The Mill on the Floss

Chapter 5

The next day, at ten o'clock, Tom was on his way to St. Ogg's, to see

his 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 person

to ask for advice about getting some employment. He was in a great way

of business; he had not the narrow notions of uncle Glegg; and he had

risen in the world on a scale of advancement which accorded with Tom's

ambition.

It was a dark, chill, misty morning, likely to end in rain,--one of

those mornings when even happy people take refuge in their hopes. And

Tom was very unhappy; he felt the humiliation as well as the

prospective hardships of his lot with all the keenness of a proud

nature; and with all his resolute dutifulness toward his father there

mingled an irrepressible indignation against him which gave misfortune

the less endurable aspect of a wrong. Since these were the

consequences of going to law, his father was really blamable, as his

aunts and uncles had always said he was; and it was a significant

indication of Tom's character, that though he thought his aunts ought

to do something more for his mother, he felt nothing like Maggie's

violent resentment against them for showing no eager tenderness and

generosity. There were no impulses in Tom that led him to expect what

did not present itself to him as a right to be demanded. Why should

people give away their money plentifully to those who had not taken

care of their own money? Tom saw some justice in severity; and all the

more, because he had confidence in himself that he should never

deserve that just severity. It was very hard upon him that he should

be 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 because

they did not make everything easy for him. He would ask no one to help

him, more than to give him work and pay him for it. Poor Tom was not

without his hopes to take refuge in under the chill damp imprisonment

of the December fog, which seemed only like a part of his home

troubles. At sixteen, the mind that has the strongest affinity for

fact cannot escape illusion and self-flattery; and Tom, in sketching

his future, had no other guide in arranging his facts than the

suggestions 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 money

slowly and retire on a moderate fortune like his uncle Glegg, but he

would be like his uncle Deane--get a situation in some great house of

business and rise fast. He had scarcely seen anything of his uncle

Deane for the last three years--the two families had been getting

wider apart; but for this very reason Tom was the more hopeful about

applying to him. His uncle Glegg, he felt sure, would never encourage

any spirited project, but he had a vague imposing idea of the

resources at his uncle Deane's command. He had heard his father say,

long ago, how Deane had made himself so valuable to Guest & Co. that

they were glad enough to offer him a share in the business; that was

what Tom resolved _he_ would do. It was intolerable to think of being

poor and looked down upon all one's life. He would provide for his

mother and sister, and make every one say that he was a man of high

character. He leaped over the years in this way, and, in the haste of

strong purpose and strong desire, did not see how they would be made

up of slow days, hours, and minutes.

By the time he had crossed the stone bridge over the Floss and was

entering St. Ogg's, he was thinking that he would buy his father's

mill and land again when he was rich enough, and improve the house and

live there; he should prefer it to any smarter, newer place, and he

could keep as many horses and dogs as he liked.

Walking along the street with a firm, rapid step, at this point in his

reverie he was startled by some one who had crossed without his

notice, and who said to him in a rough, familiar voice:

"Why, Master Tom, how's your father this morning?" It was a publican

of St. Ogg's, one of his father's customers.

Tom disliked being spoken to just then; but he said civilly, "He's

still very ill, thank you."

"Ay, it's been a sore chance for you, young man, hasn't it,--this

lawsuit 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 of

a bruise, even if there had been the most polite and delicate

reference to his position.

"That's Tulliver's son," said the publican to a grocer standing on the

adjacent door-step.

"Ah!" said the grocer, "I thought I knew his features. He takes after

his 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 fine

gentleman,--not much else, I think."

Tom, roused from his dream of the future to a thorough consciousness

of the present, made all the greater haste to reach the warehouse

offices of Guest & Co., where he expected to find his uncle Deane. But

this was Mr. Deane's morning at the band, a clerk told him, and with

some contempt for his ignorance; Mr. Deane was not to be found in

River Street on a Thursday morning.

At the bank Tom was admitted into the private room where his uncle

was, immediately after sending in his name. Mr. Deane was auditing

accounts; 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 your

father?"

"Much the same, thank you, uncle," said Tom, feeling nervous. "But I

want to speak to you, please, when you're at liberty."

