The Mill on the Floss

Chapter 5

This last breach between the two lads was not readily mended, and for

some time they spoke to each other no more than was necessary. Their

natural antipathy of temperament made resentment an easy passage to

hatred, and in Philip the transition seemed to have begun; there was

no malignity in his disposition, but there was a susceptibility that

made him peculiarly liable to a strong sense of repulsion. The ox--we

may venture to assert it on the authority of a great classic--is not

given to use his teeth as an instrument of attack, and Tom was an

excellent bovine lad, who ran at questionable objects in a truly

ingenious bovine manner; but he had blundered on Philip's tenderest

point, and had caused him as much acute pain as if he had studied the

means with the nicest precision and the most envenomed spite. Tom saw

no reason why they should not make up this quarrel as they had done

many others, by behaving as if nothing had happened; for though he had

never before said to Philip that his father was a rogue, this idea had

so habitually made part of his feeling as to the relation between

himself and his dubious schoolfellow, who he could neither like nor

dislike, that the mere utterance did not make such an epoch to him as

it did to Philip. And he had a right to say so when Philip hectored

over _him_, and called him names. But perceiving that his first

advances toward amity were not met, he relapsed into his least

favorable disposition toward Philip, and resolved never to appeal to

him either about drawing or exercise again. They were only so far

civil to each other as was necessary to prevent their state of feud

from being observed by Mr. Stelling, who would have "put down" such

nonsense with great vigor.

When Maggie came, however, she could not help looking with growing

interest at the new schoolfellow, although he was the son of that

wicked Lawyer Wakem, who made her father so angry. She had arrived in

the middle of school-hours, and had sat by while Philip went through

his lessons with Mr. Stelling. Tom, some weeks ago, had sent her word

that Philip knew no end of stories,--not stupid stories like hers; and

she was convinced now from her own observation that he must be very

clever; she hoped he would think _her_ rather clever too, when she

came to talk to him. Maggie, moreover, had rather a tenderness for

deformed things; she preferred the wry-necked lambs, because it seemed

to her that the lambs which were quite strong and well made wouldn't

mind so much about being petted; and she was especially fond of

petting objects that would think it very delightful to be petted by

her. She loved Tom very dearly, but she often wished that he _cared_

more about her loving him.

"I think Philip Wakem seems a nice boy, Tom," she said, when they went

out of the study together into the garden, to pass the interval before

dinner. "He couldn't choose his father, you know; and I've read of

very bad men who had good sons, as well as good parents who had bad

children. And if Philip is good, I think we ought to be the more sorry

for him because his father is not a good man. _You_ like him, don't

you?"

"Oh, he's a queer fellow," said Tom, curtly, "and he's as sulky as can

be with me, because I told him his father was a rogue. And I'd a right

to tell him so, for it was true; and _he_ began it, with calling me

names. But you stop here by yourself a bit, Maggie, will you? I've got

something I want to do upstairs."

"Can't I go too?" said Maggie, who in this first day of meeting again

loved Tom's shadow.

"No, it's something I'll tell you about by-and-by, not yet," said Tom,

skipping away.

In the afternoon the boys were at their books in the study, preparing

the morrow's lesson's that they might have a holiday in the evening in

honor of Maggie's arrival. Tom was hanging over his Latin grammar,

moving his lips inaudibly like a strict but impatient Catholic

repeating his tale of paternosters; and Philip, at the other end of

the room, was busy with two volumes, with a look of contented

diligence that excited Maggie's curiosity; he did not look at all as

if he were learning a lesson. She sat on a low stool at nearly a right

angle with the two boys, watching first one and then the other; and

Philip, looking off his book once toward the fire-place, caught the

pair of questioning dark eyes fixed upon him. He thought this sister

of Tulliver's seemed a nice little thing, quite unlike her brother; he

wished _he_ had a little sister. What was it, he wondered, that made

Maggie's dark eyes remind him of the stories about princesses being

turned into animals? I think it was that her eyes were full of

unsatisfied intelligence, and unsatisfied beseeching affection.

"I say, Magsie," said Tom at last, shutting his books and putting them

away with the energy and decision of a perfect master in the art of

leaving off, "I've done my lessons now. Come upstairs with me."

"What is it?" said Maggie, when they were outside the door, a slight

suspicion crossing her mind as she remembered Tom's preliminary visit

upstairs. "It isn't a trick you're going to play me, now?"

"No, no, Maggie," said Tom, in his most coaxing tone; "It's something

you'll like _ever so_."

