The Mill on the Floss (11 page)

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 toward 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 dropped the large gravy-spoon into the dish, with
the most serious results to the table-cloth. 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. Is it
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 jail, 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 the 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
arm 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 never 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 capstrings 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 toward 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 week-day 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 yeoman 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 favoring 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 send 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, neighbor 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 of 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; Tom's eddication 'ull be so much capital to
him."

"Ay, there's something in that," said Mr. Glegg. "Well well,
neighbor 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,
neighbor 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, neighbor
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 either. 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.