Books: The Mill on the Floss

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"Mrs. Tulliver, I think?" said Mr. Wakem.

"Yes, sir; Miss Elizabeth Dodson as was."

"Pray be seated. You have some business with me?"

"Well, sir, yes," said Mrs. Tulliver, beginning to feel alarmed at her
own courage, now she was really in presence of the formidable man, and
reflecting that she had not settled with herself how she should begin.
Mr. Wakem felt in his waistcoat pockets, and looked at her in silence.

"I hope, sir," she began at last,--"I hope, sir, you're not a-thinking
as _I_ bear you any ill-will because o' my husband's losing his
lawsuit, and the bailies being put in, and the linen being sold,--oh
dear!--for I wasn't brought up in that way. I'm sure you remember my
father, sir, for he was close friends with Squire Darleigh, and we
allays went to the dances there, the Miss Dodsons,--nobody could be
more looked on,--and justly, for there was four of us, and you're
quite aware as Mrs. Glegg and Mrs. Deane are my sisters. And as for
going to law and losing money, and having sales before you're dead, I
never saw anything o' that before I was married, nor for a long while
after. And I'm not to be answerable for my bad luck i' marrying out o'
my own family into one where the goings-on was different. And as for
being drawn in t' abuse you as other folks abuse you, sir, _that_ I
niver was, and nobody can say it of me."

Mrs. Tulliver shook her head a little, and looked at the hem of her
pocket-handkerchief.

"I've no doubt of what you say, Mrs. Tulliver," said Mr. Wakem, with
cold politeness. "But you have some question to ask me?"

"Well, sir, yes. But that's what I've said to myself,--I've said you'd
had some nat'ral feeling; and as for my husband, as hasn't been
himself for this two months, I'm not a-defending him, in no way, for
being so hot about th' erigation,--not but what there's worse men, for
he never wronged nobody of a shilling nor a penny, not willingly; and
as for his fieriness and lawing, what could I do? And him struck as if
it was with death when he got the letter as said you'd the hold upo'
the land. But I can't believe but what you'll behave as a gentleman."

"What does all this mean, Mrs. Tulliver?" said Mr. Wakem rather
sharply. "What do you want to ask me?"

"Why, sir, if you'll be so good," said Mrs. Tulliver, starting a
little, and speaking more hurriedly,--"if you'll be so good not to buy
the mill an' the land,--the land wouldn't so much matter, only my
husband ull' be like mad at your having it."

Something like a new thought flashed across Mr. Wakem's face as he
said, "Who told you I meant to buy it?"

"Why, sir, it's none o' my inventing, and I should never ha' thought
of it; for my husband, as ought to know about the law, he allays used
to say as lawyers had never no call to buy anything,--either lands or
houses,--for they allays got 'em into their hands other ways. An' I
should think that 'ud be the way with you, sir; and I niver said as
you'd be the man to do contrairy to that."

"Ah, well, who was it that _did_ say so?" said Wakem, opening his
desk, and moving things about, with the accompaniment of an almost
inaudible whistle.

"Why, sir, it was Mr. Glegg and Mr. Deane, as have all the management;
and Mr. Deane thinks as Guest &Co. 'ud buy the mill and let Mr.
Tulliver work it for 'em, if you didn't bid for it and raise the
price. And it 'ud be such a thing for my husband to stay where he is,
if he could get his living: for it was his father's before him, the
mill was, and his grandfather built it, though I wasn't fond o' the
noise of it, when first I was married, for there was no mills in our
family,--not the Dodson's,--and if I'd known as the mills had so much
to do with the law, it wouldn't have been me as 'ud have been the
first Dodson to marry one; but I went into it blindfold, that I did,
erigation and everything."

"What! Guest &Co. would keep the mill in their own hands, I suppose,
and pay your husband wages?"

"Oh dear, sir, it's hard to think of," said poor Mrs. Tulliver, a
little tear making its way, "as my husband should take wage. But it
'ud look more like what used to be, to stay at the mill than to go
anywhere else; and if you'll only think--if you was to bid for the
mill and buy it, my husband might be struck worse than he was before,
and niver get better again as he's getting now."

"Well, but if I bought the mill, and allowed your husband to act as my
manager in the same way, how then?" said Mr. Wakem.

