The Mill on the Floss (41 page)

She felt her father beginning to tremble; his voice trembled
too, as he said, after a few moments:

"Ay, my little wench, but I shall never live twice o'er."

"But perhaps you will live to see me pay everybody, father,"
said Tom, speaking with a great effort.

"Ah, my lad," said Mr. Tulliver, shaking his head slowly, "but
what's broke can never be whole again; it 'ud be your doing, not
mine." Then looking up at him, "You're only sixteen; it's an
up-hill fight for you, but you mustn't throw it at your father; the
raskills have been too many for him. I've given you a good
eddication,–that'll start you."

Something in his throat half choked the last words; the flush,
which had alarmed his children because it had so often preceded a
recurrence of paralysis, had subsided, and his face looked pale and
tremulous. Tom said nothing; he was still struggling against his
inclination to rush away. His father remained quiet a minute or
two, but his mind did not seem to be wandering again.

"Have they sold me up, then?" he said more clamly, as if he were
possessed simply by the desire to know what had happened.

"Everything is sold, father; but we don't know all about the
mill and the land yet," said Tom, anxious to ward off any question
leading to the fact that Wakem was the purchaser.

"You must not be surprised to see the room look very bare
downstairs, father," said Maggie; "but there's your chair and the
bureau;
they're
not gone."

"Let us go; help me down, Luke,–I'll go and see everything,"
said Mr. Tulliver, leaning on his stick, and stretching out his
other hand toward Luke.

"Ay, sir," said Luke, as he gave his arm to his master, "you'll
make up your mind to't a bit better when you've seen iverything;
you'll get used to't. That's what my mother says about her
shortness o' breath,–she says she's made friends wi't now, though
she fought again' it sore when it just come on."

Maggie ran on before to see that all was right in the dreary
parlor, where the fire, dulled by the frosty sunshine, seemed part
of the general shabbiness. She turned her father's chair, and
pushed aside the table to make an easy way for him, and then stood
with a beating heart to see him enter and look round for the first
time. Tom advanced before him, carrying the leg-rest, and stood
beside Maggie on the hearth. Of those two young hearts Tom's
suffered the most unmixed pain, for Maggie, with all her keen
susceptibility, yet felt as if the sorrow made larger room for her
love to flow in, and gave breathing-space to her passionate nature.
No true boy feels that; he would rather go and slay the Nemean
lion, or perform any round of heroic labors, than endure perpetual
appeals to his pity, for evils over which he can make no
conquest.

Mr. Tulliver paused just inside the door, resting on Luke, and
looking round him at all the bare places, which for him were filled
with the shadows of departed objects,–the daily companions of his
life. His faculties seemed to be renewing their strength from
getting a footing on this demonstration of the senses.

"Ah!" he said slowly, moving toward his chair, "they've sold me
up–they've sold me up."

Then seating himself, and laying down his stick, while Luke left
the room, he looked round again.

"They've left the big Bible," he said. "It's got everything
in,–when I was born and married; bring it me, Tom."

The quarto Bible was laid open before him at the fly-leaf, and
while he was reading with slowly travelling eyes Mrs. Tulliver
entered the room, but stood in mute surprise to find her husband
down already, and with the great Bible before him.

"Ah," he said, looking at a spot where his finger rested, "my
mother was Margaret Beaton; she died when she was forty-seven,–hers
wasn't a long-lived family; we're our mother's children, Gritty and
me are,–we shall go to our last bed before long."

He seemed to be pausing over the record of his sister's birth
and marriage, as if it were suggesting new thoughts to him; then he
suddenly looked up at Tom, and said, in a sharp tone of alarm:

"They haven't come upo' Moss for the money as I lent him, have
they?"

"No, father," said Tom; "the note was burnt."

Mr. Tulliver turned his eyes on the page again, and presently
said:

"Ah–Elizabeth Dodson–it's eighteen year since I married
her––"

"Come next Ladyday," said Mrs. Tulliver, going up to his side
and looking at the page.

Her husband fixed his eyes earnestly on her face.

