Books: The Mill on the Floss

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"Why, Pivart's a new name hereabout, brother, isn't it?" she said; "he
didn't own the land in father's time, nor yours either, before I was
married."

"New name? Yes, I should think it _is_ a new name," said Mr. Tulliver,
with angry emphasis. "Dorlcote Mill's been in our family a hundred
year and better, and nobody ever heard of a Pivart meddling with the
river, till this fellow came and bought Bincome's farm out of hand,
before anybody else could so much as say 'snap.' But I'll _Pivart_
him!" added Mr. Tulliver, lifting his glass with a sense that he had
defined his resolution in an unmistakable manner.

"You won't be forced to go to law with him, I hope, brother?" said
Mrs. Moss, with some anxiety.

"I don't know what I shall be forced to; but I know what I shall force
_him_ to, with his dikes and erigations, if there's any law to be
brought to bear o' the right side. I know well enough who's at the
bottom of it; he's got Wakem to back him and egg him on. I know Wakem
tells him the law can't touch him for it, but there's folks can handle
the law besides Wakem. It takes a big raskil to beat him; but there's
bigger to be found, as know more o' th' ins and outs o' the law, else
how came Wakem to lose Brumley's suit for him?"

Mr. Tulliver was a strictly honest man, and proud of being honest, but
he considered that in law the ends of justice could only be achieved
by employing a stronger knave to frustrate a weaker. Law was a sort of
cock-fight, in which it was the business of injured honesty to get a
game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs.

"Gore's no fool; you needn't tell me that," he observed presently, in
a pugnacious tone, as if poor Gritty had been urging that lawyer's
capabilities; "but, you see, he isn't up to the law as Wakem is. And
water's a very particular thing; you can't pick it up with a
pitchfork. That's why it's been nuts to Old Harry and the lawyers.
It's plain enough what's the rights and the wrongs of water, if you
look at it straight-forrard; for a river's a river, and if you've got
a mill, you must have water to turn it; and it's no use telling me
Pivart's erigation and nonsense won't stop my wheel; I know what
belongs to water better than that. Talk to me o' what th' engineers
say! I say it's common sense, as Pivart's dikes must do me an injury.
But if that's their engineering, I'll put Tom to it by-and-by, and he
shall see if he can't find a bit more sense in th' engineering
business than what _that_ comes to."

Tom, looking round with some anxiety at this announcement of his
prospects, unthinkingly withdrew a small rattle he was amusing baby
Moss with, whereupon she, being a baby that knew her own mind with
remarkable clearness, instantaneously expressed her sentiments in a
piercing yell, and was not to be appeased even by the restoration of
the rattle, feeling apparently that the original wrong of having it
taken from her remained in all its force. Mrs. Moss hurried away with
her into another room, and expressed to Mrs. Tulliver, who accompanied
her, the conviction that the dear child had good reasons for crying;
implying that if it was supposed to be the rattle that baby clamored
for, she was a misunderstood baby. The thoroughly justifiable yell
being quieted, Mrs. Moss looked at her sister-in-law and said,--

"I'm sorry to see brother so put out about this water work."

"It's your brother's way, Mrs. Moss; I'd never anything o' that sort
before I was married," said Mrs. Tulliver, with a half-implied
reproach. She always spoke of her husband as "your brother" to Mrs.
Moss in any case when his line of conduct was not matter of pure
admiration. Amiable Mrs. Tulliver, who was never angry in her life,
had yet her mild share of that spirit without which she could hardly
have been at once a Dodson and a woman. Being always on the defensive
toward her own sisters, it was natural that she should be keenly
conscious of her superiority, even as the weakest Dodson, over a
husband's sister, who, besides being poorly off, and inclined to "hang
on" her brother, had the good-natured submissiveness of a large,
easy-tempered, untidy, prolific woman, with affection enough in her
not only for her own husband and abundant children, but for any number
of collateral relations.