"Oh, sir, I doubt he could niver be got to do it, not if the very mill
stood still to beg and pray of him. For your name's like poison to
him, it's so as never was; and he looks upon it as you've been the
ruin of him all along, ever since you set the law on him about the
road through the meadow,--that's eight year ago, and he's been going
on ever since--as I've allays told him he was wrong----"

"He's a pig-headed, foul-mouthed fool!" burst out Mr. Wakem,
forgetting himself.

"Oh dear, sir!" said Mrs. Tulliver, frightened at a result so
different from the one she had fixed her mind on; "I wouldn't wish to
contradict you, but it's like enough he's changed his mind with this
illness,--he's forgot a many things he used to talk about. And you
wouldn't like to have a corpse on your mind, if he was to die; and
they _do_ say as it's allays unlucky when Dorlcote Mill changes hands,
and the water might all run away, and _then_--not as I'm wishing you
any ill-luck, sir, for I forgot to tell you as I remember your wedding
as if it was yesterday; Mrs. Wakem was a Miss Clint, I know _that;_
and my boy, as there isn't a nicer, handsomer, straighter boy nowhere,
went to school with your son----"

Mr. Wakem rose, opened the door, and called to one of his clerks.

"You must excuse me for interrupting you, Mrs. Tulliver; I have
business that must be attended to; and I think there is nothing more
necessary to be said."

"But if you _would_ bear it in mind, sir," said Mrs. Tulliver, rising,
"and not run against me and my children; and I'm not denying Mr.
Tulliver's been in the wrong, but he's been punished enough, and
there's worse men, for it's been giving to other folks has been his
fault. He's done nobody any harm but himself and his family,--the
more's the pity,--and I go and look at the bare shelves every day, and
think where all my things used to stand."

"Yes, yes, I'll bear it in mind," said Mr. Wakem, hastily, looking
toward the open door.

"And if you'd please not to say as I've been to speak to you, for my
son 'ud be very angry with me for demeaning myself, I know he would,
and I've trouble enough without being scolded by my children."

Poor Mrs. Tulliver's voice trembled a little, and she could make no
answer to the attorney's "good morning," but curtsied and walked out
in silence.

"Which day is it that Dorlcote Mill is to be sold? Where's the bill?"
said Mr. Wakem to his clerk when they were alone.

"Next Friday is the day,--Friday at six o'clock."

"Oh, just run to Winship's the auctioneer, and see if he's at home. I
have some business for him; ask him to come up."

Although, when Mr. Wakem entered his office that morning, he had had
no intention of purchasing Dorlcote Mill, his mind was already made
up. Mrs. Tulliver had suggested to him several determining motives,
and his mental glance was very rapid; he was one of those men who can
be prompt without being rash, because their motives run in fixed
tracks, and they have no need to reconcile conflicting aims.

To suppose that Wakem had the same sort of inveterate hatred toward
Tulliver that Tulliver had toward him would be like supposing that a
pike and a roach can look at each other from a similar point of view.
The roach necessarily abhors the mode in which the pike gets his
living, and the pike is likely to think nothing further even of the
most indignant roach than that he is excellent good eating; it could
only be when the roach choked him that the pike could entertain a
strong personal animosity. If Mr. Tulliver had ever seriously injured
or thwarted the attorney, Wakem would not have refused him the
distinction of being a special object of his vindictiveness. But when
Mr. Tulliver called Wakem a rascal at the market dinner-table, the
attorneys' clients were not a whit inclined to withdraw their business
from him; and if, when Wakem himself happened to be present, some
jocose cattle-feeder, stimulated by opportunity and brandy, made a
thrust at him by alluding to old ladies' wills, he maintained perfect
_sang froid_, and knew quite well that the majority of substantial men
then present were perfectly contented with the fact that "Wakem was
Wakem"; that is to say, a man who always knew the stepping-stones that
would carry him through very muddy bits of practice. A man who had
made a large fortune, had a handsome house among the trees at Tofton,
and decidedly the finest stock of port-wine in the neighborhood of St.
Ogg's, was likely to feel himself on a level with public opinion. And
I am not sure that even honest Mr. Tulliver himself, with his general
view of law as a cockpit, might not, under opposite circumstances,
have seen a fine appropriateness in the truth that "Wakem was Wakem";
since I have understood from persons versed in history, that mankind
is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors
when their victory is on the right side. Tulliver, then, could be no
obstruction to Wakem; on the contrary, he was a poor devil whom the
lawyer had defeated several times; a hot-tempered fellow, who would
always give you a handle against him. Wakem's conscience was not
uneasy because he had used a few tricks against the miller; why should
he hate that unsuccessful plaintiff, that pitiable, furious bull
entangled in the meshes of a net?