He put his arm round her neck, and she put hers round his waist, and

twined together in this way, they went upstairs.

"I say, Magsie, you must not tell anybody, you know," said Tom, "else

I shall get fifty lines."

"Is it alive?" said Maggie, whose imagination had settled for the

moment on the idea that Tom kept a ferret clandestinely.

"Oh, I sha'n't tell you," said he. "Now you go into that corner and

hide your face, while I reach it out," he added, as he locked the

bedroom door behind them. I'll tell you when to turn round. You

mustn't squeal out, you know."

"Oh, but if you frighten me, I shall," said Maggie, beginning to look

rather serious.

"You won't be frightened, you silly thing," said Tom. "Go and hide

your face, and mind you don't peep."

"Of course I sha'n't peep," said Maggie, disdainfully; and she buried

her face in the pillow like a person of strict honor.

But Tom looked round warily as he walked to the closet; then he

stepped into the narrow space, and almost closed the door. Maggie kept

her face buried without the aid of principle, for in that

dream-suggestive attitude she had soon forgotten where she was, and

her thoughts were busy with the poor deformed boy, who was so clever,

when Tom called out, "Now then, Magsie!"

Nothing but long meditation and preconcerted arrangement of effects

would have enabled Tom to present so striking a figure as he did to

Maggie when she looked up. Dissatisfied with the pacific aspect of a

face which had no more than the faintest hint of flaxen eyebrow,

together with a pair of amiable blue-gray eyes and round pink cheeks

that refused to look formidable, let him frown as he would before the

looking-glass (Philip had once told him of a man who had a horseshoe

frown, and Tom had tried with all his frowning might to make a

horseshoe on his forehead), he had had recourse to that unfailing

source of the terrible, burnt cork, and had made himself a pair of

black eyebrows that met in a satisfactory manner over his nose, and

were matched by a less carefully adjusted blackness about the chin. He

had wound a red handkerchief round his cloth cap to give it the air of

a turban, and his red comforter across his breast as a scarf,--an

amount of red which, with the tremendous frown on his brow, and the

decision with which he grasped the sword, as he held it with its point

resting on the ground, would suffice to convey an approximate idea of

his fierce and bloodthirsty disposition.

Maggie looked bewildered for a moment, and Tom enjoyed that moment

keenly; but in the next she laughed, clapped her hands together, and

said, "Oh, Tom, you've made yourself like Bluebeard at the show."

It was clear she had not been struck with the presence of the

sword,--it was not unsheathed. Her frivolous mind required a more

direct appeal to its sense of the terrible, and Tom prepared for his

master-stroke. Frowning with a double amount of intention, if not of

corrugation, he (carefully) drew the sword from its sheath, and

pointed it at Maggie.

"Oh, Tom, please don't!" exclaimed Maggie, in a tone of suppressed

dread, shrinking away from him into the opposite corner. "I _shall_

scream--I'm sure I shall! Oh, don't I wish I'd never come upstairs!"

The corners of Tom's mouth showed an inclination to a smile of

complacency that was immediately checked as inconsistent with the

severity of a great warrior. Slowly he let down the scabbard on the

floor, lest it should make too much noise, and then said sternly,--

"I'm the Duke of Wellington! March!" stamping forward with the right

leg a little bent, and the sword still pointing toward Maggie, who,

trembling, and with tear-filled eyes, got upon the bed, as the only

means of widening the space between them.

Tom, happy in this spectator of his military performances, even though

the spectator was only Maggie, proceeded, with the utmost exertion of

his force, to such an exhibition of the cut and thrust as would

necessarily be expected of the Duke of Wellington.

"Tom, I _will not_ bear it, I _will_ scream," said Maggie, at the

first movement of the sword. "You'll hurt yourself; you'll cut your

head off!"

"One--two," said Tom, resolutely, though at "two" his wrist trembled a

little. "Three" came more slowly, and with it the sword swung

downward, and Maggie gave a loud shriek. The sword had fallen, with

its edge on Tom's foot, and in a moment after he had fallen too.

Maggie leaped from the bed, still shrieking, and immediately there was

a rush of footsteps toward the room. Mr. Stelling, from his upstairs

study, was the first to enter. He found both the children on the

floor. Tom had fainted, and Maggie was shaking him by the collar of

his jacket, screaming, with wild eyes. She thought he was dead, poor

child! and yet she shook him, as if that would bring him back to life.

In another minute she was sobbing with joy because Tom opened his

eyes. She couldn't sorrow yet that he had hurt his foot; it seemed as

if all happiness lay in his being alive.