Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (557 page)

Chapter VI.

THE MAGIC MUSIC.

The children were to pay an afternoon visit on the following day to Aunt Pullet at Garum Firs, where they would hear Uncle Pullet’s musical-box.

Already, at twelve o’clock, Mrs. Tulliver had on her visiting costume. Maggie was frowning, and twisting her shoulders, that she might, if possible, shrink away from the prickliest of tuckers; while her mother was saying, “Don’t, Maggie, my dear — don’t look so ugly!” Tom’s cheeks were looking very red against his best blue suit, in the pockets of which he had, to his great joy, stowed away all the contents of his everyday pockets.

As for Lucy, she was just as pretty and neat as she had been yesterday, and she looked with wondering pity at Maggie pouting and writhing under the tucker. While waiting for the time to set out, they were allowed to build card-houses, as a suitable amusement for boys and girls in their best clothes.

Tom could build splendid houses, but Maggie’s would never bear the laying on of the roof. It was always so with the things that Maggie made, and Tom said that no girls could ever make anything.

But it happened that Lucy was very clever at building; she handled the cards so lightly, and moved so gently, that Tom admired her houses as well as his own — the more readily because she had asked him to teach her. Maggie, too, would have admired Lucy’s houses if Tom had not laughed when her houses fell, and told her that she was “a stupid.”

“Don’t laugh at me, Tom!” she burst out angrily. “I’m not a stupid. I know a great many things you don’t.”

“Oh, I dare say, Miss Spitfire! I’d never be such a cross thing as you — making faces like that. Lucy doesn’t do so. I like Lucy better than you. I wish Lucy was
my
sister.”

“Then it’s wicked and cruel of you to wish so,” said Maggie, starting up from her place on the floor and upsetting Tom’s wonderful pagoda. She really did not mean it, but appearances were against her, and Tom turned white with anger, but said nothing. He would have struck her, only he knew it was cowardly to strike a girl.

Maggie stood in dismay and terror while Tom got up from the floor and walked away. Lucy looked on mutely, like a kitten pausing from its lapping.

“O Tom,” said Maggie at last, going half-way towards him, “I didn’t mean to knock it down — indeed, indeed, I didn’t.”

Tom took no notice of her, but took, instead, two or three hard peas out of his pocket, and shot them with his thumbnail against the window, with the object of hitting a bluebottle which was sporting in the spring sunshine.

Thus the morning had been very sad to Maggie, and when at last they set out Tom’s coldness to her all through their walk spoiled the fresh air and sunshine for her. He called Lucy to look at the half-built bird’s nest without caring to show it to Maggie, and peeled a willow switch for Lucy and himself without offering one to Maggie. Lucy had said, “Maggie, shouldn’t
you
like one?” but Tom was deaf.

Still, the sight of the peacock spreading his tail on the stackyard wall, just as they reached the aunt’s house, was enough to turn the mind from sadness. And this was only the beginning of beautiful sights at Garum Firs.

All the farmyard life was wonderful there — bantams, speckled and top-knotted; Friesland hens, with their feathers all turned the wrong way; Guinea-fowls that flew and screamed, and dropped their pretty-spotted feathers; pouter pigeons, and a tame magpie; nay, a goat, and a wonderful dog, half mastiff, half bull-dog, as large as a lion!

Uncle Pullet had seen the party from the window, and made haste to unbar and unchain the front door. Aunt Pullet, too, appeared at the doorway, and as soon as her sister was within hearing said, “Stop the children, Bessy; don’t let ‘em come up the doorsteps. Sally’s bringing the old mat and the duster to rub their shoes.”

“You must come with me into the best room,” she went on as soon as her guests had passed the portal.

“May the children come too, sister?” inquired Mrs. Tulliver, who saw that Maggie and Lucy were looking rather eager.

“Well,” said Aunt Pullet, “it’ll perhaps be safer for the girls to come; they’ll be touching something if we leave ‘em behind.”

When they all came down again Uncle Pullet said that he reckoned the missis had been showing her bonnet — that was what had made them so long upstairs.

Meanwhile Tom had spent the time on the edge of the sofa directly opposite his Uncle Pullet, who looked at him with twinkling gray eyes and spoke to him as “young sir.”

