The Mill on the Floss (2 page)

"Dear heart!" said Mrs. Tulliver, in mild surprise, "when did I
iver make objections to a man because he'd got a mole on his face?
I'm sure I'm rether fond o' the moles; for my brother, as is dead
an' gone, had a mole on his brow. But I can't remember your iver
offering to hire a wagoner with a mole, Mr. Tulliver. There was
John Gibbs hadn't a mole on his face no more nor you have, an' I
was all for having you hire
him
; an' so you did hire him,
an' if he hadn't died o' th' inflammation, as we paid Dr. Turnbull
for attending him, he'd very like ha' been drivin' the wagon now.
He might have a mole somewhere out o' sight, but how was I to know
that, Mr. Tulliver?"

"No, no, Bessy; I didn't mean justly the mole; I meant it to
stand for summat else; but niver mind–it's puzzling work, talking
is. What I'm thinking on, is how to find the right sort o' school
to send Tom to, for I might be ta'en in again, as I've been wi' th'
academy. I'll have nothing to do wi' a 'cademy again: whativer
school I send Tom to, it sha'n't be a 'cademy; it shall be a place
where the lads spend their time i' summat else besides blacking the
family's shoes, and getting up the potatoes. It's an uncommon
puzzling thing to know what school to pick."

Mr. Tulliver paused a minute or two, and dived with both hands
into his breeches pockets as if he hoped to find some suggestion
there. Apparently he was not disappointed, for he presently said,
"I know what I'll do: I'll talk it over wi' Riley; he's coming
to-morrow, t' arbitrate about the dam."

"Well, Mr. Tulliver, I've put the sheets out for the best bed,
and Kezia's got 'em hanging at the fire. They aren't the best
sheets, but they're good enough for anybody to sleep in, be he who
he will; for as for them best Holland sheets, I should repent
buying 'em, only they'll do to lay us out in. An' if you was to die
to-morrow, Mr. Tulliver, they're mangled beautiful, an' all ready,
an' smell o' lavender as it 'ud be a pleasure to lay 'em out; an'
they lie at the left-hand corner o' the big oak linen-chest at the
back: not as I should trust anybody to look 'em out but
myself."

As Mrs. Tulliver uttered the last sentence, she drew a bright
bunch of keys from her pocket, and singled out one, rubbing her
thumb and finger up and down it with a placid smile while she
looked at the clear fire. If Mr. Tulliver had been a susceptible
man in his conjugal relation, he might have supposed that she drew
out the key to aid her imagination in anticipating the moment when
he would be in a state to justify the production of the best
Holland sheets. Happily he was not so; he was only susceptible in
respect of his right to water-power; moreover, he had the marital
habit of not listening very closely, and since his mention of Mr.
Riley, had been apparently occupied in a tactile examination of his
woollen stockings.

"I think I've hit it, Bessy," was his first remark after a short
silence. "Riley's as likely a man as any to know o' some school;
he's had schooling himself, an' goes about to all sorts o' places,
arbitratin' and vallyin' and that. And we shall have time to talk
it over to-morrow night when the business is done. I want Tom to be
such a sort o' man as Riley, you know,–as can talk pretty nigh as
well as if it was all wrote out for him, and knows a good lot o'
words as don't mean much, so as you can't lay hold of 'em i' law;
and a good solid knowledge o' business too."

"Well," said Mrs. Tulliver, "so far as talking proper, and
knowing everything, and walking with a bend in his back, and
setting his hair up, I shouldn't mind the lad being brought up to
that. But them fine-talking men from the big towns mostly wear the
false shirt-fronts; they wear a frill till it's all a mess, and
then hide it with a bib; I know Riley does. And then, if Tom's to
go and live at Mudport, like Riley, he'll have a house with a
kitchen hardly big enough to turn in, an' niver get a fresh egg for
his breakfast, an' sleep up three pair o' stairs,–or four, for what
I know,–and be burnt to death before he can get down."

"No, no," said Mr. Tulliver, "I've no thoughts of his going to
Mudport: I mean him to set up his office at St. Ogg's, close by us,
an' live at home. But," continued Mr. Tulliver after a pause, "what
I'm a bit afraid on is, as Tom hasn't got the right sort o' brains
for a smart fellow. I doubt he's a bit slowish. He takes after your
family, Bessy."

