unmistakable manner.

“You won’t be forced to go to law with him, I hope, brother?” said Mrs Moss with some anxiety.

“I don’t know what I shall be forced to; but I know what I shall

force him to, with his dykes and erigations, if there’s any law to be brought to bear o’ the right side. I know well enough who’s at the bottom of it; he’s got Wakem to back him and egg him on. I know Wakem tells him the law can’t touch him for it, but there’s folks can handle the law besides Wakem. It takes a big raskill to beat him; but there’s bigger to be found, as know more o’ th’ ins and outs o’ the law, else how came Wakem to lose Brumley’s suit for him?”

Mr Tulliver was a strictly honest man, and proud of being honest, but he considered that in law the ends of justice could only be achieved by employing a stronger knave to frustrate a weaker. Law was a sort of cock-fight in which it was the business of injured honesty to get a game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs.

“Gore’s no fool—you needn’t tell me that,” he observed presently, in a pugnacious tone as if poor Gritty had been urging that lawyer’s capabilities; “but, you see, he isn’t up to the law as Wakem is. And water’s a very particular thing—you can’t pick it up with a pitchfork. That’s why it’s been nuts to Old Harry and the lawyers. It’s plain enough what’s the rights and the wrongs of water, if you look at it straightforrard; for a river’s a river, and if you’ve got a mill, you must have water to turn it; and it’s no use telling me, Pivart’s erigation and nonsense won’t stop my wheel; I know what belongs to water better than that. Talk to me o’ what th’ engineers say! I say it’s common-sense, as Pivart’s dykes must do me an injury. But if that’s their engineering, I’ll put Tom to it by-and-by and he shall see if he can’t find a bit more sense in th’ engineering business than what that comes to.”

Tom, looking round with some anxiety at this announcement of

his prospects, unthinkingly withdrew a small rattle he was amusing baby Moss with, whereupon she, being a baby that knew her own mind with remarkable clearness, instantaneously expressed her sentiments in a piercing yell, and was not to be appeased even by the restoration of the rattle, feeling apparently that the original wrong of having it taken from her remained in all its force. Mrs Moss hurried away with her into another room, and expressed to Mrs Tulliver, who accompanied her, the conviction that the dear child had good reason for crying, implying that if it was supposed to be the rattle that baby clamoured for, she was a misunderstood baby. The thoroughly justifiable yell being quieted, Mrs Moss looked at her sister-in-law and said—“I’m sorry to see brother so put out about this water work.”

“It’s your brother’s way, Mrs Moss; I’d never anything o’ that sort before I was married,” said Mrs Tulliver with a half-implied reproach. She always spoke of her husband as ‘your brother’ to Mrs Moss in any case when his line of conduct was not matter of pure admiration. Amiable Mrs Tulliver, who was never angry in her life, had yet her mild share of that spirit without which she could hardly have been at once a Dodson and a woman. Being always on the defensive towards her own sisters, it was natural that she should be keenly conscious of her superiority, even as the weakest Dodson, over a husband’s sister, who, besides being poorly off and inclined to “hang on” her brother, had the good- natured submissiveness of a large, easy-tempered, untidy, prolific woman with affection enough in her not only for her husband and abundant children, but for any number of collateral relations.

“I hope and pray he won’t go to law,” said Mrs Moss, “for there’s never any knowing where that’ll end. And the right doesn’t

allays win. This Mr Pivart’s a rich man by what I can make out, and the rich mostly get things their own way.”

“As to that,” said Mrs Tulliver, stroking her dress down, “I’ve seen what riches are in my own family, for my sisters have got husbands as can afford to do pretty much what they like. But I think sometimes I shall be drove off my head with the talk about this law and erigation; and my sisters lay all the fault to me, for they don’t know what it is to marry a man like your brother—how should they? Sister Pullet has her own way from morning till night.”

“Well,” said Mrs Moss, “I don’t think I should like my husband if he hadn’t got any wits of his own, and I had to find head-piece for him. It’s a deal easier to do what pleases one’s husband than to be puzzling what else one should do.”

“If people come to talk o’ doing what pleases their husbands,” said Mrs Tulliver with a faint imitation of her sister Glegg, “I’m sure your brother might have waited a long while before he’d have found a wife that ’ud have let him have his say in everything, as I do. It’s nothing but law and erigation now, from when we first get up in the morning till we go to bed at night; and I never contradict him; I only say, ‘Well, Mr Tulliver, do as you like; but whativer you do, don’t go to law’.”

Mrs Tulliver, as we have seen, was not without influence over her husband. No woman is; she can always incline him to do either what she wishes or the reverse; and on the composite impulses that were threatening to hurry Mr Tulliver into “law”, Mrs Tulliver’s monotonous pleading had doubtless its share of force; it might even be comparable to that proverbial feather which has the credit or discredit of breaking the camel’s back, though on a

strictly impartial view the blame ought rather to lie with the previous weight of feathers which had already placed the back in such imminent peril that an otherwise innocent feather could not settle on it without mischief. Not that Mrs Tulliver’s feeble beseeching could have had this feather’s weight in virtue of her single personality, but whenever she departed from entire assent to her husband, he saw in her the representative of the Dodson family, and it was a guiding principle with Mr Tulliver to let the Dodsons know that they were not to domineer over him, or more specifically, that a male Tulliver was far more than equal to four female Dodsons, even though one of them was Mrs Glegg.

But not even a direct argument from that typical Dodson female herself against his going to law could have heightened his disposition towards it so much as the mere thought of Wakem, continually freshened by the sight of the too able attorney on market-days. Wakem, to his certain knowledge, was (metaphorically speaking) at the bottom of Pivart’s irrigation; Wakem had tried to make Dix stand out and go to law about the dam; it was unquestionably Wakem who had caused Mr Tulliver to lose the suit about the right of road and the bridge that made a thoroughfare of his land for every vagabond who preferred an opportunity of damaging private property to walking like an honest man along the high-road. All lawyers were more or less rascals, but Wakem’s rascality was of that peculiarly aggravated kind which placed itself in opposition to that form of right embodied in Mr Tulliver’s interests and opinions. And as an extra touch of bitterness, the injured miller had recently, in borrowing the five hundred pounds, been obliged to carry a little business to Wakem’s office on his own account. A hook-nosed glib fellow, as

cool as a cucumber, always looking so sure of his game! And it was vexatious that Lawyer Gore was not more like him, but was a bald, round-featured man with bland manners and fat hands, a game- cock that you would be rash to bet upon against Wakem. Gore was a sly fellow; his weakness did not lie on the side of scrupulosity, but the largest amount of winking, however significant, is not equivalent to seeing through a stone wall; and confident as Mr Tulliver was in his principle that water was water and in the direct inference that Pivart had not a leg to stand on in this affair of irrigation, he had an uncomfortable suspicion that Wakem had more law to show against this (rationally) irrefragable inference than Gore could show for it. But then, if they went to law, there was a chance for Mr Tulliver to employ Counsellor Wylde on his side, instead of having that admirable bully against him; and the prospect of seeing a witness of Wakem’s made to perspire and become confounded, as Mr Tulliver’s witness had once been, was alluring to the love of retributive justice.

Much rumination had Mr Tulliver on these puzzling subjects during his rides on the grey horse—much turning of the head from side to side as the scales dipped alternately; but the probable result was still out of sight, only to be reached through much hot argument and iteration in domestic and social life. That initial stage of the dispute which consisted in the narration of the case and the enforcement of Mr Tulliver’s views concerning it throughout the entire circle of his connections would necessarily take time; and at the beginning of February, when Tom was going to school again, there were scarcely any new items to be detected in his father’s statement of the case against Pivart or any more specific indication of the measures he was bent on taking against

that rash contravener of the principle that water was water. Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress, and Mr Tulliver’s heat was certainly more and more palpable. If there had been no new evidence on any other point, there had been new evidence that Pivart was as “thick as mud” with Wakem.

“Father,” said Tom one evening near the end of the holidays, “uncle Glegg says Lawyer Wakem is going to send his son to Mr Stelling. It isn’t true—what they said about his going to be sent to France. You won’t like me to go to school with Wakem’s son, shall you?”

“It’s no matter for that, my boy,” said Mr Tulliver; “don’t you learn anything bad of him, that’s all. The lad’s a poor deformed creatur and takes after his mother in the face; I think there isn’t much of his father in him. It’s a sign Wakem thinks high o’ Mr Stelling, as he sends his son to him, and Wakem knows meal from bran.”

Mr Tulliver in his heart was rather proud of the fact that his son was to have the same advantages as Wakem’s, but Tom was not at all easy on the point; it would have been much clearer if the lawyer’s son had not been deformed, for then Tom would have had the prospect of pitching into him with all that freedom which is derived from a high moral sanction.

Chapter 3

The New Schoolfellow

t was a cold, wet January day on which Tom went back to school, a day quite in keeping with this severe phase of his destiny. If he had not carried in his pocket a parcel of sugar- candy and a small Dutch doll for little Laura, there would have been no ray of expected pleasure to enliven the general gloom. But he liked to think how Laura would put out her lips and her tiny hands for the bits of sugar-candy, and to give the greater keenness to these pleasures of imagination, he took out the parcel, made a small hole in the paper, and bit off a crystal or two, which had so solacing an effect under the confined prospect and damp odours of the gig-umbrella, that he repeated the process more than once on

his way.

“Well, Tulliver, we’re glad to see you again,” said Mr Stelling heartily. “Take off your wrappings and come into the study till dinner. You’ll find a bright fire there and a new companion.”

Tom felt in an uncomfortable flutter as he took off his woollen comforter and other wrappings. He had seen Philip Wakem at St Ogg’s, but had always turned his eyes away from him as quickly as possible. He would have disliked having a deformed boy for his companion, even if Philip had not been the son of a bad man. And Tom did not see how a bad man’s son could be very good. His own father was a good man, and he would readily have fought anyone who said the contrary. He was in a state of mingled embarrassment and defiance as he followed Mr Stelling to the

study.

“Here is a new companion for you to shake hands with, Tulliver,” said that gentleman on entering the study, “Master Philip Wakem. I shall leave you to make acquaintance by yourselves. You already know something of each other, I imagine, for you are neighbours at home.”

Tom looked confused and awkward, while Philip rose and glanced at him timidly. Tom did not like to go up and put out his hand, and he was not prepared to say, “How do you do?” on so short a notice.

Mr Stelling wisely turned away and closed the door behind him: boys’ shyness only wears off in the absence of their elders.

Philip was at once too proud and too timid to walk towards Tom. He thought, or rather felt, that Tom had an aversion to looking at him; everyone, almost, disliked looking at him, and his deformity was more conspicuous when he walked. So they remained without shaking hands or even speaking, while Tom went to the fire and warmed himself, every now and then casting furtive glances at Philip, who seemed to be drawing absently first one object and then another on a piece of paper he had before him. He had seated himself again, and as he drew, was thinking what he could say to Tom and trying to overcome his own repugnance to making the first advances.

Tom began to look oftener and longer at Philip’s face, for he could see it without noticing the hump, and it was really not a disagreeable face—very old-looking, Tom thought. He wondered how much older Philip was than himself. An anatomist—even a mere physiognomist—would have seen that the deformity of Philip’s spine was not a congenital hump, but the result of an

accident in infancy; but you do not expect from Tom any acquaintance with such distinctions. To him, Philip was simply a hump-back. He had a vague notion that the deformity of Wakem’s son had some relation to the lawyer’s rascality, of which he had so often heard his father talk with hot emphasis; and he felt too a half-admitted fear of him as probably a spiteful fellow, who, not being able to fight you, had cunning ways of doing you a mischief by the sly. There was a hump-backed tailor in the neighbourhood of Mr Jacobs’ academy who was considered a very unamiable character and was much hooted after by public-spirited boys solely on the ground of his unsatisfactory moral qualities, so that Tom was not without a basis of fact to go upon. Still, no face could be more unlike that ugly tailor’s than this melancholy boy’s face; the brown hair round it waved and curled at the ends like a girl’s; Tom thought that truly pitiable. This Wakem was a pale, puny fellow, and it was quite clear he would not be able to play at anything worth speaking of; but he handled his pencil in an enviable manner and was apparently making one thing after another without any trouble. What was he drawing? Tom was quite warm now and wanted something new to be going forward. It was certainly more agreeable to have an ill-natured hump-back as a companion than to stand looking out of the study window at the rain and kicking his foot against the washboard in solitude; something would happen every day—“a quarrel or something”; and Tom thought he should rather like to show Philip that he had better not try his spiteful tricks on him. He suddenly walked across the hearth and looked over Philip’s paper.

“Why, that’s a donkey with panniers—and a spaniel, and partridges in the corn!” he exclaimed, his tongue being completely

loosed by surprise and admiration. “Oh, my buttons! I wish I could draw like that. I’m to learn drawing this half—I wonder if I shall learn to make dogs and donkeys!”

“Oh, you can do them without learning,” said Philip; “I never learned drawing.”

“Never learned?” said Tom in amazement. “Why, when I make dogs and horses and those things, the heads and the legs won’t come right, though I can see how they ought to be very well. I can make houses and all sorts of chimneys—chimneys going all down the wall, and windows in the roof, and all that. But I dare say I could do dogs and horses if I was to try more,” he added, reflecting that Philip might falsely suppose that he was going to ‘knock under’, if he were too frank about the imperfection of his accomplishments.

“Oh, yes,” said Philip, “it’s very easy. You’ve only to look well at things and draw them over and over again. What you do wrong once, you can alter the next time.”

“But haven’t you been taught anything?” said Tom, beginning to have a puzzled suspicion that Philip’s crooked back might be the source of remarkable faculties. “I thought you’d been to school a long while.”

“Yes,” said Philip, smiling, “I’ve been taught Latin, and Greek, and mathematics, and writing, and such things.”

“Oh, but, I say, you don’t like Latin, though, do you?” said Tom, lowering his voice confidentially.

“Pretty well; I don’t care much about it,” said Philip.

“Ah, but perhaps you haven’t got into the Propria quae maribus,” said Tom, nodding his head sideways, as much as to say, “that was the test; it was easy talking till you came to that.”

Philip felt some bitter complacency in the promising stupidity of this well-made, active-looking boy; but made polite by his own extreme sensitiveness as well as by his desire to conciliate, he checked his inclination to laugh and said quietly, “I’ve done with the grammar; I don’t learn that any more.”

“Then you won’t have the same lessons as I shall?” said Tom with a sense of disappointment.

“No, but I dare say I can help you. I shall be very glad to help you if I can.”

Tom did not say thank you, for he was quite absorbed in the thought that Wakem’s son did not seem so spiteful a fellow as might have been expected.