"Sit down, sit down," said Mr. Deane, relapsing into his accounts, in

which he and the managing-clerk remained so absorbed for the next

half-hour that Tom began to wonder whether he should have to sit in

this way till the bank closed,--there seemed so little tendency toward

a conclusion in the quiet, monotonous procedure of these sleek,

prosperous men of business. Would his uncle give him a place in the

bank? It would be very dull, prosy work, he thought, writing there

forever to the loud ticking of a timepiece. He preferred some other

way of getting rich. But at last there was a change; his uncle took a

pen 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's

ears.

"Well, Tom," said Mr. Deane, when they were alone, turning his

substantial person a little in his chair, and taking out his

snuff-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 the

sale.

"I hope you'll excuse me for troubling you, uncle," said Tom,

coloring, but speaking in a tone which, though, tremulous, had a

certain proud independence in it; "but I thought you were the best

person to advise me what to do."

"Ah!" said Mr. Deane, reserving his pinch of snuff, and looking at Tom

with 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 with

elaborate justice to each nostril. Tom thought snuff-taking a most

provoking habit.

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

himself backward again.

"Sixteen; I mean, I am going in seventeen," said Tom, hoping his uncle

noticed how much beard he had.

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

think?"

"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? You

understand 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," added

Tom, 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 the

world'll not get you a better place than a copying-clerk's, if you

know nothing of book-keeping,--nothing of accounts. And a

copying-clerk's a cheap article. But what have you been learning at

school, then?"

Mr. Deane had not occupied himself with methods of education, and had

no precise conception of what went forward in expensive schools.

"We learned Latin," said Tom, pausing a little between each item, as

if he were turning over the books in his school-desk to assist his

memory,--"a good deal of Latin; and the last year I did Themes, one

week in Latin and one in English; and Greek and Roman history; and

Euclid; and I began Algebra, but I left it off again; and we had one

day every week for Arithmetic. Then I used to have drawing-lessons;

and there were several other books we either read or learned out

of,--English Poetry, and Hor* Paulin* and Blair's Rhetoric, the last

half."

Mr. Deane tapped his snuff-box again and screwed up his mouth; he felt

in the position of many estimable persons when they had read the New

Tariff, and found how many commodities were imported of which they

knew nothing; like a cautious man of business, he was not going to

speak rashly of a raw material in which he had had no experience. But

the presumption was, that if it had been good for anything, so

successful a man as himself would hardly have been ignorant of it.

About Latin he had an opinion, and thought that in case of another

war, since people would no longer wear hair-powder, it would be well

to put a tax upon Latin, as a luxury much run upon by the higher

classes, and not telling at all on the ship-owning department. But,

for what he knew, the Hor* Paulin* might be something less neutral. On

the whole, this list of acquirements gave him a sort of repulsion

toward poor Tom.

"Well," he said at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone, "you've had

three years at these things,--you must be pretty strong in 'em. Hadn't

you 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 like

Latin and those things. I don't know what I could do with them unless

I went as usher in a school; and I don't know them well enough for

that! besides, I would as soon carry a pair of panniers. I don't want

to be that sort of person. I should like to enter into some business

where I can get on,--a manly business, where I should have to look

after things, and get credit for what I did. And I shall want to keep

my mother and sister."

"Ah, young gentleman," said Mr. Deane, with that tendency to repress

youthful hopes which stout and successful men of fifty find one of

their easiest duties, "that's sooner said than done,--sooner said than

done."

"But didn't _you_ get on in that way, uncle?" said Tom, a little

irritated that Mr. Deane did not enter more rapidly into his views. "I

mean, didn't you rise from one place to another through your abilities

and good conduct?"

"Ay, ay, sir," said Mr. Deane, spreading himself in his chair a

little, and entering with great readiness into a retrospect of his own

career. "But I'll tell you how I got on. It wasn't by getting astride

a stick and thinking it would turn into a horse if I sat on it long

enough. I kept my eyes and ears open, sir, and I wasn't too fond of my

own back, and I made my master's interest my own. Why, with only

looking into what went on in the mill,, I found out how there was a

waste of five hundred a-year that might be hindered. Why, sir, I

hadn't more schooling to begin with than a charity boy; but I saw

pretty soon that I couldn't get on far enough without mastering

accounts, and I learned 'em between working hours, after I'd been

unlading. 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 of

reckoning by the head; and I got it all by hard work, and paid for it

out of my own earnings,--often out of my own dinner and supper. And I

looked 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 in

my head. Why, I'm no mechanic,--I never pretended to be--but I've

thought of a thing or two that the mechanics never thought of, and

it's made a fine difference in our returns. And there isn't an article

shipped or unshipped at our wharf but I know the quality of it. If I

got places, sir, it was because I made myself fit for 'em. If you want

to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself; that's

where it is."

