Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (77 page)

“No; but I hope their brothers ‘ull love the poor things, and remember they came o’ one father and mother; the lads ‘ull never be the poorer for that,” said Mrs. Moss, flashing out with hurried timidity, like a half-smothered fire.

Mr. Tulliver gave his horse a little stroke on the flank, then checked it, and said angrily, “Stand still with you!” much to the astonishment of that innocent animal.

“And the more there is of ‘em, the more they must love one another,” Mrs. Moss went on, looking at her children with a didactic purpose. But she turned toward her brother again to say, “Not but what I hope your boy ‘ull allays be good to his sister, though there’s but two of ‘em, like you and me, brother.”

The arrow went straight to Mr. Tulliver’s heart. He had not a rapid imagination, but the thought of Maggie was very near to him, and he was not long in seeing his relation to his own sister side by side with Tom’s relation to Maggie. Would the little wench ever be poorly off, and Tom rather hard upon her?

“Ay, ay, Gritty,” said the miller, with a new softness in his tone; “but I’ve allays done what I could for you,” he added, as if vindicating himself from a reproach.

“I’m not denying that, brother, and I’m noways ungrateful,” said poor Mrs. Moss, too fagged by toil and children to have strength left for any pride. “But here’s the father. What a while you’ve been, Moss!”

“While, do you call it?” said Mr. Moss, feeling out of breath and injured. “I’ve been running all the way. Won’t you ‘light, Mr. Tulliver?”

“Well, I’ll just get down and have a bit o’ talk with you in the garden,” said Mr. Tulliver, thinking that he should be more likely to show a due spirit of resolve if his sister were not present.

He got down, and passed with Mr. Moss into the garden, toward an old yew-tree arbor, while his sister stood tapping her baby on the back and looking wistfully after them.

Their entrance into the yew-tree arbor surprised several fowls that were recreating themselves by scratching deep holes in the dusty ground, and at once took flight with much pother and cackling. Mr. Tulliver sat down on the bench, and tapping the ground curiously here and there with his stick, as if he suspected some hollowness, opened the conversation by observing, with something like a snarl in his tone,–

“Why, you’ve got wheat again in that Corner Close, I see; and never a bit o’ dressing on it. You’ll do no good with it this year.”

Mr. Moss, who, when he married Miss Tulliver, had been regarded as the buck of Basset, now wore a beard nearly a week old, and had the depressed, unexpectant air of a machine-horse. He answered in a patient-grumbling tone, “Why, poor farmers like me must do as they can; they must leave it to them as have got money to play with, to put half as much into the ground as they mean to get out of it.”

“I don’t know who should have money to play with, if it isn’t them as can borrow money without paying interest,” said Mr. Tulliver, who wished to get into a slight quarrel; it was the most natural and easy introduction to calling in money.

“I know I’m behind with the interest,” said Mr. Moss, “but I was so unlucky wi’ the wool last year; and what with the Missis being laid up so, things have gone awk’arder nor usual.”

“Ay,” snarled Mr. Tulliver, “there’s folks as things ‘ull allays go awk’ard with; empty sacks ‘ull never stand upright.”

“Well, I don’t know what fault you’ve got to find wi’ me, Mr. Tulliver,” said Mr. Moss, deprecatingly; “I know there isn’t a day-laborer works harder.”

“What’s the use o’ that,” said Mr. Tulliver, sharply, “when a man marries, and’s got no capital to work his farm but his wife’s bit o’ fortin? I was against it from the first; but you’d neither of you listen to me. And I can’t lie out o’ my money any longer, for I’ve got to pay five hundred o’ Mrs. Glegg’s, and there’ll be Tom an expense to me. I should find myself short, even saying I’d got back all as is my own. You must look about and see how you can pay me the three hundred pound.”

“Well, if that’s what you mean,” said Mr. Moss, looking blankly before him, “we’d better be sold up, and ha’ done with it; I must part wi’ every head o’ stock I’ve got, to pay you and the landlord too.”

Poor relations are undeniably irritating,–their existence is so entirely uncalled for on our part, and they are almost always very faulty people. Mr. Tulliver had succeeded in getting quite as much irritated with Mr. Moss as he had desired, and he was able to say angrily, rising from his seat,–

“Well, you must do as you can. I can’t find money for everybody else as well as myself. I must look to my own business and my own family. I can’t lie out o’ my money any longer. You must raise it as quick as you can.”

Mr. Tulliver walked abruptly out of the arbor as he uttered the last sentence, and, without looking round at Mr. Moss, went on to the kitchen door, where the eldest boy was holding his horse, and his sister was waiting in a state of wondering alarm, which was not without its alleviations, for baby was making pleasant gurgling sounds, and performing a great deal of finger practice on the faded face. Mrs. Moss had eight children, but could never overcome her regret that the twins had not lived. Mr. Moss thought their removal was not without its consolations. “Won’t you come in, brother?” she said, looking anxiously at her husband, who was walking slowly up, while Mr. Tulliver had his foot already in the stirrup.

“No, no; good-by,” said he, turning his horse’s head, and riding away.

No man could feel more resolute till he got outside the yard gate, and a little way along the deep-rutted lane; but before he reached the next turning, which would take him out of sight of the dilapidated farm-buildings, he appeared to be smitten by some sudden thought. He checked his horse, and made it stand still in the same spot for two or three minutes, during which he turned his head from side to side in a melancholy way, as if he were looking at some painful object on more sides than one. Evidently, after his fit of promptitude, Mr. Tulliver was relapsing into the sense that this is a puzzling world. He turned his horse, and rode slowly back, giving vent to the climax of feeling which had determined this movement by saying aloud, as he struck his horse, “Poor little wench! she’ll have nobody but Tom, belike, when I’m gone.”