“I say,” he said presently, “do you love your father?”

“Yes,” said Philip, colouring deeply; “don’t you love yours?” “Oh yes . . . I only wanted to know,” said Tom, rather ashamed

of himself now he saw Philip colouring and looking uncomfortable. He found much difficulty in adjusting his attitude of mind towards the son of Lawyer Wakem, and it had occurred to him that if Philip disliked his father, that fact might go some way towards clearing up his perplexity.

“Shall you learn drawing now?” he said by way of changing the subject.

“No,” said Philip. “My father wishes me to give all my time to other things now.”

“What! Latin, and Euclid, and those things?” said Tom.

“Yes,” said Philip, who had left off using his pencil, and was resting his head on one hand while Tom was leaning forward on both elbows and looking with increasing admiration at the dog and the donkey.

“And you don’t mind that?” said Tom with strong curiosity. “No, I like to know what everybody else knows. I can study

what I like by-and-by.”

“I can’t think why anybody should learn Latin,” said Tom. “It’s no good.”

“It’s part of the education of a gentleman,” said Philip. “All gentlemen learn the same things.”

“What! Do you think Sir John Crake, the master of the harriers, knows Latin?” said Tom, who had often thought he should like to resemble Sir John Crake. “He learnt it when he was a boy, of course,” said Philip. “But I dare say he’s forgotten it.”

“Oh, well, I can do that, then,” said Tom, not with any epigrammatic intention, but with serious satisfaction at the idea that, as far as Latin was concerned, there was no hindrance to his resembling Sir John Crake. “Only you’re obliged to remember it while you’re at school, else you’ve got to learn ever so many lines of ‘Speaker’. Mr Stelling’s very particular—did you know? He’ll have you up ten times if you say ‘nam’ for ‘jam’ . . . he won’t let you go a letter wrong, I can tell you.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Philip, unable to choke a laugh; “I can remember things easily. And there are some lessons I’m very fond of. I’m very fond of Greek history and everything about the Greeks. I should like to have been a Greek and fought the Persians, and then have come home and have written tragedies, or else have been listened to by everybody for my wisdom, like Socrates, and have died a grand death.” (Philip, you perceive, was not without a wish to impress the well-made barbarian with a sense of his mental superiority.) “Why, were the Greeks great fighters?” said Tom, who saw a vista in this direction. “Is there

anything like David and Goliath, and Samson, in the Greek history? Those are the only bits I like in the history of the Jews.”

“Oh, there are very fine stories of that sort about the Greeks— about the heroes of early times who killed the wild beasts, as Samson did. And in the Odyssey—that’s a beautiful poem—there’s a more wonderful giant than Goliath—Polypheme, who had only one eye in the middle of his forehead; and Ulysses, a little fellow, but very wise and cunning, got a red-hot pine-tree and stuck it into this one eye and made him roar like a thousand bulls.”

“Oh, what fun!” said Tom, jumping away from the table and stamping first with one leg and then the other. “I say, can you tell me all about those stories? Because I shan’t learn Greek you know

. . . Shall I?” he added, pausing in his stamping with a sudden alarm lest the contrary might be possible. “Does every gentleman learn Greek? Will Mr Stelling make me begin with it, do you think?”

“No, I should think not—very likely not,” said Philip. “But you may read those stories without knowing Greek. I’ve got them in English.”

“Oh, but I don’t like reading; I’d sooner have you tell them me. But only the fighting ones, you know. My sister Maggie is always wanting to tell me stories, but they’re stupid things. Girls’ stories always are. Can you tell a good many fighting stories?”

“Oh, yes,” said Philip; “lots of them, besides the Greek stories. I can tell you about Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Saladin, and about William Wallace, and Robert Bruce, and James Douglas—I know no end.”

“You’re older than I am, aren’t you?” said Tom. “Why, how old are you? I’m fifteen.”

“I’m only going in fourteen,” said Tom. “But I thrashed all the fellows at Jacobs’—that’s where I was before I came here. And I beat ’em all at bandy and climbing. And I wish Mr Stelling would let us go fishing. I could show you how to fish. You could fish, couldn’t you? It’s only standing and sitting still, you know.”

Tom, in his turn, wished to make the balance dip in his favour. This hunch-back must not suppose that his acquaintance with fighting stories put him on a par with an actual fighting hero, like Tom Tulliver. Philip winced under this allusion to his unfitness for active sports, and he answered almost peevishly, “I can’t bear fishing. I think people look like fools sitting watching a line hour after hour—or else throwing and throwing, and catching nothing.” “Ah, but you wouldn’t say they looked like fools when they landed a big pike, I can tell you,” said Tom, who had never caught anything that was ‘big’ in his life, but whose imagination was on the stretch with indignant zeal for the honour of sport. Wakem’s son, it was plain, had his disagreeable points, and must be kept in due check. Happily for the harmony of this first interview, they were now called to dinner, and Philip was not allowed to develop farther his unsound views on the subject of fishing. But Tom said to himself, that was just what he should have expected from a

hunchback.

Chapter 4

“The Young Idea”

T

he alternations of feeling in that first dialogue between Tom and Philip continued to mark their intercourse even after many weeks of schoolboy intimacy. Tom never quite

lost the feeling that Philip, being the son of a ‘rascal’, was his natural enemy, never thoroughly overcame his repulsion to Philip’s deformity; he was a boy who adhered tenaciously to impressions once received; as with all minds in which mere perception predominates over thought and emotion, the external remained to him rigidly what it was in the first instance. But then, it was impossible not to like Philip’s company when he was in a good humour; he could help one so well in one’s Latin exercises, which Tom regarded as a kind of puzzle that could only be found out by a lucky chance; and he could tell such wonderful fighting stories about Hal of the Wynd, for example, and other heroes who were especial favourites with Tom because they laid about them with heavy strokes. He had small opinion of Saladin, whose scimitar could cut a cushion in two in an instant; who wanted to cut cushions? That was a stupid story, and he didn’t care to hear it again. But when Robert Bruce, on the black pony, rose in his stirrups, and lifting his good battle-axe, cracked at once the helmet and the skull of the too hasty knight at Bannockburn, then Tom felt all the exaltation of sympathy, and if he had had a cocoa-nut at hand, he would have cracked it at once with the poker. Philip in his happier moods indulged Tom to the top of his bent,

heightening the crash and bang and fury of every fight with all the artillery of epithets and similes at his command. But he was not always in a good humour or happy mood. The slight spurt of peevish susceptibility which had escaped him in their first interview was a symptom of a perpetually recurring mental ailment—half of it nervous irritability, half of it the heart- bitterness produced by the sense of his deformity. In these fits of susceptibility every glance seemed to him to be charged either with offensive pity or with ill-repressed disgust; at the very least it was an indifferent glance, and Philip felt indifference as a child of the south feels the chill air of a northern spring. Poor Tom’s blundering patronage when they were out of doors together would sometimes make him turn upon the well-meaning lad quite savagely, and his eyes, usually sad and quiet, would flash with anything but playful lightning. No wonder Tom retained his suspicions of the humpback. But Philip’s self-taught skill in drawing was another link between them: for Tom found, to his disgust, that his new drawing-master gave him no dogs and donkeys to draw, but brooks and rustic bridges and ruins all with a general softness of black-lead surface indicating that nature, if anything, was rather satiny; and as Tom’s feeling for the picturesque in landscape was at present quite latent, it is not surprising that Mr Goodrich’s productions seemed to him an uninteresting form of art. Mr Tulliver having a vague intention that Tom should be put to some business which included the drawing out of plans and maps, had complained to Mr Riley, when he saw him at Mudport, that Tom seemed to be learning nothing of that sort: whereupon that obliging adviser had suggested that Tom should have drawing lessons. Mr Tulliver must not mind

paying extra for drawing: let Tom be made a good draughtsman, and he would be able to turn his pencil to any purpose. So it was ordered that Tom should have drawing lessons; and whom should Mr Stelling have selected as a master if not Mr Goodrich, who was considered quite at the head of his profession within a circuit of twelve miles round King’s Lorton? By which means Tom learned to make an extremely fine point to his pencil and to represent landscape with a “broad generality” which, doubtless from a narrow tendency in his mind to details, he thought extremely dull.

All this, you remember, happened in those dark ages when there were no Schools of Design, before schoolmasters were invariably men of scrupulous integrity, and before the clergy were all men of enlarged minds and varied culture. In those less favoured days, it is no fable that there were other clergymen besides Mr Stelling who had narrow intellects and large wants, and whose income, by a logical confusion to which Fortune, being a female as well as blindfold, is peculiarly liable, was proportioned not to their wants but to their intellect—with which income has clearly no inherent relation. The problem these gentlemen had to solve was to readjust the proportion between their wants and their income; and since wants are not easily starved to death, the simpler method appeared to be—to raise their income. There was but one way of doing this: any of those low callings in which men are obliged to do good work at a low price were forbidden to clergymen: was it their fault if their only resource was to turn out very poor work at a high price? Besides, how should Mr Stelling be expected to know that education was a delicate and difficult business? any more than an animal endowed with a power of boring a hole through rock should be expected to have wide views

of excavation. Mr Stelling’s faculties had been early trained to boring in a strait line, and he had no faculty to spare. But among Tom’s contemporaries whose fathers cast their sons on clerical instruction to find them ignorant after many days, there were many far less lucky than Tom Tulliver. Education was almost entirely a matter of luck—usually of ill-luck—in those distant days. The state of mind in which you take a billiard-cue or a dice-box in your hand is one of sober certainty compared with that of old- fashioned fathers, like Mr Tulliver, when they selected a school or a tutor for their sons. Excellent men, who had been forced all their lives to spell on an impromptu phonetic system, and having carried on a successful business in spite of this disadvantage, had acquired money enough to give their sons a better star in life than they had had themselves, must necessarily take their change as to the conscience and the competence of the schoolmaster whose circular fell in their way and appeared to promise so much more than they would ever have thought of asking for—including the return of linen, fork, and spoon. It was happy for them if some ambitious draper of their acquaintance had not brought up his son to the Church and if that young gentleman, at the age of four-and- twenty, had not closed his college dissipations by an imprudent marriage: otherwise, these innocent fathers desirous of doing the best for their offspring could only escape the draper’s son by happening to be on the foundation of a grammar school as yet unvisited by commissioners where two or three boys could have all to themselves the advantages of a large and lofty building, together with a headmaster, toothless, dim-eyed and deaf, whose erudite indistinctness and inattention were engrossed by them at the rate of three hundred pounds a head—a ripe scholar,

doubtless, when first appointed; but all ripeness beneath the sun has a further stage less esteemed in the market.

Tom Tulliver, then, compared with many other British youths of his time who have since had to scramble through life with some fragments of more or less relevant knowledge and a great deal of strictly relevant ignorance, was not so very unlucky. Mr Stelling was a broad-chested healthy man with the bearing of a gentleman, a conviction that a growing boy required a sufficiency of beef, and a certain hearty kindness in him that made him like to see Tom looking well and enjoying his dinner:—not a man of refined conscience or with any deep sense of the infinite issues belonging to everyday duties; not quite competent to his high offices; but incompetent gentlemen must live, and without private fortune, it is difficult to see how they could all live genteelly if they had nothing to do with education or government. Besides it was the fault of Tom’s mental Constitution that his faculties could not be nourished on the sort of knowledge Mr Stelling had to communicate. A boy born with a deficient power of apprehending signs and abstractions must suffer the penalty of his congenital deficiency, just as if he had been born with one leg shorter than the other; a method of education sanctioned by the long practice of our venerable ancestors was not to give way before the exceptional dullness of a boy who was merely living at the time then present. And Mr Stelling was convinced that a boy so stupid at signs and abstractions must be stupid at everything else, even if that reverend gentleman could have taught him everything else. It was the practice of our venerable ancestors to apply that ingenious instrument the thumb-screw, and to tighten and tighten it in order to elicit non-existent facts: they had a fixed opinion to begin with,

that the facts were existent, and what had they to do but to tighten the thumb-screw? In like manner, Mr Stelling had a fixed opinion that all boys with any capacity could learn what it was the only regular thing to teach: if they were slow, the thumb-screw must be tightened—the exercises must be insisted on with increased severity, and a page of Virgil be awarded as a penalty, to encourage and stimulate a too languid inclination to Latin verse.

Nevertheless the thumb-screw was relaxed a little during this second half year. Philip was so advanced in his studies and so apt, that Mr Stelling could obtain credit by his facility which required little help, much more easily than by the troublesome process of overcoming Tom’s dullness. Gentlemen with broad chests and ambitious intentions do sometimes disappoint their friends by failing to carry the world before them. Perhaps it is, that high achievements demand some other unusual qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes; perhaps it is that these stalwart gentlemen are rather indolent, their divinae particulam aurae being obstructed from soaring by a too hearty appetite. Some reason or other there was why Mr Stelling deferred the execution of many spirited projects—why he did not begin the editing of his Greek play, or any other work of scholarship in his leisure hours, but, after turning the key of his private study with much resolution, sat down to one of Theodore Hook’s novels. Tom was gradually allowed to shuffle through his lessons with less rigour, and having Philip to help him, he was able to make some show of having applied his mind in a confused and blundering way, without being cross-examined into betrayal that his mind had been entirely neutral in the matter. He thought school much more bearable under this modification of circumstances; and he went on

contentedly enough, picking up a promiscuous education chiefly from things that were not intended as education at all. What was understood to be his education, was simply the practice of reading, writing and spelling, carried on by an elaborate appliance of unintelligible ideas and by much failure in the effort to learn by rote.

Nevertheless, there was a visible improvement in Tom under this training; perhaps because he was not a boy in the abstract existing solely to illustrate the evils of a mistaken education, but a boy made of flesh and blood, with dispositions not entirely at the mercy of circumstances.

