The Mill on the Floss (40 page)

Wakem was not without this parenthetic vindictiveness toward the
uncomplimentary miller; and now Mrs. Tulliver had put the notion
into his head, it presented itself to him as a pleasure to do the
very thing that would cause Mr. Tulliver the most deadly
mortification,–and a pleasure of a complex kind, not made up of
crude malice, but mingling with it the relish of self-approbation.
To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is
jejune compared with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him
humiliated by your benevolent action or concession on his behalf.
That is a sort of revenge which falls into the scale of virtue, and
Wakem was not without an intention of keeping that scale
respectably filled. He had once had the pleasure of putting an old
enemy of his into one of the St. Ogg's alms-houses, to the
rebuilding of which he had given a large subscription; and here was
an opportunity of providing for another by making him his own
servant. Such things give a completeness to prosperity, and
contribute elements of agreeable consciousness that are not dreamed
of by that short-sighted, overheated vindictiveness which goes out
its way to wreak itself in direct injury. And Tulliver, with his
rough tongue filed by a sense of obligation, would make a better
servant than any chance-fellow who was cap-in-hand for a situation.
Tulliver was known to be a man of proud honesty, and Wakem was too
acute not to believe in the existence of honesty. He was given too
observing individuals, not to judging of them according to maxims,
and no one knew better than he that all men were not like himself.
Besides, he intended to overlook the whole business of land and
mill pretty closely; he was fond of these practical rural matters.
But there were good reasons for purchasing Dorlcote Mill, quite
apart from any benevolent vengeance on the miller. It was really a
capital investment; besides, Guest &Co. were going to bid for
it. Mr. Guest and Mr. Wakem were on friendly dining terms, and the
attorney liked to predominate over a ship-owner and mill-owner who
was a little too loud in the town affairs as well as in his
table-talk. For Wakem was not a mere man of business; he was
considered a pleasant fellow in the upper circles of St.
Ogg's–chatted amusingly over his port-wine, did a little amateur
farming, and had certainly been an excellent husband and father; at
church, when he went there, he sat under the handsomest of mural
monuments erected to the memory of his wife. Most men would have
married again under his circumstances, but he was said to be more
tender to his deformed son than most men were to their best-shapen
offspring. Not that Mr. Wakem had not other sons beside Philip; but
toward them he held only a chiaroscuro parentage, and provided for
them in a grade of life duly beneath his own. In this fact, indeed,
there lay the clenching motive to the purchase of Dorlcote Mill.
While Mrs. Tulliver was talking, it had occurred to the
rapid-minded lawyer, among all the other circumstances of the case,
that this purchase would, in a few years to come, furnish a highly
suitable position for a certain favorite lad whom he meant to bring
on in the world.

These were the mental conditions on which Mrs. Tulliver had
undertaken to act persuasively, and had failed; a fact which may
receive some illustration from the remark of a great philosopher,
that fly-fishers fail in preparing their bait so as to make it
alluring in the right quarter, for want of a due acquaintance with
the subjectivity of fishes.

