The Mill on the Floss

Chapter 7

So Tom went on even to the fifth half-year--till he was turned

sixteen--at King's Lorton, while Maggie was growing with a rapidity

which her aunts considered highly reprehensible, at Miss Firniss's

boarding-school in the ancient town of Laceham on the Floss, with

cousin Lucy for her companion. In her early letters to Tom she had

always sent her love to Philip, and asked many questions about him,

which were answered by brief sentences about Tom's toothache, and a

turf-house which he was helping to build in the garden, with other

items of that kind. She was pained to hear Tom say in the holidays

that Philip was as queer as ever again, and often cross. They were no

longer very good friends, she perceived; and when she reminded Tom

that he ought always to love Philip for being so good to him when his

foot was bad, he answered: "Well, it isn't my fault; _I_ don't do

anything to him." She hardly ever saw Philip during the remainder of

their school-life; in the Midsummer holidays he was always away at the

seaside, and at Christmas she could only meet him at long intervals in

the street of St. Ogg's. When they did meet, she remembered her

promise to kiss him, but, as a young lady who had been at a

boarding-school, she knew now that such a greeting was out of the

question, and Philip would not expect it. The promise was void, like

so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as

promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and when the

starry blossoms grew side by side with the ripening peach,--impossible

to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed.

But when their father was actually engaged in the long-threatened

lawsuit, and Wakem, as the agent at once of Pivart and Old Harry, was

acting against him, even Maggie felt, with some sadness, that they

were not likely ever to have any intimacy with Philip again; the very

name of Wakem made her father angry, and she had once heard him say

that if that crook-backed son lived to inherit his father's ill-gotten

gains, there would be a curse upon him. "Have as little to do with him

at school as you can, my lad," he said to Tom; and the command was

obeyed the more easily because Mr. Sterling by this time had two

additional pupils; for though this gentleman's rise in the world was

not of that meteor-like rapidity which the admirers of his

extemporaneous eloquence had expected for a preacher whose voice

demanded so wide a sphere, he had yet enough of growing prosperity to

enable him to increase his expenditure in continued disproportion to

his income.

As for Tom's school course, it went on with mill-like monotony, his

mind continuing to move with a slow, half-stifled pulse in a medium

uninteresting or unintelligible ideas. But each vacation he brought

home larger and larger drawings with the satiny rendering of

landscape, and water-colors in vivid greens, together with manuscript

books full of exercises and problems, in which the handwriting was all

the finer because he gave his whole mind to it. Each vacation he

brought home a new book or two, indicating his progress through

different stages of history, Christian doctrine, and Latin literature;

and that passage was not entirely without results, besides the

possession of the books. Tom's ear and tongue had become accustomed to

a great many words and phrases which are understood to be signs of an

educated condition; and though he had never really applied his mind to

any one of his lessons, the lessons had left a deposit of vague,

fragmentary, ineffectual notions. Mr. Tulliver, seeing signs of

acquirement beyond the reach of his own criticism, thought it was

probably all right with Tom's education; he observed, indeed, that

there were no maps, and not enough "summing"; but he made no formal

complaint to Mr. Stelling. It was a puzzling business, this schooling;

and if he took Tom away, where could he send him with better effect?

By the time Tom had reached his last quarter at King's Lorton, the

years had made striking changes in him since the day we saw him

returning from Mr. Jacobs's academy. He was a tall youth now, carrying

himself without the least awkwardness, and speaking without more

shyness than was a becoming symptom of blended diffidence and pride;

he wore his tail-coat and his stand-up collars, and watched the down

on his lip with eager impatience, looking every day at his virgin

razor, with which he had provided himself in the last holidays. Philip

had already left,--at the autumn quarter,--that he might go to the

south for the winter, for the sake of his health; and this change

helped to give Tom the unsettled, exultant feeling that usually

belongs to the last months before leaving school. This quarter, too,

there was some hope of his father's lawsuit being decided; _that_ made

the prospect of home more entirely pleasurable. For Tom, who had

gathered his view of the case from his father's conversation, had no

doubt that Pivart would be beaten.