"I hope and pray he won't go to law," said Mrs. Moss, "for there's
never any knowing where that'll end. And the right doesn't allays win.
This Mr. Pivart's a rich man, by what I can make out, and the rich
mostly get things their own way."

"As to that," said Mrs. Tulliver, stroking her dress down, "I've seen
what riches are in my own family; for my sisters have got husbands as
can afford to do pretty much what they like. But I think sometimes I
shall be drove off my head with the talk about this law and erigation;
and my sisters lay all the fault to me, for they don't know what it is
to marry a man like your brother; how should they? Sister Pullet has
her own way from morning till night."

"Well," said Mrs. Moss, "I don't think I should like my husband if he
hadn't got any wits of his own, and I had to find head-piece for him.
It's a deal easier to do what pleases one's husband, than to be
puzzling what else one should do."

"If people come to talk o' doing what pleases their husbands," said
Mrs. Tulliver, with a faint imitation of her sister Glegg, "I'm sure
your brother might have waited a long while before he'd have found a
wife that 'ud have let him have his say in everything, as I do. It's
nothing but law and erigation now, from when we first get up in the
morning till we go to bed at night; and I never contradict him; I only
say, 'Well, Mr. Tulliver, do as you like; but whativer you do, don't
go to law."

Mrs. Tulliver, as we have seen, was not without influence over her
husband. No woman is; she can always incline him to do either what she
wishes, or the reverse; and on the composite impulses that were
threatening to hurry Mr. Tulliver into "law," Mrs. Tulliver's
monotonous pleading had doubtless its share of force; it might even be
comparable to that proverbial feather which has the credit or
discredit of breaking the camel's back; though, on a strictly
impartial view, the blame ought rather to lie with the previous weight
of feathers which had already placed the back in such imminent peril
that an otherwise innocent feather could not settle on it without
mischief. Not that Mrs. Tulliver's feeble beseeching could have had
this feather's weight in virtue of her single personality; but
whenever she departed from entire assent to her husband, he saw in her
the representative of the Dodson family; and it was a guiding
principle with Mr. Tulliver to let the Dodsons know that they were not
to domineer over _him_, or--more specifically--that a male Tulliver
was far more than equal to four female Dodsons, even though one of
them was Mrs. Glegg.

But not even a direct argument from that typical Dodson female herself
against his going to law could have heightened his disposition toward
it so much as the mere thought of Wakem, continually freshened by the
sight of the too able attorney on market-days. Wakem, to his certain
knowledge, was (metaphorically speaking) at the bottom of Pivart's
irrigation; Wakem had tried to make Dix stand out, and go to law about
the dam; it was unquestionably Wakem who had caused Mr. Tulliver to
lose the suit about the right of road and the bridge that made a
thoroughfare of his land for every vagabond who preferred an
opportunity of damaging private property to walking like an honest man
along the highroad; all lawyers were more or less rascals, but Wakem's
rascality was of that peculiarly aggravated kind which placed itself
in opposition to that form of right embodied in Mr. Tulliver's
interests and opinions. And as an extra touch of bitterness, the
injured miller had recently, in borrowing the five hundred pounds,
been obliged to carry a little business to Wakem's office on his own
account. A hook-nosed glib fellow! as cool as a cucumber,--always
looking so sure of his game! And it was vexatious that Lawyer Gore was
not more like him, but was a bald, round-featured man, with bland
manners and fat hands; a game-cock that you would be rash to bet upon
against Wakem. Gore was a sly fellow. His weakness did not lie on the
side of scrupulosity; but the largest amount of winking, however
significant, is not equivalent to seeing through a stone wall; and
confident as Mr. Tulliver was in his principle that water was water,
and in the direct inference that Pivart had not a leg to stand on in
this affair of irrigation, he had an uncomfortable suspicion that
Wakem had more law to show against this (rationally) irrefragable
inference than Gore could show for it. But then, if they went to law,
there was a chance for Mr. Tulliver to employ Counsellor Wylde on his
side, instead of having that admirable bully against him; and the
prospect of seeing a witness of Wakem's made to perspire and become
confounded, as Mr. Tulliver's witness had once been, was alluring to
the love of retributive justice.