Chapter VIII
Daylight on the Wreck

It was a clear frosty January day on which Mr. Tulliver first
came downstairs. The bright sun on the chestnut boughs and the
roofs opposite his window had made him impatiently declare that he
would be caged up no longer; he thought everywhere would be more
cheery under this sunshine than his bedroom; for he knew nothing of
the bareness below, which made the flood of sunshine importunate,
as if it had an unfeeling pleasure in showing the empty places, and
the marks where well-known objects once had been. The impression on
his mind that it was but yesterday when he received the letter from
Mr. Gore was so continually implied in his talk, and the attempts
to convey to him the idea that many weeks had passed and much had
happened since then had been so soon swept away by recurrent
forgetfulness, that even Mr. Turnbull had begun to despair of
preparing him to meet the facts by previous knowledge. The full
sense of the present could only be imparted gradually by new
experience,–not by mere words, which must remain weaker than the
impressions left by the
old
experience. This resolution to
come downstairs was heard with trembling by the wife and children.
Mrs. Tulliver said Tom must not go to St. Ogg's at the usual hour,
he must wait and see his father downstairs; and Tom complied,
though with an intense inward shrinking from the painful scene. The
hearts of all three had been more deeply dejected than ever during
the last few days. For Guest &Co. had not bought the mill; both
mill and land had been knocked down to Wakem, who had been over the
premises, and had laid before Mr. Deane and Mr. Glegg, in Mrs.
Tulliver's presence, his willingness to employ Mr. Tulliver, in
case of his recovery, as a manager of the business. This
proposition had occasioned much family debating. Uncles and aunts
were almost unanimously of opinion that such an offer ought not to
be rejected when there was nothing in the way but a feeling in Mr.
Tulliver's mind, which, as neither aunts nor uncles shared it, was
regarded as entirely unreasonable and childish,–indeed, as a
transferring toward Wakem of that indignation and hatred which Mr.
Tulliver ought properly to have directed against himself for his
general quarrelsomeness, and his special exhibition of it in going
to law. Here was an opportunity for Mr. Tulliver to provide for his
wife and daughter without any assistance from his wife's relations,
and without that too evident descent into pauperism which makes it
annoying to respectable people to meet the degraded member of the
family by the wayside. Mr. Tulliver, Mrs. Glegg considered, must be
made to feel, when he came to his right mind, that he could never
humble himself enough; for
that
had come which she had
always foreseen would come of his insolence in time past "to them
as were the best friends he'd got to look to." Mr Glegg and Mr.
Deane were less stern in their views, but they both of them thought
Tulliver had done enough harm by his hot-tempered crotchets and
ought to put them out of the question when a livelihood was offered
him; Wakem showed a right feeling about the matter,–
he
had
no grudge against Tulliver.

Tom had protested against entertaining the proposition. He
shouldn't like his father to be under Wakem; he thought it would
look mean-spirited; but his mother's main distress was the utter
impossibility of ever "turning Mr. Tulliver round about Wakem," or
getting him to hear reason; no, they would all have to go and live
in a pigsty on purpose to spite Wakem, who spoke "so as nobody
could be fairer." Indeed, Mrs. Tulliver's mind was reduced to such
confusion by living in this strange medium of unaccountable sorrow,
against which she continually appealed by asking, "Oh dear, what
have
I done to deserve worse than other women?" that
Maggie began to suspect her poor mother's wits were quite
going.

"Tom," she said, when they were out of their father's room
together, "we
must
try to make father understand a little
of what has happened before he goes downstairs. But we must get my
mother away. She will say something that will do harm. Ask Kezia to
fetch her down, and keep her engaged with something in the
kitchen."

Kezia was equal to the task. Having declared her intention of
staying till the master could get about again, "wage or no wage,"
she had found a certain recompense in keeping a strong hand over
her mistress, scolding her for "moithering" herself, and going
about all day without changing her cap, and looking as if she was
"mushed." Altogether, this time of trouble was rather a Saturnalian
time to Kezia; she could scold her betters with unreproved freedom.
On this particular occasion there were drying clothes to be fetched
in; she wished to know if one pair of hands could do everything
in-doors and out, and observed that
she
should have
thought it would be good for Mrs. Tulliver to put on her bonnet,
and get a breath of fresh air by doing that needful piece of work.
Poor Mrs. Tulliver went submissively downstairs; to be ordered
about by a servant was the last remnant of her household
dignities,–she would soon have no servant to scold her. Mr.
Tulliver was resting in his chair a little after the fatigue of
dressing, and Maggie and Tom were seated near him, when Luke
entered to ask if he should help master downstairs.

"Ay, ay, Luke; stop a bit, sit down," said Mr. Tulliver pointing
his stick toward a chair, and looking at him with that pursuant
gaze which convalescent persons often have for those who have
tended them, reminding one of an infant gazing about after its
nurse. For Luke had been a constant night-watcher by his master's
bed.

"How's the water now, eh, Luke?" said Mr. Tulliver. "Dix hasn't
been choking you up again, eh?"

"No, sir, it's all right."