Mr. Deane tapped his box again. He had been led on by pure enthusiasm

in his subject, and had really forgotten what bearing this

retrospective survey had on his listener. He had found occasion for

saying the same thing more than once before, and was not distinctly

aware that he had not his port-wine before him.

"Well, uncle," said Tom, with a slight complaint in his tone, "that's

what 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 on

what sort of material you are, to begin with, and whether you've been

put into the right mill. But I'll tell you what it is. Your poor

father went the wrong way to work in giving you an education. It

wasn't my business, and I didn't interfere; but it is as I thought it

would be. You've had a sort of learning that's all very well for a

young fellow like our Mr. Stephen Guest, who'll have nothing to do but

sign checks all his life, and may as well have Latin inside his head

as any other sort of stuffing."

"But, uncle," said Tom, earnestly, "I don't see why the Latin need

hinder me from getting on in business. I shall soon forget it all; it

makes no difference to me. I had to do my lessons at school, but I

always thought they'd never be of any use to me afterward; I didn't

care about them."

"Ay, ay, that's all very well," said Mr. Deane; "but it doesn't alter

what I was going to say. Your Latin and rigmarole may soon dry off

you, but you'll be but a bare stick after that. Besides, it's whitened

your 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 so

much of reckoning as a common shopman. You'll have to begin at a low

round 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, if

you don't give yourself a new un."

Tom bit his lips hard; he felt as if the tears were rising, and he

would 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 and

working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get

horseback. Now, you must remember what you are,--you're a lad of

sixteen, trained to nothing particular. There's heaps of your sort,

like so many pebbles, made to fit in nowhere. Well, you might be

apprenticed 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,--I

know, I know,--you want to make more haste, and you don't want to

stand behind a counter. But if you're a copying-clerk, you'll have to

stand behind a desk, and stare at your ink and paper all day; there

isn't much out-look there, and you won't be much wiser at the end of

the year than at the beginning. The world isn't made of pen, ink, and

paper, and if you're to get on in the world, young man, you must know

what the world's made of. Now the best chance for you 'ud be to have a

place on a wharf, or in a warehouse, where you'd learn the smell of

things, but you wouldn't like that, I'll be bound; you'd have to stand

cold and wet, and be shouldered about by rough fellows. You're too

fine a gentleman for that."

Mr. Deane paused and looked hard at Tom, who certainly felt some

inward struggle before he could reply.

"I would rather do what will be best for me in the end, sir; I would

put up with what was disagreeable."

"That's well, if you can carry it out. But you must remember it isn't

only laying hold of a rope, you must go on pulling. It's the mistake

you lads make that have got nothing either in your brains or your

pocket, to think you've got a better start in the world if you stick

yourselves in a place where you can keep your coats clean, and have

the 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 I

wasn't afraid of handling cheeses. That's the reason I can wear good

broadcloth now, and have my legs under the same table with the head

of the best firms in St. Ogg's."

Uncle Deane tapped his box, and seemed to expand a little under his

waistcoat and gold chain, as he squared his shoulders in the chair.

"Is there any place at liberty that you know of now, uncle, that I

should do for? I should like to set to work at once," said Tom, with a

slight tremor in his voice.

"Stop a bit, stop a bit; we mustn't be in too great a hurry. You must

bear in mind, if I put you in a place you're a bit young for, because

you happen to be my nephew, I shall be responsible for you. And

there's no better reason, you know, than your being my nephew; because

it remains to be seen whether you're good for anything."

"I hope I shall never do you any discredit, uncle," said Tom, hurt, as

all boys are at the statement of the unpleasant truth that people feel

no ground for trusting them. "I care about my own credit too much for

that."

"Well done, Tom, well done! That's the right spirit, and I never

refuse 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 shall

do 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 up

the other day to a new market for Swedish bark; he's uncommonly

knowing in manufactures, that young fellow."

"I'd better set about learning book-keeping, hadn't I, uncle?" said

Tom, anxious to prove his readiness to exert himself.

