The Mill on the Floss (20 page)

There was one evening-cloud which had always disappeared from
Mrs. Glegg's brow when she sat at the breakfast-table. It was her
fuzzy front of curls; for as she occupied herself in household
matters in the morning it would have been a mere extravagance to
put on anything so superfluous to the making of leathery pastry as
a fuzzy curled front. By half-past ten decorum demanded the front;
until then Mrs. Glegg could economize it, and society would never
be any the wiser. But the absence of that cloud only left it more
apparent that the cloud of severity remained; and Mr. Glegg,
perceiving this, as he sat down to his milkporridge, which it was
his old frugal habit to stem his morning hunger with, prudently
resolved to leave the first remark to Mrs. Glegg, lest, to so
delicate an article as a lady's temper, the slightest touch should
do mischief. People who seem to enjoy their ill temper have a way
of keeping it in fine condition by inflicting privations on
themselves. That was Mrs. Glegg's way. She made her tea weaker than
usual this morning, and declined butter. It was a hard case that a
vigorous mood for quarrelling, so highly capable of using an
opportunity, should not meet with a single remark from Mr. Glegg on
which to exercise itself. But by and by it appeared that his
silence would answer the purpose, for he heard himself
apostrophized at last in that tone peculiar to the wife of one's
bosom.

"Well, Mr. Glegg! it's a poor return I get for making you the
wife I've made you all these years. If this is the way I'm to be
treated, I'd better ha' known it before my poor father died, and
then, when I'd wanted a home, I should ha' gone elsewhere, as the
choice was offered me."

Mr. Glegg paused from his porridge and looked up, not with any
new amazement, but simply with that quiet, habitual wonder with
which we regard constant mysteries.

"Why, Mrs. G., what have I done now?"

"Done now, Mr. Glegg?
done now?
–I'm sorry for you."

Not seeing his way to any pertinent answer, Mr. Glegg reverted
to his porridge.

"There's husbands in the world," continued Mrs. Glegg, after a
pause, "as 'ud have known how to do something different to siding
with everybody else against their own wives. Perhaps I'm wrong and
you can teach me better. But I've allays heard as it's the
husband's place to stand by the wife, instead o' rejoicing and
triumphing when folks insult her."

"Now, what call have you to say that?" said Mr. Glegg, rather
warmly, for though a kind man, he was not as meek as Moses. "When
did I rejoice or triumph over you?"

"There's ways o' doing things worse than speaking out plain, Mr.
Glegg. I'd sooner you'd tell me to my face as you make light of me,
than try to make out as everybody's in the right but me, and come
to your breakfast in the morning, as I've hardly slept an hour this
night, and sulk at me as if I was the dirt under your feet."

"Sulk at you?" said Mr. Glegg, in a tone of angry facetiousness.
"You're like a tipsy man as thinks everybody's had too much but
himself."

"Don't lower yourself with using coarse language to
me
,
Mr. Glegg! It makes you look very small, though you can't see
yourself," said Mrs. Glegg, in a tone of energetic compassion. "A
man in your place should set an example, and talk more
sensible."

"Yes; but will you listen to sense?" retorted Mr. Glegg,
sharply. "The best sense I can talk to you is what I said last
night,–as you're i' the wrong to think o' calling in your money,
when it's safe enough if you'd let it alone, all because of a bit
of a tiff, and I was in hopes you'd ha' altered your mind this
morning. But if you'd like to call it in, don't do it in a hurry
now, and breed more enmity in the family, but wait till there's a
pretty mortgage to be had without any trouble. You'd have to set
the lawyer to work now to find an investment, and make no end o'
expense."

Mrs. Glegg felt there was really something in this, but she
tossed her head and emitted a guttural interjection to indicate
that her silence was only an armistice, not a peace. And, in fact
hostilities soon broke out again.

"I'll thank you for my cup o' tea, now, Mrs. G.," said Mr.
Glegg, seeing that she did not proceed to give it him as usual,
when he had finished his porridge. She lifted the teapot with a
slight toss of the head, and said,–

"I'm glad to hear you'll
thank
me, Mr. Glegg. It's
little thanks
I
get for what I do for folks i' this world.
Though there's never a woman o'
your
side o' the family,
Mr. Glegg, as is fit to stand up with me, and I'd say it if I was
on my dying bed. Not but what I've allays conducted myself civil to
your kin, and there isn't one of 'em can say the contrary, though
my equils they aren't, and nobody shall make me say it."

"You'd better leave finding fault wi' my kin till you've left
off quarrelling with you own, Mrs. G.," said Mr. Glegg, with angry
sarcasm. "I'll trouble you for the milk-jug."