Still, among the various excesses to which human nature is subject,
moralists have never numbered that of being too fond of the people who
openly revile us. The successful Yellow candidate for the borough of
Old Topping, perhaps, feels no pursuant meditative hatred toward the
Blue editor who consoles his subscribers with vituperative rhetoric
against Yellow men who sell their country, and are the demons of
private life; but he might not be sorry, if law and opportunity
favored, to kick that Blue editor to a deeper shade of his favorite
color. Prosperous men take a little vengeance now and then, as they
take a diversion, when it comes easily in their way, and is no
hindrance to business; and such small unimpassioned revenges have an
enormous effect in life, running through all degrees of pleasant
infliction, blocking the fit men out of places, and blackening
characters in unpremeditated talk. Still more, to see people who have
been only insignificantly offensive to us reduced in life and
humiliated, without any special effort of ours, is apt to have a
soothing, flattering influence. Providence or some other prince of
this world, it appears, has undertaken the task of retribution for us;
and really, by an agreeable constitution of things, our enemies
somehow _don't_ prosper.

Wakem was not without this parenthetic vindictiveness toward the
uncomplimentary miller; and now Mrs. Tulliver had put the notion into
his head, it presented itself to him as a pleasure to do the very
thing that would cause Mr. Tulliver the most deadly mortification,--
and a pleasure of a complex kind, not made up of crude malice, but
mingling with it the relish of self-approbation. To see an enemy
humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared
with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your
benevolent action or concession on his behalf. That is a sort of
revenge which falls into the scale of virtue, and Wakem was not without
an intention of keeping that scale respectably filled. He had once
had the pleasure of putting an old enemy of his into one of the St.
Ogg's alms-houses, to the rebuilding of which he had given a large
subscription; and here was an opportunity of providing for another by
making him his own servant. Such things give a completeness to
prosperity, and contribute elements of agreeable consciousness that
are not dreamed of by that short-sighted, overheated vindictiveness
which goes out its way to wreak itself in direct injury. And Tulliver,
with his rough tongue filed by a sense of obligation, would make a
better servant than any chance-fellow who was cap-in-hand for a
situation. Tulliver was known to be a man of proud honesty, and Wakem
was too acute not to believe in the existence of honesty. He was given
too observing individuals, not to judging of them according to maxims,
and no one knew better than he that all men were not like himself.
Besides, he intended to overlook the whole business of land and mill
pretty closely; he was fond of these practical rural matters. But
there were good reasons for purchasing Dorlcote Mill, quite apart from
any benevolent vengeance on the miller. It was really a capital
investment; besides, Guest &Co. were going to bid for it. Mr. Guest
and Mr. Wakem were on friendly dining terms, and the attorney liked to
predominate over a ship-owner and mill-owner who was a little too loud
in the town affairs as well as in his table-talk. For Wakem was not a
mere man of business; he was considered a pleasant fellow in the upper
circles of St. Ogg's--chatted amusingly over his port-wine, did a
little amateur farming, and had certainly been an excellent husband
and father; at church, when he went there, he sat under the handsomest
of mural monuments erected to the memory of his wife. Most men would
have married again under his circumstances, but he was said to be more
tender to his deformed son than most men were to their best-shapen
offspring. Not that Mr. Wakem had not other sons beside Philip; but
toward them he held only a chiaroscuro parentage, and provided for
them in a grade of life duly beneath his own. In this fact, indeed,
there lay the clenching motive to the purchase of Dorlcote Mill. While
Mrs. Tulliver was talking, it had occurred to the rapid-minded lawyer,
among all the other circumstances of the case, that this purchase
would, in a few years to come, furnish a highly suitable position for
a certain favorite lad whom he meant to bring on in the world.

These were the mental conditions on which Mrs. Tulliver had undertaken
to act persuasively, and had failed; a fact which may receive some
illustration from the remark of a great philosopher, that fly-fishers
fail in preparing their bait so as to make it alluring in the right
quarter, for want of a due acquaintance with the subjectivity of
fishes.