There was a great improvement in his bearing, for example, and some credit on this score was due to Mr Poulter, the village schoolmaster, who, being an old Peninsular soldier, was employed to drill Tom—a source of high mutual pleasure. Mr Poulter, who was understood by the company at the Black Swan to have once struck terror into the hearts of the French, was no longer personally formidable. He had rather a shrunken appearance, and was tremulous in the mornings, not from age, but from the extreme perversity of the King’s Lorton boys which nothing but gin could enable him to sustain with any firmness. Still, he carried himself with martial erectness, had his clothes scrupulously brushed, and his trousers tightly strapped, and on the Wednesday and Saturday afternoons when he came to Tom, he was always inspired with gin and old memories Which gave him an exceptionally spirited air, as of a superannuated charger who hears the drum. The drilling lessons were always protracted by episodes of warlike narrative much more interesting to Tom than Philip’s stories out of the Iliad; for there were no cannon in the

Iliad, and besides, Tom had felt some disgust on learning that Hector and Achilles might possibly never have existed. But the Duke of Wellington was really alive, and Bony had not been long dead—therefore Mr Poulter’s reminiscences of the Peninsular War were removed from all suspicion of being mythical. Mr Poulter, it appeared, had been a conspicuous figure at Talavera, and had contributed not a little to the peculiar terror with which his regiment of infantry was regarded by the enemy. On afternoons when his memory was more stimulated than usual, he remembered that the Duke of Wellington had (in strict privacy, lest jealousies should be awakened) expressed his esteem for that fine fellow Poulter. The very surgeon who attended him in the hospital after he had received his gunshot wound had been profoundly impressed with the superiority of Mr Poulter’s flesh: no other flesh would have healed in anything like the same time. On less personal matters connected with the important warfare in which he had been engaged Mr Poulter was more reticent, only taking care not to give the weight of his authority to any loose notions concerning military history. Any one who pretended to a knowledge of what occurred at the siege of Badajos was especially an object of silent pity to Mr Poulter: he wished that prating person had been run down and had the breath trampled out of him at the first go-off, as he himself had—he might talk about the siege of Badajos then! Tom did not escape irritating his drilling master occasionally, by his curiosity concerning other military matters than Mr Poulter’s personal experience.

“And General Wolfe, Mr Poulter? wasn’t he a wonderful fighter?” said Tom, who held the notion that all the martial heroes commemorated on the public-house signs were engaged in the

war with Bony.

“Not at all!” said Mr Poulter, contemptuously. “Nothing o’ the sort! . . . Heads up!” he added in a tone of stern command, which delighted Tom and made him feel as if he were a regiment in his own person.

“No, no!” Mr Poulter would continue, on coming to a pause in his discipline. “They’d better not talk to me about General Wolfe. He did nothing but die of his would; that’s a poor haction, I consider. Any other man ’ud have died o’ the wounds I’ve had . . . One of my sword-cuts ’ud ha’ killed a fellow like General Wolfe.”

“Mr Poulter,” Tom would say, at any allusion to the sword, “I wish you’d bring your sword and do the sword-exercise!”

For a long while Mr Poulter only shook his head in a significant manner at this request, and smiled patronisingly, as Jupiter may have done when Semele urged her too ambitious request. But one afternoon when a sudden shower of heavy rain had detained Mr Poulter twenty minutes longer than usual at the Black Swan, the sword was brought—just for Tom to look at.

“And this is the real sword you fought with in all the battles, Mr Poulter?” said Tom, handling the hilt. “Has it ever cut a Frenchman’s head off?”

“Head off? Ah! and would, if he’d had three heads.”

“But you had a gun and bayonet besides?” said Tom. “I should like the gun and bayonet best, because you could shoot ’em first and spear ’em after. Bang! Ps-s-s-s!” Tom gave the requisite pantomime to indicate the double enjoyment of pulling the trigger and thrusting the spear.

“Ah, but the sword’s the thing when you come to close fighting,” said Mr Poulter, involuntarily falling in with Tom’s

enthusiasm, and drawing the sword so suddenly that Tom leaped back with much agility.

“Oh but, Mr Poulter, if you’re going to do the exercise,” said Tom, a little conscious that he had not stood his ground as became an Englishman, “let me go and call Philip. He’ll like to see you, you know.”

“What! the humpbacked lad?” said Mr Poulter contemptuously. “What’s the use of his looking on?”

“Oh but he knows a great deal about fighting,” said Tom, “and how they used to fight with bows and arrows and battle-axes.”

“Let him come then—I’ll show him something different from his bows and arrows,” said Mr Poulter, coughing and drawing himself up, while he gave a little preliminary play to his wrist.

Tom ran in to Philip who was enjoying his afternoon’s holiday at the piano in the drawing-room, picking out tunes for himself and singing them. He was supremely happy perched like an amorphous bundle on the high stool, with his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on the opposite cornice, and his lips wide open, sending forth, with all his might, impromptu syllables to a tune of Arne’s; which had hit his fancy.

“Come, Philip,” said Tom, bursting in. “Don’t stay roaring ‘la la’ there—come and see old Poulter do his sword exercise in the carriage-house!”

The jar of this interruption—the discord of Tom’s tones coming across the notes to which Philip was vibrating in soul and body, would have been enough to unhinge his temper, even if there had been no question of Poulter the drilling-master. And Tom, in the hurry of seizing something to say to prevent Mr Poulter from thinking he was afraid of the sword when he sprang away from it,

had alighted on this proposition to fetch Philip—though he knew well enough that Philip hated to hear him mention his drilling- lessons. Tom would never have done so inconsiderate a thing except under the severe stress of his personal pride.

Philip shuddered visibly as he paused from his music. Then turning red, he said, with violent passion, “Get away, you lumbering idiot! Don’t come bellowing at me—you’re not fit to speak to anything but a cart horse!”

It was not the first time Philip had been made angry by him, but Tom had never before been assailed with verbal missiles that he understood so well.

“I’m fit to speak to something better than you—you poor- spirited imp!” said Tom, lighting up immediately at Philip’s fire. “You know I won’t hit you—because you’re no better than a girl. But I’m an honest man’s son, and your father’s a rogue— everybody says so!”

Tom flung out of the room, and slammed the door after him, made strangely heedless by his anger; for to slam doors within the hearing of Mrs Stelling, who was probably not far off, was an offence only to be wiped out by twenty lines of Virgil. In fact, that lady did presently descend from her room, in double wonder at the noise and the subsequent cessation of Philip’s music. She found him sitting in a heap on the hassock, and crying bitterly.

“What’s the matter, Wakem? What was that noise about? Who slammed the door?”

Philip looked up and hastily dried his eyes. “It was Tulliver who came in . . . to ask me to go out with him.”

“And what are you in trouble about?” said Mrs Stelling.

Philip was not her favourite of the two pupils: he was less

obliging than Tom, who was made useful in many ways. Still his father paid more than Mr Tulliver did, and she meant him to feel that she behaved exceedingly well to him. Philip, however, met her advances towards a good understanding very much as a caressed mollusc meets an invitation to show himself out of his shell. Mrs Stelling was not a loving, tender-hearted woman: she was a woman whose skirt sat well, who adjusted her waist, and patted her curls with a preoccupied air when she inquired after your welfare. These things, doubtless, represent a great social power, but it is not power of love—and no other power could win Philip from his personal reserve.

He said, in answer to her question, “My toothache came on and made me hysterical again.”

This had been the fact once, and Philip was glad of the recollection—it was like an inspiration to enable him to excuse his crying. He had to accept eau-de-cologne, and to refuse creosote in consequence, but that was easy.

Meanwhile Tom, who had for the first time sent a poisoned arrow into Philip’s heart, had returned to the carriage-house, where he found Mr Poulter with a fixed and earnest eye, wasting the perfections of his sword exercise on probably observant but inappreciative rats. But Mr Poulter was a host in himself; that is to say, he admired himself more than a whole army of spectators could have admired him. He took no notice of Tom’s return, being too entirely absorbed in the cut and thrust—the solemn one, two, three, four—and Tom, not without a slight feeling of alarm at Mr Poulter’s fixed eye and hungry-looking sword which seemed impatient for something else to cut besides the air, admired the performance from as great a distance as possible. It was not until

Mr Poulter paused and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, that Tom felt the full charm of the sword exercise, and wished it to be repeated.

“Mr Poulter,” said Tom, when the sword was being finally sheathed, “I wish you’d lend me your sword a little while to keep.” “No, no, young gentleman,” said Mr Poulter, shaking his head

decidedly, “you might do yourself some mischief with it.”

“No, I’m sure I wouldn’t—I’m sure I’d take care and not hurt myself. I shouldn’t take it out of the sheath much, but I could ground arms with it, and all that.”

“No, no, it won’t do, I tell you, it won’t do,” said Mr Poulter, preparing to depart. “What ’ud Mr Stelling say to me?”

“Oh, I say, do, Mr Poulter! I’d give you my five-shilling piece, if you’d let me keep the sword a week. Look here!” said Tom, reaching out the attractively large round of silver. The young dog calculated the effect as well as if he had been a philosopher.

“Well,” said Mr Poulter, with still deeper gravity, “you must keep it out of sight, you know.”

“Oh yes, I’ll keep it under the bed,” said Tom, eagerly, “or else at the bottom of my large box.”

“And let me see, now, whether you can draw it out of the sheath without hurting yourself.”

That process having been gone through more than once, Mr Poulter felt that he had acted with scrupulous conscientiousness and said, “Well, now, Master Tulliver, if I take the crown-piece, it is to make sure as you’ll do no mischief with the sword.”

“Oh no, indeed, Mr Poulter,” said Tom delightedly handing him the crown-piece, and grasping the sword, which, he thought, might have been lighter with advantage.

“But if Mr Stelling catches you carrying it in,” said Mr Poulter, pocketing the crown-piece provisionally while he raised this new doubt.

“Oh he always keeps in his upstairs study on Saturday afternoons,” said Tom, who disliked anything sneaking, but was not disinclined to a little stratagem in a worthy cause. So he carried off the sword in triumph mixed with dread—dread that he might encounter Mr or Mrs Stelling—to his bedroom, where, after some consideration, he hid it in the closet behind some hanging clothes. That night he fell asleep in the thought that he would astonish Maggie with it when she came—tie it round his waist with his red comforter, and make her believe that the sword was his own and that he was going to be a soldier. There was nobody but Maggie who would be silly enough to believe him, or whom he dared allow to know that he had a sword. And Maggie was really coming next week, to see Tom before she went to a boarding- school with Lucy.

If you think a lad of thirteen would not have been so childish, you must be an exceptionally wise man, who, although you are devoted to a civil calling, requiring you to look bland rather than formidable, yet never, since you had a beard, threw yourself into a martial attitude, and frowned before the looking-glass. It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possible cease for want of a “public”.

Chapter 5

Maggie’s Second Visit

T

his last breach between the two lads was not readily mended and for some time they spoke to each other no more than was necessary. Their natural antipathy of

temperament made resentment an easy passage to hatred, and in Philip the transition seemed to have begun: there was no malignity in his disposition, but there was a susceptibility that made him peculiarly liable to a strong sense of repulsion. The ox— we may venture to assert it on the authority of a great classic—is not given to use his teeth as an instrument of attack; and Tom was an excellent bovine lad, who ran at questionable objects in a truly ingenuous bovine manner; but he had blundered on Philip’s tenderest point, and had caused him as much acute pain as if he had studied the means with the nicest precision and the most envenomed spite. Tom saw no reason why they should not make up this quarrel as they had done many others, by behaving as if nothing had happened; for though he had never before said to Philip that his father was a rogue, this idea had so habitually made part of his feeling as to the relation between himself and his dubious schoolfellow, whom he could neither like nor dislike, that the mere utterance did not make such an epoch to him as it did to Philip. And he had a right to say so, when Philip hectored over him and called him names. But perceiving that his first advances towards amity were not met, he relapsed into his least favourable disposition towards Philip, and resolved never to appeal to him

either about drawing or exercises again. They were only so far civil to each other as was necessary to prevent their state of feud from being observed by Mr Stelling, who would have “put down” such nonsense with great vigour.

When Maggie came, however, she could not help looking with growing interest at the new school-fellow, although he was the son of that wicked Lawyer Wakem who made her father so angry. She had arrived in the middle of school-hours, and had sat by while Philip went through his lessons with Mr Stelling. Tom, some weeks ago, had sent her word that Philip knew no end of stories— not stupid stories like hers—and she was convinced now from her own observation that he must be very clever: she hoped he would think her rather clever too, when she came to talk to him. Maggie moreover had rather a tenderness for deformed things; she preferred the wry-necked lambs, because it seemed to her that the lambs which were quite strong and well made wouldn’t mind so much about being petted, and she was especially fond of petting objects that would think it very delightful to be petted by her. She loved Tom very dearly, but she often wished that he cared more about her loving him.

“I think Philip Wakem seems a nice boy, Tom,” she said, when they went out of the study together into the garden, to pass the interval before dinner. “He couldn’t choose his father, you know; and I’ve read of very bad men who had good sons, as well as good parents who had bad children. And if Philip is good, I think we ought to be the more sorry for him because his father is not a good man. You like him, don’t you?”

“Oh, he’s a queer fellow,” said Tom, curtly, “and he’s as sulky as can be with me, because I told him his father was a rogue. And

I’d a right to tell him so, for it was true—and he began it, with calling me names. But you can stop here by yourself a bit, Magsie, will you? I’ve got something I want to do upstairs.”

“Can’t I go too?” said Maggie, who, in this first day of meeting again, loved Tom’s shadow.

“No, it’s something I’ll tell you about by-and-by, not yet,” said Tom, skipping away.

In the afternoon, the boys were at their books in the study, preparing the morrow’s lessons, that they might have a holiday in the evening in honour of Maggie’s arrival. Tom was hanging over his Latin grammar, moving his lips inaudibly like a strict but impatient Catholic repeating his tale of paternosters, and Philip, at the other end of the room, was busy with two volumes, with a look of contented diligence that excited Maggie’s curiosity: he did not look at all as if he were learning a lesson. She sat on a low stool at nearly right angle with the two boys, watching first one and then the other, and Philip looking off his book once towards the fireplace, caught the pair of questioning dark eyes fixed upon him. He thought this sister of Tulliver’s seemed a nice little thing, quite unlike her brother: he wished he had a little sister. What was it, he wondered, that made Maggie’s dark eyes remind him of the stories about princesses being turned into animals? . . . I think it was, that her eyes were full of unsatisfied intelligence and unsatisfied, beseeching affection.

“I say, Magsie,” said Tom at last, shutting his books and putting them away with the energy and decision of a perfect master in the art of “leaving off,” “I’ve done my lessons now. Come upstairs with me.”

“What is it?” said Maggie when they were outside the door, a

slight suspicion crossing her mind as she remembered Tom’s Preliminary visit upstairs. “It isn’t trick you’re going to play me, now?”

“No, no, Maggie,” said Tom, in his most coaxing tone. “It’s something you’ll like ever so.”

He put his arm round her neck, and she put hers round his waist, and twined together in this way, they went upstairs.

“I say, Magsie, you must not tell anybody, you know,” said Tom, “else I shall get fifty lines.”

“Is it alive?” said Maggie, whose imagination had settled for the moment on the idea that Tom kept a ferret clandestinely.

“Oh, I shan’t tell you,” said he. “Now you go into that corner and hide your face while I reach it out,” he added as he locked the bedroom door behind them. “I’ll tell you when to turn round. You mustn’t squeal out, you know.”

“Oh, but if you frighten me, I shall,” said Maggie, beginning to look rather serious.