"Poor Bessy," he said, "you was a pretty lass then,–everybody
said so,–and I used to think you kept your good looks rarely. But
you're sorely aged; don't you bear me ill-will–I meant to do well
by you–we promised one another for better or for worse––"

"But I never thought it 'ud be so for worse as this," said poor
Mrs. Tulliver, with the strange, scared look that had come over her
of late; "and my poor father gave me away–and to come on so all at
once––"

"Oh, mother!" said Maggie, "don't talk in that way."

"No, I know you won't let your poor mother speak–that's been the
way all my life–your father never minded what I said–it 'ud have
been o' no use for me to beg and pray–and it 'ud be no use now, not
if I was to go down o' my hands and knees––"

"Don't say so, Bessy," said Mr. Tulliver, whose pride, in these
first moments of humiliation, was in abeyance to the sense of some
justice in his wife's reproach. "It there's anything left as I
could do to make you amends, I wouldn't say you nay."

"Then we might stay here and get a living, and I might keep
among my own sisters,–and me been such a good wife to you, and
never crossed you from week's end to week's end–and they all say
so–they say it 'ud be nothing but right, only you're so turned
against Wakem."

"Mother," said Tom, severely, "this is not the time to talk
about that."

"Let her be," said Mr. Tulliver. "Say what you mean, Bessy."

"Why, now the mill and the land's all Wakem's, and he's got
everything in his hands, what's the use o' setting your face
against him, when he says you may stay here, and speaks as fair as
can be, and says you may manage the business, and have thirty
shillings a-week, and a horse to ride about to market? And where
have we got to put our heads? We must go into one o' the cottages
in the village,–and me and my children brought down to that,–and
all because you must set your mind against folks till there's no
turning you."

Mr. Tulliver had sunk back in his chair trembling.

"You may do as you like wi' me, Bessy," he said, in a low voice;
"I've been the bringing of you to poverty–this world's too many for
me–I'm nought but a bankrupt; it's no use standing up for anything
now."

"Father," said Tom, "I don't agree with my mother or my uncles,
and I don't think you ought to submit to be under Wakem. I get a
pound a-week now, and you can find something else to do when you
get well."

"Say no more, Tom, say no more; I've had enough for this day.
Give me a kiss, Bessy, and let us bear one another no ill-will; we
shall never be young again–this world's been too many for me."

Chapter IX
An Item Added to the Family Register

That first moment of renunciation and submission was followed by
days of violent struggle in the miller's mind, as the gradual
access of bodily strength brought with it increasing ability to
embrace in one view all the conflicting conditions under which he
found himself. Feeble limbs easily resign themselves to be
tethered, and when we are subdued by sickness it seems possible to
us to fulfil pledges which the old vigor comes back and breaks.
There were times when poor Tulliver thought the fulfilment of his
promise to Bessy was something quite too hard for human nature; he
had promised her without knowing what she was going to say,–she
might as well have asked him to carry a ton weight on his back. But
again, there were many feelings arguing on her side, besides the
sense that life had been made hard to her by having married him. He
saw a possibility, by much pinching, of saving money out of his
salary toward paying a second dividend to his creditors, and it
would not be easy elsewhere to get a situation such as he could
fill.

He had led an easy life, ordering much and working little, and
had no aptitude for any new business. He must perhaps take to
day-labor, and his wife must have help from her sisters,–a prospect
doubly bitter to him, now they had let all Bessy's precious things
be sold, probably because they liked to set her against him, by
making her feel that he had brought her to that pass. He listened
to their admonitory talk, when they came to urge on him what he was
bound to do for poor Bessy's sake, with averted eyes, that every
now and then flashed on them furtively when their backs were
turned. Nothing but the dread of needing their help could have made
it an easier alternative to take their advice.