"Yes, that he does," said Mrs. Tulliver, accepting the last
proposition entirely on its own merits; "he's wonderful for liking
a deal o' salt in his broth. That was my brother's way, and my
father's before him."

"It seems a bit a pity, though," said Mr. Tulliver, "as the lad
should take after the mother's side instead o' the little wench.
That's the worst on't wi' crossing o' breeds: you can never justly
calkilate what'll come on't. The little un takes after my side,
now: she's twice as 'cute as Tom. Too 'cute for a woman, I'm
afraid," continued Mr. Tulliver, turning his head dubiously first
on one side and then on the other. "It's no mischief much while
she's a little un; but an over-'cute woman's no better nor a
long-tailed sheep,–she'll fetch none the bigger price for
that."

"Yes, it
is
a mischief while she's a little un, Mr.
Tulliver, for it runs to naughtiness. How to keep her in a clean
pinafore two hours together passes my cunning. An' now you put me
i' mind," continued Mrs. Tulliver, rising and going to the window,
"I don't know where she is now, an' it's pretty nigh tea-time. Ah,
I thought so,–wanderin' up an' down by the water, like a wild
thing: She'll tumble in some day."

Mrs. Tulliver rapped the window sharply, beckoned, and shook her
head,–a process which she repeated more than once before she
returned to her chair.

"You talk o' 'cuteness, Mr. Tulliver," she observed as she sat
down, "but I'm sure the child's half an idiot i' some things; for
if I send her upstairs to fetch anything, she forgets what she's
gone for, an' perhaps 'ull sit down on the floor i' the sunshine
an' plait her hair an' sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur', all
the while I'm waiting for her downstairs. That niver run i' my
family, thank God! no more nor a brown skin as makes her look like
a mulatter. I don't like to fly i' the face o' Providence, but it
seems hard as I should have but one gell, an' her so comical."

"Pooh, nonsense!" said Mr. Tulliver; "she's a straight,
black-eyed wench as anybody need wish to see. I don't know i' what
she's behind other folks's children; and she can read almost as
well as the parson."

"But her hair won't curl all I can do with it, and she's so
franzy about having it put i' paper, and I've such work as never
was to make her stand and have it pinched with th' irons."

"Cut it off–cut it off short," said the father, rashly.

"How can you talk so, Mr. Tulliver? She's too big a gell–gone
nine, and tall of her age–to have her hair cut short; an' there's
her cousin Lucy's got a row o' curls round her head, an' not a hair
out o' place. It seems hard as my sister Deane should have that
pretty child; I'm sure Lucy takes more after me nor my own child
does. Maggie, Maggie," continued the mother, in a tone of
half-coaxing fretfulness, as this small mistake of nature entered
the room, "where's the use o' my telling you to keep away from the
water? You'll tumble in and be drownded some day, an' then you'll
be sorry you didn't do as mother told you."

Maggie's hair, as she threw off her bonnet, painfully confirmed
her mother's accusation. Mrs. Tulliver, desiring her daughter to
have a curled crop, "like other folks's children," had had it cut
too short in front to be pushed behind the ears; and as it was
usually straight an hour after it had been taken out of paper,
Maggie was incessantly tossing her head to keep the dark, heavy
locks out of her gleaming black eyes,–an action which gave her very
much the air of a small Shetland pony.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear, Maggie, what are you thinkin'of, to throw
your bonnet down there? Take it upstairs, there's a good gell, an'
let your hair be brushed, an' put your other pinafore on, an'
change your shoes, do, for shame; an' come an' go on with your
patchwork, like a little lady."

"Oh, mother," said Maggie, in a vehemently cross tone, "I don't
want
to do my patchwork."

"What! not your pretty patchwork, to make a counterpane for your
aunt Glegg?"

"It's foolish work," said Maggie, with a toss of her
mane,–"tearing things to pieces to sew 'em together again. And I
don't want to do anything for my aunt Glegg. I don't like her."

Exit Maggie, dragging her bonnet by the string, while Mr.
Tulliver laughs audibly.

"I wonder at you, as you'll laugh at her, Mr. Tulliver," said
the mother, with feeble fretfulness in her tone. "You encourage her
i' naughtiness. An' her aunts will have it as it's me spoils
her."