“You won’t be frightened, you silly thing,” said Tom. “Go and hide your face and mind you don’t peep.”

“Of course I shan’t peep,” said Maggie, disdainfully: and she buried her face in the pillow like a person of strict honour.

But Tom looked round warily as he walked to the closet; then he stepped into the narrow space, and almost closed the door. Maggie kept her face buried without the aid of principle, for in that dream-suggestive attitude she had soon forgotten where she was, and her thoughts were busy with the poor deformed boy who was so clever, when Tom called out, “Now then, Magsie!”

Nothing but long meditation and preconcerted arrangement of effects could have enabled Tom to present so striking a figure as

he did to Maggie when she looked up. Dissatisfied with the pacific aspect of a face which had no more than the faintest hint of flaxen eyebrow, together with a pair of amiable blue-grey eyes and round pink cheeks that refused to look formidable let him frown as he would before the looking-glass—(Philip had once told him of a man who had a horseshoe frown, and Tom had tried with all his frowning might to make a horseshoe on his forehead)—he had had recourse to that unfailing source of the terrible, burnt cork, and had made himself a pair of black eyebrows that met in a satisfactory manner over his nose and were matched by a less carefully adjusted blackness about the chin. He had wound a red handkerchief round his cloth cap to give it the air of a turban, and his red comforter across his breast as a scarf—an amount of red which, with the tremendous frown on his brow, and the decision with which he grasped the sword as he held it with its point resting on the ground, would suffice to convey an approximate idea of his fierce and bloodthirsty disposition.

Maggie looked bewildered for a moment, and Tom enjoyed that moment keenly; but in the next, she laughed, clapped her hands together and said, “Oh Tom, You’ve made yourself like Bluebeard at the show.”

It was clear she had not been struck with the presence of the sword—it was not unsheathed. Her frivolous mind required a more direct appeal to its sense of the terrible, and Tom prepared for his masterstroke. Frowning with a double amount of intention, if not of corrugation, he (carefully) drew the sword from its sheath and pointed it at Maggie.

“Oh Tom, please don’t,” exclaimed Maggie, in a tone of suppressed dread, shrinking away from him into the opposite

corner, “I shall scream—I’m sure I shall! Oh don’t! I wish I’d never come upstairs!”

The corners of Tom’s mouth showed an inclination to a smile of complacency that was immediately checked as inconsistent with the severity of a great warrior. Slowly he let down the scabbard on the floor, lest it should make too much noise, and then said, sternly, “I’m the Duke of Wellington! March!” stamping forward with the right leg a little bent, and the sword still pointing towards Maggie, who, trembling, and with tear-filled eyes, got upon the bed, as the only means of widening the space between them.

Tom, happy in this spectator of his military performances, even though the spectator was only Maggie, proceeded with the utmost exertion of his force, to such an exhibition of the cut and thrust as would necessarily be expected of the Duke of Wellington.

“Tom, I will not bear it—I will scream,” said Maggie, at the first movement of the sword. “You’ll hurt yourself, you’ll cut your head off!”

“One—two,” said Tom, resolutely, though at “two” his wrist trembled a little. “Three” came more slowly, and with it the sword swung downwards, and Maggie gave a loud shriek. The sword had fallen, with its edge on Tom’s foot, and in a moment he had fallen too. Maggie leaped from the bed, still shrieking, and immediately there was a rush of footsteps towards the room. Mr Stelling, from his upstairs study, was the first to enter. He found both the children on the floor. Tom had fainted, and Maggie was shaking him by the collar of his jacket, screaming, with wild eyes. She thought he was dead, poor child! and yet she shook him, as if that would bring him back to life. In another minute she was sobbing with joy because Tom had opened his eyes: she couldn’t sorrow

yet that he had hurt his foot—it seemed as if all happiness lay in his being alive.

Chapter 6

A Love Scene

oor Tom bore his severe pain heroically, and was resolute in not “telling” of Mr Poulter more than was avoidable: the five-shilling piece remained a secret event to Maggie. But

there was a terrible dread weighing on his mind—so terrible that he dared not even ask the question which might bring the fatal “yes”—he dared not ask the surgeon or Mr Stelling “Shall I be lame, sir?” He mastered himself so as not to cry out at the pain, but when his foot had been dressed, and he was left alone with Maggie seated by his bedside, the children sobbed together with their heads laid on the same pillow. Tom was thinking of himself walking about on crutches, like the wheelwright’s son, and Maggie, who did not guess what was in his mind, sobbed for company. It had not occurred to the surgeon or to Mr Stelling to anticipate this dread in Tom’s mind and to reassure him by hopeful words. But Philip watched the surgeon out of the house and waylaid Mr Stelling to ask the very question that Tom had not dared to ask for himself. “I beg your pardon, sir—but does Mr Askern say Tulliver will be lame?”

“Oh no, Oh no,” said Mr Stelling, “not permanently. Only for a little while.”

“Did he tell Tulliver so, sir, do you think?” “No: nothing was said to him on the subject.” “Then may I go and tell him sir?”

“Yes, to be sure: now you mention it, I daresay he may be

troubling about that. Go to his bedroom, but be very quiet at present.”

It had been Philip’s first thought when he heard of the accident—“Will Tulliver be lame? It will be very hard for him if he is”—and Tom’s hitherto unforgiven offences were washed out by that pity. Philip felt that they were no longer in a state of repulsion but were being drawn into a common current of suffering and sad privation. His imagination did not dwell on the outward calamity and its future effect on Tom’s life, but it made vividly present to him the probable state of Tom’s feeling: he had only lived fourteen years, but those years had, most of them, been steeped in the sense of a lot irremediably hard.

“Mr Askern says you’ll soon be all right again, Tulliver, did you know?” he said, rather timidly, as he stepped gently up to Tom’s bed. “I’ve just been to ask Mr Stelling, and he says you’ll walk as well as ever again, by-and-by.”

Tom looked up with that momentary stopping of the breath which comes with a sudden joy; then he gave a long sigh, and turned his blue-grey eyes straight on Philip’s face as he had not done for a fortnight or more. As for Maggie, this intimation of a possibility she had not thought of before affected her as a new trouble: the bare idea of Tom’s being always lame overpowered the assurance that such a misfortune was not likely to befall him; and she clung to him and cried afresh.

“Don’t be a little silly, Magsie,” said Tom, tenderly, feeling very brave now. “I shall soon get well.”

“Good-bye, Tulliver,” said Philip, putting out his small, delicate hand, which Tom clasped immediately with his more substantial fingers.

“I say,” said Tom “ask Mr Stelling to let you come and sit with me sometimes, till I get up again, Wakem—and tell me about Robert Bruce, you know.”

After that, Philip spent all his time out of school-hours with Tom and Maggie. Tom liked to hear fighting stories as much as ever, but he insisted strongly on the fact that those great fighters who did so many wonderful things and came off unhurt, wore excellent armour from head to foot which made fighting easy work, he considered. He should not have hurt his foot if he had had an iron shoe on. He listened with great interest to a new story of Philip’s about a man who had a very bad wound in his foot, and cried out so dreadfully with the pain, that his friends could bear with him no longer, but put him ashore on a desert island, with nothing but some wonderful poisoned arrows to kill animals with for food.

“I didn’t roar out a bit, you know,” Tom said, “and I daresay my foot was as bad as his. It’s cowardly to roar.”

But Maggie would have it that when anything hurt you very much it was quite permissible to cry out, and it was cruel of people not to bear it. She wanted to know if Philoctetes had a sister, and why she didn’t go with him on the desert island and take care of him.

One day, soon after Philip had told this story, he and Maggie were in the study alone together while Tom’s foot was being dressed. Philip was at his books, and Maggie, after sauntering idly round the room, not caring to do anything in particular, because she would soon go to Tom again, went and leaned on the table near Philip to see what he was doing, for they were quite old friends now and perfectly at home with each other.

“What are you reading about in Greek?” she said. “It’s poetry— I can see that, because the lines are so short.”

“It’s about Philoctetes—the lame man, I was telling you of yesterday,” he answered, resting his head on his hand and looking at her, as if he were not at all sorry to be interrupted. Maggie, in her absent way, continued to lean forward, resting on her arms and moving her feet about, while her dark eyes got more and more fixed and vacant as if she had quite forgotten Philip and his book.

“Maggie,” said Philip, after a minute or two, still leaning on his elbow and looking at her, “if you had had a brother like me—do you think you should have loved him as well as Tom?”

Maggie started a little on being roused for her reverie, and said, “What?” Philip repeated his question.

“Oh yes, better,” she answered, immediately. “No, not better: because I don’t think I could love you better than Tom. But I should be so sorry—so sorry for you.”

Philip coloured: he had meant to imply, would she love him as well in spite of his deformity, and yet when she alluded to it so plainly, he winced under her pity. Maggie, young as she was, felt her mistake. Hitherto she had instinctively behaved as if she were quite unconscious of Philip’s deformity: her own keen sensitiveness and experience under family criticism sufficed to teach her this, as well as if she had been directed by the most finished breeding.

“But you are so very clever, Philip, and you can play and sing,” she added, quickly, “I wish you were my brother—I’m very fond of you, and you would stay at home with me when Tom went out, and you would teach me everything, wouldn’t you? Greek and everything.”

“But you’ll go away soon, and go to school, Maggie,” said Philip, “and then you’ll forget all about me and not care for me any more. And then I shall see you when you’re grown up, and you’ll hardly take any notice of me.”

“Oh no, I shan’t forget you, I’m sure,” said Maggie, shaking her head very seriously. “I never forget anything, and I think about everybody when I’m away from them. I think about poor Yap— he’s got a lump in his throat, and Luke says he’ll die. Only don’t you tell Tom, because it will vex him so. You never saw Yap: he’s a queer little dog—nobody cares about him but Tom and me.”

“Do you care as much about me as you do about Yap, Maggie?” said Philip, smiling rather sadly.

“Oh yes, I should think so,” said Maggie, laughing.

“I’m very fond of you, Maggie; I shall never forget you,” said Philip, “and when I’m very unhappy, I shall always think of you, and wish I had a sister with dark eyes just like yours.”

“Why do you like my eyes?” said Maggie, well pleased. She had never heard any one but her father speak of her eyes as if they had merit.

“I don’t know,” said Philip. “They’re not like any other eyes. They seem trying to speak—trying to speak kindly. I don’t like other people to look at me much, but I like you to look at me, Maggie.”

“Why, I think you’re fonder of me than Tom is,” said Maggie, rather sorrowfully. Then, wondering how she could convince Philip that she could like him just as well, although he was crooked, she said, “Should you like me to kiss you, as I do Tom? I will, if you like.”

“Yes, very much: nobody kisses me.”

Maggie put her arm round his neck and kissed him quite earnestly.

“There now,” she said, “I shall always remember you, and kiss you when I see you again, if it’s ever so long. But I’ll go now, because I think Mr Askern’s done with Tom’s foot.”

When their father came the second time, Maggie said to him, “Oh father, Philip Wakem is so very good to Tom—he is such a clever boy, and I do love him. And you love him too, Tom, don’t you? Say you love him,” she added entreatingly.

Tom coloured a little as he looked at his father and said, “I shan’t be friends with him when I leave school, father; but we’ve made it up now, since my foot has been bad, and he’s taught me to play at draughts, and I can beat him.”

“Well, Well,” said Mr Tulliver, “if he’s good to you, try and make him amends and be good to him. He’s a poor crooked creatur and takes after his dead mother. But don’t you be getting too thick with him—he’s got his father’s blood in him too. Ay, ay, the grey colt may chance to kick like his black sire.”

The jarring natures of the two boys effected what Mr Tulliver’s admonition alone might have failed to effect: in spite of Philip’s new kindness, and Tom’s answering regard in this time of his trouble, they never became close friends. When Maggie was gone, and when Tom by-and-by began to walk about as usual, the friendly warmth that had been kindled by pity and gratitude died out by degrees, and left them in their old relation to each other. Philip was often peevish and contemptuous; and Tom’s more specific and kindly impressions gradually melted into the old background of suspicion and dislike towards him as a queer fellow, and humpback, and a son of a rogue. If boys and men are to

be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they will inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out.

Chapter 7

The Golden Gates are Passed

o Tom went on even to the fifth half year—till he was turned sixteen—at King’s Lorton, while Maggie was growing, with a rapidity which her aunts considered highly reprehensible, at Miss Firniss’s boarding school in the ancient town of Laceham on the Floss, with cousin Lucy for her companion. In her early letters to Tom she had always sent her love to Philip and asked many questions about him which were answered by brief sentences about Tom’s toothache, and a turf- house which he was helping to build in the garden, with other items of that kind. She was pained to hear Tom say in the holidays that Philip was as queer as ever again, and often cross: they were no longer very good friends, she perceived, and when she reminded Tom that he ought always to love Philip for being so good to him when his foot was bad, he answered, “Well, it isn’t my fault: I don’t do anything to him.” She hardly ever saw Philip during the remainder of their school life: in the Midsummer holidays he was always away at the seaside, and at Christmas she could only meet him at long intervals in the streets of St Ogg’s. When they did meet, she remembered her promise to kiss him, but, as a young lady who had been at a boarding-school, she knew now that such a greeting was out of the question, and Philip would not expect it. The promise was void like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood: void as promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms

grew side by side with the ripening peach—impossible to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed. But when their father was actually engaged in the long-threatened lawsuit, and Wakem, as the agent at once of Pivart and Old Harry, was acting against him, even Maggie felt, with some sadness, that they were not likely ever to have any intimacy with Philip again: the very name of Wakem made her father angry, and she had once heard him say that if that crook-backed son lived to inherit his father’s ill-gotten gains, there would be a curse upon him. “Have as little to do with him at school as you can, my lad,” he said to Tom; and the command was obeyed the more easily because Mr Stelling by this time had two additional pupils; for though this gentleman’s rise in the world was not of that meteor-like rapidity which the admirers of his extemporaneous eloquence had expected for a preacher whose voice demanded so wide a sphere, he had yet enough of growing prosperity to enable him to increase his expenditure in continued disproportion to his income.

As for Tom’s school course, it went on with mill-like monotony, his mind continuing to move with a slow, half-stifled pulse in a medium of uninteresting or unintelligible ideas. But each vacation he brought home larger and larger drawings with the satiny rendering of landscape and water-colours in vivid greens, together with manuscript books full of exercises and problems, in which the handwriting was all the finer because he gave his whole mind to it. Each vacation he brought home a new book or two, indicating his progress through different stages of history, Christian doctrine, and Latin literature; and that passage was not entirely without result besides the possession of the books. Tom’s ear and tongue had become accustomed to a great many words and phrases which

are understood to be signs of an educated condition, and though he had never really applied his mind to any one of his lessons, the lessons had left a deposit of vague, fragmentary ineffectual notions. Mr Tulliver, seeing signs of acquirement beyond the reach of his own criticism, thought it was probably all right with Tom’s education: he observed, indeed, that there were no maps, and not enough “summing,” but he made no formal complaint to Mr Stelling. It was a puzzling business, this schooling; and if he took Tom away, where could he send him with better effect?

