The Mill on the Floss (4 page)

"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 bookmen; 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, some-what
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 dare say 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 Lady-day quarter,
and you see what good's come of it."

"Ay, ay, Bessy, never brew wi' bad malt upo' Michael-masday,
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? Sha'n'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 labor of suggesting some solution
or compromise,–a labor 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 neighbors 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
neutralized by small extravagances, 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 toward 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 "Æneid," but it
had ceased to be distinctly recognizable 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 was 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 be 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 toward 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 IV
Tom Is Expected

It 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 toward the great attic that run 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 favorite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not
too cold; here she fretted out all her ill humors, 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 afterward 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
danced and barked round her, as much as to say, if there was any
noise wanted he was the dog for it.