Much rumination had Mr. Tulliver on these puzzling subjects during his
rides on the gray horse; much turning of the head from side to side,
as the scales dipped alternately; but the probable result was still
out of sight, only to be reached through much hot argument and
iteration in domestic and social life. That initial stage of the
dispute which consisted in the narration of the case and the
enforcement of Mr. Tulliver's views concerning it throughout the
entire circle of his connections would necessarily take time; and at
the beginning of February, when Tom was going to school again, there
were scarcely any new items to be detected in his father's statement
of the case against Pivart, or any more specific indication of the
measures he was bent on taking against that rash contravener of the
principle that water was water. Iteration, like friction, is likely to
generate heat instead of progress, and Mr. Tulliver's heat was
certainly more and more palpable. If there had been no new evidence on
any other point, there had been new evidence that Pivart was as "thick
as mud" with Wakem.

"Father," said Tom, one evening near the end of the holidays, "uncle
Glegg says Lawyer Wakem _is_ going to send his son to Mr. Stelling. It
isn't true, what they said about his going to be sent to France. You
won't like me to go to school with Wakem's son, shall you?"

"It's no matter for that, my boy," said Mr. Tulliver; "don't you learn
anything bad of him, that's all. The lad's a poor deformed creatur,
and takes after his mother in the face; I think there isn't much of
his father in him. It's a sign Wakem thinks high o' Mr. Sterling, as
he sends his son to him, and Wakem knows meal from bran."

Mr. Tulliver in his heart was rather proud of the fact that his son
was to have the same advantages as Wakem's; but Tom was not at all
easy on the point. It would have been much clearer if the lawyer's son
had not been deformed, for then Tom would have had the prospect of
pitching into him with all that freedom which is derived from a high
moral sanction.

Chapter III

The New Schoolfellow

It was a cold, wet January day on which Tom went back to school; a day
quite in keeping with this severe phase of his destiny. If he had not
carried in his pocket a parcel of sugar-candy and a small Dutch doll
for little Laura, there would have been no ray of expected pleasure to
enliven the general gloom. But he liked to think how Laura would put
out her lips and her tiny hands for the bits of sugarcandy; and to
give the greater keenness to these pleasures of imagination, he took
out the parcel, made a small hole in the paper, and bit off a crystal
or two, which had so solacing an effect under the confined prospect
and damp odors of the gig-umbrella, that he repeated the process more
than once on his way.

"Well, Tulliver, we're glad to see you again," said Mr. Stelling,
heartily. "Take off your wrappings and come into the study till
dinner. You'll find a bright fire there, and a new companion."

Tom felt in an uncomfortable flutter as he took off his woollen
comforter and other wrappings. He had seen Philip Wakem at St. Ogg's,
but had always turned his eyes away from him as quickly as possible.
He would have disliked having a deformed boy for his companion, even
if Philip had not been the son of a bad man. And Tom did not see how a
bad man's son could be very good. His own father was a good man, and
he would readily have fought any one who said the contrary. He was in
a state of mingled embarrassment and defiance as he followed Mr.
Stelling to the study.

"Here is a new companion for you to shake hands with, Tulliver," said
that gentleman on entering the study,--"Master Philip Wakem. I shall
leave you to make acquaintance by yourselves. You already know
something of each other, I imagine; for you are neighbors at home."

Tom looked confused and awkward, while Philip rose and glanced at him
timidly. Tom did not like to go up and put out his hand, and he was
not prepared to say, "How do you do?" on so short a notice.

Mr. Stelling wisely turned away, and closed the door behind him; boys'
shyness only wears off in the absence of their elders.