By the time Tom had reached his last quarter at King’s Lorton, the years had made striking changes in him since the day we saw him returning from Mr Jacobs’ Academy. He was a tall youth now, carrying himself without the least awkwardness, and speaking without more shyness than was a becoming symptom of blended diffidence and pride: he wore his tailed coat and his stand-up collars, and watched the down on his lip with eager impatience looking every day at his virgin razor, with which he had provided himself in the last holidays. Philip had already left—at the Autumn quarter—that he might go to the South for the winter, for the sake of his health; and this change helped to give Tom the unsettled, exulting feeling that usually belongs to the last months before leaving school. This quarter too, there was some hope of his father’s lawsuit being decided: that made the prospect of home more entirely pleasurable. For Tom, who had gathered his view of the case from his father’s conversation, had no doubt that Pivart would be beaten.

Tom had not heard anything from home for some weeks—a fact which did not surprise him, for his father and mother were not apt to manifest their affection in unnecessary letters—when to his

great surprise on the morning of a dark cold day near the end of November, he was told, soon after entering the study at nine o’clock, that his sister was in the drawing-room. It was Mrs Stelling who had come into the study to tell him, and she left him to enter the drawing-room alone.

Maggie too was tall now, with braided and coiled hair: she was almost as tall as Tom, though she was only thirteen; and she really looked older than he did at that moment. She had thrown off her bonnet, her heavy braids were pushed back from her forehead as if it would not bear that extra load, and her young face had a strangely worn look as her eyes turned anxiously towards the door. When Tom entered, she did not speak, but only went up to him, put her arms round his neck and kissed him earnestly. He was used to various moods of hers, and felt no alarm at the unusual seriousness of her greeting.

“Why, how is it you’re come so early this cold morning, Maggie? Did you come in the gig?” said Tom, as she backed towards the sofa and drew him to her side.

“No, I came by the coach—I’ve walked from the turnpike.”

“But how is it you’re not at school? The holidays have not begun yet?”

“Father wanted me at home,” said Maggie, with a slight trembling of the lip. “I came home three or four days ago.”

“Isn’t my father well?” said Tom, rather anxiously.

“Not quite,” said Maggie. “He’s very unhappy, Tom. The lawsuit is ended, and I came to tell you, because I thought it would be better for you to know it before you came home, and I didn’t like only to send you a letter.”

“My father hasn’t lost?” said Tom, hastily, springing from the

sofa, and standing before Maggie with his hands suddenly thrust in his pockets.

“Yes, dear Tom,” said Maggie, looking up at him with trembling.

Tom was silent a minute or two, with his eyes fixed on the floor. Then he said—“My father will have to pay a good deal of money, then?”

“Yes,” said Maggie, rather faintly.

“Well, it can’t be helped,” said Tom, bravely, not translating the loss of a large sum of money into any tangible results. “But my father’s very much vexed, I dare say?” he added, looking at Maggie, and thinking that her agitated face was only part of her girlish way of taking things.

“Yes,” said Maggie, again faintly. Then, urged to fuller speech by Tom’s freedom from apprehension, she said loudly and rapidly, as if the words would burst from her, “Oh Tom, he will lose the Mill and the land, and everything. He will have nothing left.”

Tom’s eyes flashed out one look of surprise at her before he turned pale and trembled visibly. He said nothing, but sat down on the sofa again, looking vaguely out of the opposite window.

Anxiety about the future had never entered Tom’s mind. His father had always ridden a good horse, kept a good house, and had the cheerful, confident air of a man who has plenty of property to fall back upon. Tom had never dreamed that his father would “fail:” that was a form of misfortune which he had always heard spoken of as a deep disgrace, and disgrace was an idea that he could not associate with any of his relations, least of all with his father. A proud sense of family respectability was part of the very air Tom had been born and brought up in. He knew there were

people in St Ogg’s who made a show without money to support it, and he had always heard such people spoken of by his own friends with contempt and reprobation: he had a strong belief, which was a life-long habit, and required no definite evidence to rest on, that his father could spend a great deal of money if he chose; and since his education at Mr Stelling’s had given him a more expensive view of life, he had often thought that when he got older he would make a figure in the world, with his horse and dogs and saddle, and other accoutrements of a fine young man, and show himself equal to any of his contemporaries at St Ogg’s, who might consider themselves a grade above him in society, because their fathers were professional men or had large oil-mills. As to the prognostics and head-shaking of his aunts and uncles, they had never produced the least effect on him except to make him think that aunts and uncles were disagreeable society: he had heard them find fault in much the same way as along as he could remember. His father knew better than they did.

The down had come on Tom’s lip, yet his thoughts and expectations had been hitherto only the reproduction in changed forms of the boyish dreams in which he had lived three years ago. He was awakened now with a violent shock.

Maggie was frightened at Tom’s pale, trembling silence. There was something else to tell him—something worse. She threw her arms round him at last, and said, with a half sob, “Oh Tom—dear, dear Tom, don’t fret too much—try and bear it well.”

Tom turned his cheek passively to meet her entreating kisses, and there gathered a moisture in his eyes, which he just rubbed away with his hand. The action seemed to rouse him, for he shook himself and said, “I shall go home with you Maggie? Didn’t my

father say I was to go?”

“No, Tom, father didn’t wish it,” said Maggie, her anxiety about his feeling helping her to master her agitation:—What would he do when she told him all? “But mother wants you to come—poor mother—she cries so. Oh Tom, it’s very dreadful at home.”

Maggie’s lips grew whiter, and she began to tremble almost as Tom had done. The two poor things clung closer to each other— both trembling—the one at an unshapen fear, the other at the image of a terrible certainty. When Maggie spoke, it was hardly above a whisper.

“And . . . and . . . poor father . . .”

Maggie could not utter it. But the suspense was intolerable to Tom. A vague idea of going to prison as a consequence of debt, was the shape his fears had begun to take.

“Where’s my father?” he said, impatiently. “Tell me, Maggie.” “He’s at home,” said Maggie, finding it easier to reply to that

question. “But,” she added, after a pause, “not himself . . . He fell off his horse . . . He has known nobody but me ever since . . . He seems to have lost his senses . . . Oh, father, father . . .”

With these last words Maggie’s sobs burst forth with the more violence for the previous struggle against them. Tom felt that pressure of the heart which forbids tears: he had no distinct vision of their troubles as Maggie had, who had been at home: he only felt the crushing weight of what seemed unmitigated misfortune. He tightened his arm almost convulsively round Maggie as she sobbed, but his face looked rigid and tearless—his eyes blank—as if a black curtain of cloud had suddenly fallen on his path.

But Maggie soon checked herself abruptly: a single thought had acted on her like a startling sound.

“We must set out, Tom—we must not stay—father will miss me—we must be at the turnpike at ten to meet the coach.” She said this with hasty decision, rubbing her eyes, and rising to seize her bonnet.

Tom at once felt the same impulse, and rose too. “Wait a minute, Maggie,” he said. “I must speak to Mr Stelling, and then we’ll go.”

He thought he must go to the study where the pupils were, but on his way he met Mr Stelling, who had heard from his wife that Maggie appeared to be in trouble when she asked for her brother, and, now that he thought the brother and sister had been alone long enough, was coming to inquire and offer his sympathy.

“Please, sir, I must go home,” Tom said abruptly, as he met Mr Stelling in the passage. “I must go back with my sister directly. My father’s lost his law-suit—he’s lost all his property—and he’s very ill.”

Mr Stelling felt like a kind-hearted man: he foresaw a probable money loss for himself, but this had no appreciable share in his feeling while he looked with grave pity at the brother and sister for whom youth and sorrow had begun together. When he knew how Maggie had come and how eager she was to get home again, he hurried their departure, only whispering something to Mrs Stelling, who had followed him, and who immediately left the room.

Tom and Maggie were standing on the door-step, ready to set out, when Mrs Stelling came with a little basket, which she hung on Maggie’s arm, saying, “Do remember to eat something on the way, dear.” Maggie’s heart went out towards this woman whom she had never liked, and she kissed her silently. It was the first

sign within the poor child of that new sense which is the gift of sorrow—that susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving fellowship, as to haggard men among the icebergs the mere presence of an ordinary comrade stirs the deep fountains of affection.

Mr Stelling put his hand on Tom’s shoulder and said, “God bless you, my boy: let me know how you get on.” Then he pressed Maggie’s hand; but there were no audible good-byes. Tom had so often thought how joyful he should be the day he left school “for good!” And now his school years seemed like a holiday that had come to an end.

The two slight youthful figures soon grew indistinct on the distant road—were soon lost behind the projecting hedgerow.

They had gone forth together into their new life of sorrow, and they would never more see the sunshine undimmed by remembered cares. They had entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood had forever closed behind them.

BOOK THIRD

The Downfall

Chapter 1

What had Happened at Home

hen Mr Tulliver first knew the fact that the lawsuit was decided against him, and that Pivart and Wakem were triumphant, everyone who happened to observe him at

the time thought that, for so confident and hot-tempered a man, he bore the blow remarkably well. He thought so himself; he thought he was going to show that if Wakem or anybody else considered him crushed, they would find themselves mistaken. He could not refuse to see that the costs of this protracted suit would take more than he possessed to pay them, but he appeared to himself to be full of expedients by which he could ward off any results but such as were tolerable, and could avoid the appearance of breaking down in the world. All the obstinacy and defiance of his nature, driven out of their old channel, found a vent for themselves in the immediate formation of plans by which he would meet his difficulties and remain Mr Tulliver of Dorlcote Mill, in spite of them. There was such a rush of projects in his brain, that it was no wonder his face was flushed when he came away from his talk with his attorney, Mr Gore, and mounted his horse to ride home from Lindum. There was Furley, who held the mortgage on the land, a reasonable fellow who would see his own interest, Mr Tulliver was convinced, and who would be glad not only to purchase the whole estate, including the Mill and homestead, but would accept Mr Tulliver as tenant and be willing to advance money to be repaid with high interest out of the profits

of the business, which would be made over to him, Mr Tulliver only taking enough barely to maintain himself and his family. Who would neglect such a profitable investment? Certainly not Furley, for Mr Tulliver had determined that Furley should meet his plans with the utmost alacrity; and there are men whose brains have not yet been dangerously heated by the loss of a lawsuit, who are apt to see in their own interest or desires a motive for other men’s actions. There was no doubt (in the miller’s mind) that Furley would do just what was desirable; and if he did—why, things would not be so very much worse. Mr Tulliver and his family must live meagrely and humbly, but it would only be till the profits of the business had paid off Furley’s advances, and that might be while Mr Tulliver had still a good many years of life before him. It was clear that the costs of the suit could be paid without his being obliged to turn out of his old place and look like a ruined man. It was certainly an awkward moment in his affairs. There was that suretyship for poor Riley, who had died suddenly last April, and left his friend saddled with a debt of two hundred and fifty pounds—a fact which had helped to make Mr Tulliver’s banking- book less pleasant reading than a man might desire towards Christmas. Well! He had never been one of those poor-spirited sneaks who would refuse to give a helping hand to a fellow traveller in this puzzling world. The really vexatious business was the fact that some months ago the creditor who had lent him the five hundred pounds to repay Mrs Glegg had become uneasy about his money (set on by Wakem, of course), and Mr Tulliver, still confident that he should gain his suit, and finding it eminently inconvenient to raise the said sum until that desirable issue had taken place, had rashly acceded to the demand that he should give

a bill of sale on his household furniture and some other effects as security in lieu of the bond. It was all one, he had said to himself; he should soon pay off the money, and there was no harm in giving that security any more than another. But now the consequences of this bill of sale occurred to him in a new light, and he remembered that the time was close at hand when it would be enforced unless the money were repaid. Two months ago he would have declared stoutly that he would never be beholden to his wife’s friends, but now he told himself as stoutly that it was nothing but right and natural that Bessy should go to the Pullets and explain the thing to them: they would hardly let Bessy’s furniture be sold, and it might be security to Pullet if he advanced the money—there would, after all, be no gift or favour in the matter. Mr Tulliver would never have asked for anything from so poor-spirited a fellow for himself, but Bessy might do so if she liked.

It is precisely the proudest and most obstinate men who are the most liable to shift their position and contradict themselves in this sudden manner; everything is easier to them than to face the simple fact that they have been thoroughly defeated, and must begin life anew. And Mr Tulliver, you perceive, though nothing more than a superior miller and maltster, was as proud and obstinate as if he had been a very lofty personage in whom such dispositions might be a source of that conspicuous, far-echoing tragedy which sweeps the stage in regal robes and makes the dullest chronicler sublime. The pride and obstinacy of millers and other insignificant people whom you pass unnoticingly on the road every day have their tragedy too, but it is of that unwept, hidden sort that goes on from generation to generation and leaves no

record—such tragedy, perhaps, as lies in the conflicts of young souls, hungry for joy, under a lot made suddenly hard to them, under the dreariness of a home where the morning brings no promise with it and where the unexpectant discontent of worn and disappointed parents weighs on the children like a damp, thick air in which all the functions of life are depressed; or such tragedy as lies in the slow or sudden death that follows on a bruised passion, though it may be a death that finds only a parish funeral. There are certain animals to which tenacity of position is a law of life— they can never flourish again, after a single wrench. And there are certain human beings to whom predominance is a law of life—they can only sustain humiliation so long as they can refuse to believe in it, and in their own conception, predominate still.

Mr Tulliver was still predominating in his own imagination as he approached St Ogg’s, through which he had to pass on his way homeward. But what was it that suggested to him, as he saw the Laceham coach entering the town, to follow it to the coach-office and get the clerk there to write a letter, requiring Maggie to come home the very next day? Mr Tulliver’s own hand shook too much under his excitement for him to write himself, and he wanted the letter to be given to the coachman to deliver to Miss Firniss’ school in the morning. There was a craving which he would not account for to himself, to have Maggie near him—without delay—she must come back by the coach tomorrow.

To Mrs Tulliver, when he got home, he would admit no difficulties, and scolded down her burst of grief on hearing that the lawsuit was lost by angry assertions that there was nothing to grieve about. He said nothing to her that night about the bill of sale and the application to Mrs Pullet, for he had kept her in

ignorance of the nature of that transaction, and had explained the necessity for taking an inventory of the goods as a matter connected with his will. The possession of a wife conspicuously one’s inferior in intellect is, like other high privileges, attended with a few inconveniences, and among the rest, with the occasional necessity for using a little deception.

