The Mill on the Floss

by George Eliot

  Chapter V

  Tom Applies His Knife to the Oyster

  The next day, at ten o'clock, Tom was on his way to St. Ogg's, to seehis uncle Deane, who was to come home last night, his aunt had said;and Tom had made up his mind that his uncle Deane was the right personto ask for advice about getting some employment. He was in a great wayof business; he had not the narrow notions of uncle Glegg; and he hadrisen in the world on a scale of advancement which accorded with Tom'sambition.

  It was a dark, chill, misty morning, likely to end in rain,--one ofthose mornings when even happy people take refuge in their hopes. AndTom was very unhappy; he felt the humiliation as well as theprospective hardships of his lot with all the keenness of a proudnature; and with all his resolute dutifulness toward his father theremingled an irrepressible indignation against him which gave misfortunethe less endurable aspect of a wrong. Since these were theconsequences of going to law, his father was really blamable, as hisaunts and uncles had always said he was; and it was a significantindication of Tom's character, that though he thought his aunts oughtto do something more for his mother, he felt nothing like Maggie'sviolent resentment against them for showing no eager tenderness andgenerosity. There were no impulses in Tom that led him to expect whatdid not present itself to him as a right to be demanded. Why shouldpeople give away their money plentifully to those who had not takencare of their own money? Tom saw some justice in severity; and all themore, because he had confidence in himself that he should neverdeserve that just severity. It was very hard upon him that he shouldbe put at this disadvantage in life by his father's want of prudence;but he was not going to complain and to find fault with people becausethey did not make everything easy for him. He would ask no one to helphim, more than to give him work and pay him for it. Poor Tom was notwithout his hopes to take refuge in under the chill damp imprisonmentof the December fog, which seemed only like a part of his hometroubles. At sixteen, the mind that has the strongest affinity forfact cannot escape illusion and self-flattery; and Tom, in sketchinghis future, had no other guide in arranging his facts than thesuggestions of his own brave self-reliance. Both Mr. Glegg and Mr.Deane, he knew, had been very poor once; he did not want to save moneyslowly and retire on a moderate fortune like his uncle Glegg, but hewould be like his uncle Deane--get a situation in some great house ofbusiness and rise fast. He had scarcely seen anything of his uncleDeane for the last three years--the two families had been gettingwider apart; but for this very reason Tom was the more hopeful aboutapplying to him. His uncle Glegg, he felt sure, would never encourageany spirited project, but he had a vague imposing idea of theresources at his uncle Deane's command. He had heard his father say,long ago, how Deane had made himself so valuable to Guest & Co. thatthey were glad enough to offer him a share in the business; that waswhat Tom resolved _he_ would do. It was intolerable to think of beingpoor and looked down upon all one's life. He would provide for hismother and sister, and make every one say that he was a man of highcharacter. He leaped over the years in this way, and, in the haste ofstrong purpose and strong desire, did not see how they would be madeup of slow days, hours, and minutes.

  By the time he had crossed the stone bridge over the Floss and wasentering St. Ogg's, he was thinking that he would buy his father'smill and land again when he was rich enough, and improve the house andlive there; he should prefer it to any smarter, newer place, and hecould keep as many horses and dogs as he liked.

  Walking along the street with a firm, rapid step, at this point in hisreverie he was startled by some one who had crossed without hisnotice, and who said to him in a rough, familiar voice:

  "Why, Master Tom, how's your father this morning?" It was a publicanof St. Ogg's, one of his father's customers.

  Tom disliked being spoken to just then; but he said civilly, "He'sstill very ill, thank you."

  "Ay, it's been a sore chance for you, young man, hasn't it,--thislawsuit turning out against him?" said the publican, with a confused,beery idea of being good-natured.

  Tom reddened and passed on he would have felt it like the handling ofa bruise, even if there had been the most polite and delicatereference to his position.

  "That's Tulliver's son," said the publican to a grocer standing on theadjacent door-step.

  "Ah!" said the grocer, "I thought I knew his features. He takes afterhis mother's family; she was a Dodson. He's a fine, straight youth;what's he been brought up to?"

  "Oh! to turn up his nose at his father's customers, and be a finegentleman,--not much else, I think."