Chapter VIII

Daylight on the Wreck

It was a clear frosty January day on which Mr. Tulliver first came
downstairs. The bright sun on the chestnut boughs and the roofs
opposite his window had made him impatiently declare that he would be
caged up no longer; he thought everywhere would be more cheery under
this sunshine than his bedroom; for he knew nothing of the bareness
below, which made the flood of sunshine importunate, as if it had an
unfeeling pleasure in showing the empty places, and the marks where
well-known objects once had been. The impression on his mind that it
was but yesterday when he received the letter from Mr. Gore was so
continually implied in his talk, and the attempts to convey to him the
idea that many weeks had passed and much had happened since then had
been so soon swept away by recurrent forgetfulness, that even Mr.
Turnbull had begun to despair of preparing him to meet the facts by
previous knowledge. The full sense of the present could only be
imparted gradually by new experience,--not by mere words, which must
remain weaker than the impressions left by the _old_ experience. This
resolution to come downstairs was heard with trembling by the wife and
children. Mrs. Tulliver said Tom must not go to St. Ogg's at the usual
hour, he must wait and see his father downstairs; and Tom complied,
though with an intense inward shrinking from the painful scene. The
hearts of all three had been more deeply dejected than ever during the
last few days. For Guest & Co. had not bought the mill; both mill and
land had been knocked down to Wakem, who had been over the premises,
and had laid before Mr. Deane and Mr. Glegg, in Mrs. Tulliver's
presence, his willingness to employ Mr. Tulliver, in case of his
recovery, as a manager of the business. This proposition had
occasioned much family debating. Uncles and aunts were almost
unanimously of opinion that such an offer ought not to be rejected
when there was nothing in the way but a feeling in Mr. Tulliver's
mind, which, as neither aunts nor uncles shared it, was regarded as
entirely unreasonable and childish,--indeed, as a transferring toward
Wakem of that indignation and hatred which Mr. Tulliver ought properly
to have directed against himself for his general quarrelsomeness, and
his special exhibition of it in going to law. Here was an opportunity
for Mr. Tulliver to provide for his wife and daughter without any
assistance from his wife's relations, and without that too evident
descent into pauperism which makes it annoying to respectable people
to meet the degraded member of the family by the wayside. Mr.
Tulliver, Mrs. Glegg considered, must be made to feel, when he came to
his right mind, that he could never humble himself enough; for _that_
had come which she had always foreseen would come of his insolence in
time past "to them as were the best friends he'd got to look to." Mr
Glegg and Mr. Deane were less stern in their views, but they both of
them thought Tulliver had done enough harm by his hot-tempered
crotchets and ought to put them out of the question when a livelihood
was offered him; Wakem showed a right feeling about the matter,--_he_
had no grudge against Tulliver.

Tom had protested against entertaining the proposition. He shouldn't
like his father to be under Wakem; he thought it would look
mean-spirited; but his mother's main distress was the utter
impossibility of ever "turning Mr. Tulliver round about Wakem," or
getting him to hear reason; no, they would all have to go and live in
a pigsty on purpose to spite Wakem, who spoke "so as nobody could be
fairer." Indeed, Mrs. Tulliver's mind was reduced to such confusion by
living in this strange medium of unaccountable sorrow, against which
she continually appealed by asking, "Oh dear, what _have_ I done to
deserve worse than other women?" that Maggie began to suspect her poor
mother's wits were quite going.

"Tom," she said, when they were out of their father's room together,
"we _must_ try to make father understand a little of what has happened
before he goes downstairs. But we must get my mother away. She will
say something that will do harm. Ask Kezia to fetch her down, and keep
her engaged with something in the kitchen."

Kezia was equal to the task. Having declared her intention of staying
till the master could get about again, "wage or no wage," she had
found a certain recompense in keeping a strong hand over her mistress,
scolding her for "moithering" herself, and going about all day without
changing her cap, and looking as if she was "mushed." Altogether, this
time of trouble was rather a Saturnalian time to Kezia; she could
scold her betters with unreproved freedom. On this particular occasion
there were drying clothes to be fetched in; she wished to know if one
pair of hands could do everything in-doors and out, and observed that
_she_ should have thought it would be good for Mrs. Tulliver to put on
her bonnet, and get a breath of fresh air by doing that needful piece
of work. Poor Mrs. Tulliver went submissively downstairs; to be
ordered about by a servant was the last remnant of her household
dignities,--she would soon have no servant to scold her. Mr. Tulliver
was resting in his chair a little after the fatigue of dressing, and
Maggie and Tom were seated near him, when Luke entered to ask if he
should help master downstairs.

