The Mill on the Floss (36 page)

"I hope you'll excuse me for troubling you, uncle," said Tom,
coloring, but speaking in a tone which, though, tremulous, had a
certain proud independence in it; "but I thought you were the best
person to advise me what to do."

"Ah!" said Mr. Deane, reserving his pinch of snuff, and looking
at Tom with new attention, "let us hear."

"I want to get a situation, uncle, so that I may earn some
money," said Tom, who never fell into circumlocution.

"A situation?" said Mr. Deane, and then took his pinch of snuff
with elaborate justice to each nostril. Tom thought snuff-taking a
most provoking habit.

"Why, let me see, how old are you?" said Mr. Deane, as he threw
himself backward again.

"Sixteen; I mean, I am going in seventeen," said Tom, hoping his
uncle noticed how much beard he had.

"Let me see; your father had some notion of making you an
engineer, I think?"

"But I don't think I could get any money at that for a long
while, could I?"

"That's true; but people don't get much money at anything, my
boy, when they're only sixteen. You've had a good deal of
schooling, however; I suppose you're pretty well up in accounts,
eh? You understand book keeping?"

"No," said Tom, rather falteringly. "I was in Practice. But Mr.
Stelling says I write a good hand, uncle. That's my writing," added
Tom, laying on the table a copy of the list he had made
yesterday.

"Ah! that's good, that's good. But, you see, the best hand in
the world'll not get you a better place than a copying-clerk's, if
you know nothing of book-keeping,–nothing of accounts. And a
copying-clerk's a cheap article. But what have you been learning at
school, then?"

Mr. Deane had not occupied himself with methods of education,
and had no precise conception of what went forward in expensive
schools.

"We learned Latin," said Tom, pausing a little between each
item, as if he were turning over the books in his school-desk to
assist his memory,–"a good deal of Latin; and the last year I did
Themes, one week in Latin and one in English; and Greek and Roman
history; and Euclid; and I began Algebra, but I left it off again;
and we had one day every week for Arithmetic. Then I used to have
drawing-lessons; and there were several other books we either read
or learned out of,–English Poetry, and Horæ Pauliné and Blair's
Rhetoric, the last half."

Mr. Deane tapped his snuff-box again and screwed up his mouth;
he felt in the position of many estimable persons when they had
read the New Tariff, and found how many commodities were imported
of which they knew nothing; like a cautious man of business, he was
not going to speak rashly of a raw material in which he had had no
experience. But the presumption was, that if it had been good for
anything, so successful a man as himself would hardly have been
ignorant of it.

About Latin he had an opinion, and thought that in case of
another war, since people would no longer wear hair-powder, it
would be well to put a tax upon Latin, as a luxury much run upon by
the higher classes, and not telling at all on the ship-owning
department. But, for what he knew, the Horé Pauliné might be
something less neutral. On the whole, this list of acquirements
gave him a sort of repulsion toward poor Tom.

"Well," he said at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone,
"you've had three years at these things,–you must be pretty strong
in 'em. Hadn't you better take up some line where they'll come in
handy?"

Tom colored, and burst out, with new energy:

"I'd rather not have any employment of that sort, uncle. I don't
like Latin and those things. I don't know what I could do with them
unless I went as usher in a school; and I don't know them well
enough for that! besides, I would as soon carry a pair of panniers.
I don't want to be that sort of person. I should like to enter into
some business where I can get on,–a manly business, where I should
have to look after things, and get credit for what I did. And I
shall want to keep my mother and sister."

"Ah, young gentleman," said Mr. Deane, with that tendency to
repress youthful hopes which stout and successful men of fifty find
one of their easiest duties, "that's sooner said than done,–sooner
said than done."

"But didn't
you
get on in that way, uncle?" said Tom, a
little irritated that Mr. Deane did not enter more rapidly into his
views. "I mean, didn't you rise from one place to another through
your abilities and good conduct?"

