The Mill on the Floss

Chapter 2

Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his

duty that year in the noblest fashion, and had set off his rich gifts

of warmth and color with all the heightening contrast of frost and

snow.

Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undulations softer than the

limbs of infancy; it lay with the neatliest finished border on every

sloping roof, making the dark-red gables stand out with a new depth of

color; it weighed heavily on the laurels and fir-trees, till it fell

from them with a shuddering sound; it clothed the rough turnip-field

with whiteness, and made the sheep look like dark blotches; the gates

were all blocked up with the sloping drifts, and here and there a

disregarded four-footed beast stood as if petrified "in unrecumbent

sadness"; there was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were

one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark

river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow. But old

Christmas smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on the outdoor

world, for he meant to light up home with new brightness, to deepen

all the richness of indoor color, and give a keener edge of delight to

the warm fragrance of food; he meant to prepare a sweet imprisonment

that would strengthen the primitive fellowship of kindred, and make

the sunshine of familiar human faces as welcome as the hidden

day-star. His kindness fell but hardly on the homeless,--fell but

hardly on the homes where the hearth was not very warm, and where the

food had little fragrance; where the human faces had had no sunshine

in them, but rather the leaden, blank-eyed gaze of unexpectant want.

But the fine old season meant well; and if he has not learned the

secret how to bless men impartially, it is because his father Time,

with ever-unrelenting unrelenting purpose, still hides that secret in

his own mighty, slow-beating heart.

And yet this Christmas day, in spite of Tom's fresh delight in home,

was not, he thought, somehow or other, quite so happy as it had always

been before. The red berries were just as abundant on the holly, and

he and Maggie had dressed all the windows and mantlepieces and

picture-frames on Christmas eve with as much taste as ever, wedding

the thick-set scarlet clusters with branches of the black-berried ivy.

There had been singing under the windows after midnight,--supernatural

singing, Maggie always felt, in spite of Tom's contemptuous insistence

that the singers were old Patch, the parish clerk, and the rest of the

church choir; she trembled with awe when their carolling broke in upon

her dreams, and the image of men in fustian clothes was always thrust

away by the vision of angels resting on the parted cloud. The midnight

chant had helped as usual to lift the morning above the level of

common days; and then there were the smell of hot toast and ale from

the kitchen, at the breakfast hour; the favorite anthem, the green

boughs, and the short sermon gave the appropriate festal character to

the church-going; and aunt and uncle Moss, with all their seven

children, were looking like so many reflectors of the bright

parlor-fire, when the church-goers came back, stamping the snow from

their feet. The plum-pudding was of the same handsome roundness as

ever, and came in with the symbolic blue flames around it, as if it

had been heroically snatched from the nether fires, into which it had

been thrown by dyspeptic Puritans; the dessert was as splendid as

ever, with its golden oranges, brown nuts, and the crystalline light

and dark of apple-jelly and damson cheese; in all these things

Christmas was as it had always been since Tom could remember; it was

only distinguished, it by anything, by superior sliding and snowballs.

Christmas was cheery, but not so Mr. Tulliver. He was irate and

defiant; and Tom, though he espoused his father's quarrels and shared

his father's sense of injury, was not without some of the feeling that

oppressed Maggie when Mr. Tulliver got louder and more angry in

narration and assertion with the increased leisure of dessert. The

attention that Tom might have concentrated on his nuts and wine was

distracted by a sense that there were rascally enemies in the world,

and that the business of grown-up life could hardly be conducted

without a good deal of quarrelling. Now, Tom was not fond of

quarrelling, unless it could soon be put an end to by a fair stand-up

fight with an adversary whom he had every chance of thrashing; and his

father's irritable talk made him uncomfortable, though he never

accounted to himself for the feeling, or conceived the notion that his

father was faulty in this respect.

The particular embodiment of the evil principle now exciting Mr.

Tulliver's determined resistance was Mr. Pivart, who, having lands

higher up the Ripple, was taking measures for their irrigation, which

either were, or would be, or were bound to be (on the principle that

water was water), an infringement on Mr. Tulliver's legitimate share

of water-power. Dix, who had a mill on the stream, was a feeble

auxiliary of Old Harry compared with Pivart. Dix had been brought to

his senses by arbitration, and Wakem's advice had not carried _him_

far. No; Dix, Mr. Tulliver considered, had been as good as nowhere in

point of law; and in the intensity of his indignation against Pivart,

his contempt for a baffled adversary like Dix began to wear the air of

a friendly attachment. He had no male audience to-day except Mr. Moss,

who knew nothing, as he said, of the "natur' o' mills," and could only

assent to Mr. Tulliver's arguments on the _a priori_ ground of family

relationship and monetary obligation; but Mr. Tulliver did not talk

with the futile intention of convincing his audience, he talked to

relieve himself; while good Mr. Moss made strong efforts to keep his

eyes wide open, in spite of the sleepiness which an unusually good

dinner produced in his hard-worked frame. Mrs. Moss, more alive to the

subject, and interested in everything that affected her brother,

listened and put in a word as often as maternal preoccupations

allowed.

"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-c**k 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.