"Ay, I thought not; he won't be in a hurry at that again, now
Riley's been to settle him. That was what I said to Riley
yesterday–I said––"

Mr. Tulliver leaned forward, resting his elbows on the armchair,
and looking on the ground as if in search of something, striving
after vanishing images like a man struggling against a doze. Maggie
looked at Tom in mute distress, their father's mind was so far off
the present, which would by-and-by thrust itself on his wandering
consciousness! Tom was almost ready to rush away, with that
impatience of painful emotion which makes one of the differences
between youth and maiden, man and woman.

"Father," said Maggie, laying her hand on his, "don't you
remember that Mr. Riley is dead?"

"Dead?" said Mr. Tulliver, sharply, looking in her face with a
strange, examining glance.

"Yes, he died of apoplexy nearly a year ago. I remember hearing
you say you had to pay money for him; and he left his daughters
badly off; one of them is under-teacher at Miss Firniss's, where
I've been to school, you know."

"Ah?" said her father, doubtfully, still looking in her face.
But as soon as Tom began to speak he turned to look at
him
with the same inquiring glances, as if he were rather surprised at
the presence of these two young people. Whenever his mind was
wandering in the far past, he fell into this oblivion of their
actual faces; they were not those of the lad and the little wench
who belonged to that past.

"It's a long while since you had the dispute with Dix, father,"
said Tom. "I remember your talking about it three years ago, before
I went to school at Mr. Stelling's. I've been at school there three
years; don't you remember?"

Mr. Tulliver threw himself backward again, losing the childlike
outward glance under a rush of new ideas, which diverted him from
external impressions.

"Ay, ay," he said, after a minute or two, "I've paid a deal o'
money–I was determined my son should have a good eddication; I'd
none myself, and I've felt the miss of it. And he'll want no other
fortin, that's what I say–if Wakem was to get the better of me
again––"

The thought of Wakem roused new vibrations, and after a moment's
pause he began to look at the coat he had on, and to feel in his
side-pocket. Then he turned to Tom, and said in his old sharp way,
"Where have they put Gore's letter?"

It was close at hand in a drawer, for he had often asked for it
before.

"You know what there is in the letter, father?" said Tom, as he
gave it to him.

"To be sure I do," said Mr. Tulliver, rather angrily. "What o'
that? If Furley can't take to the property, somebody else can;
there's plenty o' people in the world besides Furley. But it's
hindering–my not being well–go and tell 'em to get the horse in the
gig, Luke; I can get down to St. Ogg's well enough–Gore's expecting
me."

"No, dear father!" Maggie burst out entreatingly; "it's a very
long while since all that; you've been ill a great many weeks,–more
than two months; everything is changed."

Mr. Tulliver looked at them all three alternately with a
startled gaze; the idea that much had happened of which he knew
nothing had often transiently arrested him before, but it came upon
him now with entire novelty.

"Yes, father," said Tom, in answer to the gaze. "You needn't
trouble your mind about business until you are quite well;
everything is settled about that for the present,–about the mill
and the land and the debts."

"What's settled, then?" said his father, angrily.

"Don't you take on too much bout it, sir," said Luke. "You'd ha'
paid iverybody if you could,–that's what I said to Master Tom,–I
said you'd ha' paid iverybody if you could."

Good Luke felt, after the manner of contented hard-working men
whose lives have been spent in servitude, that sense of natural
fitness in rank which made his master's downfall a tragedy to him.
He was urged, in his slow way, to say something that would express
his share in the family sorrow; and these words, which he had used
over and over again to Tom when he wanted to decline the full
payment of his fifty pounds out of the children's money, were the
most ready to his tongue. They were just the words to lay the most
painful hold on his master's bewildered mind.

"Paid everybody?" he said, with vehement agitation, his face
flushing, and his eye lighting up. "Why–what–have they made me a
bankrupt?
"

"Oh, father, dear father!" said Maggie, who thought that
terrible word really represented the fact; "bear it well, because
we love you; your children will always love you. Tom will pay them
all; he says he will, when he's a man."