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Produced by Curtis Weyant and David Maddock

The Mill on the Floss

George Eliot

Table of Contents

Book I: Boy and Girl

1. Outside Dorlcote Mill
2. Mr. Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Tom
3. Mr. Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom
4. Tom Is Expected
5. Tom Comes Home
6. The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming
7. Enter the Aunts and Uncles
8. Mr. Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side
9. To Garum Firs
10. Maggie Behaves Worse Than She Expected
11. Maggie Tries to Run away from Her Shadow
12. Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at Home
13. Mr. Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life

Book II: School-Time

1. Tom's "First Half"
2. The Christmas Holidays
3. The New Schoolfellow
4. "The Young Idea"
5. Maggie's Second Visit
6. A Love-Scene
7. The Golden Gates Are Passed

Book III: The Downfall

1. What Had Happened at Home
2. Mrs. Tulliver's Teraphim, or Household Gods
3. The Family Council
4. A Vanishing Gleam
5. Tom Applies His Knife to the Oyster
6. Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a
Pocket-Knife
7. How a Hen Takes to Stratagem
8. Daylight on the Wreck
9. An Item Added to the Family Register

Book IV: The Valley of Humiliation

1. A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet
2. The Torn Nest Is Pierced by the Thorns
3. A Voice from the Past

Book V: Wheat and Tares

1. In the Red Deeps
2. Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob's Thumb
3. The Wavering Balance
4. Another Love-Scene
5. The Cloven Tree
6. The Hard-Won Triumph
7. A Day of Reckoning

Book VI: The Great Temptation

1. A Duet in Paradise
2. First Impressions
3. Confidential Moments
4. Brother and Sister
5. Showing That Tom Had Opened the Oyster
6. Illustrating the Laws of Attraction
7. Philip Re-enters
8. Wakem in a New Light
9. Charity in Full-Dress
10. The Spell Seems Broken
11. In the Lane
12. A Family Party
13. Borne Along by the Tide
14. Waking

Book VII: The Final Rescue

1. The Return to the Mill
2. St. Ogg's Passes Judgment
3. Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us
4. Maggie and Lucy
5. The Last Conflict

Book I

_Boy and Girl_

Chapter I

Outside Dorlcote Mill

A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green
banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its
passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black
ships--laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of
oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal--are borne along to
the town of St. Ogg's, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the
broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the
river-brink, tingeing the water with a soft purple hue under the
transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch
the rich pastures, and the patches of dark earth made ready for the
seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of
the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn. There is a remnant still of last
year's golden clusters of beehive-ricks rising at intervals beyond the
hedgerows; and everywhere the hedgerows are studded with trees; the
distant ships seem to be lifting their masts and stretching their
red-brown sails close among the branches of the spreading ash. Just by
the red-roofed town the tributary Ripple flows with a lively current
into the Floss. How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing
wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along
the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice, as to the voice of one
who is deaf and loving. I remember those large dipping willows. I
remember the stone bridge.

And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two here on the
bridge and look at it, though the clouds are threatening, and it is
far on in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of departing
February it is pleasant to look at,--perhaps the chill, damp season
adds a charm to the trimly kept, comfortable dwelling-house, as old as
the elms and chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast. The
stream is brimful now, and lies high in this little withy plantation,
and half drowns the grassy fringe of the croft in front of the house.
As I look at the full stream, the vivid grass, the delicate
bright-green powder softening the outline of the great trunks and
branches that gleam from under the bare purple boughs, I am in love
with moistness, and envy the white ducks that are dipping their heads
far into the water here among the withes, unmindful of the awkward
appearance they make in the drier world above.

The rush of the water and the booming of the mill bring a dreamy
deafness, which seems to heighten the peacefulness of the scene. They
are like a great curtain of sound, shutting one out from the world
beyond. And now there is the thunder of the huge covered wagon coming
home with sacks of grain. That honest wagoner is thinking of his
dinner, getting sadly dry in the oven at this late hour; but he will
not touch it till he has fed his horses,--the strong, submissive,
meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at him from
between their blinkers, that he should crack his whip at them in that
awful manner as if they needed that hint! See how they stretch their
shoulders up the slope toward the bridge, with all the more energy
because they are so near home. Look at their grand shaggy feet that
seem to grasp the firm earth, at the patient strength of their necks,
bowed under the heavy collar, at the mighty muscles of their
struggling haunches! I should like well to hear them neigh over their
hardly earned feed of corn, and see them, with their moist necks freed
from the harness, dipping their eager nostrils into the muddy pond.
Now they are on the bridge, and down they go again at a swifter pace,
and the arch of the covered wagon disappears at the turning behind the
trees.

