The Mill on the Floss (28 page)

"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
afternoon," 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 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 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 possibly cease for want of a
"public."

Chapter V
Maggie's Second Visit

This 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 ingenious 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, who 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 toward amity were not met, he relapsed into
his least favorable disposition toward Philip, and resolved never
to appeal to him either about drawing or exercise 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 vigor.

When Maggie came, however, she could not help looking with
growing interest at the new schoolfellow, 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 stop here by yourself a bit,
Maggie, 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 lesson's that they might have a holiday in
the evening in honor 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 a right angle with the two boys, watching first one
and then the other; and Philip, looking off his book once toward
the fire-place, 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 a 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 sha'n'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 sha'n't peep," said Maggie, disdainfully; and she
buried her face in the pillow like a person of strict honor.

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-gray 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 master-stroke. 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 toward
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 downward, and Maggie gave a loud shriek. The sword had
fallen, with its edge on Tom's foot, and in a moment after he had
fallen too. Maggie leaped from the bed, still shrieking, and
immediately there was a rush of footsteps toward 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 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 VI
A Love-Scene

Poor Tom bore his severe pain heroically, and was resolute in
not "telling" of Mr. Poulter more than was unavoidable; the
five-shilling piece remained a secret even 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.