The Mill on the Floss

by George Eliot

  Chapter IX

  An Item Added to the Family Register

  That first moment of renunciation and submission was followed by daysof violent struggle in the miller's mind, as the gradual access ofbodily strength brought with it increasing ability to embrace in oneview all the conflicting conditions under which he found himself.Feeble limbs easily resign themselves to be tethered, and when we aresubdued by sickness it seems possible to us to fulfil pledges whichthe old vigor comes back and breaks. There were times when poorTulliver thought the fulfilment of his promise to Bessy was somethingquite too hard for human nature; he had promised her without knowingwhat she was going to say,--she might as well have asked him to carrya ton weight on his back. But again, there were many feelings arguingon her side, besides the sense that life had been made hard to her byhaving married him. He saw a possibility, by much pinching, of savingmoney out of his salary toward paying a second dividend to hiscreditors, and it would not be easy elsewhere to get a situation suchas he could fill.

  He had led an easy life, ordering much and working little, and had noaptitude for any new business. He must perhaps take to day-labor, andhis wife must have help from her sisters,--a prospect doubly bitter tohim, now they had let all Bessy's precious things be sold, probablybecause they liked to set her against him, by making her feel that hehad brought her to that pass. He listened to their admonitory talk,when they came to urge on him what he was bound to do for poor Bessy'ssake, with averted eyes, that every now and then flashed on themfurtively when their backs were turned. Nothing but the dread ofneeding their help could have made it an easier alternative to taketheir advice.

  But the strongest influence of all was the love of the old premiseswhere he had run about when he was a boy, just as Tom had done afterhim. The Tullivers had lived on this spot for generations, and he hadsat listening on a low stool on winter evenings while his fathertalked of the old half-timbered mill that had been there before thelast great floods which damaged it so that his grandfather pulled itdown and built the new one. It was when he got able to walk about andlook at all the old objects that he felt the strain of his clingingaffection for the old home as part of his life, part of himself. Hecouldn't bear to think of himself living on any other spot than this,where he knew the sound of every gate door, and felt that the shapeand color of every roof and weather-stain and broken hillock was good,because his growing senses had been fed on them. Our instructedvagrancy, which was hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runsaway early to the tropics, and is at home with palms andbanyans,--which is nourished on books of travel and stretches thetheatre of its imagination to the Zambesi,--can hardly get a dimnotion of what an old-fashioned man like Tulliver felt for this spot,where all his memories centred, and where life seemed like a familiarsmooth-handled tool that the fingers clutch with loving ease. And justnow he was living in that freshened memory of the far-off time whichcomes to us in the passive hours of recovery from sickness.

  "Ay, Luke," he said one afternoon, as he stood looking over theorchard gate, "I remember the day they planted those apple-trees. Myfather was a huge man for planting,--it was like a merry-making to himto get a cart full o' young trees; and I used to stand i' the coldwith him, and follow him about like a dog."

  Then he turned round, and leaning against the gate-post, looked at theopposite buildings.

  "The old mill 'ud miss me, I think, Luke. There's a story as when themill changes hands, the river's angry; I've heard my father say itmany a time. There's no telling whether there mayn't be summat _in_the story, for this is a puzzling world, and Old Harry's got a fingerin it--it's been too many for me, I know."

  "Ay, sir," said Luke, with soothing sympathy, "what wi' the rust onthe wheat, an' the firin' o' the ricks an' that, as I've seen i' mytime,--things often looks comical; there's the bacon fat wi' our lastpig run away like butter,--it leaves nought but a scratchin'."

  "It's just as if it was yesterday, now," Mr. Tulliver went on, "whenmy father began the malting. I remember, the day they finished themalt-house, I thought summat great was to come of it; for we'd aplum-pudding that day and a bit of a feast, and I said to mymother,--she was a fine dark-eyed woman, my mother was,--the littlewench 'ull be as like her as two peas." Here Mr. Tulliver put hisstick between his legs, and took out his snuff-box, for the greaterenjoyment of this anecdote, which dropped from him in fragments, as ifhe every other moment lost narration in vision. "I was a little chapno higher much than my mother's knee,--she was sore fond of uschildren, Gritty and me,--and so I said to her, 'Mother,' I said,'shall we have plum-pudding _every_ day because o' the malt-house? Sheused to tell me o' that till her dying day. She was but a young womanwhen she died, my mother was. But it's forty good year since theyfinished the malt-house, and it isn't many days out of 'em all as Ihaven't looked out into the yard there, the first thing in themorning,--all weathers, from year's end to year's end. I should go offmy head in a new place. I should be like as if I'd lost my way. It'sall hard, whichever way I look at it,--the harness 'ull gall me, butit 'ud be summat to draw along the old road, instead of a new un."

  "Ay, sir," said Luke, "you'd be a deal better here nor in some newplace. I can't abide new places mysen: things is allaysawk'ard,--narrow-wheeled waggins, belike, and the stiles all anothersort, an' oat-cake i' some places, tow'rt th' head o' the Floss,there. It's poor work, changing your country-side."

  "But I doubt, Luke, they'll be for getting rid o' Ben, and making youdo with a lad; and I must help a bit wi' the mill. You'll have a worseplace."

  "Ne'er mind, sir," said Luke, "I sha'n't plague mysen. I'n been wi'you twenty year, an' you can't get twenty year wi' whistlin' for 'em,no more nor you can make the trees grow: you mun wait till GodA'mighty sends 'em. I can't abide new victual nor new faces, _I_can't,--you niver know but what they'll gripe you."