"Ay, ay, sir," said Mr. Deane, spreading himself in his chair a
little, and entering with great readiness into a retrospect of his
own career. "But I'll tell you how I got on. It wasn't by getting
astride a stick and thinking it would turn into a horse if I sat on
it long enough. I kept my eyes and ears open, sir, and I wasn't too
fond of my own back, and I made my master's interest my own. Why,
with only looking into what went on in the mill,, I found out how
there was a waste of five hundred a-year that might be hindered.
Why, sir, I hadn't more schooling to begin with than a charity boy;
but I saw pretty soon that I couldn't get on far enough without
mastering accounts, and I learned 'em between working hours, after
I'd been unlading. Look here." Mr. Deane opened a book and pointed
to the page. "I write a good hand enough, and I'll match anybody at
all sorts of reckoning by the head; and I got it all by hard work,
and paid for it out of my own earnings,–often out of my own dinner
and supper. And I looked into the nature of all the things we had
to do in the business, and picked up knowledge as I went about my
work, and turned it over in my head. Why, I'm no mechanic,–I never
pretended to be–but I've thought of a thing or two that the
mechanics never thought of, and it's made a fine difference in our
returns. And there isn't an article shipped or unshipped at our
wharf but I know the quality of it. If I got places, sir, it was
because I made myself fit for 'em. If you want to slip into a round
hole, you must make a ball of yourself; that's where it is."

Mr. Deane tapped his box again. He had been led on by pure
enthusiasm in his subject, and had really forgotten what bearing
this retrospective survey had on his listener. He had found
occasion for saying the same thing more than once before, and was
not distinctly aware that he had not his port-wine before him.

"Well, uncle," said Tom, with a slight complaint in his tone,
"that's what I should like to do. Can't
I
get on in the
same way?"

"In the same way?" said Mr. Deane, eyeing Tom with quiet
deliberation. "There go two or three questions to that, Master Tom.
That depends on what sort of material you are, to begin with, and
whether you've been put into the right mill. But I'll tell you what
it is. Your poor father went the wrong way to work in giving you an
education. It wasn't my business, and I didn't interfere; but it is
as I thought it would be. You've had a sort of learning that's all
very well for a young fellow like our Mr. Stephen Guest, who'll
have nothing to do but sign checks all his life, and may as well
have Latin inside his head as any other sort of stuffing."

"But, uncle," said Tom, earnestly, "I don't see why the Latin
need hinder me from getting on in business. I shall soon forget it
all; it makes no difference to me. I had to do my lessons at
school, but I always thought they'd never be of any use to me
afterward; I didn't care about them."

"Ay, ay, that's all very well," said Mr. Deane; "but it doesn't
alter what I was going to say. Your Latin and rigmarole may soon
dry off you, but you'll be but a bare stick after that. Besides,
it's whitened your hands and taken the rough work out of you. And
what do you know? Why, you know nothing about book-keeping, to
begin with, and not so much of reckoning as a common shopman.
You'll have to begin at a low round of the ladder, let me tell you,
if you mean to get on in life. It's no use forgetting the education
your father's been paying for, if you don't give yourself a new
un."

Tom bit his lips hard; he felt as if the tears were rising, and
he would rather die than let them.

"You want me to help you to a situation," Mr. Deane went on;
"well, I've no fault to find with that. I'm willing to do something
for you. But you youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with
living well and working easy; you've no notion of running afoot
before you get horseback. Now, you must remember what you
are,–you're a lad of sixteen, trained to nothing particular.
There's heaps of your sort, like so many pebbles, made to fit in
nowhere. Well, you might be apprenticed to some business,–a
chemist's and druggist's perhaps; your Latin might come in a bit
there––"

Tom was going to speak, but Mr. Deane put up his hand and
said:

"Stop! hear what I've got to say. You don't want to be a
'prentice,–I know, I know,–you want to make more haste, and you
don't want to stand behind a counter. But if you're a
copying-clerk, you'll have to stand behind a desk, and stare at
your ink and paper all day; there isn't much out-look there, and
you won't be much wiser at the end of the year than at the
beginning. The world isn't made of pen, ink, and paper, and if
you're to get on in the world, young man, you must know what the
world's made of. Now the best chance for you 'ud be to have a place
on a wharf, or in a warehouse, where you'd learn the smell of
things, but you wouldn't like that, I'll be bound; you'd have to
stand cold and wet, and be shouldered about by rough fellows.
You're too fine a gentleman for that."