“Well, young sir, what do you learn at school?” was the usual question with Uncle Pullet; whereupon Tom always looked sheepish, rubbed his hand across his face, and answered, “I don’t know.”

The appearance of the little girls made Uncle Pullet think of some small sweetcakes, of which he kept a stock under lock and key for his own private eating on wet days; but the three children had no sooner got them between their fingers than Aunt Pullet desired them to abstain from eating till the tray and the plates came, since with those crisp cakes they would make the floor “all over” crumbs.

Lucy didn’t mind that much, for the cake was so pretty she thought it was rather a pity to eat it; but Tom, watching his chance while the elders were talking, hastily stowed his own cake in his mouth at two bites. As for Maggie, she presently let fall her cake, and by an unlucky movement crushed it beneath her foot — a source of such disgrace to her that she began to despair of hearing the musical snuff-box to-day, till it occurred to her that Lucy was in high favour enough to venture on asking for a tune.

So she whispered to Lucy, and Lucy, who always did what she was asked to do, went up quietly to her uncle’s knee, and, blushing all over her neck while she fingered her necklace, said, “Will you please play us a tune, uncle?” But Uncle Pullet never gave a too ready consent. “We’ll see about it,” was the answer he always gave, waiting till a suitable number of minutes had passed.

Perhaps the waiting increased Maggie’s enjoyment when the tune began. For the first time she quite forgot that she had a load on her mind — that Tom was angry with her; and by the time “Hush, ye pretty warbling choir” had been played, her face wore that bright look of happiness, while she sat still with her hands clasped, which sometimes comforted her mother that Maggie could look pretty now and then, in spite of her brown skin. But when the magic music ceased, she jumped up, and running towards Tom, put her arm round his neck and said, “O Tom, isn’t it pretty?”

Now Tom had his glass of cowslip wine in his hand, and Maggie jerked him so as to make him spill half of it. He would have been an extreme milksop if he had not said angrily, “Look there, now!”

“Why don’t you sit still, Maggie?” her mother said peevishly.

“Little gells mustn’t come to see me if they behave in that way,” said Aunt Pullet.

“Why, you’re too rough, little miss,” said Uncle Pullet.

Poor Maggie sat down again, with the music all chased out of her soul.

Mrs. Tulliver wisely took an early opportunity of suggesting that, now they were rested after their walk, the children might go and play out of doors; and Aunt Pullet gave them leave, only telling them not to go off the paved walks in the garden, and if they wanted to see the poultry fed, to view them from a distance on the horse-block.

For a long time after the children had gone out the elders sat deep in talk about family matters, till at last Mrs. Pullet, observing that it was tea-time, turned to reach from a drawer a fine damask napkin, which she pinned before her in the fashion of an apron. Then the door was thrown open; but instead of the tea-tray, Sally brought in an object so startling that both Mrs. Pullet and Mrs. Tulliver gave a scream, causing Uncle Pullet to swallow a lozenge he was sucking — for the fifth time in his life, as he afterwards noted.

The startling object was no other than little Lucy, with one side of her person, from her small foot to her bonnet-crown, wet and discoloured with mud, holding out two tiny blackened hands, and making a very piteous face.

Chapter VII.

MAGGIE IS VERY NAUGHTY.

As soon as the children reached the open air Tom said, “Here, Lucy, you come along with me,” and walked off to the place where the toads were, as if there were no Maggie in existence. Lucy was naturally pleased that Cousin Tom was so good to her, and it was very amusing to see him tickling a fat toad with a piece of string, when the toad was safe down the area, with an iron grating over him.

Still Lucy wished Maggie to enjoy the sight also, especially as she would doubtless find a name for the toad, and say what had been his past history; for Lucy loved Maggie’s stories about the live things they came upon by accident — how Mrs. Earwig had a wash at home, and one of her children had fallen into the hot copper, for which reason she was running so fast to fetch the doctor. So now the desire to know the history of a very portly toad made her run back to Maggie and say, “Oh, there is such a big, funny toad, Maggie! Do come and see.”

Maggie said nothing, but turned away from her with a deep frown. She was actually beginning to think that she should like to make Lucy cry, by slapping or pinching her, especially as it might vex Tom, whom it was of no use to slap, even if she dared, because he didn’t mind it. And if Lucy hadn’t been there, Maggie was sure he would have made friends with her sooner.