"Ay, ay, Luke; stop a bit, sit down," said Mr. Tulliver pointing his
stick toward a chair, and looking at him with that pursuant gaze which
convalescent persons often have for those who have tended them,
reminding one of an infant gazing about after its nurse. For Luke had
been a constant night-watcher by his master's bed.

"How's the water now, eh, Luke?" said Mr. Tulliver. "Dix hasn't been
choking you up again, eh?"

"No, sir, it's all right."

"Ay, I thought not; he won't be in a hurry at that again, now Riley's
been to settle him. That was what I said to Riley yesterday--I
said----"

Mr. Tulliver leaned forward, resting his elbows on the armchair, and
looking on the ground as if in search of something, striving after
vanishing images like a man struggling against a doze. Maggie looked
at Tom in mute distress, their father's mind was so far off the
present, which would by-and-by thrust itself on his wandering
consciousness! Tom was almost ready to rush away, with that impatience
of painful emotion which makes one of the differences between youth
and maiden, man and woman.

"Father," said Maggie, laying her hand on his, "don't you remember
that Mr. Riley is dead?"

"Dead?" said Mr. Tulliver, sharply, looking in her face with a
strange, examining glance.

"Yes, he died of apoplexy nearly a year ago. I remember hearing you
say you had to pay money for him; and he left his daughters badly off;
one of them is under-teacher at Miss Firniss's, where I've been to
school, you know."

"Ah?" said her father, doubtfully, still looking in her face. But as
soon as Tom began to speak he turned to look at _him_ with the same
inquiring glances, as if he were rather surprised at the presence of
these two young people. Whenever his mind was wandering in the far
past, he fell into this oblivion of their actual faces; they were not
those of the lad and the little wench who belonged to that past.

"It's a long while since you had the dispute with Dix, father," said
Tom. "I remember your talking about it three years ago, before I went
to school at Mr. Stelling's. I've been at school there three years;
don't you remember?"

Mr. Tulliver threw himself backward again, losing the childlike
outward glance under a rush of new ideas, which diverted him from
external impressions.

"Ay, ay," he said, after a minute or two, "I've paid a deal o'
money--I was determined my son should have a good eddication; I'd none
myself, and I've felt the miss of it. And he'll want no other fortin,
that's what I say--if Wakem was to get the better of me again----"

The thought of Wakem roused new vibrations, and after a moment's pause
he began to look at the coat he had on, and to feel in his
side-pocket. Then he turned to Tom, and said in his old sharp way,
"Where have they put Gore's letter?"

It was close at hand in a drawer, for he had often asked for it
before.

"You know what there is in the letter, father?" said Tom, as he gave
it to him.

"To be sure I do," said Mr. Tulliver, rather angrily. "What o' that?
If Furley can't take to the property, somebody else can; there's
plenty o' people in the world besides Furley. But it's hindering--my
not being well--go and tell 'em to get the horse in the gig, Luke; I
can get down to St. Ogg's well enough--Gore's expecting me."

"No, dear father!" Maggie burst out entreatingly; "it's a very long
while since all that; you've been ill a great many weeks,--more than
two months; everything is changed."

Mr. Tulliver looked at them all three alternately with a startled
gaze; the idea that much had happened of which he knew nothing had
often transiently arrested him before, but it came upon him now with
entire novelty.

"Yes, father," said Tom, in answer to the gaze. "You needn't trouble
your mind about business until you are quite well; everything is
settled about that for the present,--about the mill and the land and
the debts."

"What's settled, then?" said his father, angrily.

"Don't you take on too much bout it, sir," said Luke. "You'd ha' paid
iverybody if you could,--that's what I said to Master Tom,--I said
you'd ha' paid iverybody if you could."

Good Luke felt, after the manner of contented hard-working men whose
lives have been spent in servitude, that sense of natural fitness in
rank which made his master's downfall a tragedy to him. He was urged,
in his slow way, to say something that would express his share in the
family sorrow; and these words, which he had used over and over again
to Tom when he wanted to decline the full payment of his fifty pounds
out of the children's money, were the most ready to his tongue. They
were just the words to lay the most painful hold on his master's
bewildered mind.

"Paid everybody?" he said, with vehement agitation, his face flushing,
and his eye lighting up. "Why--what--have they made me a _bankrupt?_"

"Oh, father, dear father!" said Maggie, who thought that terrible word
really represented the fact; "bear it well, because we love you; your
children will always love you. Tom will pay them all; he says he will,
when he's a man."