  Tom, roused from his dream of the future to a thorough consciousnessof the present, made all the greater haste to reach the warehouseoffices of Guest & Co., where he expected to find his uncle Deane. Butthis was Mr. Deane's morning at the band, a clerk told him, and withsome contempt for his ignorance; Mr. Deane was not to be found inRiver Street on a Thursday morning.

  At the bank Tom was admitted into the private room where his unclewas, immediately after sending in his name. Mr. Deane was auditingaccounts; but he looked up as Tom entered, and putting out his hand,said, "Well, Tom, nothing fresh the matter at home, I hope? How's yourfather?"

  "Much the same, thank you, uncle," said Tom, feeling nervous. "But Iwant to speak to you, please, when you're at liberty."

  "Sit down, sit down," said Mr. Deane, relapsing into his accounts, inwhich he and the managing-clerk remained so absorbed for the nexthalf-hour that Tom began to wonder whether he should have to sit inthis way till the bank closed,--there seemed so little tendency towarda conclusion in the quiet, monotonous procedure of these sleek,prosperous men of business. Would his uncle give him a place in thebank? It would be very dull, prosy work, he thought, writing thereforever to the loud ticking of a timepiece. He preferred some otherway of getting rich. But at last there was a change; his uncle took apen and wrote something with a flourish at the end.

  "You'll just step up to Torry's now, Mr. Spence, will you?" said Mr.Deane, and the clock suddenly became less loud and deliberate in Tom'sears.

  "Well, Tom," said Mr. Deane, when they were alone, turning hissubstantial person a little in his chair, and taking out hissnuff-box; "what's the business, my boy; what's the business?" Mr.Deane, who had heard from his wife what had passed the day before,thought Tom was come to appeal to him for some means of averting thesale.

  "I hope you'll excuse me for troubling you, uncle," said Tom,coloring, but speaking in a tone which, though, tremulous, had acertain proud independence in it; "but I thought you were the bestperson to advise me what to do."

  "Ah!" said Mr. Deane, reserving his pinch of snuff, and looking at Tomwith new attention, "let us hear."

  "I want to get a situation, uncle, so that I may earn some money,"said Tom, who never fell into circumlocution.

  "A situation?" said Mr. Deane, and then took his pinch of snuff withelaborate justice to each nostril. Tom thought snuff-taking a mostprovoking habit.

  "Why, let me see, how old are you?" said Mr. Deane, as he threwhimself backward again.

  "Sixteen; I mean, I am going in seventeen," said Tom, hoping his unclenoticed how much beard he had.

  "Let me see; your father had some notion of making you an engineer, Ithink?"

  "But I don't think I could get any money at that for a long while,could I?"

  "That's true; but people don't get much money at anything, my boy,when they're only sixteen. You've had a good deal of schooling,however; I suppose you're pretty well up in accounts, eh? Youunderstand book keeping?"

  "No," said Tom, rather falteringly. "I was in Practice. But Mr.Stelling says I write a good hand, uncle. That's my writing," addedTom, laying on the table a copy of the list he had made yesterday.

  "Ah! that's good, that's good. But, you see, the best hand in theworld'll not get you a better place than a copying-clerk's, if youknow nothing of book-keeping,--nothing of accounts. And acopying-clerk's a cheap article. But what have you been learning atschool, then?"

  Mr. Deane had not occupied himself with m
ethods of education, and hadno precise conception of what went forward in expensive schools.

  "We learned Latin," said Tom, pausing a little between each item, asif he were turning over the books in his school-desk to assist hismemory,--"a good deal of Latin; and the last year I did Themes, oneweek in Latin and one in English; and Greek and Roman history; andEuclid; and I began Algebra, but I left it off again; and we had oneday every week for Arithmetic. Then I used to have drawing-lessons;and there were several other books we either read or learned outof,--English Poetry, and Horae Paulinae and Blair's Rhetoric, the lasthalf."

  Mr. Deane tapped his snuff-box again and screwed up his mouth; he feltin the position of many estimable persons when they had read the NewTariff, and found how many commodities were imported of which theyknew nothing; like a cautious man of business, he was not going tospeak rashly of a raw material in which he had had no experience. Butthe presumption was, that if it had been good for anything, sosuccessful a man as himself would hardly have been ignorant of it.

