The Mill on the Floss

Chapter 9

That first moment of renunciation and submission was followed by days

of violent struggle in the miller's mind, as the gradual access of

bodily strength brought with it increasing ability to embrace in one

view all the conflicting conditions under which he found himself.

Feeble limbs easily resign themselves to be tethered, and when we are

subdued by sickness it seems possible to us to fulfil pledges which

the old vigor comes back and breaks. There were times when poor

Tulliver thought the fulfilment of his promise to Bessy was something

quite too hard for human nature; he had promised her without knowing

what she was going to say,--she might as well have asked him to carry

a ton weight on his back. But again, there were many feelings arguing

on her side, besides the sense that life had been made hard to her by

having married him. He saw a possibility, by much pinching, of saving

money out of his salary toward paying a second dividend to his

creditors, and it would not be easy elsewhere to get a situation such

as he could fill.

He had led an easy life, ordering much and working little, and had no

aptitude for any new business. He must perhaps take to day-labor, and

his wife must have help from her sisters,--a prospect doubly bitter to

him, now they had let all Bessy's precious things be sold, probably

because they liked to set her against him, by making her feel that he

had 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's

sake, with averted eyes, that every now and then flashed on them

furtively when their backs were turned. Nothing but the dread of

needing their help could have made it an easier alternative to take

their advice.

But the strongest influence of all was the love of the old premises

where he had run about when he was a boy, just as Tom had done after

him. The Tullivers had lived on this spot for generations, and he had

sat listening on a low stool on winter evenings while his father

talked of the old half-timbered mill that had been there before the

last great floods which damaged it so that his grandfather pulled it

down and built the new one. It was when he got able to walk about and

look at all the old objects that he felt the strain of his clinging

affection for the old home as part of his life, part of himself. He

couldn'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 shape

and color of every roof and weather-stain and broken hillock was good,

because his growing senses had been fed on them. Our instructed

vagrancy, which was hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs

away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and

banyans,--which is nourished on books of travel and stretches the

theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi,--can hardly get a dim

notion of what an old-fashioned man like Tulliver felt for this spot,

where all his memories centred, and where life seemed like a familiar

smooth-handled tool that the fingers clutch with loving ease. And just

now he was living in that freshened memory of the far-off time which

comes to us in the passive hours of recovery from sickness.

"Ay, Luke," he said one afternoon, as he stood looking over the

orchard gate, "I remember the day they planted those apple-trees. My

father was a huge man for planting,--it was like a merry-making to him

to get a cart full o' young trees; and I used to stand i' the cold

with him, and follow him about like a dog."

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

opposite buildings.

"The old mill 'ud miss me, I think, Luke. There's a story as when the

mill changes hands, the river's angry; I've heard my father say it

many 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 finger

in it--it's been too many for me, I know."

"Ay, sir," said Luke, with soothing sympathy, "what wi' the rust on

the wheat, an' the firin' o' the ricks an' that, as I've seen i' my

time,--things often looks comical; there's the bacon fat wi' our last

pig run away like butter,--it leaves nought but a scratchin'."

"It's just as if it was yesterday, now," Mr. Tulliver went on, "when

my father began the malting. I remember, the day they finished the

malt-house, I thought summat great was to come of it; for we'd a

plum-pudding that day and a bit of a feast, and I said to my

mother,--she was a fine dark-eyed woman, my mother was,--the little

wench 'ull be as like her as two peas." Here Mr. Tulliver put his

stick between his legs, and took out his snuff-box, for the greater

enjoyment of this anecdote, which dropped from him in fragments, as if

he every other moment lost narration in vision. "I was a little chap

no higher much than my mother's knee,--she was sore fond of us

children, Gritty and me,--and so I said to her, 'Mother,' I said,

'shall we have plum-pudding _every_ day because o' the malt-house? She

used to tell me o' that till her dying day. She was but a young woman

when she died, my mother was. But it's forty good year since they

finished the malt-house, and it isn't many days out of 'em all as I

haven't looked out into the yard there, the first thing in the

morning,--all weathers, from year's end to year's end. I should go off

my head in a new place. I should be like as if I'd lost my way. It's

all hard, whichever way I look at it,--the harness 'ull gall me, but

it '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 new

place. I can't abide new places mysen: things is allays

awk'ard,--narrow-wheeled waggins, belike, and the stiles all another

sort, 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 you

do with a lad; and I must help a bit wi' the mill. You'll have a worse

place."

