The Mill on the Floss (9 page)

Mrs. Glegg held her large gold watch in her hand with the
many-doubled chain round her fingers, and observed to Mrs.
Tulliver, who had just returned from a visit to the kitchen, that
whatever it might be by other people's clocks and watches, it was
gone half-past twelve by hers.

"I don't know what ails sister Pullet," she continued. "It used
to be the way in our family for one to be as early as another,–I'm
sure it was so in my poor father's time,–and not for one sister to
sit half an hour before the others came. But if the ways o' the
family are altered, it sha'n't be
my
fault;
I'll
never be the one to come into a house when all the rest are going
away. I wonder
at
sister Deane,–she used to be more like
me. But if you'll take my advice, Bessy, you'll put the dinner
forrard a bit, sooner than put it back, because folks are late as
ought to ha' known better."

"Oh dear, there's no fear but what they'll be all here in time,
sister," said Mrs. Tulliver, in her mild-peevish tone. "The dinner
won't be ready till half-past one. But if it's long for you to
wait, let me fetch you a cheesecake and a glass o' wine."

"Well, Bessy!" said Mrs. Glegg, with a bitter smile and a
scarcely perceptible toss of her head, "I should ha' thought you'd
known your own sister better. I never
did
eat between
meals, and I'm not going to begin. Not but what I hate that
nonsense of having your dinner at half-past one, when you might
have it at one. You was never brought up in that way, Bessy."

"Why, Jane, what can I do? Mr. Tulliver doesn't like his dinner
before two o'clock, but I put it half an hour earlier because o'
you."

"Yes, yes, I know how it is with husbands,–they're for putting
everything off; they'll put the dinner off till after tea, if
they've got wives as are weak enough to give in to such work; but
it's a pity for you, Bessy, as you haven't got more strength o'
mind. It'll be well if your children don't suffer for it. And I
hope you've not gone and got a great dinner for us,–going to
expense for your sisters, as 'ud sooner eat a crust o' dry bread
nor help to ruin you with extravagance. I wonder you don't take
pattern by your sister Deane; she's far more sensible. And here
you've got two children to provide for, and your husband's spent
your fortin i' going to law, and's likely to spend his own too. A
boiled joint, as you could make broth of for the kitchen," Mrs.
Glegg added, in a tone of emphatic protest, "and a plain pudding,
with a spoonful o' sugar, and no spice, 'ud be far more
becoming."

With sister Glegg in this humor, there was a cheerful prospect
for the day. Mrs. Tulliver never went the length of quarrelling
with her, any more than a water-fowl that puts out its leg in a
deprecating manner can be said to quarrel with a boy who throws
stones. But this point of the dinner was a tender one, and not at
all new, so that Mrs. Tulliver could make the same answer she had
often made before.

"Mr. Tulliver says he always
will
have a good dinner
for his friends while he can pay for it," she said; "and he's a
right to do as he likes in his own house, sister."

"Well, Bessy,
I
can't leave your children enough out o'
my savings to keep 'em from ruin. And you mustn't look to having
any o' Mr. Glegg's money, for it's well if I don't go first,–he
comes of a long-lived family; and if he was to die and leave me
well for my life, he'd tie all the money up to go back to his own
kin."

The sound of wheels while Mrs. Glegg was speaking was an
interruption highly welcome to Mrs. Tulliver, who hastened out to
receive sister Pullet; it must be sister Pullet, because the sound
was that of a four-wheel.

Mrs. Glegg tossed her head and looked rather sour about the
mouth at the thought of the "four-wheel." She had a strong opinion
on that subject.

Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped
before Mrs. Tulliver's door, and it was apparently requisite that
she should shed a few more before getting out; for though her
husband and Mrs. Tulliver stood ready to support her, she sat still
and shook her head sadly, as she looked through her tears at the
vague distance.

"Why, whativer is the matter, sister?" said Mrs. Tulliver. She
was not an imaginative woman, but it occurred to her that the large
toilet-glass in sister Pullet's best bedroom was possibly broken
for the second time.

There was no reply but a further shake of the head, as Mrs.
Pullet slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without
casting a glance at Mr. Pullet to see that he was guarding her
handsome silk dress from injury. Mr. Pullet was a small man, with a
high nose, small twinkling eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking
suit of black and a white cravat, that seemed to have been tied
very tight on some higher principle than that of mere personal
ease. He bore about the same relation to his tall, good-looking
wife, with her balloon sleeves, abundant mantle, and a large
befeathered and beribboned bonnet, as a small fishing-smack bears
to a brig with all its sails spread.