  About Latin he had an opinion, and thought that in case of anotherwar, since people would no longer wear hair-powder, it would be wellto put a tax upon Latin, as a luxury much run upon by the higherclasses, and not telling at all on the ship-owning department. But,for what he knew, the Horae Paulinae might be something less neutral. Onthe whole, this list of acquirements gave him a sort of repulsiontoward poor Tom.

  "Well," he said at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone, "you've hadthree years at these things,--you must be pretty strong in 'em. Hadn'tyou better take up some line where they'll come in handy?"

  Tom colored, and burst out, with new energy:

  "I'd rather not have any employment of that sort, uncle. I don't likeLatin and those things. I don't know what I could do with them unlessI went as usher in a school; and I don't know them well enough forthat! besides, I would as soon carry a pair of panniers. I don't wantto be that sort of person. I should like to enter into some businesswhere I can get on,--a manly business, where I should have to lookafter things, and get credit for what I did. And I shall want to keepmy mother and sister."

  "Ah, young gentleman," said Mr. Deane, with that tendency to repressyouthful hopes which stout and successful men of fifty find one oftheir easiest duties, "that's sooner said than done,--sooner said thandone."

  "But didn't _you_ get on in that way, uncle?" said Tom, a littleirritated that Mr. Deane did not enter more rapidly into his views. "Imean, didn't you rise from one place to another through your abilitiesand good conduct?"

  "Ay, ay, sir," said Mr. Deane, spreading himself in his chair alittle, and entering with great readiness into a retrospect of his owncareer. "But I'll tell you how I got on. It wasn't by getting astridea stick and thinking it would turn into a horse if I sat on it longenough. I kept my eyes and ears open, sir, and I wasn't too fond of myown back, and I made my master's interest my own. Why, with onlylooking into what went on in the mill, I found out how there was awaste of five hundred a-year that might be hindered. Why, sir, Ihadn't more schooling to begin with than a charity boy; but I sawpretty soon that I couldn't get on far enough without masteringaccounts, and I learned 'em between working hours, after I'd beenunlading. Look here." Mr. Deane opened a book and pointed to the page."I write a good hand enough, and I'll match anybody at all sorts ofreckoning by the head; and I got it all by hard work, and paid for itout of my own earnings,--often out of my own dinner and supper. And Ilooked into the nature of all the things we had to do in the business,and picked up knowledge as I went about my work, and turned it over inmy head. Why, I'm no mechanic,--I never pretended to be--but I'vethought of a thing or two that the mechanics never thought of, andit's made a fine difference in our returns. And there isn't an articleshipped or unshipped at our wharf but I know the quality of it. If Igot places, sir, it was because I made myself fit for 'em. If you wantto slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself; that'swhere it is."

  Mr. Deane tapped his box again. He had been led on by pure enthusiasmin his subject, and had really forgotten what bearing thisretrospective survey had on his listener. He had found occasion forsaying the same thing more than once before, and was not distinctlyaware that he had not his port-wine before him.

  "Well, uncle," said Tom, with a slight complaint in his tone, "that'swhat I should like to do. Can't _I_ get on in the same way?"

  "In the same way?" said Mr. Deane, eyeing Tom with quiet deliberation."There go two or three questions to that, Master Tom. That depends onwhat sort of material you are, to begin with, and whether you've beenput into the right mill. But I'll tell you what it is. Your poorfather went the wrong way to work in giving you an education. Itwasn't my business, and I didn't interfere; but it is as I thought itwould be. You've had a sort of learning that's all very well for ayoung fellow like our Mr. Stephen Guest, who'll have nothing to do butsign checks all his life, and may as well have Latin inside his headas any other sort of stuffing."

  "But, uncle," said Tom, earnestly, "I don't see why the Latin needhinder me from getting on in business. I shall soon forget it all; itmakes no difference to me. I had to do my lessons at school, but Ialways thought they'd never be of any use to me afterward; I didn'tcare about them."

  "Ay, ay, that's all very well," said Mr. Deane; "but it doesn't alterwhat I was going to say. Your Latin and rigmarole may soon dry offyou, but you'll be but a bare stick after that. Besides, it's whitenedyour hands and taken the rough work out of you. And what do you know?Why, you know nothing about book-keeping, to begin with, and not somuch of reckoning as a common shopman. You'll have to begin at a lowround of the ladder, let me tell you, if you mean to get on in life.It's no use forgetting the education your father's been paying for, ifyou don't give yourself a new un."