The next day Mr Tulliver was again on horseback in the afternoon, on his way to Mr Gore’s office at St Ogg’s. Gore was to have seen Furley in the morning, and to have sounded him in relation to Mr Tulliver’s affairs. But he had not gone half-way when he met a clerk from Mr Gore’s office who was bringing a letter to Mr Tulliver. Mr Gore had been prevented by a sudden call of business from waiting at his office to see Mr Tulliver according to appointment, but would be at his office at eleven tomorrow morning, and meanwhile had sent some important information by letter.

“Oh!” said Mr Tulliver, taking the letter but not opening it. “Then tell Gore I’ll see him tomorrow at eleven;” and he turned his horse.

The clerk, struck with Mr Tulliver’s glistening excited glance, looked after him for a few moments and then rode away. The reading of a letter was not the affair of an instant to Mr Tulliver; he took in the sense of a statement very slowly through the medium of written or even printed characters; so he had put the letter in his pocket, thinking he would open it in his armchair at home. But by-and-by it occurred to him that there might be something in the letter Mrs Tulliver must not know about, and if so, it would be better to keep it out of her sight altogether. He stopped his horse, took out the letter, and read it. It was only a

short letter; the substance was that Mr Gore has ascertained, on secret but sure authority, that Furley had been lately much straitened for money and had parted with his securities, among the rest, the mortgage on Mr Tulliver’s property, which he had transferred to—Wakem.

In half an hour after this, Mr Tulliver’s own waggoner found him lying by the road-side insensible, with an open letter near him and his grey horse snuffing uneasily about him.

When Maggie reached home that evening, in obedience to her father’s call, he was no longer insensible. About an hour before, he had become conscious, and after vague, vacant looks around him had muttered something about ‘a letter’, which he presently repeated impatiently. At the instance of Mr Turnbull, the medical man, Gore’s letter was brought and laid on the bed, and the previous impatience seemed to be allayed. The stricken man lay for some time with his eyes fixed on the letter as if he were trying to knit up his thoughts by its help. But presently a new wave of memory seemed to have come and swept the other away; he turned his eyes from the letter to the door, and after looking uneasily as if striving to see something his eyes were too dim for, he said, “The little wench.”

He repeated the words impatiently from time to time, appearing entirely unconscious of everything except this one importunate want, and giving no sign of knowing his wife or anyone else; and poor Mrs Tulliver, her feeble faculties almost paralysed by this sudden accumulation of troubles, went backwards and forwards to the gate to see if the Laceham coach were coming, though it was not yet time.

But it came at last and set down the poor anxious girl, no longer

the “little wench”, except to her father’s fond memory.

“Oh mother, what is the matter?” Maggie said with pale lips as her mother came towards her crying. She didn’t think her father was ill, because the letter had come at his dictation from the office at St Ogg’s.

But Mr Turnbull came now to meet her; a medical man is the good angel of the troubled house, and Maggie ran towards the kind old friend, whom she remembered as long as she could remember anything, with a trembling, questioning look.

“Don’t alarm yourself too much, my dear,” he said, taking her hand. “Your father has had a sudden attack, and has not quite recovered his memory. But he has been asking for you, and it will do him good to see you. Keep as quiet as you can; take off your things and come upstairs with me.”

Maggie obeyed with that terrible beating of the heart which makes existence seem simply a painful pulsation. The very quietness with which Mr Turnbull spoke had frightened her susceptible imagination. Her father’s eyes were still turned uneasily towards the door when she entered and met the strange, yearning, helpless look that had been seeking her in vain. With a sudden flash and movement, he raised himself in the bed—she rushed towards him and clasped him with agonised kisses.

Poor child! It was very early for her to know one of those supreme moments in life when all we have hoped or delighted in, all we can dread or endure, falls away from our regard as insignificant—is lost like a trivial memory in that simple, primitive love which knits us to the beings who have been nearest to us, in their times of helplessness or of anguish.

But that flash of recognition had been too great a strain on the

father’s bruised, enfeebled powers. He sank back again in renewed insensibility and rigidity, which lasted for many hours, and was only broken by a flickering return of consciousness in which he took passively everything that was given to him and seemed to have a sort of infantine satisfaction in Maggie’s near presence—such satisfaction as a baby has when it is returned to the nurse’s lap.

Mrs Tulliver sent for her sisters, and there was much wailing and lifting up of hands below stairs; both uncles and aunts saw that the ruin of Bessy and her family was as complete as they had ever foreboded it, and there was a general family sense that a judgement had fallen on Mr Tulliver, which it would be an impiety to counteract by too much kindness. But Maggie heard little of this, scarcely ever leaving her father’s bedside, where she sat opposite him with her hand on his. Mrs Tulliver wanted to have Tom fetched home, and seemed to be thinking more of her boy even than of her husband, but the aunts and uncles opposed this. Tom was better at school, since Mr Turnbull said there was no immediate danger, he believed. But at the end of the second day, when Maggie had become more accustomed to her father’s fits of insensibility and to the expectation that he would revive from them, the thought of Tom had become urgent with her too; and when her mother sat crying at night and saying, “My poor lad . . . it’s nothing but right he should come home,” Maggie said, “Let me go for him and tell him, mother; I’ll go tomorrow morning if father doesn’t know me and want me. It would be so hard for Tom to come home and not know anything about it beforehand.”

And the next morning Maggie went, as we have seen. Sitting on the coach on their way home, the brother and sister talked to each

other in sad, interrupted whispers.

“They say Mr Wakem has got a mortgage or something on the land, Tom,” said Maggie. “It was the letter with that news in it that made father ill, they think.”

“I believe that scoundrel’s been planning all along to ruin my father,” said Tom, leaping from the vaguest impressions to a definite conclusion. “I’ll make him feel for it when I’m a man. Mind you never speak to Philip again.”

“Oh, Tom!” said Maggie in a tone of sad remonstrance, but she had no spirit to dispute anything then, still less to vex Tom by opposing him.

Chapter 2

Mrs Tulliver’s Teraphim, or Household Gods

hen the coach set down Tom and Maggie, it was five hours since she had started from home, and she was thinking with some trembling that her father had

perhaps missed her and asked for “the little wench” in vain. She thought of no other change that might have happened.

She hurried along the gravel-walk and entered the house before Tom, but in the entrance she was startled by a strong smell of tobacco. The parlour door was ajar—that was where the smell came from. It was very strange: could any visitor be smoking at a time like this? Was her mother there? If so, she must be told that Tom was come. Maggie, after this pause of surprise, was only in the act of opening the door when Tom came up, and they both looked into the parlour together. There was a coarse, dingy man, of whose face Tom had some vague recollection, sitting in his father’s chair, smoking, with a jug and glass beside him.

The truth flashed on Tom’s mind in an instant. To “have the bailiff in the house” and “to be sold up”, were phrases which he had been used to, even as a little boy; they were part of the disgrace and misery of “failing”, of losing all one’s money, and being ruined—sinking into the condition of poor working people. It seemed only natural this should happen, since his father had lost all his property, and he thought of no more special cause for this particular form of misfortune than the loss of the lawsuit. But the immediate presence of this disgrace was so much keener an

experience to Tom than the worst form of apprehension that he felt at this moment, as if his real trouble had only just begun; it was a touch on the irritated nerve compared with its spontaneous dull aching.

“How do you do, sir?” said the man, taking the pipe out of his mouth with rough, embarrassed civility. The two young startled faces made him a little uncomfortable.

But Tom turned away hastily without speaking; the sight was too hateful. Maggie had not understood the appearance of this stranger as Tom had. She followed him, whispering, “Who can it be, Tom? What is the matter?” Then, with a sudden undefined dread lest this stranger might have something to do with a change in her father, she rushed upstairs, checking herself at the bedroom door to throw off her bonnet and enter on tiptoe. All was silent there; her father was lying, heedless of everything around him, with his eyes closed as when she had left him. A servant was there, but not her mother.

“Where’s my mother?” she whispered. The servant did not know.

Maggie hastened out and said to Tom, “Father is lying quiet: let us go and look for my mother. I wonder where she is.”

Mrs Tulliver was not downstairs—not in any of the bedrooms. There was but one room below the attic which Maggie had left unsearched; it was the store-room, where her mother kept all her linen and all the precious “best things” that were only unwrapped and brought out on special occasions. Tom, preceding Maggie as they returned along the passage, opened the door of this room and immediately said, “Mother!”

Mrs Tulliver was seated there with all her laid-up treasures.

One of the linen-chests was open; the silver tea-pot was unwrapped from its many folds of paper, and the best china was laid out on the top of the closed linen-chest; spoons and skewers and ladles were spread in rows on the shelves; and the poor woman was shaking her head and weeping, with a bitter tension of the mouth, over the mark, “Elizabeth Dodson”, on the corner of some table-cloths she held in her lap.

She dropped them and started up as Tom spoke.

“Oh my boy, my boy!” she said, clasping him round the neck. “To think as I should live to see this day! We’re ruined . . . everything’s going to be sold up . . . to think as your father should ha’ married me to bring me to this! We’ve got nothing . . . we shall be beggars . . . we must go to the workhouse . . .”

She kissed him, then seated herself again and took another tablecloth on her lap, unfolding it a little way to look at the pattern, while the children stood by in mute wretchedness—their minds quite filled for the moment with the words “beggars” and “workhouse”.

“To think o’ these clothes as I spun myself,” she went on, lifting things out and turning them over with an excitement all the more strange and piteous because the stout blonde woman was usually so passive. If she had been ruffled before, it was at the surface merely. “And Job Haxey wove ’em and brought the piece home on his back, as I remember standing at the door and seeing him come, before I ever thought o’ marrying your father! And the pattern as I chose myself—and bleached so beautiful, and I marked ’em so as nobody ever saw such marking—they must cut the cloth to get it out, for it’s a particular stitch. And they’re all to be sold, and go into strange people’s houses, and perhaps be cut

with the knives, and wore out before I’m dead. You’ll never have one of ’em, my boy,” she said, looking up at Tom with her eyes full of tears, “and I meant ’em for you. I wanted you to have all o’ this pattern. Maggie could have had the large check; it never shows so well when the dishes are on it.”

Tom was touched to the quick, but there was an angry reaction immediately. His face flushed as he said, “But will my aunts let them be sold, mother? Do they know about it? They’ll never let your linen go, will they? Haven’t you sent to them?”

“Yes, I sent Luke directly they’d put the bailies in, and your aunt Pullet’s been—and, oh dear, oh dear, she cries so and says your father’s disgraced my family and made it the talk o’ the country; and she’ll buy the spotted cloths for herself, because she’s never had so many as she wanted o’ that pattern, and they shan’t go to strangers, but she’s got more checks a’ready nor she can do with.” (Here Mrs Tulliver began to lay back the tablecloths in the chest, folding and stroking them automatically.) “And your uncle Glegg’s been too, and he says things must be bought in for us to lie down on, but he must talk to your aunt; and they’re all coming to consult . . . But I know they’ll none of ’em take my chany,” she added, turning towards the cups and saucers, “for they all found fault with ’em when I bought ’em, ’cause o’ the small gold sprig all over ’em between the flowers. But there’s none of ’em got better chany, not even your aunt Pullet herself, and I bought it wi’ my own money as I’d saved ever since I was turned fifteen; and the silver tea-pot, too—your father never paid for ’em. And to think as he should ha’ married me and brought me to this.”

Mrs Tulliver burst out crying afresh, and she sobbed with her handkerchief at her eyes a few moments, but then removing it, she

said in a deprecating way, still half-sobbing as if she were called upon to speak before she could command her voice—

“And I did say to him times and times, ‘Whativer you do, don’t go to law’—and what more could I do? I’ve had to sit by while my own fortin’s been spent, and what should ha’ been my children’s, too. You’ll have niver a penny, my boy . . . but it isn’t your poor mother’s fault.”

She put out one arm towards Tom, looking up at him piteously with her helpless, childish, blue eyes. The poor lad went to her and kissed her, and she clung to him. For the first time Tom thought of his father with some reproach. His natural inclination to blame, hitherto kept entirely in abeyance towards his father by the predisposition to think him always right, simply on the ground that he was Tom Tulliver’s father, was turned into this new channel by his mother’s plaints, and with his indignation against Wakem there began to mingle some indignation of another sort. Perhaps his father might have helped bringing them all down in the world and making people talk of them with contempt, but no one should talk long of Tom Tulliver with contempt. The natural strength and firmness of his nature was beginning to assert itself, urged by the double stimulus of resentment against his aunts and the sense that he must behave like a man and take care of his mother.

“Don’t fret, mother,” he said tenderly. “I shall soon be able to get money; I’ll get a situation of some sort.”

“Bless you, my boy! “ said Mrs Tulliver, a little soothed. Then, looking round sadly, “But I shouldn’t ha’ minded so much if we could ha’ kept the things wi’ my name on ’em.”

Maggie had witnessed this scene with gathering anger. The

implied reproaches against her father—her father, who was lying there in a sort of living death—neutralised all her pity for griefs about table-cloths and china, and her anger on her father’s account was heightened by some egoistic resentment at Tom’s silent concurrence with her mother in shutting her out from the common calamity. She had become almost indifferent to her mother’s habitual depreciation of her, but she was keenly alive to any sanction of it, however passive, that she might suspect in Tom. Poor Maggie was by no means made up of unalloyed devotedness, but put forth large claims for herself where she loved strongly. She burst out at last in an agitated, almost violent tone, “Mother, how can you talk so as if you cared only for things with your name on and not for what has my father’s name too?—and to care about anything but dear father himself!—when he’s lying there and may never speak to us again! Tom, you ought to say so too; you ought not to let anyone find fault with my father.”

Maggie, almost choked with mingled grief and anger, left the room, and took her old place on her father’s bed. Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed all her life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers. Her father had always defended and excused her, and her loving remembrance of his tenderness was a force within her that would enable her to do or bear anything for his sake.

Tom was a little shocked at Maggie’s outburst—telling him as well as his mother what it was right to do! She ought to have learned better than have those hectoring, assuming manners, by this time. But he presently went into his father’s room, and the sight there touched him in a way that effaced the slighter

impressions of the previous hour. When Maggie saw how he was moved, she went to him and put her arm round his neck as he sat by the bed, and the two children forgot everything else in the sense that they had one father and one sorrow.