It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity
introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilization, the
sight of a fashionably dressed female in grief. From the sorrow of
a Hottentot to that of a woman in large buckram sleeves, with
several bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet, and
delicate ribbon strings, what a long series of gradations! In the
enlightened child of civilization the abandonment characteristic of
grief is checked and varied in the subtlest manner, so as to
present an interesting problem to the analytic mind. If, with a
crushed heart and eyes half blinded by the mist of tears, she were
to walk with a too-devious step through a door-place, she might
crush her buckram sleeves too, and the deep consciousness of this
possibility produces a composition of forces by which she takes a
line that just clears the door-post. Perceiving that the tears are
hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and throws them languidly
backward, a touching gesture, indicative, even in the deepest
gloom, of the hope in future dry moments when cap-strings will once
more have a charm. As the tears subside a little, and with her head
leaning backward at the angle that will not injure her bonnet, she
endures that terrible moment when grief, which has made all things
else a weariness, has itself become weary; she looks down pensively
at her bracelets, and adjusts their clasps with that pretty studied
fortuity which would be gratifying to her mind if it were once more
in a calm and healthy state.

Mrs. Pullet brushed each door-post with great nicety, about the
latitude of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly
ridiculous to an instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and a
half across the shoulders), and having done that sent the muscles
of her face in quest of fresh tears as she advanced into the parlor
where Mrs. Glegg was seated.

"Well, sister, you're late; what's the matter?" said Mrs. Glegg,
rather sharply, as they shook hands.

Mrs. Pullet sat down, lifting up her mantle carefully behind,
before she answered,–

"She's gone," unconsciously using an impressive figure of
rhetoric.

"It isn't the glass this time, then," thought Mrs. Tulliver.

"Died the day before yesterday," continued Mrs. Pullet; "an' her
legs was as thick as my body,"' she added, with deep sadness, after
a pause. "They'd tapped her no end o' times, and the water–they say
you might ha' swum in it, if you'd liked."

"Well, Sophy, it's a mercy she's gone, then, whoever she may
be," said Mrs. Glegg, with the promptitude and emphasis of a mind
naturally clear and decided; "but I can't think who you're talking
of, for my part."

"But
I
know," said Mrs. Pullet, sighing and shaking her
head; "and there isn't another such a dropsy in the parish.
I
know as it's old Mrs. Sutton o' the Twentylands."

"Well, she's no kin o' yours, nor much acquaintance as I've ever
heared of," said Mrs. Glegg, who always cried just as much as was
proper when anything happened to her own "kin," but not on other
occasions.

"She's so much acquaintance as I've seen her legs when they was
like bladders. And an old lady as had doubled her money over and
over again, and kept it all in her own management to the last, and
had her pocket with her keys in under her pillow constant. There
isn't many old
par
ish'ners like her, I doubt."

"And they say she'd took as much physic as 'ud fill a wagon,"
observed Mr. Pullet.

"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Pullet, "she'd another complaint ever so many
years before she had the dropsy, and the doctors couldn't make out
what it was. And she said to me, when I went to see her last
Christmas, she said, 'Mrs. Pullet, if ever you have the dropsy,
you'll think o' me.' She
did
say so," added Mrs. Pullet,
beginning to cry bitterly again; "those were her very words. And
she's to be buried o' Saturday, and Pullet's bid to the
funeral."

"Sophy," said Mrs. Glegg, unable any longer to contain her
spirit of rational remonstrance,–"Sophy, I wonder
at
you,
fretting and injuring your health about people as don't belong to
you. Your poor father never did so, nor your aunt Frances neither,
nor any o' the family as I ever heard of. You couldn't fret no more
than this, if we'd heared as our cousin Abbott had died sudden
without making his will."

Mrs. Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather
flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much. It
was not everybody who could afford to cry so much about their
neighbors who had left them nothing; but Mrs. Pullet had married a
gentleman farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her crying and
everything else to the highest pitch of respectability.

"Mrs. Sutton didn't die without making her will, though," said
Mr. Pullet, with a confused sense that he was saying something to
sanction his wife's tears; "ours is a rich parish, but they say
there's nobody else to leave as many thousands behind 'em as Mrs.
Sutton. And she's left no leggicies to speak on,–left it all in a
lump to her husband's nevvy."

"There wasn't much good i' being so rich, then," said Mrs.
Glegg, "if she'd got none but husband's kin to leave it to. It's
poor work when that's all you've got to pinch yourself for. Not as
I'm one o' those as 'ud like to die without leaving more money out
at interest than other folks had reckoned; but it's a poor tale
when it must go out o' your own family."