  Tom bit his lips hard; he felt as if the tears were rising, and hewould rather die than let them.

  "You want me to help you to a situation," Mr. Deane went on "well,I've no fault to find with that. I'm willing to do something for you.But you youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well andworking easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you gethorseback. Now, you must remember what you are,--you're a lad ofsixteen, trained to nothing particular. There's heaps of your sort,like so many pebbles, made to fit in nowhere. Well, you might beapprenticed to some business,--a chemist's and druggist's perhaps;your Latin might come in a bit there----"

  Tom was going to speak, but Mr. Deane put up his hand and said:

  "Stop! hear what I've got to say. You don't want to be a 'prentice,--Iknow, I know,--you want to make more haste, and you don't want tostand behind a counter. But if you're a copying-clerk, you'll have tostand behind a desk, and stare at your ink and paper all day; thereisn't much out-look there, and you won't be much wiser at the end ofthe year than at the beginning. The world isn't made of pen, ink, andpaper, and if you're to get on in the world, young man, you must knowwhat the world's made of. Now the best chance for you 'ud be to have aplace on a wharf, or in a warehouse, where you'd learn the smell ofthings, but you wouldn't like that, I'll be bound; you'd have to standcold and wet, and be shouldered about by rough fellows. You're toofine a gentleman for that."

  Mr. Deane paused and looked hard at Tom, who certainly felt someinward struggle before he could reply.

  "I would rather do what will be best for me in the end, sir; I wouldput up with what was disagreeable."

  "That's well, if you can carry it out. But you must remember it isn'tonly laying hold of a rope, you must go on pulling. It's the mistakeyou lads make that have got nothing either in your brains or yourpocket, to think you've got a better start in the world if you stickyourselves in a place where you can keep your coats clean, and havethe shopwenches take you for fine gentlemen. That wasn't the way _I_started, young man; when I was sixteen, my jacket smelt of tar, and Iwasn't afraid of handling cheeses. That's the reason I can wear goodbroadcloth now, and have my legs under the same table with the headof the best firms in St. Ogg's."

  Uncle Deane tap
ped his box, and seemed to expand a little under hiswaistcoat and gold chain, as he squared his shoulders in the chair.

  "Is there any place at liberty that you know of now, uncle, that Ishould do for? I should like to set to work at once," said Tom, with aslight tremor in his voice.

  "Stop a bit, stop a bit; we mustn't be in too great a hurry. You mustbear in mind, if I put you in a place you're a bit young for, becauseyou happen to be my nephew, I shall be responsible for you. Andthere's no better reason, you know, than your being my nephew; becauseit remains to be seen whether you're good for anything."

  "I hope I shall never do you any discredit, uncle," said Tom, hurt, asall boys are at the statement of the unpleasant truth that people feelno ground for trusting them. "I care about my own credit too much forthat."

  "Well done, Tom, well done! That's the right spirit, and I neverrefuse to help anybody if they've a mind to do themselves justice.There's a young man of two-and-twenty I've got my eye on now. I shalldo what I can for that young man; he's got some pith in him. But then,you see, he's made good use of his time,--a first-rate calculator,--can tell you the cubic contents of anything in no time, and put me upthe other day to a new market for Swedish bark; he's uncommonlyknowing in manufactures, that young fellow."

  "I'd better set about learning book-keeping, hadn't I, uncle?" saidTom, anxious to prove his readiness to exert himself.

  "Yes, yes, you can't do amiss there. But--Ah, Spence, you're backagain. Well Tom, there's nothing more to be said just now, I think,and I must go to business again. Good-by. Remember me to your mother."

  Mr. Deane put out his hand, with an air of friendly dismissal, and Tomhad not courage to ask another question, especially in the presence ofMr. Spence. So he went out again into the cold damp air. He had tocall at his uncle Glegg's about the money in the Savings Bank, and bythe time he set out again the mist had thickened, and he could not seevery far before him; but going along River Street again, he wasstartled, when he was within two yards of the projecting side of ashop-window, by the words "Dorlcote Mill" in large letters on ahand-bill, placed as if on purpose to stare at him. It was thecatalogue of the sale to take place the next week; it was a reason forhurrying faster out of the town.