"That's as false a word as ever you spoke, Mr. Glegg," said the
lady, pouring out the milk with unusual profuseness, as much as to
say, if he wanted milk he should have it with a vengeance. "And you
know it's false. I'm not the woman to quarrel with my own kin;
you
may, for I've known you to do it."

"Why, what did you call it yesterday, then, leaving your
sister's house in a tantrum?"

"I'd no quarrel wi' my sister, Mr. Glegg, and it's false to say
it. Mr. Tulliver's none o' my blood, and it was him quarrelled with
me, and drove me out o' the house. But perhaps you'd have had me
stay and be swore at, Mr. Glegg; perhaps you was vexed not to hear
more abuse and foul language poured out upo' your own wife. But,
let me tell you, it's
your
disgrace."

"Did ever anybody hear the like i' this parish?" said Mr. Glegg,
getting hot. "A woman, with everything provided for her, and
allowed to keep her own money the same as if it was settled on her,
and with a gig new stuffed and lined at no end o' expense, and
provided for when I die beyond anything she could expect–to go on
i' this way, biting and snapping like a mad dog! It's beyond
everything, as God A 'mighty should ha' made women
so
."
(These last words were uttered in a tone of sorrowful agitation.
Mr. Glegg pushed his tea from him, and tapped the table with both
his hands.)

"Well, Mr. Glegg, if those are your feelings, it's best they
should be known," said Mrs. Glegg, taking off her napkin, and
folding it in an excited manner. "But if you talk o' my being
provided for beyond what I could expect, I beg leave to tell you as
I'd a right to expect a many things as I don't find. And as to my
being like a mad dog, it's well if you're not cried shame on by the
county for your treatment of me, for it's what I can't bear, and I
won't bear––"

Here Mrs. Glegg's voice intimated that she was going to cry, and
breaking off from speech, she rang the bell violently.

"Sally," she said, rising from her chair, and speaking in rather
a choked voice, "light a fire up-stairs, and put the blinds down.
Mr. Glegg, you'll please to order what you'd like for dinner. I
shall have gruel."

Mrs. Glegg walked across the room to the small book-case, and
took down Baxter's "Saints' Everlasting Rest," which she carried
with her up-stairs. It was the book she was accustomed to lay open
before her on special occasions,–on wet Sunday mornings, or when
she heard of a death in the family, or when, as in this case, her
quarrel with Mr. Glegg had been set an octave higher than
usual.

But Mrs. Glegg carried something else up-stairs with her, which,
together with the "Saints' Rest" and the gruel, may have had some
influence in gradually calming her feelings, and making it possible
for her to endure existence on the ground-floor, shortly before
tea-time. This was, partly, Mr. Glegg's suggestion that she would
do well to let her five hundred lie still until a good investment
turned up; and, further, his parenthetic hint at his handsome
provision for her in case of his death. Mr. Glegg, like all men of
his stamp, was extremely reticent about his will; and Mrs. Glegg,
in her gloomier moments, had forebodings that, like other husbands
of whom she had heard, he might cherish the mean project of
heightening her grief at his death by leaving her poorly off, in
which case she was firmly resolved that she would have scarcely any
weeper on her bonnet, and would cry no more than if he had been a
second husband. But if he had really shown her any testamentary
tenderness, it would be affecting to think of him, poor man, when
he was gone; and even his foolish fuss about the flowers and
garden-stuff, and his insistence on the subject of snails, would be
touching when it was once fairly at an end. To survive Mr. Glegg,
and talk eulogistically of him as a man who might have his
weaknesses, but who had done the right thing by her,
not-withstanding his numerous poor relations; to have sums of
interest coming in more frequently, and secrete it in various
corners, baffling to the most ingenious of thieves (for, to Mrs.
Glegg's mind, banks and strong-boxes would have nullified the
pleasure of property; she might as well have taken her food in
capsules); finally, to be looked up to by her own family and the
neighborhood, so as no woman can ever hope to be who has not the
præterite and present dignity comprised in being a "widow well
left,"–all this made a flattering and conciliatory view of the
future. So that when good Mr. Glegg, restored to good humor by much
hoeing, and moved by the sight of his wife's empty chair, with her
knitting rolled up in the corner, went up-stairs to her, and
observed that the bell had been tolling for poor Mr. Morton, Mrs.
Glegg answered magnanimously, quite as if she had been an uninjured
woman: "Ah! then, there'll be a good business for somebody to take
to."