But the strongest influence of all was the love of the old
premises where he had run about when he was a boy, just as Tom had
done after him. The Tullivers had lived on this spot for
generations, and he had sat listening on a low stool on winter
evenings while his father talked of the old half-timbered mill that
had been there before the last great floods which damaged it so
that his grandfather pulled it down and built the new one. It was
when he got able to walk about and look at all the old objects that
he felt the strain of his clinging affection for the old home as
part of his life, part of himself. He couldn't bear to think of
himself living on any other spot than this, where he knew the sound
of every gate door, and felt that the shape and color of every roof
and weather-stain and broken hillock was good, because his growing
senses had been fed on them. Our instructed vagrancy, which was
hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the
tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans,–which is nourished
on books of travel and stretches the theatre of its imagination to
the Zambesi,–can hardly get a dim notion of what an old-fashioned
man like Tulliver felt for this spot, where all his memories
centred, and where life seemed like a familiar smooth-handled tool
that the fingers clutch with loving ease. And just now he was
living in that freshened memory of the far-off time which comes to
us in the passive hours of recovery from sickness.

"Ay, Luke," he said one afternoon, as he stood looking over the
orchard gate, "I remember the day they planted those apple-trees.
My father was a huge man for planting,–it was like a merry-making
to him to get a cart full o' young trees; and I used to stand i'
the cold with him, and follow him about like a dog."

Then he turned round, and leaning against the gate-post, looked
at the opposite buildings.

"The old mill 'ud miss me, I think, Luke. There's a story as
when the mill changes hands, the river's angry; I've heard my
father say it many a time. There's no telling whether there mayn't
be summat
in
the story, for this is a puzzling world, and
Old Harry's got a finger in it–it's been too many for me, I
know."

"Ay, sir," said Luke, with soothing sympathy, "what wi' the rust
on the wheat, an' the firin' o' the ricks an' that, as I've seen i'
my time,–things often looks comical; there's the bacon fat wi' our
last pig run away like butter,–it leaves nought but a
scratchin'."

"It's just as if it was yesterday, now," Mr. Tulliver went on,
"when my father began the malting. I remember, the day they
finished the malt-house, I thought summat great was to come of it;
for we'd a plum-pudding that day and a bit of a feast, and I said
to my mother,–she was a fine dark-eyed woman, my mother was,–the
little wench 'ull be as like her as two peas." Here Mr. Tulliver
put his stick between his legs, and took out his snuff-box, for the
greater enjoyment of this anecdote, which dropped from him in
fragments, as if he every other moment lost narration in vision. "I
was a little chap no higher much than my mother's knee,–she was
sore fond of us children, Gritty and me,–and so I said to her,
'Mother,' I said, 'shall we have plum-pudding
every
day
because o' the malt-house? She used to tell me o' that till her
dying day. She was but a young woman when she died, my mother was.
But it's forty good year since they finished the malt-house, and it
isn't many days out of 'em all as I haven't looked out into the
yard there, the first thing in the morning,–all weathers, from
year's end to year's end. I should go off my head in a new place. I
should be like as if I'd lost my way. It's all hard, whichever way
I look at it,–the harness 'ull gall me, but it 'ud be summat to
draw along the old road, instead of a new un."

"Ay, sir," said Luke, "you'd be a deal better here nor in some
new place. I can't abide new places mysen: things is allays
awk'ard,–narrow-wheeled waggins, belike, and the stiles all another
sort, an' oat-cake i' some places, tow'rt th' head o' the Floss,
there. It's poor work, changing your country-side."

"But I doubt, Luke, they'll be for getting rid o' Ben, and
making you do with a lad; and I must help a bit wi' the mill.
You'll have a worse place."

"Ne'er mind, sir," said Luke, "I sha'n't plague mysen. I'n been
wi' you twenty year, an' you can't get twenty year wi' whistlin'
for 'em, no more nor you can make the trees grow: you mun wait till
God A'mighty sends 'em. I can't abide new victual nor new faces,
I
can't,–you niver know but what they'll gripe you."

The walk was finished in silence after this, for Luke had
disburthened himself of thoughts to an extent that left his
conversational resources quite barren, and Mr. Tulliver had
relapsed from his recollections into a painful meditation on the
choice of hardships before him. Maggie noticed that he was
unusually absent that evening at tea; and afterward he sat leaning
forward in his chair, looking at the ground, moving his lips, and
shaking his head from time to time. Then he looked hard at Mrs.
Tulliver, who was knitting opposite him, then at Maggie, who, as
she bent over her sewing, was intensely conscious of some drama
going forward in her father's mind. Suddenly he took up the poker
and broke the large coal fiercely.