  The walk was finished in silence after this, for Luke had disburthenedhimself of thoughts to an extent that left his conversationalresources quite barren, and Mr. Tulliver had relapsed from hisrecollections into a painful meditation on the choice of hardshipsbefore him. Maggie noticed that he was unusually absent that eveningat tea; and afterward he sat leaning forward in his chair, looking atthe ground, moving his lips, and shaking his head from time to time.Then he looked hard at Mrs. Tulliver, who was knitting opposite him,then at Maggie, who, as she bent over her sewing, was intenselyconscious of some drama going forward in her father's mind. Suddenlyhe took up the poker and broke the large coal fiercely.

  "Dear heart, Mr. Tulliver, what can you be thinking of?" said hiswife, looking up in alarm; "it's very wasteful, breaking the coal, andwe've got hardly any large coal left, and I don't know where the restis to come from."

  "I don't think you're quite so well to-night, are you, father?" saidMaggie; "you seem uneasy."

  "Why, how is it Tom doesn't come?" said Mr. Tulliver, impatiently.

  "Dear heart, is it time? I must go and get his supper," said Mrs.Tulliver, laying down her knitting, and leaving the room.

  "It's nigh upon half-past eight," said Mr. Tulliver. "He'll be heresoon. Go, go and get the big Bible, and open it at the beginning,where everything's set down. And get the pen and ink."

  Maggie obeyed, wondering; but her father gave no further orders, andonly sat listening for Tom's footfall on the gravel, apparentlyirritated by the wind, which had risen, and was roaring so as to drownall other sounds. There was a strange light in his eyes that ratherfrightened Maggie; _she_ began to wish that Tom would come, too.

  "There he is, then," said Mr. Tulliver, in an excited way, when theknock came at last. Maggie went to open the door, but her mother cameout of the kitchen hurriedly, saying, "Stop a bit, Maggie; I'll openit."

  Mrs. Tulliver had begun to be a little frightened at her boy, but shewas jealous of every office others did for him.

  "Your supper's ready by the kitchen-fire, my boy," she said, as hetook off his hat and coat. "You shall have it by yourself, just as youlike, and I won't speak to you."

&nb
sp; "I think my father wants Tom, mother," said Maggie; "he must come intothe parlor first."

  Tom entered with his usual saddened evening face, but his eyes fellimmediately on the open Bible and the inkstand, and he glanced with alook of anxious surprise at his father, who was saying,--

  "Come, come, you're late; I want you."

  "Is there anything the matter, father?" said Tom.

  "You sit down, all of you," said Mr. Tulliver, peremptorily.

  "And, Tom, sit down here; I've got something for you to write i' theBible."

  They all three sat down, looking at him. He began to speak slowly,looking first at his wife.

  "I've made up my mind, Bessy, and I'll be as good as my word to you.There'll be the same grave made for us to lie down in, and we mustn'tbe bearing one another ill-will. I'll stop in the old place, and I'llserve under Wakem, and I'll serve him like an honest man; there's noTulliver but what's honest, mind that, Tom,"--here his voicerose,--"they'll have it to throw up against me as I paid a dividend,but it wasn't my fault; it was because there's raskills in the world.They've been too many for me, and I must give in. I'll put my neck inharness,--for you've a right to say as I've brought you into trouble,Bessy,--and I'll serve him as honest as if he was no raskill; I'm anhonest man, though I shall never hold my head up no more. I'm a treeas is broke--a tree as is broke."

  He paused and looked on the ground. Then suddenly raising his head, hesaid, in a louder yet deeper tone:

  "But I won't forgive him! I know what they say, he never meant me anyharm. That's the way Old Harry props up the rascals. He's been at thebottom of everything; but he's a fine gentleman,--I know, I know. Ishouldn't ha' gone to law, they say. But who made it so as there wasno arbitratin', and no justice to be got? It signifies nothing to him,I know that; he's one o' them fine gentlemen as get money by doingbusiness for poorer folks, and when he's made beggars of 'em he'llgive 'em charity. I won't forgive him! I wish he might be punishedwith shame till his own son 'ud like to forget him. I wish he may dosummat as they'd make him work at the treadmill! But he won't,--he'stoo big a raskill to let the law lay hold on him. And you mind this,Tom,--you never forgive him neither, if you mean to be my son.There'll maybe come a time when you may make him feel; it'll nevercome to me; I'n got my head under the yoke. Now write--write it i' theBible."

  "Oh, father, what?" said Maggie, sinking down by his knee, pale andtrembling. "It's wicked to curse and bear malice."

  "It isn't wicked, I tell you," said her father, fiercely. "It's wickedas the raskills should prosper; it's the Devil's doing. Do as I tellyou, Tom. Write."

  "What am I to write?" said Tom, with gloomy submission.

  "Write as your father, Edward Tulliver, took service under John Wakem,the man as had helped to ruin him, because I'd promised my wife tomake her what amends I could for her trouble, and because I wanted todie in th' old place where I was born and my father was born. Put thati' the right words--you know how--and then write, as I don't forgiveWakem for all that; and for all I'll serve him honest, I wish evil maybefall him. Write that."

  There was a dead silence as Tom's pen moved along the paper; Mrs.Tulliver looked scared, and Maggie trembled like a leaf.

  "Now let me hear what you've wrote," said Mr. Tulliver, Tom read aloudslowly.

  "Now write--write as you'll remember what Wakem's done to your father,and you'll make him and his feel it, if ever the day comes. And signyour name Thomas Tulliver."

  "Oh no, father, dear father!" said Maggie, almost choked with fear."You shouldn't make Tom write that."

  "Be quiet, Maggie!" said Tom. "I _shall_ write it."

  Book IV

  _The Valley of Humiliation_