"I'm sure, sister," said Mrs. Pullet, who had recovered
sufficiently to take off her veil and fold it carefully, "it's a
nice sort o' man as Mrs. Sutton has left her money to, for he's
troubled with the asthmy, and goes to bed every night at eight
o'clock. He told me about it himself–as free as could be–one Sunday
when he came to our church. He wears a hareskin on his chest, and
has a trembling in his talk,–quite a gentleman sort o' man. I told
him there wasn't many months in the year as I wasn't under the
doctor's hands. And he said, 'Mrs. Pullet, I can feel for you.'
That was what he said,–the very words. Ah!" sighed Mrs. Pullet,
shaking her head at the idea that there were but few who could
enter fully into her experiences in pink mixture and white mixture,
strong stuff in small bottles, and weak stuff in large bottles,
damp boluses at a shilling, and draughts at eighteenpence. "Sister,
I may as well go and take my bonnet off now. Did you see as the
cap-box was put out?" she added, turning to her husband.

Mr. Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten
it, and hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the
omission.

"They'll bring it upstairs, sister," said Mrs. Tulliver, wishing
to go at once, lest Mrs. Glegg should begin to explain her feelings
about Sophy's being the first Dodson who ever ruined her
constitution with doctor's stuff.

Mrs. Tulliver was fond of going upstairs with her sister Pullet,
and looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head,
and discussing millinery in general. This was part of Bessy's
weakness that stirred Mrs. Glegg's sisterly compassion: Bessy went
far too well dressed, considering; and she was too proud to dress
her child in the good clothing her sister Glegg gave her from the
primeval strata of her wardrobe; it was a sin and a shame to buy
anything to dress that child, if it wasn't a pair of shoes. In this
particular, however, Mrs. Glegg did her sister Bessy some
injustice, for Mrs. Tulliver had really made great efforts to
induce Maggie to wear a leghorn bonnet and a dyed silk frock made
out of her aunt Glegg's, but the results had been such that Mrs.
Tulliver was obliged to bury them in her maternal bosom; for
Maggie, declaring that the frock smelt of nasty dye, had taken an
opportunity of basting it together with the roast beef the first
Sunday she wore it, and finding this scheme answer, she had
subsequently pumped on the bonnet with its green ribbons, so as to
give it a general resemblance to a sage cheese garnished with
withered lettuces. I must urge in excuse for Maggie, that Tom had
laughed at her in the bonnet, and said she looked like an old Judy.
Aunt Pullet, too, made presents of clothes, but these were always
pretty enough to please Maggie as well as her mother. Of all her
sisters, Mrs. Tulliver certainly preferred her sister Pullet, not
without a return of preference; but Mrs. Pullet was sorry Bessy had
those naughty, awkward children; she would do the best she could by
them, but it was a pity they weren't as good and as pretty as
sister Deane's child. Maggie and Tom, on their part, thought their
aunt Pullet tolerable, chiefly because she was not their aunt
Glegg. Tom always declined to go more than once during his holidays
to see either of them. Both his uncles tipped him that once, of
course; but at his aunt Pullet's there were a great many toads to
pelt in the cellar-area, so that he preferred the visit to her.
Maggie shuddered at the toads, and dreamed of them horribly, but
she liked her uncle Pullet's musical snuff-box. Still, it was
agreed by the sisters, in Mrs. Tulliver's absence, that the
Tulliver blood did not mix well with the Dodson blood; that, in
fact, poor Bessy's children were Tullivers, and that Tom,
notwithstanding he had the Dodson complexion, was likely to be as
"contrairy" as his father. As for Maggie, she was the picture of
her aunt Moss, Mr. Tulliver's sister,–a large-boned woman, who had
married as poorly as could be; had no china, and had a husband who
had much ado to pay his rent. But when Mrs. Pullet was alone with
Mrs. Tulliver upstairs, the remarks were naturally to the
disadvantage of Mrs. Glegg, and they agreed, in confidence, that
there was no knowing what sort of fright sister Jane would come out
next. But their
tête-à-tête
was curtailed by the
appearance of Mrs. Deane with little Lucy; and Mrs. Tulliver had to
look on with a silent pang while Lucy's blond curls were adjusted.
It was quite unaccountable that Mrs. Deane, the thinnest and
sallowest of all the Miss Dodsons, should have had this child, who
might have been taken for Mrs. Tulliver's any day. And Maggie
always looked twice as dark as usual when she was by the side of
Lucy.