Philip was at once too proud and too timid to walk toward Tom. He
thought, or rather felt, that Tom had an aversion to looking at him;
every one, almost, disliked looking at him; and his deformity was more
conspicuous when he walked. So they remained without shaking hands or
even speaking, while Tom went to the fire and warmed himself, every
now and then casting furtive glances at Philip, who seemed to be
drawing absently first one object and then another on a piece of paper
he had before him. He had seated himself again, and as he drew, was
thinking what he could say to Tom, and trying to overcome his own
repugnance to making the first advances.

Tom began to look oftener and longer at Philip's face, for he could
see it without noticing the hump, and it was really not a disagreeable
face,--very old-looking, Tom thought. He wondered how much older
Philip was than himself. An anatomist--even a mere physiognomist--
would have seen that the deformity of Philip's spine was not a
congenital hump, but the result of an accident in infancy; but you
do not expect from Tom any acquaintance with such distinctions;
to him, Philip was simply a humpback. He had a vague notion
that the deformity of Wakem's son had some relation to the lawyer's
rascality, of which he had so often heard his father talk with hot
emphasis; and he felt, too, a half-admitted fear of him as probably
a spiteful fellow, who, not being able to fight you, had cunning
ways of doing you a mischief by the sly. There was a humpbacked
tailor in the neighborhood of Mr. Jacobs's academy, who was considered
a very unamiable character, and was much hooted after by public-spirited
boys solely on the ground of his unsatisfactory moral qualities; so
that Tom was not without a basis of fact to go upon. Still, no face
could be more unlike that ugly tailor's than this melancholy boy's
face,--the brown hair round it waved and curled at the ends like a
girl's; Tom thought that truly pitiable. This Wakem was a pale,
puny fellow, and it was quite clear he would not be able to play at
anything worth speaking of; but he handled his pencil in an enviable
manner, and was apparently making one thing after another without
any trouble. What was he drawing? Tom was quite warm now, and wanted
something new to be going forward. It was certainly more agreeable
to have an ill-natured humpback as a companion than to stand looking
out of the study window at the rain, and kicking his foot against
the washboard in solitude; something would happen every day,--
"a quarrel or something"; and Tom thought he should rather like to
show Philip that he had better not try his spiteful tricks on _him_.
He suddenly walked across the hearth and looked over Philip's paper.

"Why, that's a donkey with panniers, and a spaniel, and partridges in
the corn!" he exclaimed, his tongue being completely loosed by
surprise and admiration. "Oh my buttons! I wish I could draw like
that. I'm to learn drawing this half; I wonder if I shall learn to
make dogs and donkeys!"

"Oh, you can do them without learning," said Philip; "I never learned
drawing."

"Never learned?" said Tom, in amazement. "Why, when I make dogs and
horses, and those things, the heads and the legs won't come right;
though I can see how they ought to be very well. I can make houses,
and all sorts of chimneys,--chimneys going all down the wall,--and
windows in the roof, and all that. But I dare say I could do dogs and
horses if I was to try more," he added, reflecting that Philip might
falsely suppose that he was going to "knock under," if he were too
frank about the imperfection of his accomplishments.

"Oh, yes," said Philip, "it's very easy. You've only to look well at
things, and draw them over and over again. What you do wrong once, you
can alter the next time."

"But haven't you been taught _any_thing?" said Tom, beginning to have
a puzzled suspicion that Philip's crooked back might be the source of
remarkable faculties. "I thought you'd been to school a long while."

"Yes," said Philip, smiling; "I've been taught Latin and Greek and
mathematics, and writing and such things."

"Oh, but I say, you don't like Latin, though, do you?" said Tom,
lowering his voice confidentially.

"Pretty well; I don't care much about it," said Philip.

"Ah, but perhaps you haven't got into the _Propria quae maribus_," said
Tom, nodding his head sideways, as much as to say, "that was the test;
it was easy talking till you came to _that_."