Baxter had been open at least eight hours by this time, for it
was nearly five o'clock; and if people are to quarrel often, it
follows as a corollary that their quarrels cannot be protracted
beyond certain limits.

Mr. and Mrs. Glegg talked quite amicably about the Tullivers
that evening. Mr. Glegg went the length of admitting that Tulliver
was a sad man for getting into hot water, and was like enough to
run through his property; and Mrs. Glegg, meeting this
acknowledgment half-way, declared that it was beneath her to take
notice of such a man's conduct, and that, for her sister's sake,
she would let him keep the five hundred a while longer, for when
she put it out on a mortgage she should only get four per cent.

Chapter XIII
Mr. Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life

Owing to this new adjustment of Mrs. Glegg's thoughts, Mrs.
Pullet found her task of mediation the next day surprisingly easy.
Mrs. Glegg, indeed checked her rather sharply for thinking it would
be necessary to tell her elder sister what was the right mode of
behavior in family matters. Mrs. Pullet's argument, that it would
look ill in the neighborhood if people should have it in their
power to say that there was a quarrel in the family, was
particularly offensive. If the family name never suffered except
through Mrs. Glegg, Mrs. Pullet might lay her head on her pillow in
perfect confidence.

"It's not to be expected, I suppose," observed Mrs. Glegg, by
way of winding up the subject, "as I shall go to the mill again
before Bessy comes to see me, or as I shall go and fall down o' my
knees to Mr. Tulliver, and ask his pardon for showing him favors;
but I shall bear no malice, and when Mr. Tulliver speaks civil to
me, I'll speak civil to him. Nobody has any call to tell me what's
becoming."

Finding it unnecessary to plead for the Tullivers, it was
natural that aunt Pullet should relax a little in her anxiety for
them, and recur to the annoyance she had suffered yesterday from
the offspring of that apparently ill-fated house. Mrs. Glegg heard
a circumstantial narrative, to which Mr. Pullet's remarkable memory
furnished some items; and while aunt Pullet pitied poor Bessy's bad
luck with her children, and expressed a half-formed project of
paying for Maggie's being sent to a distant boarding-school, which
would not prevent her being so brown, but might tend to subdue some
other vices in her, aunt Glegg blamed Bessy for her weakness, and
appealed to all witnesses who should be living when the Tulliver
children had turned out ill, that she, Mrs. Glegg, had always said
how it would be from the very first, observing that it was
wonderful to herself how all her words came true.

"Then I may call and tell Bessy you'll bear no malice, and
everything be as it was before?" Mrs. Pullet said, just before
parting.

"Yes, you may, Sophy," said Mrs. Glegg; "you may tell Mr.
Tulliver, and Bessy too, as I'm not going to behave ill because
folks behave ill to me; I know it's my place, as the eldest, to set
an example in every respect, and I do it. Nobody can say different
of me, if they'll keep to the truth."

Mrs. Glegg being in this state of satisfaction in her own lofty
magnanimity, I leave you to judge what effect was produced on her
by the reception of a short letter from Mr. Tulliver that very
evening, after Mrs. Pullet's departure, informing her that she
needn't trouble her mind about her five hundred pounds, for it
should be paid back to her in the course of the next month at
farthest, together with the interest due thereon until the time of
payment. And furthermore, that Mr. Tulliver had no wish to behave
uncivilly to Mrs. Glegg, and she was welcome to his house whenever
she liked to come, but he desired no favors from her, either for
himself or his children.

It was poor Mrs. Tulliver who had hastened this catastrophe,
entirely through that irrepressible hopefulness of hers which led
her to expect that similar causes may at any time produce different
results. It had very often occurred in her experience that Mr.
Tulliver had done something because other people had said he was
not able to do it, or had pitied him for his supposed inability, or
in any other way piqued his pride; still, she thought to-day, if
she told him when he came in to tea that sister Pullet was gone to
try and make everything up with sister Glegg, so that he needn't
think about paying in the money, it would give a cheerful effect to
the meal. Mr. Tulliver had never slackened in his resolve to raise
the money, but now he at once determined to write a letter to Mrs.
Glegg, which should cut off all possibility of mistake. Mrs. Pullet
gone to beg and pray for
him
indeed! Mr. Tulliver did not
willingly write a letter, and found the relation between spoken and
written language, briefly known as spelling, one of the most
puzzling things in this puzzling world. Nevertheless, like all
fervid writing, the task was done in less time than usual, and if
the spelling differed from Mrs. Glegg's,–why, she belonged, like
himself, to a generation with whom spelling was a matter of private
judgment.