Chapter 3

The Family Council

t was at eleven o’clock the next morning that the aunts and uncles came to hold their consultation. The fire was lighted in the large parlour, and poor Mrs Tulliver, with a confused

impression that it was a great occasion, like a funeral, unbagged the bell-rope tassels and unpinned the curtains, adjusting them in proper folds, looking round and shaking her head sadly at the polished tops and legs of the tables, which sister Pullet herself could not accuse of insufficient brightness.

Mr Deane was not coming—he was away on business—but Mrs Deane appeared punctually in that handsome new gig with the head to it, and the livery-servant driving it, which had thrown so clear a light on several traits in her character to some of her female friends in St Ogg’s. Mr Deane had been advancing in the world as rapidly as Mr Tulliver had been going down in it; and in Mrs Deane’s house the Dodson linen and plate were beginning to hold quite a subordinate position, as a mere supplement to the handsomer articles of the same kind, purchased in recent years; a change which had caused an occasional coolness in the sisterly intercourse between her and Mrs Glegg, who felt that Susan was getting ‘like the rest’ and there would soon be little of the true Dodson spirit surviving except in herself, and it might be hoped, in those nephews who supported the Dodson name on the family land, far away in the Wolds. People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes;

and it seems superfluous, when we consider the remote geographical position of the Ethiopians and how very little the Greeks had to do with them, to inquire further why Homer calls them “blameless”.

Mrs Deane was the first to arrive, and when she had taken her seat in the large parlour, Mrs Tulliver came down to her with her comely face a little distorted, nearly as it would have been if she had been crying; she was not a woman who could shed abundant tears, except in moments when the prospect of losing her furniture became unusually vivid, but she felt how unfitting it was to be quite calm under present circumstances.

“Oh sister, what a world this is!” she exclaimed as she entered. “What trouble, oh dear!”

Mrs Deane was a thin-lipped woman who made small well- considered speeches on peculiar occasions, repeating them afterwards to her husband, and asking him if she had not spoken very properly.

“Yes, sister,” she said deliberately, “this is a changing world, and we don’t know today what may happen tomorrow. But it’s right to be prepared for all things, and if trouble’s sent, to remember as it isn’t sent without a cause. I’m very sorry for you as a sister, and if the doctor orders jelly for Mr Tulliver, I hope you’ll let me know; I’ll send it willingly. For it is but right he should have proper attendance while he’s ill.”

“Thank you, Susan,” said Mrs Tulliver rather faintly, withdrawing her fat hand from her sister’s thin one. “But there’s been no talk o’ jelly yet.” Then after a moment’s pause she added, “There’s a dozen o’ cut jelly-glasses upstairs . . . I shall niver put jelly into ’em no more.”

Her voice was rather agitated as she uttered the last words, but the sound of wheels diverted her thoughts. Mr and Mrs Glegg were come and were almost immediately followed by Mr and Mrs Pullet.

Mrs Pullet entered crying, as a compendious mode at all times of expressing what were her views of life in general and what in brief were the opinions she held concerning the particular case before her.

Mrs Glegg had on her fuzziest front and garments which appeared to have had a recent resurrection from rather a creasy form of burial, a costume selected with the high moral purpose of instilling perfect humility into Bessy and her children.

“Mrs G., won’t you come nearer the fire?” said her husband, unwilling to take the more comfortable seat without offering it to her.

“You see I’ve seated myself here, Mr Glegg,” returned this superior woman; “you can roast yourself if you like.”

“Well,” said Mr Glegg, seating himself good-humouredly, “and how’s the poor man upstairs?”

“Dr Turnbull thought him a deal better this morning,” said Mrs Tulliver; “he took more notice and spoke to me, but he’s never known Tom yet—looks at the poor lad as if he was a stranger, though he said something once about Tom and the pony. The doctor says his memory’s gone a long way back, and he doesn’t know Tom because he’s thinking of him when he was little. Eh dear, eh dear!”

“I doubt it’s the water got on his brain,” said aunt Pullet, turning round from adjusting her cap in a melancholy way at the pier-glass. “It’s much if he ever gets up again; and if he does, he’ll

most like be childish, as Mr Carr was, poor man! They fed him with a spoon as if he’d been a baby for three year. He’d quite lost the use of his limbs, but then he’d got a Bath chair and somebody to draw him; and that’s what you won’t have, I doubt, Bessy.”

“Sister Pullet,” said Mrs Glegg severely, “if I understand right, we’ve come together this morning to advise and consult about what’s to be done in this disgrace as has fallen upon the family, and not to talk o’ people as don’t belong to us. Mr Carr was none of our blood, nor noways connected with us, as I’ve ever heared.”

“Sister Glegg,” said Mrs Pullet in a pleading tone, drawing on her gloves again and stroking the fingers in an agitated manner, “if you’ve got anything disrespectful to say o’ Mr Carr, I do beg of you as you won’t say it to me. I know what he was,” she added with a sigh; “his breath was short to that degree as you could hear him two rooms off.”

“Sophy!” said Mrs Glegg with indignant disgust, “you do talk o’ people’s complaints till it’s quite undecent. But I say again, as I said before, I didn’t come away from home to talk about acquaintance, whether they’d short breath or long. If we aren’t come together for one to hear what the other ’ull do to save a sister and her children from the parish, I shall go back. One can’t act without the other, I suppose; it isn’t to be expected as I should do everything.”

“Well, Jane,” said Mrs Pullet, “I don’t see as you’ve been so very forrard at doing. So far as I know, this is the first time as here you’ve been, since it’s been known as the bailiff’s in the house; and I was here yesterday and looked at all Bessy’s linen and things, and I told her I’d buy in the spotted tablecloths. I couldn’t speak fairer, for as for the teapot as she doesn’t want to go out o’ the

family, it stands to sense I can’t do with two silver teapots, not if it hadn’t a straight spout—but the spotted damask I was allays fond on.”

“I wish it could be managed so as my teapot and chany and the best castors needn’t be put up for sale,” said poor Mrs Tulliver beseechingly, “and the sugar-tongs, the first things ever I bought.” “But that can’t be helped, you know,” said Mr Glegg. “If one o’ the family chooses to buy ’em in, they can, but one thing must be

bid for as well as another.”

“And it isn’t to be looked for,” said uncle Pullet with unwonted independence of idea, “as your own family should pay more for things nor they’ll fetch. They may go for an old song by auction.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Mrs Tulliver, “to think o’ my chany being sold i’ that way—and I bought it when I was married, just as you did yours, Jane and Sophy; and I know you didn’t like mine because o’ the sprig, but I was fond of it; and there’s never been a bit broke, for I’ve washed it myself—and there’s the tulips on the cups, and the roses, as anybody might go and look at ’em for pleasure. You wouldn’t like your chany to go for an old song and be broke to pieces, though yours has got no colour in it, Jane; it’s all white and fluted, and didn’t cost so much as mine. And there’s the castors—sister Deane, I can’t think but you’d like to have the castors, for I’ve heard you say they’re pretty.”

“Well, I’ve no objection to buy some of the best things,” said Mrs Deane rather loftily; “we can do with extra things in our house.”

“Best things!” exclaimed Mrs Glegg with severity which had gathered intensity from her long silence. “It drives me past patience to hear you all talking o’ best things, and buying in this,

that, and the other, such as silver and chany. You must bring your mind to your circumstances, Bessy, and not be thinking o’ silver and chany; but whether you shall get so much as a flock bed to lie on, and a blanket to cover you, and a stool to sit on. You must remember, if you get ’em, it’ll be because your friends have bought ’em for you, for you’re dependent upon them for everything, for your husband lies there helpless and hasn’t got a penny i’ the world to call his own. And it’s for your own good I say this, for it’s right you should feel what your state is and what disgrace your husband’s brought on your family, as you’ve got to look to for everything—and be humble in your mind.”

Mrs Glegg paused, for speaking with much energy for the good of others is naturally exhausting. Mrs Tulliver, always borne down by the family predominance of sister Jane, who had made her wear the yoke of a younger sister in very tender years, said pleadingly—“I’m sure, sister, I’ve never asked anybody to do anything, only buy things as it ’ud be a pleasure to ’em to have, so as they mightn’t go and be spoiled i’ strange houses. I never asked anybody to buy the things in for me and my children; though there’s the linen I spun, and I thought when Tom was born—I thought one o’ the first things when he was lying i’ the cradle, as all the things I’d bought wi’ my own money and been so careful of, ’ud go to him. But I’ve said nothing as I wanted my sisters to pay their money for me. What my husband has done for his sister’s unknown, and we should ha’ been better off this day if it hadn’t been as he’s lent money and never asked for it again.”

“Come, come,” said Mr Glegg kindly, “don’t let us make things too dark. What’s done can’t be undone. We shall make a shift among us to buy what’s sufficient for you; though, as Mrs G. says,

they must be useful, plain things. We mustn’t be thinking o’ what’s unnecessary. A table, and a chair or two, and kitchen things, and a good bed, and suchlike. Why, I’ve seen the day when I shouldn’t ha’ known myself if I’d lain on sacking i’stead o’ the floor. We get a deal o’ useless things about us, only because we’ve got the money to spend.”

“Mr Glegg,” said Mrs G., “if you’ll be kind enough to let me speak, instead o’ taking the words out o’ my mouth—I was going to say, Bessy, as it’s fine talking for you to say as you’ve never asked us to buy anything for you; let me tell you, you ought to have asked us. Pray, how are you to be purvided for if your own family don’t help you? You must go to the parish if they didn’t. And you ought to know that, and keep it in mind, and ask us humble to do what we can for you, i’stead o’ saying and making a boast as you’ve never asked us for anything.”

“You talked o’ the Mosses and what Mr Tulliver’s done for ’em: said uncle Pullet, who became unusually suggestive where advances of money were concerned. “Haven’t they been anear you? They ought to do something, as well as other folks; and if he’s lent ’em money, they ought to be made to pay it back.”

“Yes, to be sure,” said Mrs Deane; “I’ve been thinking so. How is it Mr and Mrs Moss aren’t here to meet us? It is but right they should do their share.”

“Oh dear! “ said Mrs Tulliver, “I never sent ’em word about Mr Tulliver, and they live so back’ard among the lanes at Basset, they niver hear anything only when Mr Moss comes to market. But I niver gave ’em a thought. I wonder Maggie didn’t, though, for she was allays so fond of her aunt Moss.”

“Why don’t your children come in, Bessy?” said Mrs Pullet at

the mention of Maggie. “They should hear what their aunts and uncles have got to say; and Maggie, when it’s me as have paid for half her schooling, she ought to think more of her aunt Pullet than of aunt Mosses. I may go off sudden when I get home today, there’s no telling.”

“If I’d had my way,” said Mrs Glegg, “the children ’ud ha’ been in the room from the first. It’s time they knew who they’ve to look to, and it’s right as somebody should talk to ’em, and let ’em know their condition i’ life and what they’re come down to, and make ’em feel as they’ve got to suffer for their father’s faults.”

“Well, I’ll go and fetch ’em, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver resignedly. She was quite crushed now and thought of the treasures in the store-room with no other feeling than blank despair.

She went upstairs to fetch Tom and Maggie, who were both in their father’s room, and was on her way down again when the sight of the store-room door suggested a new thought to her. She went towards it and left the children to go down by themselves.

The aunts and uncles appeared to have been in warm discussion when the brother and sister entered—both with shrinking reluctance, for though Tom, with a practical sagacity which had been roused into activity by the strong stimulus of the new emotions he had undergone since yesterday, had been turning over in his mind a plan which he meant to propose to one of his aunts or uncles, he felt by no means amicably towards them and dreaded meeting them all at once as he would have dreaded a large dose of concentrated physic which was but just endurable in small draughts. As for Maggie, she was peculiarly depressed this morning; she had been called up after brief rest, at three o’clock, and had that strange dreamy weariness which comes from

watching in a sick-room through the chill hours of early twilight and breaking day—in which the outside daylight life seems to have no importance and to be a mere margin to the hours in the darkened chamber. Their entrance interrupted the conversation. The shaking of hands was a melancholy and silent ceremony till uncle Pullet observed as Tom approached him, “Well, young sir, we’ve been talking as we should want your pen and ink; you can write rarely now, after all your schooling, I should think.”

“Ay, ay,” said uncle Glegg with admonition, which he meant to be kind, “we must look to see the good of all this schooling, as your father’s sunk so much money in, now—

‘When land is gone and money’s spent, Then learning is most excellent.’

Now’s the time, Tom, to let us see the good o’ your learning. Let us see whether you can do better than I can, as have made my fortin without it. But I began wi’ doing with little, you see; I could live on a basin o’ porridge and a crust o’ bread and cheese. But I doubt high living and high learning ’ull make it harder for you, young man, nor it was for me.”

“But he must do it,” interposed aunt Glegg energetically, “whether it’s hard or no. He hasn’t got to consider what’s hard; he must consider as he isn’t to trusten to his friends to keep him in idleness and luxury; he’s got to bear the fruits of his father’s misconduct and bring his mind to fare hard and to work hard. And he must be humble and grateful to his aunts and uncles for what they’re doing for his mother and father, as must be turned out into the streets and go to the workhouse if they didn’t help ’em. And

his sister, too,” continued Mrs Glegg, looking severely at Maggie, who had sat down on the sofa by her aunt Deane, drawn to her by the sense that she was Lucy’s mother, “she must make up her mind to be humble and work, for there’ll be no servants to wait on her any more—she must remember that. She must do the work o’ the house, and she must respect and love her aunts as have done so much for her and saved their money to leave to their nepheys and nieces.”

Tom was still standing before the table in the centre of the group. There was a heightened colour in his face, and he was very far from looking humbled, but he was preparing to say in a respectful tone something he had previously meditated, when the door opened and his mother re-entered.

Poor Mrs Tulliver had in her hands a small tray on which she had placed her silver teapot, a specimen teacup and saucer, the castors, and sugar-tongs.

“See here, sister,” she said, looking at Mrs Deane as she set the tray on the table, “I thought, perhaps, if you looked at the teapot again—it’s a good while since you saw it—you might like the pattern better; it makes beautiful tea, and there’s a stand and everything; you might use it for every day, or else lay it by for Lucy when she goes to housekeeping. I should be so loth for ’em to buy it at the Golden Lion,” said the poor woman, her heart swelling and the tears coming, “my teapot as I bought when I was married, and to think of its being scratched, and set before the travellers and folks, and my letters on it—see here, E. D.—and everybody to see ’em.”

“Ah, dear, dear!” said aunt Pullet, shaking her head with deep sadness, “it’s very bad—to think o’ the family initials going about

everywhere—it niver was so before; you’re a very unlucky sister, Bessy. But what’s the use o’ buying the teapot when there’s the linen and spoons and everything to go, and some of ’em with your full name—and when it’s got that straight spout, too.”