Now I can turn my eyes toward the mill again, and watch the unresting
wheel sending out its diamond jets of water. That little girl is
watching it too; she has been standing on just the same spot at the
edge of the water ever since I paused on the bridge. And that queer
white cur with the brown ear seems to be leaping and barking in
ineffectual remonstrance with the wheel; perhaps he is jealous because
his playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so rapt in its movement. It is
time the little playfellow went in, I think; and there is a very
bright fire to tempt her: the red light shines out under the deepening
gray of the sky. It is time, too, for me to leave off resting my arms
on the cold stone of this bridge....

Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been pressing my elbows on the
arms of my chair, and dreaming that I was standing on the bridge in
front of Dorlcote Mill, as it looked one February afternoon many years
ago. Before I dozed off, I was going to tell you what Mr. and Mrs.
Tulliver were talking about, as they sat by the bright fire in the
left-hand parlor, on that very afternoon I have been dreaming of.

Chapter II

Mr. Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Tom

"What I want, you know," said Mr. Tulliver,--"what I want is to give
Tom a good eddication; an eddication as'll be a bread to him. That was
what I was thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave the academy
at Lady-day. I mean to put him to a downright good school at
Midsummer. The two years at th' academy 'ud ha' done well enough, if
I'd meant to make a miller and farmer of him, for he's had a fine
sight more schoolin' nor _I_ ever got. All the learnin' _my_ father
ever paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and the alphabet at th'
other. But I should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard, so as he might
be up to the tricks o' these fellows as talk fine and write with a
flourish. It 'ud be a help to me wi' these lawsuits, and arbitrations,
and things. I wouldn't make a downright lawyer o' the lad,--I should
be sorry for him to be a raskill,--but a sort o' engineer, or a
surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Riley, or one o' them
smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big
watch-chain and a high stool. They're pretty nigh all one, and they're
not far off being even wi' the law, _I_ believe; for Riley looks
Lawyer Wakem i' the face as hard as one cat looks another. _He's_ none
frightened at him."

Mr. Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blond comely woman in a
fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to think how long it is since fan-shaped
caps were worn, they must be so near coming in again. At that time,
when Mrs. Tulliver was nearly forty, they were new at St. Ogg's, and
considered sweet things).

"Well, Mr. Tulliver, you know best: _I've_ no objections. But hadn't I
better kill a couple o' fowl, and have th' aunts and uncles to dinner
next week, so as you may hear what sister Glegg and sister Pullet have
got to say about it? There's a couple o' fowl _wants_ killing!"

"You may kill every fowl i' the yard if you like, Bessy; but I shall
ask neither aunt nor uncle what I'm to do wi' my own lad," said Mr.
Tulliver, defiantly.

"Dear heart!" said Mrs. Tulliver, shocked at this sanguinary rhetoric,
"how can you talk so, Mr. Tulliver? But it's your way to speak
disrespectful o' my family; and sister Glegg throws all the blame
upo'me, though I'm sure I'm as innocent as the babe unborn. For
nobody's ever heard me say as it wasn't lucky for my children to have
aunts and uncles as can live independent. Howiver, if Tom's to go to a
new school, I should like him to go where I can wash him and mend him;
else he might as well have calico as linen, for they'd be one as
yallow as th' other before they'd been washed half-a-dozen times. And
then, when the box is goin' back'ard and forrard, I could send the lad
a cake, or a pork-pie, or an apple; for he can do with an extry bit,
bless him! whether they stint him at the meals or no. My children can
eat as much victuals as most, thank God!"

"Well, well, we won't send him out o' reach o' the carrier's cart, if
other things fit in," said Mr. Tulliver. "But you mustn't put a spoke
i' the wheel about the washin,' if we can't get a school near enough.
That's the fault I have to find wi' you, Bessy; if you see a stick i'
the road, you're allays thinkin' you can't step over it. You'd want me
not to hire a good wagoner, 'cause he'd got a mole on his face."

"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 Manichaeism, 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."

"I believe you," said Mr. Tulliver, winking, and turning his head on
one side; "but that's where it is. I don't _mean_ Tom to be a miller
and farmer. I see no fun i' that. Why, if I made him a miller an'
farmer, he'd be expectin' to take to the mill an' the land, an'
a-hinting at me as it was time for me to lay by an' think o' my latter
end. Nay, nay, I've seen enough o' that wi' sons. I'll never pull my
coat off before I go to bed. I shall give Tom an eddication an' put
him to a business, as he may make a nest for himself, an' not want to
push me out o' mine. Pretty well if he gets it when I'm dead an' gone.
I sha'n't be put off wi' spoon-meat afore I've lost my teeth."

This was evidently a point on which Mr. Tulliver felt strongly; and
the impetus which had given unusual rapidity and emphasis to his
speech showed itself still unexhausted for some minutes afterward in a
defiant motion of the head from side to side, and an occasional "Nay,
nay," like a subsiding growl.