"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 God

A'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 disburthened

himself of thoughts to an extent that left his conversational

resources quite barren, and Mr. Tulliver had relapsed from his

recollections into a painful meditation on the choice of hardships

before him. Maggie noticed that he was unusually absent that evening

at tea; and afterward he sat leaning forward in his chair, looking at

the 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 intensely

conscious of some drama going forward in her father's mind. Suddenly

he took up the poker and broke the large coal fiercely.

"Dear heart, Mr. Tulliver, what can you be thinking of?" said his

wife, looking up in alarm; "it's very wasteful, breaking the coal, and

we've got hardly any large coal left, and I don't know where the rest

is to come from."

"I don't think you're quite so well to-night, are you, father?" said

Maggie; "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 here

soon. 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, and

only sat listening for Tom's footfall on the gravel, apparently

irritated by the wind, which had risen, and was roaring so as to drown

all other sounds. There was a strange light in his eyes that rather

frightened Maggie; _she_ began to wish that Tom would come, too.

"There he is, then," said Mr. Tulliver, in an excited way, when the

knock came at last. Maggie went to open the door, but her mother came

out of the kitchen hurriedly, saying, "Stop a bit, Maggie; I'll open

it."

Mrs. Tulliver had begun to be a little frightened at her boy, but she

was jealous of every office others did for him.

"Your supper's ready by the kitchen-fire, my boy," she said, as he

took off his hat and coat. "You shall have it by yourself, just as you

like, and I won't speak to you."

"I think my father wants Tom, mother," said Maggie; "he must come into

the parlor first."

Tom entered with his usual saddened evening face, but his eyes fell

immediately on the open Bible and the inkstand, and he glanced with a

look 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' the

Bible."

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't

be bearing one another ill-will. I'll stop in the old place, and I'll

serve under Wakem, and I'll serve him like an honest man; there's no

Tulliver but what's honest, mind that, Tom,"--here his voice

rose,--"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 in

harness,--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 an

honest man, though I shall never hold my head up no more. I'm a tree

as is broke--a tree as is broke."

He paused and looked on the ground. Then suddenly raising his head, he

said, in a louder yet deeper tone:

"But I won't forgive him! I know what they say, he never meant me any

harm. That's the way Old Harry props up the rascals. He's been at the

bottom of everything; but he's a fine gentleman,--I know, I know. I

shouldn't ha' gone to law, they say. But who made it so as there was

no 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 doing

business for poorer folks, and when he's made beggars of 'em he'll

give 'em charity. I won't forgive him! I wish he might be punished

with shame till his own son 'ud like to forget him. I wish he may do

summat as they'd make him work at the treadmill! But he won't,--he's

too 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 never

come to me; I'n got my head under the yoke. Now write--write it i' the

Bible."

"Oh, father, what?" said Maggie, sinking down by his knee, pale and

trembling. "It's wicked to curse and bear malice."

"It isn't wicked, I tell you," said her father, fiercely. "It's wicked

as the raskills should prosper; it's the Devil's doing. Do as I tell

you, 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 to

make her what amends I could for her trouble, and because I wanted to

die in th' old place where I was born and my father was born. Put that

i' the right words--you know how--and then write, as I don't forgive

Wakem for all that; and for all I'll serve him honest, I wish evil may

befall 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 aloud

slowly.

"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 sign

your 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."