“As to disgrace o’ the family,” said Mrs Glegg, “that can’t be helped wi’ buying teapots. The disgrace is for one o’ the family to ha’ married a man as has brought her to beggary. The disgrace is, as they’re to be sold up. We can’t hinder the country from knowing that.”

Maggie had started up from the sofa at the allusion to her father, but Tom saw her action and flushed face in time to prevent her from speaking. “Be quiet, Maggie,” he said authoritatively, pushing her aside. It was a remarkable manifestation of self- command and practical judgement in a lad of fifteen, that when his aunt Glegg ceased, he began to speak in a quiet and respectful manner, though with a good deal of trembling in his voice, for his mother’s words had cut him to the quick.

“Then, aunt,” he said, looking straight at Mrs Glegg, “if you think it’s a disgrace to the family that we should be sold up, wouldn’t it be better to prevent it altogether? And if you and my aunt Pullet,” he continued, looking at the latter, “think of leaving any money to me and Maggie, wouldn’t it be better to give it now, and pay the debt we’re going to be sold up for, and save my mother from parting with her furniture?” There was silence for a few moments, for everyone, including Maggie, was astonished at Tom’s sudden manliness of tone. Uncle Glegg was the first to speak.

“Ay, ay, young man—come now! You show some notion o’ things. But there’s the interest, you must remember; your aunts

get five per cent on their money, and they’d lose that if they advanced it—you haven’t thought o’ that.”

“I could work and pay that every year,” said Tom promptly. “I’ll do anything to save my mother from parting with her things.”

“Well done!” said uncle Glegg admiringly. He had been drawing Tom out, rather than reflecting on the practicability of his proposal. But he had produced the unfortunate result of irritating his wife. “Yes, Mr Glegg!” said that lady with angry sarcasm. “It’s pleasant work for you to be giving my money away, as you’ve pretended to leave at my own disposal. And my money, as was my own father’s gift, and not yours, Mr Glegg; and I’ve saved it, and added to it myself, and had more to put out almost every year, and it’s to go and be sunk in other folks’ furniture and encourage ’em in luxury and extravagance as they’ve no means of supporting; and I’m to alter my will, or have a codicil made, and leave two or three hundred less behind me when I die—me as have allays done right and been careful, and the eldest o’ the family; and my money’s to go and be squandered on them as have had the same chance as me, only they’ve been wicked and wasteful. Sister Pullet, you may do as you like, and you may let your husband rob you back again o’ the money he’s given you, but that isn’t my sperrit.”

“La, Jane, how fiery you are!” said Mrs Pullet. “I’m sure you’ll have the blood in your head and have to be cupped. I’m sorry for Bessy and her children; I’m sure I think of ’em o’ nights dreadful, for I sleep very bad wi’ this new medicine; but it’s no use for me to think o’ doing anything if you won’t meet me halfway.”

“Why, there’s this to be considered,” said Mr Glegg. “It’s no use to pay off this debt and save the furniture when there’s all the law

debts behind us ’ud take every shilling and more than could be made out o’ land and stock, for I’ve made that out from Lawyer Gore. We’d need save our money to keep the poor man with, instead o’ spending it on furniture as he can neither eat nor drink. You will be so hasty, Jane, as if I didn’t know what was reasonable.”

“Then speak accordingly, Mr Glegg!” said his wife with slow, loud emphasis, bending her head towards him significantly.

Tom’s countenance had fallen during this conversation and his lip quivered; but he was determined not to give way. He would behave like a man. Maggie, on the contrary, after her momentary delight in Tom’s speech, had relapsed into her state of trembling indignation. Her mother had been standing close by Tom’s side and had been clinging to his arm ever since he had last spoken; Maggie suddenly started up and stood in front of them, her eyes flashing like the eyes of a young lioness. “Why do you come, then,” she burst out, “talking and interfering with us and scolding us if you don’t mean to do anything to help my poor mother—your own sister—if you’ve no feeling for her when she’s in trouble, and won’t part with anything, though you would never miss it, to save her from pain? Keep away from us then, and don’t come to find fault with my father—he was better than any of you—he was kind—he would have helped you if you had been in trouble. Tom and I don’t ever want to have any of your money if you won’t help my mother. We’d rather not have it! We’ll do without you.”

Maggie, having hurled her defiance at aunts and uncles in this way, stood still, with her large dark eyes glaring at them as if she was ready to await all consequences.

Mrs Tulliver was frightened; there was something portentous in

this mad outbreak; she did not see how life could go on after it. Tom was vexed; it was no use to talk so. The aunts were silent with surprise for some moments. At length, in a case of aberration such as this, comment presented itself as more expedient than any answer.

“You haven’t seen the end o’ your trouble wi’ that child, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet; “she’s beyond everything for boldness and unthankfulness. It’s dreadful. I might ha’ let alone paying for her schooling, for she’s worse nor ever.”

“It’s no more than what I’ve allays said,” followed Mrs Glegg. “Other folks may be surprised, but I’m not. I’ve said over and over again, years ago I’ve said, ‘Mark my words; that child ’ull come to no good; there isn’t a bit of our family in her.’ And as for her having so much schooling, I never thought well o’ that. I’d my reasons when I said I wouldn’t pay anything towards it.”

“Come, come,” said Mr Glegg, “let’s waste no more time in talking—let’s go to business. Tom now, get the pen and ink—” While Mr Glegg was speaking, a tall dark figure was seen hurrying past the window.

“Why, there’s Mrs Moss,” said Mrs Tulliver. “The bad news must ha’ reached her, then’; and she went out to open the door, Maggie eagerly following her.

“That’s fortunate,” said Mrs Glegg. “She can agree to the list o’ things to be bought in. It’s but right she should do her share when it’s her own brother.” Mrs Moss was in too much agitation to resist Mrs Tulliver’s movement as she drew her into the parlour automatically, without reflecting that it was hardly kind to take her among so many persons in the first painful moment of arrival. The tall, worn, dark-haired woman was a strong contrast to the

Dodson sisters as she entered in her shabby dress, with her shawl and bonnet looking as if they had been hastily huddled on and with that entire absence of self-consciousness which belongs to keenly felt trouble. Maggie was clinging to her arm; and Mrs Moss seemed to notice no one else except Tom, whom she went straight up to and took by the hand.

“Oh my dear children,” she burst out, “you’ve no call to think well o’ me; I’m a poor aunt to you, for I’m one o’ them as take all and give nothing. How’s my poor brother?”

“Mr Turnbull thinks he’ll get better,” said Maggie. “Sit down, aunt Gritty. Don’t fret.”

“Oh my sweet child, I feel torn i’ two,” said Mrs Moss, allowing Maggie to lead her to the sofa, but still not seeming to notice the presence of the rest. “We’ve three hundred pounds o’ my brother’s money, and now he wants it, and you all want it, poor things! And yet we must be sold up to pay it, and there’s my poor children— eight of ’em, and the little un of all can’t speak plain. And I feel as if I was a robber. But I’m sure I’d no thought as my brother—” The poor woman was interrupted by a rising sob.

“Three hundred pounds! Oh dear, dear,” said Mrs Tulliver, who, when she had said that her husband had done ‘unknown’ things for his sister, had not had any particular sum in her mind and felt a wife’s irritation at having been kept in the dark.

“What madness, to be sure!” said Mrs Glegg. “A man with a family! He’d no right to lend his money i’ that way; and without security, I’ll be bound, if the truth was known.”

Mrs Glegg’s voice had arrested Mrs Moss’s attention, and looking up, she said, “Yes, there was security; my husband gave a note for it. We’re not that sort o’ people, neither of us, as ’ud rob

my brother’s children, and we looked to paying back the money when the times got a bit better.”

“Well, but now,” said Mr Glegg gently, “hasn’t your husband no way o’ raising this money? Because it ’ud be a little fortin, like, for these folks, if we can do without Tulliver’s being made a bankrupt. Your husband’s got stock; it is but right he should raise the money, as it seems to me—not but what I’m sorry for you, Mrs Moss.”

“Oh sir, you don’t know what bad luck my husband’s had with his stock. The farm’s suffering so as never was for want o’ stock; and we’ve sold all the wheat, and we’re behind with our rent . . . not but what we’d like to do what’s right, and I’d sit up and work half the night, if it ’ud be any good . . . but there’s them poor children . . . four of ’em such little uns ”

“Don’t cry so, aunt—don’t fret,” whispered Maggie, who had kept hold of Mrs Moss’s hand.

“Did Mr Tulliver let you have the money all at once?” said Mrs Tulliver, still lost in the conception of things which had been ‘going on’ without her knowledge.

“No; at twice,” said Mrs Moss, rubbing her eyes and making an effort to restrain her tears. “The last was after my bad illness four years ago, as everything went wrong, and there was a new note made then. What with illness and bad luck, I’ve been nothing but cumber all my life.”

“Yes, Mrs Moss,” said Mrs Glegg with decision. “Yours is a very unlucky family; the more’s the pity for my sister.”

“I set off in the cart as soon as ever I heard o’ what had happened,” said Mrs Moss, looking at Mrs Tulliver. “I should never ha’ stayed away all this while if you’d thought well to let me know. And it isn’t as I’m thinking all about ourselves and nothing

about my brother—only the money was so on my mind, I couldn’t help speaking about it. And my husband and me desire to do the right thing, sir,” she added, looking at Mr Glegg, “and we’ll make shift and pay the money, come what will, if that’s all my brother’s got to trust to. We’ve been used to trouble and don’t look for much else. It’s only the thought o’ my poor children pulls me i’ two.”

“Why, there’s this to be thought on, Mrs Moss,” said Mr Glegg, “and it’s right to warn you—if Tulliver’s made a bankrupt, and he’s got a note-of-hand of your husband’s for three hundred pounds, you’ll be obliged to pay it; th’ assignees ’ull come on you for it.”

“Oh dear, oh dear!” said Mrs Tulliver, thinking of the bankruptcy and not of Mrs Moss’s concern in it. Poor Mrs Moss herself listened in trembling submission while Maggie looked with bewildered distress at Tom to see if he showed any signs of understanding this trouble and caring about poor aunt Moss. Tom was only looking thoughtful, with his eyes on the tablecloth.

“And if he isn’t made bankrupt,” continued Mr Glegg, “as I said before, three hundred pounds ’ud be a little fortin for him, poor man. We don’t know but what he may be partly helpless, if he ever gets up again. I’m very sorry if it goes hard with you, Mrs Moss, but my opinion is: looking at it one way, it’ll be right for you to raise the money, and looking at it th’ other way, you’ll be obliged to pay it. You won’t think ill o’ me for speaking the truth.”

“Uncle,” said Tom, looking up suddenly from his meditative view of the table-cloth, “I don’t think it would be right for my aunt Moss to pay the money if it would be against my father’s will for her to pay it, would it?”

Mr Glegg looked surprised for a moment or two before he said,

“Why, no, perhaps not, Tom; but then he’d ha’ destroyed the note, you know. We must look for the note. What makes you think it ’ud be against his will?”

“Why,” said Tom, colouring but trying to speak firmly in spite of a boyish tremor, “I remember quite well, before I went to school to Mr Stelling, my father said to me one night when we were sitting by the fire together and no one else was in the room . . .”

Tom hesitated a little and then went on.

“He said something to me about Maggie, and then he said, “I’ve always been good to my sister, though she married against my will, and I’ve lent Moss money, but I shall never think of distressing him to pay it; I’d rather lose it. My children must not mind being the poorer for that.” And now my father’s ill and not able to speak for himself, I shouldn’t like anything to be done contrary to what he said to me.”

“Well, but then, my boy,” said uncle Glegg, whose good feeling led him to enter into Tom’s wish but who could not at once shake off his habitual abhorrence of such recklessness as destroying securities or alienating anything important enough to make an appreciable difference in a man’s property, “we should have to make away wi’ the note, you know, if we’re to guard against what may happen, supposing your father’s made bankrupt . . .”

“Mr Glegg,” interrupted his wife severely, “mind what you’re saying. You’re putting yourself very forrard in other folks’s business. If you speak rash, don’t say it was my fault.”

“That’s such a thing as I never heared of before,” said uncle Pullet, who had been making haste with his lozenge in order to express his amazement; “making away with a note! I should think anybody could set the constable on you for it.”

“Well, but,” said Mrs Tulliver, “if the note’s worth all that money, why can’t we pay it away and save my things from going away? We’ve no call to meddle with your uncle and aunt Moss, Tom, if you think your father ’ud be angry when he gets well.”

Mrs Tulliver had not studied the question of exchange, and was straining her mind after original ideas on the subject.

“Pooh, pooh, pooh! You women don’t understand these things,” said uncle Glegg. “There’s no way o’ making it safe for Mr and Mrs Moss but destroying the note.”

“Then I hope you’ll help me to do it, uncle,” said Tom earnestly. “If my father shouldn’t get well, I should be very unhappy to think anything had been done against his will that I could hinder. And I’m sure he meant me to remember what he said that evening. I ought to obey my father’s wish about his property.”

Even Mrs Glegg could not withhold her approval from Tom’s words; she felt that the Dodson blood was certainly speaking in him; though, if his father had been a Dodson, there would never have been this wicked alienation of money. Maggie would hardly have restrained herself from leaping on Tom’s neck if her aunt Moss had not prevented her by herself rising and taking Tom’s hand while she said with rather a choked voice, “You’ll never be the poorer for this, my dear boy, if there’s a God above; and if the money’s wanted for your father, Moss and me ’ull pay it, the same as if there was ever such security. We’ll do as we’d be done by, for if my children have got no other luck, they’ve got an honest father and mother.”

“Well,” said Mr Glegg, who had been meditating after Tom’s words, “we shouldn’t be doing any wrong by the creditors, supposing your father was bankrupt. I’ve been thinking o’ that, for

I’ve been a creditor myself and seen no end o’ cheating. If he meant to give your aunt the money before ever he got into this sad work o’ lawing, it’s the same as if he’d made away with the note himself, for he’d made up his mind to be that much poorer. But there’s a deal o’ things to be considered, young man,” Mr Glegg added, looking admonishingly at Tom, “when you come to money business, and you may be taking one man’s dinner away to make another man’s breakfast. You don’t understand that, I doubt?”

“Yes, I do,” said Tom decidedly. “I know if I owe money to one man, I’ve no right to give it to another. But if my father had made up his mind to give my aunt the money before he was in debt, he had a right to do it.”

“Well done, young man! I didn’t think you’d been so sharp,” said uncle Glegg with much candour. “But perhaps your father did make away with the note. Let us go and see if we can find it in the chest.”

“It’s in my father’s room. Let us go too, aunt Gritty,” whispered Maggie.

Chapter 4

A Vanishing Gleam