"Yes, yes, you can't do amiss there. But--Ah, Spence, you're back

again. 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 Tom

had not courage to ask another question, especially in the presence of

Mr. Spence. So he went out again into the cold damp air. He had to

call at his uncle Glegg's about the money in the Savings Bank, and by

the time he set out again the mist had thickened, and he could not see

very far before him; but going along River Street again, he was

startled, when he was within two yards of the projecting side of a

shop-window, by the words "Dorlcote Mill" in large letters on a

hand-bill, placed as if on purpose to stare at him. It was the

catalogue of the sale to take place the next week; it was a reason for

hurrying faster out of the town.

Poor Tom formed no visions of the distant future as he made his way

homeward; he only felt that the present was very hard. It seemed a

wrong toward him that his uncle Deane had no confidence in him,--did

not see at once that he should acquit himself well, which Tom himself

was as certain of as of the daylight. Apparently he, Tom Tulliver, was

likely to be held of small account in the world; and for the first

time he felt a sinking of heart under the sense that he really was

very ignorant, and could do very little. Who was that enviable young

man that could tell the cubic contents of things in no time, and make

suggestions about Swedish bark! Tom had been used to be so entirely

satisfied with himself, in spite of his breaking down in a

demonstration, and construing _nunc illas promite vires_ as "now

promise those men"; but now he suddenly felt at a disadvantage,

because he knew less than some one else knew. There must be a world of

things connected with that Swedish bark, which, if he only knew them,

might have helped him to get on. It would have been much easier to

make a figure with a spirited horse and a new saddle.

Two hours ago, as Tom was walking to St. Ogg's, he saw the distant

future before him as he might have seen a tempting stretch of smooth

sandy beach beyond a belt of flinty shingles; he was on the grassy

bank then, and thought the shingles might soon be passed. But now his

feet were on the sharp stones; the belt of shingles had widened, and

the stretch of sand had dwindled into narrowness.

"What did my Uncle Deane say, Tom?" said Maggie, putting her arm

through Tom's as he was warming himself rather drearily by the kitchen

fire. "Did he say he would give you a situation?"

"No, he didn't say that. He didn't quite promise me anything; he

seemed 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 care

about his speaking kindly, if I could get a situation. But it's such a

nuisance and bother; I've been at school all this while learning Latin

and things,--not a bit of good to me,--and now my uncle says I must

set about learning book-keeping and calculation, and those things. He

seems to make out I'm good for nothing."

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

fire.

"Oh, what a pity we haven't got Dominie Sampson!" said Maggie, who

couldn't help mingling some gayety with their sadness. "If he had

taught 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," said

Tom.

"Dear Tom, I was only joking," said Maggie, putting her cheek against

his coat-sleeve.

"But it's always the same, Maggie," said Tom, with the little frown he

put on when he was about to be justifiably severe. "You're always

setting yourself up above me and every one else, and I've wanted to

tell you about it several times. You ought not to have spoken as you

did to my uncles and aunts; you should leave it to me to take care of

my mother and you, and not put yourself forward. You think you know

better than any one, but you're almost always wrong. I can judge much

better than you can."

Poor Tom! he had just come from being lectured and made to feel his

inferiority; the reaction of his strong, self-asserting nature must

take place somehow; and here was a case in which he could justly show

himself dominant. Maggie's cheek flushed and her lip quivered with

conflicting resentment and affection, and a certain awe as well as

admiration of Tom's firmer and more effective character. She did not

answer immediately; very angry words rose to her lips, but they were

driven back again, and she said at last:

"You often think I'm conceited, Tom, when I don't mean what I say at

all in that way. I don't mean to put myself above you; I know you

behaved better than I did yesterday. But you are always so harsh to

me, Tom."

With the last words the resentment was rising again.

"No, I'm not harsh," said Tom, with severe decision. "I'm always kind

to you, and so I shall be; I shall always take care of you. But you

must mind what I say."

Their mother came in now, and Maggie rushed away, that her burst of

tears, which she felt must come, might not happen till she was safe

upstairs. They were very bitter tears; everybody in the world seemed

so hard and unkind to Maggie; there was no indulgence, no fondness,

such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own

thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or

tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did

not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books

was not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where people

behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did

not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there

for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother's

narrow griefs, perhaps of her father's heart-cutting childish

dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth,

when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no

superadded life in the life of others; though we who looked on think

lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future

lightened the blind sufferer's present.

Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair

pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dull

walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a

creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful

and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after

dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a

blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the

wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a

sense of home in it.

No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the

inward, that painful collisions come of it.