Tickling a fat toad is an amusement that does not last, and Tom by-and-by began to look round for some other mode of passing the time. But in so prim a garden, where they were not to go off the paved walks, there was not a great choice of sport.

“I say, Lucy,” he began, nodding his head up and down, as he coiled up his string again, “what do you think I mean to do?”

“What, Tom?” said Lucy.

“I mean to go to the pond and look at the pike. You may go with me if you like.”

“O Tom, dare you?” said Lucy. “Aunt said we mustn’t go out of the garden.”

“Oh, I shall go out at the other end of the garden,” said Tom. “Nobody ‘ull see us. Besides, I don’t care if they do; I’ll run off home.”

“But I couldn’t run,” said Lucy.

“Oh, never mind; they won’t be cross with you,” said Tom. “You say I took you.”

Tom walked along, and Lucy trotted by his side. Maggie saw them leaving the garden, and could not resist the impulse to follow. She kept a few yards behind them unseen by Tom, who was watching for the pike — a highly interesting monster; he was said to be so very old, so very large, and to have such a great appetite.

“Here, Lucy,” he said in a loud whisper, “come here.”

Lucy came carefully as she was bidden, and bent down to look at what seemed a golden arrow-head darting through the water. It was a water-snake, Tom told her; and Lucy at last could see the wave of its body, wondering very much that a snake could swim.

Maggie had drawn nearer and nearer; she must see it too, though it was bitter to her, like everything else, since Tom did not care about her seeing it. At last she was close by Lucy, and Tom turned round and said, —

“Now, get away, Maggie. There’s no room for you on the grass here. Nobody asked
you
to come.”

Then Maggie, with a fierce thrust of her small brown arm, pushed poor little pink-and-white Lucy into the cow-trodden mud.

Tom could not restrain himself, and gave Maggie two smart slaps on the arm as he ran to pick up Lucy, who lay crying helplessly. Maggie retreated to the roots of a tree a few yards off, and looked on. Why should she be sorry? Tom was very slow to forgive
her
, however sorry she might have been.

“I shall tell mother, you know, Miss Mag,” said Tom, as soon as Lucy was up and ready to walk away. It was not Tom’s practice to “tell,” but here justice clearly demanded that Maggie should be visited with the utmost punishment.

“Sally,” said Tom, when they reached the kitchen door — “Sally, tell mother it was Maggie pushed Lucy into the mud.”

Sally, as we have seen, lost no time in presenting Lucy at the parlour door.

“Goodness gracious!” Aunt Pullet exclaimed, after giving a scream; “keep her at the door, Sally! Don’t bring her off the oilcloth, whatever you do.”

“Why, she’s tumbled into some nasty mud,” said Mrs. Tulliver, going up to Lucy.

“If you please, ‘um, it was Miss Maggie as pushed her in,” said Sally. “Master Tom’s been and said so; and they must ha’ been to the pond, for it’s only there they could ha’ got into such dirt.”

“There it is, Bessy; it’s what I’ve been telling you,” said Mrs. Pullet. “It’s your children; there’s no knowing what they’ll come to.”

Mrs. Tulliver went out to speak to these naughty children, supposing them to be close at hand; but it was not until after some search that she found Tom leaning with rather a careless air against the white paling of the poultry-yard, and lowering his piece of string on the other side as a means of teasing the turkey-cock.

“Tom, you naughty boy, where’s your sister?” said Mrs. Tulliver in a distressed voice.

“I don’t know,” said Tom.

“Why, where did you leave her?” said his mother, looking round.

“Sitting under the tree against the pond,” said Tom.

“Then go and fetch her in this minute, you naughty boy. And how could you think o’ going to the pond, and taking your sister where there was dirt? You know she’ll do mischief, if there’s mischief to be done.”

The idea of Maggie sitting alone by the pond roused a fear in Mrs. Tulliver’s mind, and she mounted the horse-block to satisfy herself by a sight of that fatal child, while Tom walked — not very quickly — on his way towards her.

“They’re such children for the water, mine are,” she said aloud, without reflecting that there was no one to hear her; “they’ll be brought in dead and drownded some day. I wish that river was far enough.”

But when she not only failed to see Maggie, but presently saw Tom returning from the pond alone, she hurried to meet him.

“Maggie’s nowhere about the pond, mother,” said Tom; “she’s gone away.”