Mrs. Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered person,–never
cried, when she was a baby, on any slighter ground than hunger and
pins; and from the cradle upward had been healthy, fair, plump, and
dull-witted; in short, the flower of her family for beauty and
amiability. But milk and mildness are not the best things for
keeping, and when they turn only a little sour, they may disagree
with young stomachs seriously. I have often wondered whether those
early Madonnas of Raphael, with the blond faces and somewhat stupid
expression, kept their placidity undisturbed when their
strong-limbed, strong-willed boys got a little too old to do
without clothing. I think they must have been given to feeble
remonstrance, getting more and more peevish as it became more and
more ineffectual.

Chapter III
Mr. Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom

The gentleman in the ample white cravat and shirt-frill, taking
his brandy-and-water so pleasantly with his good friend Tulliver,
is Mr. Riley, a gentleman with a waxen complexion and fat hands,
rather highly educated for an auctioneer and appraiser, but
large-hearted enough to show a great deal of
bonhomie
toward simple country acquaintances of hospitable habits. Mr. Riley
spoke of such acquaintances kindly as "people of the old
school."

The conversation had come to a pause. Mr. Tulliver, not without
a particular reason, had abstained from a seventh recital of the
cool retort by which Riley had shown himself too many for Dix, and
how Wakem had had his comb cut for once in his life, now the
business of the dam had been settled by arbitration, and how there
never would have been any dispute at all about the height of water
if everybody was what they should be, and Old Harry hadn't made the
lawyers.

Mr. Tulliver was, on the whole, a man of safe traditional
opinions; but on one or two points he had trusted to his unassisted
intellect, and had arrived at several questionable conclusions;
amongst the rest, that rats, weevils, and lawyers were created by
Old Harry. Unhappily he had no one to tell him that this was
rampant Manichæism, else he might have seen his error. But to-day
it was clear that the good principle was triumphant: this affair of
the water-power had been a tangled business somehow, for all it
seemed–look at it one way–as plain as water's water; but, big a
puzzle as it was, it hadn't got the better of Riley. Mr. Tulliver
took his brandy-and-water a little stronger than usual, and, for a
man who might be supposed to have a few hundreds lying idle at his
banker's, was rather incautiously open in expressing his high
estimate of his friend's business talents.

But the dam was a subject of conversation that would keep; it
could always be taken up again at the same point, and exactly in
the same condition; and there was another subject, as you know, on
which Mr. Tulliver was in pressing want of Mr. Riley's advice. This
was his particular reason for remaining silent for a short space
after his last draught, and rubbing his knees in a meditative
manner. He was not a man to make an abrupt transition. This was a
puzzling world, as he often said, and if you drive your wagon in a
hurry, you may light on an awkward corner. Mr. Riley, meanwhile,
was not impatient. Why should he be? Even Hotspur, one would think,
must have been patient in his slippers on a warm hearth, taking
copious snuff, and sipping gratuitous brandy-and-water.

"There's a thing I've got i' my head," said Mr. Tulliver at
last, in rather a lower tone than usual, as he turned his head and
looked steadfastly at his companion.

"Ah!" said Mr. Riley, in a tone of mild interest. He was a man
with heavy waxen eyelids and high-arched eyebrows, looking exactly
the same under all circumstances. This immovability of face, and
the habit of taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an answer, made
him trebly oracular to Mr. Tulliver.

"It's a very particular thing," he went on; "it's about my boy
Tom."

At the sound of this name, Maggie, who was seated on a low stool
close by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, shook her
heavy hair back and looked up eagerly. There were few sounds that
roused Maggie when she was dreaming over her book, but Tom's name
served as well as the shrillest whistle; in an instant she was on
the watch, with gleaming eyes, like a Skye terrier suspecting
mischief, or at all events determined to fly at any one who
threatened it toward Tom.

"You see, I want to put him to a new school at Midsummer," said
Mr. Tulliver; "he's comin' away from the 'cademy at Lady-day, an' I
shall let him run loose for a quarter; but after that I want to
send him to a downright good school, where they'll make a scholard
of him."

"Well," said Mr. Riley, "there's no greater advantage you can
give him than a good education. Not," he added, with polite
significance,–"not that a man can't be an excellent miller and
farmer, and a shrewd, sensible fellow into the bargain, without
much help from the schoolmaster."