  Poor Tom formed no visions of the distant future as he made his wayhomeward; he only felt that the present was very hard. It seemed awrong toward him that his uncle Deane had no confidence in him,--didnot see at once that he should acquit himself well, which Tom himselfwas as certain of as of the daylight. Apparently he, Tom Tulliver, waslikely to be held of small account in the world; and for the firsttime he felt a sinking of heart under the sense that he really wasvery ignorant, and could do very little. Who was that enviable youngman that could tell the cubic contents of things in no time, and makesuggestions about Swedish bark! Tom had been used to be so entirelysatisfied with himself, in spite of his breaking down in ademonstration, and construing _nunc illas promite vires_ as "nowpromise those men"; but now he suddenly felt at a disadvantage,because he knew less than some one else knew. There must be a world ofthings connected with that Swedish bark, which, if he only knew them,might have helped him to get on. It would have been much easier tomake a figure with a spirited horse and a new saddle.

  Two hours ago, as Tom was walking to St. Ogg's, he saw the distantfuture before him as he might have seen a tempting stretch of smoothsandy beach beyond a belt of flinty shingles; he was on the grassybank then, and thought the shingles might soon be passed. But now hisfeet were on the sharp stones; the belt of shingles had widened, andthe stretch of sand had dwindled into narrowness.

  "What did my Uncle Deane say, Tom?" said Maggie, putting her armthrough Tom's as he was warming himself rather drearily by the kitchenfire. "Did he say he would give you a situation?"

  "No, he didn't say that. He didn't quite promise me anything; heseemed to think I couldn't have a very good situation. I'm too young."

  "But didn't he speak kindly, Tom?"

  "Kindly? Pooh! what's the use of talking about that? I wouldn't careabout his speaking kindly, if I could get a situation. But it's such anuisance and bother; I've been at school all this while learning Latinand things,--not a bit of good to me,--and now my uncle says I mustset about learning book-keeping and calculation, and those things. Heseems to make out I'm good for nothing."

  Tom's mouth twitched with a bitter expression as he looked at thefire.

  "Oh, what a pity we haven't got Dominie Sampson!" said Maggie, whocouldn't help mingling some gayety with their sadness. "If he hadtaught me book-keeping by double entry and after the Italian method,as he did Lucy Bertram, I could teach you, Tom."

  "_You_ teach! Yes, I dare say. That's always the tone you take," saidTom.

  "Dear Tom, I was only joking," said Maggie, putting her cheek againsthis coat-sleeve.

  "But it's always the same, Maggie," said Tom, with the little frown heput on when he was about to be justifiably severe. "You're alwayssetting yourself up above me and every one else, and I've wanted totell you about it several times. You ought not to have spoken as youdid to my uncles and aunts; you should leave it to me to take care ofmy mother and you, and not put yourself forward. You think you knowbetter than any one, but you're almost always wrong. I can judge muchbetter than you can."

  Poor Tom! he had just come from being lectured and made to feel hisinferiority; the reaction of his strong, self-asserting nature musttake place somehow; and here was a case in which he could justly showhimself dominant. Maggie's cheek flushed and her lip quivered withconflicting resentment and affection, and a certain awe as well asadmiration of Tom's firmer and more effective character. She did notanswer immediately; very angry words rose to her lips, but they weredriven back again, and she said at last:

  "You often think I'm conceited, Tom, when I don't mean what I say atall in that way. I don't mean to put myself above you; I know youbehaved better than I did yesterday. But you are always so harsh tome, Tom."

  With the last words the resentment was rising again.

  "No, I'm not harsh," said Tom, with severe decision. "I'm always kindto you, and so I shall be; I shall always take care of you. But youmust mind what I say."

  Their mother came in now, and Maggie rushed away, that her burst oftears, which she felt must come, might not happen till she was safeupstairs. They were very bitter tears; everybody in the world seemedso hard and unkind to Maggie; there was no indulgence, no fondness,such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her ownthoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable ortender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who didnot show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the bookswas not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where peoplebehaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that didnot belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was therefor Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother'snarrow griefs, perhaps of her father's heart-cutting childishdependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth,when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, nosuperadded life in the life of others; though we who looked on thinklightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the futurelightened the blind sufferer's present.

  Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hairpushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dullwalls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was acreature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautifuland glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining afterdreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with ablind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together thewonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul asense of home in it.

  No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and theinward, that painful collisions come of it.