Philip felt some bitter complacency in the promising stupidity of this
well-made, active-looking boy; but made polite by his own extreme
sensitiveness, as well as by his desire to conciliate, he checked his
inclination to laugh, and said quietly,--

"I've done with the grammar; I don't learn that any more."

"Then you won't have the same lessons as I shall?" said Tom, with a
sense of disappointment.

"No; but I dare say I can help you. I shall be very glad to help you
if I can."

Tom did not say "Thank you," for he was quite absorbed in the thought
that Wakem's son did not seem so spiteful a fellow as might have been
expected.

"I say," he said presently, "do you love your father?"

"Yes," said Philip, coloring deeply; "don't you love yours?"

"Oh yes--I only wanted to know," said Tom, rather ashamed of himself,
now he saw Philip coloring and looking uncomfortable. He found much
difficulty in adjusting his attitude of mind toward the son of Lawyer
Wakem, and it had occurred to him that if Philip disliked his father,
that fact might go some way toward clearing up his perplexity.

"Shall you learn drawing now?" he said, by way of changing the
subject.

"No," said Philip. "My father wishes me to give all my time to other
things now."

"What! Latin and Euclid, and those things?" said Tom.

"Yes," said Philip, who had left off using his pencil, and was resting
his head on one hand, while Tom was learning forward on both elbows,
and looking with increasing admiration at the dog and the donkey.

"And you don't mind that?" said Tom, with strong curiosity.

"No; I like to know what everybody else knows. I can study what I like
by-and-by."

"I can't think why anybody should learn Latin," said Tom. "It's no
good."

"It's part of the education of a gentleman," said Philip. "All
gentlemen learn the same things."

"What! do you think Sir John Crake, the master of the harriers, knows
Latin?" said Tom, who had often thought he should like to resemble Sir
John Crake.

"He learned it when he was a boy, of course," said Philip. "But I dare
say he's forgotten it."

"Oh, well, I can do that, then," said Tom, not with any epigrammatic
intention, but with serious satisfaction at the idea that, as far as
Latin was concerned, there was no hindrance to his resembling Sir John
Crake. "Only you're obliged to remember it while you're at school,
else you've got to learn ever so many lines of 'Speaker.' Mr.
Stelling's very particular--did you know? He'll have you up ten times
if you say 'nam' for 'jam,'--he won't let you go a letter wrong, _I_
can tell you."

"Oh, I don't mind," said Philip, unable to choke a laugh; "I can
remember things easily. And there are some lessons I'm very fond of.
I'm very fond of Greek history, and everything about the Greeks. I
should like to have been a Greek and fought the Persians, and then
have come home and have written tragedies, or else have been listened
to by everybody for my wisdom, like Socrates, and have died a grand
death." (Philip, you perceive, was not without a wish to impress the
well-made barbarian with a sense of his mental superiority.)

"Why, were the Greeks great fighters?" said Tom, who saw a vista in
this direction. "Is there anything like David and Goliath and Samson
in the Greek history? Those are the only bits I like in the history of
the Jews."

"Oh, there are very fine stories of that sort about the Greeks,--about
the heroes of early times who killed the wild beasts, as Samson did.
And in the Odyssey--that's a beautiful poem--there's a more wonderful
giant than Goliath,--Polypheme, who had only one eye in the middle of
his forehead; and Ulysses, a little fellow, but very wise and cunning,
got a red-hot pine-tree and stuck it into this one eye, and made him
roar like a thousand bulls."

"Oh, what fun!" said Tom, jumping away from the table, and stamping
first with one leg and then the other. "I say, can you tell me all
about those stories? Because I sha'n't learn Greek, you know. Shall
I?" he added, pausing in his stamping with a sudden alarm, lest the
contrary might be possible. "Does every gentleman learn Greek? Will
Mr. Stelling make me begin with it, do you think?"

"No, I should think not, very likely not," said Philip. "But you may
read those stories without knowing Greek. I've got them in English."