Tom had not heard anything from home for some weeks,--a fact which did

not surprise him, for his father and mother were not apt to manifest

their affection in unnecessary letters,--when, to his great surprise,

on the morning of a dark, cold day near the end of November, he was

told, soon after entering the study at nine o'clock, that his sister

was in the drawing-room. It was Mrs. Stelling who had come into the

study to tell him, and she left him to enter the drawing-room alone.

Maggie, too, was tall now, with braided and coiled hair; she was

almost as tall as Tom, though she was only thirteen; and she really

looked older than he did at that moment. She had thrown off her

bonnet, her heavy braids were pushed back from her forehead, as if it

would not bear that extra load, and her young face had a strangely

worn look, as her eyes turned anxiously toward the door. When Tom

entered she did not speak, but only went up to him, put her arms round

his neck, and kissed him earnestly. He was used to various moods of

hers, and felt no alarm at the unusual seriousness of her greeting.

"Why, how is it you're come so early this cold morning, Maggie? Did

you come in the gig?" said Tom, as she backed toward the sofa, and

drew him to her side.

"No, I came by the coach. I've walked from the turnpike."

"But how is it you're not at school? The holidays have not begun yet?"

"Father wanted me at home," said Maggie, with a slight trembling of

the lip. "I came home three or four days ago."

"Isn't my father well?" said Tom, rather anxiously.

"Not quite," said Maggie. "He's very unhappy, Tom. The lawsuit is

ended, and I came to tell you because I thought it would be better for

you to know it before you came home, and I didn't like only to send

you a letter."

"My father hasn't lost?" said Tom, hastily, springing from the sofa,

and standing before Maggie with his hands suddenly thrust into his

pockets.

"Yes, dear Tom," said Maggie, looking up at him with trembling.

Tom was silent a minute or two, with his eyes fixed on the floor. Then

he said:

"My father will have to pay a good deal of money, then?"

"Yes," said Maggie, rather faintly.

"Well, it can't be helped," said Tom, bravely, not translating the

loss of a large sum of money into any tangible results. "But my

father's very much vexed, I dare say?" he added, looking at Maggie,

and thinking that her agitated face was only part of her girlish way

of taking things.

"Yes," said Maggie, again faintly. Then, urged to fuller speech by

Tom's freedom from apprehension, she said loudly and rapidly, as if

the words _would_ burst from her: "Oh, Tom, he will lose the mill and

the land and everything; he will have nothing left."

Tom's eyes flashed out one look of surprise at her, before he turned

pale, and trembled visibly. He said nothing, but sat down on the sofa

again, looking vaguely out of the opposite window.

Anxiety about the future had never entered Tom's mind. His father had

always ridden a good horse, kept a good house, and had the cheerful,

confident air of a man who has plenty of property to fall back upon.

Tom had never dreamed that his father would "fail"; _that_ was a form

of misfortune which he had always heard spoken of as a deep disgrace,

and disgrace was an idea that he could not associate with any of his

relations, least of all with his father. A proud sense of family

respectability was part of the very air Tom had been born and brought

up in. He knew there were people in St. Ogg's who made a show without

money to support it, and he had always heard such people spoken of by

his own friends with contempt and reprobation. He had a strong belief,

which was a lifelong habit, and required no definite evidence to rest

on, that his father could spend a great deal of money if he chose; and

since his education at Mr. Stelling's had given him a more expensive

view of life, he had often thought that when he got older he would

make a figure in the world, with his horse and dogs and saddle, and

other accoutrements of a fine young man, and show himself equal to any

of his contemporaries at St. Ogg's, who might consider themselves a

grade above him in society because their fathers were professional

men, or had large oil-mills. As to the prognostics and headshaking of

his aunts and uncles, they had never produced the least effect on him,

except to make him think that aunts and uncles were disagreeable

society; he had heard them find fault in much the same way as long as

he could remember. His father knew better than they did.

The down had come on Tom's lip, yet his thoughts and expectations had

been hitherto only the reproduction, in changed forms, of the boyish

dreams in which he had lived three years ago. He was awakened now with

a violent shock.

