The Mill on the Floss

Chapter 4

It was a heavy disappointment to Maggie that she was not allowed to go

with her father in the gig when he went to fetch Tom home from the

academy; but the morning was too wet, Mrs. Tulliver said, for a little

girl to go out in her best bonnet. Maggie took the opposite view very

strongly, and it was a direct consequence of this difference of

opinion that when her mother was in the act of brushing out the

reluctant black crop Maggie suddenly rushed from under her hands and

dipped her head in a basin of water standing near, in the vindictive

determination that there should be no more chance of curls that day.

"Maggie, Maggie!" exclaimed Mrs. Tulliver, sitting stout and helpless

with the brushes on her lap, "what is to become of you if you're so

naughty? I'll tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt Pullet when they come

next week, and they'll never love you any more. Oh dear, oh dear! look

at your clean pinafore, wet from top to bottom. Folks 'ull think it's

a judgment on me as I've got such a child,--they'll think I've done

summat wicked."

Before this remonstrance was finished, Maggie was already out of

hearing, making her way toward the great attic that run under the old

high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran,

like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Maggie's

favorite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold; here

she fretted out all her ill humors, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten

floors and the worm-eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with

cobwebs; and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her

misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which once

stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks; but was

now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering. Three

nails driven into the head commemorated as many crises in Maggie's

nine years of earthly struggle; that luxury of vengeance having been

suggested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in the old

Bible. The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than

usual, for the Fetish on that occasion represented aunt Glegg. But

immediately afterward Maggie had reflected that if she drove many

nails in she would not be so well able to fancy that the head was hurt

when she knocked it against the wall, nor to comfort it, and make

believe to poultice it, when her fury was abated; for even aunt Glegg

would be pitiable when she had been hurt very much, and thoroughly

humiliated, so as to beg her niece's pardon. Since then she had driven

no more nails in, but had soothed herself by alternately grinding and

beating the wooden head against the rough brick of the great chimneys

that made two square pillars supporting the roof. That was what she

did this morning on reaching the attic, sobbing all the while with a

passion that expelled every other form of consciousness,--even the

memory of the grievance that had caused it. As at last the sobs were

getting quieter, and the grinding less fierce, a sudden beam of

sunshine, falling through the wire lattice across the worm-eaten

shelves, made her throw away the Fetish and run to the window. The sun

was really breaking out; the sound of the mill seemed cheerful again;

the granary doors were open; and there was Yap, the queer

white-and-brown terrier, with one ear turned back, trotting about and

sniffing vaguely, as if he were in search of a companion. It was

irresistible. Maggie tossed her hair back and ran downstairs, seized

her bonnet without putting it on, peeped, and then dashed along the

passage lest she should encounter her mother, and was quickly out in

the yard, whirling round like a Pythoness, and singing as she whirled,

"Yap, Yap, Tom's coming home!" while Yap danced and barked round her,

as much as to say, if there was any noise wanted he was the dog for

it.

"Hegh, hegh, Miss! you'll make yourself giddy, an' tumble down i' the

dirt," said Luke, the head miller, a tall, broad-shouldered man of

forty, black-eyed and black-haired, subdued by a general mealiness,

like an auricula.

Maggie paused in her whirling and said, staggering a little, "Oh no,

it doesn't make me giddy, Luke; may I go into the mill with you?"

Maggie loved to linger in the great spaces of the mill, and often came

out with her black hair powdered to a soft whiteness that made her

dark eyes flash out with new fire. The resolute din, the unresting

motion of the great stones, giving her a dim, delicious awe as at the

presence of an uncontrollable force; the meal forever pouring,

pouring; the fine white powder softening all surfaces, and making the

very spidernets look like a faery lace-work; the sweet, pure scent of

the meal,--all helped to make Maggie feel that the mill was a little

world apart from her outside every-day life. The spiders were

especially a subject of speculation with her. She wondered if they had

any relatives outside the mill, for in that case there must be a

painful difficulty in their family intercourse,--a fat and floury

spider, accustomed to take his fly well dusted with meal, must suffer

a little at a cousin's table where the fly was _au naturel_, and the

lady spiders must be mutually shocked at each other's appearance. But

the part of the mill she liked best was the topmost story,--the

corn-hutch, where there were the great heaps of grain, which she could

sit on and slide down continually. She was in the habit of taking this

recreation as she conversed with Luke, to whom she was very

communicative, wishing him to think well of her understanding, as her

father did.

Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her position with him on the

present occasion for, as she sat sliding on the heap of grain near

which he was busying himself, she said, at that shrill pitch which was

requisite in mill-society,--

"I think you never read any book but the Bible, did you, Luke?"

"Nay, Miss, an' not much o' that," said Luke, with great frankness.

"I'm no reader, I aren't."