"Oh, but I don't like reading; I'd sooner have you tell them me. But
only the fighting ones, you know. My sister Maggie is always wanting
to tell me stories, but they're stupid things. Girls' stories always
are. Can you tell a good many fighting stories?"

"Oh yes," said Philip; "lots of them, besides the Greek stories. I can
tell you about Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Saladin, and about William
Wallace and Robert Bruce and James Douglas,--I know no end."

"You're older than I am, aren't you?" said Tom.

"Why, how old are _you?_ I'm fifteen."

"I'm only going in fourteen," said Tom. "But I thrashed all the
fellows at Jacob's--that's where I was before I came here. And I beat
'em all at bandy and climbing. And I wish Mr. Stelling would let us go
fishing. _I_ could show you how to fish. You _could_ fish, couldn't
you? It's only standing, and sitting still, you know."

Tom, in his turn, wished to make the balance dip in his favor. This
hunchback must not suppose that his acquaintance with fighting stories
put him on a par with an actual fighting hero, like Tom Tulliver.
Philip winced under this allusion to his unfitness for active sports,
and he answered almost peevishly,--

"I can't bear fishing. I think people look like fools sitting watching
a line hour after hour, or else throwing and throwing, and catching
nothing."

"Ah, but you wouldn't say they looked like fools when they landed a
big pike, I can tell you," said Tom, who had never caught anything
that was "big" in his life, but whose imagination was on the stretch
with indignant zeal for the honor of sport. Wakem's son, it was plain,
had his disagreeable points, and must be kept in due check. Happily
for the harmony of this first interview, they were now called to
dinner, and Philip was not allowed to develop farther his unsound
views on the subject of fishing. But Tom said to himself, that was
just what he should have expected from a hunchback.

Chapter IV

"The Young Idea"

The alterations of feeling in that first dialogue between Tom and
Philip continued to make their intercourse even after many weeks of
schoolboy intimacy. Tom never quite lost the feeling that Philip,
being the son of a "rascal," was his natural enemy; never thoroughly
overcame his repulsion to Philip's deformity. He was a boy who adhered
tenaciously to impressions once received; as with all minds in which
mere perception predominates over thought and emotion, the external
remained to him rigidly what it was in the first instance. But then it
was impossible not to like Philip's company when he was in a good
humor; he could help one so well in one's Latin exercises, which Tom
regarded as a kind of puzzle that could only be found out by a lucky
chance; and he could tell such wonderful fighting stories about Hal of
the Wynd, for example, and other heroes who were especial favorites
with Tom, because they laid about them with heavy strokes. He had
small opinion of Saladin, whose cimeter could cut a cushion in two in
an instant; who wanted to cut cushions? That was a stupid story, and
he didn't care to hear it again. But when Robert Bruce, on the black
pony, rose in his stirrups, and lifting his good battle-axe, cracked
at once the helmet and the skull of the too hasty knight at
Bannockburn, then Tom felt all the exaltation of sympathy, and if he
had had a cocoanut at hand, he would have cracked it at once with the
poker. Philip in his happier moods indulged Tom to the top of his
bent, heightening the crash and bang and fury of every fight with all
the artillery of epithets and similes at his command. But he was not
always in a good humor or happy mood. The slight spurt of peevish
susceptibility which had escaped him in their first interview was a
symptom of a perpetually recurring mental ailment, half of it nervous
irritability, half of it the heart-bitterness produced by the sense of
his deformity. In these fits of susceptibility every glance seemed to
him to be charged either with offensive pity or with ill-repressed
disgust; at the very least it was an indifferent glance, and Philip
felt indifference as a child of the south feels the chill air of a
northern spring. Poor Tom's blundering patronage when they were out of
doors together would sometimes make him turn upon the well-meaning lad
quite savagely; and his eyes, usually sad and quiet, would flash with
anything but playful lightning. No wonder Tom retained his suspicions
of the humpback.