Maggie was frightened at Tom's pale, trembling silence. There was

something else to tell him,--something worse. She threw her arms round

him at last, and said, with a half sob:

"Oh, Tom--dear, dear Tom, don't fret too much; try and bear it well."

Tom turned his cheek passively to meet her entreating kisses, and

there gathered a moisture in his eyes, which he just rubbed away with

his hand. The action seemed to rouse him, for he shook himself and

said: "I shall go home, with you, Maggie. Didn't my father say I was

to go?"

"No, Tom, father didn't wish it," said Maggie, her anxiety about _his_

feeling helping her to master her agitation. What _would_ he do when

she told him all? "But mother wants you to come,--poor mother!--she

cries so. Oh, Tom, it's very dreadful at home."

Maggie's lips grew whiter, and she began to tremble almost as Tom had

done. The two poor things clung closer to each other, both

trembling,--the one at an unshapen fear, the other at the image of a

terrible certainty. When Maggie spoke, it was hardly above a whisper.

"And--and--poor father----"

Maggie could not utter it. But the suspense was intolerable to Tom. A

vague idea of going to prison, as a consequence of debt, was the shape

his fears had begun to take.

"Where's my father?" he said impatiently. "_Tell_ me, Maggie."

"He's at home," said Maggie, finding it easier to reply to that

question. "But," she added, after a pause, "not himself--he fell off

his horse. He has known nobody but me ever since--he seems to have

lost his senses. O father, father----"

With these last words, Maggie's sobs burst forth with the more

violence for the previous struggle against them. Tom felt that

pressure of the heart which forbids tears; he had no distinct vision

of their troubles as Maggie had, who had been at home; he only felt

the crushing weight of what seemed unmitigated misfortune. He

tightened his arm almost convulsively round Maggie as she sobbed, but

his face looked rigid and tearless, his eyes blank,--as if a black

curtain of cloud had suddenly fallen on his path.

But Maggie soon checked herself abruptly; a single thought had acted

on her like a startling sound.

"We must set out, Tom, we must not stay. Father will miss me; we must

be at the turnpike at ten to meet the coach." She said this with hasty

decision, rubbing her eyes, and rising to seize her bonnet.

Tom at once felt the same impulse, and rose too. "Wait a minute,

Maggie," he said. "I must speak to Mr. Stelling, and then we'll go."

He thought he must go to the study where the pupils were; but on his

way he met Mr. Stelling, who had heard from his wife that Maggie

appeared to be in trouble when she asked for her brother, and now that

he thought the brother and sister had been alone long enough, was

coming to inquire and offer his sympathy.

"Please, sir, I must go home," Tom said abruptly, as he met Mr.

Stelling in the passage. "I must go back with my sister directly. My

father's lost his lawsuit--he's lost all his property--and he's very

ill."

Mr. Stelling felt like a kind-hearted man; he foresaw a probable money

loss for himself, but this had no appreciable share in his feeling,

while he looked with grave pity at the brother and sister for whom

youth and sorrow had begun together. When he knew how Maggie had come,

and how eager she was to get home again, he hurried their departure,

only whispering something to Mrs. Stelling, who had followed him, and

who immediately left the room.

Tom and Maggie were standing on the door-step, ready to set out, when

Mrs. Stelling came with a little basket, which she hung on Maggie's

arm, saying: "Do remember to eat something on the way, dear." Maggie's

heart went out toward this woman whom she had never liked, and she

kissed her silently. It was the first sign within the poor child of

that new sense which is the gift of sorrow,--that susceptibility to

the bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving

fellowship, as to haggard men among the ice-bergs the mere presence of

an ordinary comrade stirs the deep fountains of affection.

Mr. Stelling put his hand on Tom's shoulder and said: "God bless you,

my boy; let me know how you get on." Then he pressed Maggie's hand;

but there were no audible good-byes. Tom had so often thought how

joyful he should be the day he left school "for good"! And now his

school years seemed like a holiday that had come to an end.

The two slight youthful figures soon grew indistinct on the distant

road,--were soon lost behind the projecting hedgerow.

They had gone forth together into their life of sorrow, and they would

never more see the sunshine undimmed by remembered cares. They had

entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood

had forever closed behind them.