"But if I lent you one of my books, Luke? I've not got any _very_

pretty books that would be easy for you to read; but there's 'Pug's

Tour of Europe,'--that would tell you all about the different sorts of

people in the world, and if you didn't understand the reading, the

pictures would help you; they show the looks and ways of the people,

and what they do. There are the Dutchmen, very fat, and smoking, you

know, and one sitting on a barrel."

"Nay, Miss, I'n no opinion o' Dutchmen. There ben't much good i'

knowin' about _them_."

"But they're our fellow-creatures, Luke; we ought to know about our

fellow-creatures."

"Not much o' fellow-creaturs, I think, Miss; all I know--my old

master, as war a knowin' man, used to say, says he, 'If e'er I sow my

wheat wi'out brinin', I'm a Dutchman,' says he; an' that war as much

as to say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next door. Nay, nay, I aren't

goin' to bother mysen about Dutchmen. There's fools enoo, an' rogues

enoo, wi'out lookin' i' books for 'em."

"Oh, well," said Maggie, rather foiled by Luke's unexpectedly decided

views about Dutchmen, "perhaps you would like 'Animated Nature'

better; that's not Dutchmen, you know, but elephants and kangaroos,

and the civet-cat, and the sunfish, and a bird sitting on its tail,--I

forget its name. There are countries full of those creatures, instead

of horses and cows, you know. Shouldn't you like to know about them,

Luke?"

"Nay, Miss, I'n got to keep count o' the flour an' corn; I can't do

wi' knowin' so many things besides my work. That's what brings folks

to the gallows,--knowin' everything but what they'n got to get their

bread by. An' they're mostly lies, I think, what's printed i' the

books: them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men cry i' the

streets."

"Why, you're like my brother Tom, Luke," said Maggie, wishing to turn

the conversation agreeably; "Tom's not fond of reading. I love Tom so

dearly, Luke,--better than anybody else in the world. When he grows up

I shall keep his house, and we shall always live together. I can tell

him everything he doesn't know. But I think Tom's clever, for all he

doesn't like books; he makes beautiful whipcord and rabbit-pens."

"Ah," said Luke, "but he'll be fine an' vexed, as the rabbits are all

dead."

"Dead!" screamed Maggie, jumping up from her sliding seat on the corn.

"Oh dear, Luke! What! the lop-eared one, and the spotted doe that Tom

spent all his money to buy?"

"As dead as moles," said Luke, fetching his comparison from the

unmistakable corpses nailed to the stable wall.

"Oh dear, Luke," said Maggie, in a piteous tone, while the big tears

rolled down her cheek; "Tom told me to take care of 'em, and I forgot.

What _shall_ I do?"

"Well, you see, Miss, they were in that far tool-house, an' it was

nobody's business to see to 'em. I reckon Master Tom told Harry to

feed 'em, but there's no countin' on Harry; _he's_ an offal creatur as

iver come about the primises, he is. He remembers nothing but his own

inside--an' I wish it'ud gripe him."

"Oh, Luke, Tom told me to be sure and remember the rabbits every day;

but how could I, when they didn't come into my head, you know? Oh, he

will be so angry with me, I know he will, and so sorry about his

rabbits, and so am I sorry. Oh, what _shall_ I do?"

"Don't you fret, Miss," said Luke, soothingly; "they're nash things,

them lop-eared rabbits; they'd happen ha' died, if they'd been fed.

Things out o' natur niver thrive: God A'mighty doesn't like 'em. He

made the rabbits' ears to lie back, an' it's nothin' but contrairiness

to make 'em hing down like a mastiff dog's. Master Tom 'ull know

better nor buy such things another time. Don't you fret, Miss. Will

you come along home wi' me, and see my wife? I'm a-goin' this minute."

The invitation offered an agreeable distraction to Maggie's grief, and

her tears gradually subsided as she trotted along by Luke's side to

his pleasant cottage, which stood with its apple and pear trees, and

with the added dignity of a lean-to pigsty, at the other end of the

Mill fields. Mrs. Moggs, Luke's wife, was a decidely agreeable

acquaintance. She exhibited her hospitality in bread and treacle, and

possessed various works of art. Maggie actually forgot that she had

any special cause of sadness this morning, as she stood on a chair to

look at a remarkable series of pictures representing the Prodigal Son

in the costume of Sir Charles Grandison, except that, as might have

been expected from his defective moral character, he had not, like

that accomplished hero, the taste and strength of mind to dispense

with a wig. But the indefinable weight the dead rabbits had left on

her mind caused her to feel more than usual pity for the career of

this weak young man, particularly when she looked at the picture where

he leaned against a tree with a flaccid appearance, his knee-breeches

unbuttoned and his wig awry, while the swine apparently of some

foreign breed, seemed to insult him by their good spirits over their

feast of husks.

"I'm very glad his father took him back again, aren't you, Luke?" she

said. "For he was very sorry, you know, and wouldn't do wrong again."

"Eh, Miss," said Luke, "he'd be no great shakes, I doubt, let's

feyther do what he would for him."

That was a painful thought to Maggie, and she wished much that the

subsequent history of the young man had not been left a blank.