Mr. Deane paused and looked hard at Tom, who certainly felt some
inward struggle before he could reply.

"I would rather do what will be best for me in the end, sir; I
would put up with what was disagreeable."

"That's well, if you can carry it out. But you must remember it
isn't only laying hold of a rope, you must go on pulling. It's the
mistake you lads make that have got nothing either in your brains
or your pocket, to think you've got a better start in the world if
you stick yourselves in a place where you can keep your coats
clean, and have the shopwenches take you for fine gentlemen. That
wasn't the way
I
started, young man; when I was sixteen,
my jacket smelt of tar, and I wasn't afraid of handling cheeses.
That's the reason I can wear good broadcloth now, and have my legs
under the same table with the heads of the best firms in St.
Ogg's."

Uncle Deane tapped his box, and seemed to expand a little under
his waistcoat and gold chain, as he squared his shoulders in the
chair.

"Is there any place at liberty that you know of now, uncle, that
I should do for? I should like to set to work at once," said Tom,
with a slight tremor in his voice.

"Stop a bit, stop a bit; we mustn't be in too great a hurry. You
must bear in mind, if I put you in a place you're a bit young for,
because you happen to be my nephew, I shall be responsible for you.
And there's no better reason, you know, than your being my nephew;
because it remains to be seen whether you're good for
anything."

"I hope I shall never do you any discredit, uncle," said Tom,
hurt, as all boys are at the statement of the unpleasant truth that
people feel no ground for trusting them. "I care about my own
credit too much for that."

"Well done, Tom, well done! That's the right spirit, and I never
refuse to help anybody if they've a mind to do themselves justice.
There's a young man of two-and-twenty I've got my eye on now. I
shall do what I can for that young man; he's got some pith in him.
But then, you see, he's made good use of his time,–a first-rate
calculator,–can tell you the cubic contents of anything in no time,
and put me up the other day to a new market for Swedish bark; he's
uncommonly knowing in manufactures, that young fellow."

"I'd better set about learning book-keeping, hadn't I, uncle?"
said Tom, anxious to prove his readiness to exert himself.

"Yes, yes, you can't do amiss there. But–Ah, Spence, you're back
again. Well Tom, there's nothing more to be said just now, I think,
and I must go to business again. Good-by. Remember me to your
mother."

Mr. Deane put out his hand, with an air of friendly dismissal,
and Tom had not courage to ask another question, especially in the
presence of Mr. Spence. So he went out again into the cold damp
air. He had to call at his uncle Glegg's about the money in the
Savings Bank, and by the time he set out again the mist had
thickened, and he could not see very far before him; but going
along River Street again, he was startled, when he was within two
yards of the projecting side of a shop-window, by the words
"Dorlcote Mill" in large letters on a hand-bill, placed as if on
purpose to stare at him. It was the catalogue of the sale to take
place the next week; it was a reason for hurrying faster out of the
town.

Poor Tom formed no visions of the distant future as he made his
way homeward; he only felt that the present was very hard. It
seemed a wrong toward him that his uncle Deane had no confidence in
him,–did not see at once that he should acquit himself well, which
Tom himself was as certain of as of the daylight. Apparently he,
Tom Tulliver, was likely to be held of small account in the world;
and for the first time he felt a sinking of heart under the sense
that he really was very ignorant, and could do very little. Who was
that enviable young man that could tell the cubic contents of
things in no time, and make suggestions about Swedish bark! Tom had
been used to be so entirely satisfied with himself, in spite of his
breaking down in a demonstration, and construing
nunc illas
promite vires
as "now promise those men"; but now he suddenly
felt at a disadvantage, because he knew less than some one else
knew. There must be a world of things connected with that Swedish
bark, which, if he only knew them, might have helped him to get on.
It would have been much easier to make a figure with a spirited
horse and a new saddle.