The Mill on the Floss (8 page)

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 yellow-hammer's; he found out
all the wasps' nests, and could set all sort of traps; he could
climb the trees like a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of
detecting hedgehogs and stoats; and he had courage to do things
that were rather naughty, such as making gaps in the hedgerows,
throwing stones after the 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 hollow, 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 neighboring 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
villanous-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 unrecognized (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
toward 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 sold 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 neighboring 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 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 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 halfpence, 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've 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 sha'n't," said Bob, holding it tight in his pocket.

"Then I'll make you; see if I don't," said Tom.

"Yes, I can."

"You can't make me do nothing, you can't," said Bob.

"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 favorable opportunity for
biting Bob's bare leg not only with inpunity but with honor. 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 knees firmly on Bob's chest.

"You give me the halfpenny now," said Tom.

"Take it," said Bob, sulkily.

"No, I sha'n'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 sha'n't go along with you any more," he added, turning
round homeward, not without casting a regret toward 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 a 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 around, and Yap followed his
example, the cold bath having moderated his passions.

"Go along wi' you, then, wi' your drowned 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 he
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 not 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
honor, 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 boy's 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 VII
Enter the Aunts and Uncles

The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs. Glegg was
not the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs.
Tulliver's arm-chair, 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 week-day world from under a
crisp and glossy front would be to introduce a most dreamlike and
unpleasant confusion between the sacred and the secular.
Occasionally, indeed, Mrs. Glegg wore one of her third-best fronts
on a week-day visit, but not at a sister's house; especially not at
Mrs. Tulliver's, who, since her marriage, had hurt her sister's
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 to-day 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 to-day,–united and tilted slightly, of course–a frequent
practice of hers when she was on a visit, and happened to be in a
severe humor: 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-colored silk gown must have
been; but from certain constellations of small yellow spots upon
it, and a mouldy odor 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.