Mr. Tulliver’s return into the yard was descried by several young Mosses, who immediately ran in with the exciting news to their mother, so that Mrs. Moss was again on the door-step when her brother rode up. She had been crying, but was rocking baby to sleep in her arms now, and made no ostentatious show of sorrow as her brother looked at her, but merely said:

“The father’s gone to the field, again, if you want him, brother.”

“No, Gritty, no,” said Mr. Tulliver, in a gentle tone. “Don’t you fret,–that’s all,–I’ll make a shift without the money a bit, only you must be as clever and contriving as you can.”

Mrs. Moss’s tears came again at this unexpected kindness, and she could say nothing.

“Come, come!–the little wench shall come and see you. I’ll bring her and Tom some day before he goes to school. You mustn’t fret. I’ll allays be a good brother to you.”

“Thank you for that word, brother,” said Mrs. Moss, drying her tears; then turning to Lizzy, she said, “Run now, and fetch the colored egg for cousin Maggie.” Lizzy ran in, and quickly reappeared with a small paper parcel.

“It’s boiled hard, brother, and colored with thrums, very pretty; it was done o’ purpose for Maggie. Will you please to carry it in your pocket?”

“Ay, ay,” said Mr. Tulliver, putting it carefully in his side pocket. “Good-by.”

And so the respectable miller returned along the Basset lanes rather more puzzled than before as to ways and means, but still with the sense of a danger escaped. It had come across his mind that if he were hard upon his sister, it might somehow tend to make Tom hard upon Maggie at some distant day, when her father was no longer there to take her part; for simple people, like our friend Mr. Tulliver, are apt to clothe unimpeachable feelings in erroneous ideas, and this was his confused way of explaining to himself that his love and anxiety for “the little wench” had given him a new sensibility toward his sister.

CHAPTER IX

To Garum Firs

While the possible troubles of Maggie’s future were occupying her father’s mind, she herself was tasting only the bitterness of the present. Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

The fact was, the day had begun ill with Maggie. The pleasure of having Lucy to look at, and the prospect of the afternoon visit to Garum Firs, where she would hear uncle Pullet’s musical box, had been marred as early as eleven o’clock by the advent of the hair-dresser from St. Ogg’s, who had spoken in the severest terms of the condition in which he had found her hair, holding up one jagged lock after another and saying, “See here! tut, tut, tut!” in a tone of mingled disgust and pity, which to Maggie’s imagination was equivalent to the strongest expression of public opinion. Mr. Rappit, the hair-dresser, with his well-anointed coronal locks tending wavily upward, like the simulated pyramid of flame on a monumental urn, seemed to her at that moment the most formidable of her contemporaries, into whose street at St. Ogg’s she would carefully refrain from entering through the rest of her life.

Moreover, the preparation for a visit being always a serious affair in the Dodson family, Martha was enjoined to have Mrs. Tulliver’s room ready an hour earlier than usual, that the laying out of the best clothes might not be deferred till the last moment, as was sometimes the case in families of lax views, where the ribbon-strings were never rolled up, where there was little or no wrapping in silver paper, and where the sense that the Sunday clothes could be got at quite easily produced no shock to the mind. Already, at twelve o’clock, Mrs. Tulliver had on her visiting costume, with a protective apparatus of brown holland, as if she had been a piece of satin furniture in danger of flies; Maggie was frowning and twisting her shoulders, that she might if possible shrink away from the prickliest of tuckers, while her mother was remonstrating, “Don’t, Maggie, my dear; don’t make yourself so ugly!” and Tom’s cheeks were looking particularly brilliant as a relief to his best blue suit, which he wore with becoming calmness, having, after a little wrangling, effected what was always the one point of interest to him in his toilet: he had transferred all the contents of his every-day pockets to those actually in wear.

As for Lucy, she was just as pretty and neat as she had been yesterday; no accidents ever happened to her clothes, and she was never uncomfortable in them, so that she looked with wondering pity at Maggie, pouting and writhing under the exasperating tucker. Maggie would certainly have torn it off, if she had not been checked by the remembrance of her recent humiliation about her hair; as it was, she confined herself to fretting and twisting, and behaving peevishly about the card-houses which they were allowed to build till dinner, as a suitable amusement for boys and girls in their best clothes. Tom could build perfect pyramids of houses; but Maggie’s would never bear the laying on the roof. It was always so with the things that Maggie made; and Tom had deduced the conclusion that no girls could ever make anything. But it happened that Lucy proved wonderfully clever at building; she handled the cards so lightly, and moved so gently, that Tom condescended to admire 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, and would have given up her own unsuccessful building to contemplate them, without ill temper, if her tucker had not made her peevish, and if Tom had not inconsiderately laughed when her houses fell, and told her 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 very wicked and cruel of you to wish so,” said Maggie, starting up hurriedly from her place on the floor, and upsetting Tom’s wonderful pagoda. She really did not mean it, but the circumstantial evidence was 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, and Tom Tulliver was quite determined he would never do anything cowardly.

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

“Oh, Tom,” said Maggie, at last, going half-way toward 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, vaguely at first, but presently with the distinct aim of hitting a superannuated blue-bottle which was exposing its imbecility in the spring sunshine, clearly against the views of Nature, who had provided Tom and the peas for the speedy destruction of this weak individual.

Thus the morning had been made heavy to Maggie, and Tom’s persistent 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 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 opportunely spreading his tail on the stackyard wall, just as they reached Garum Firs, was enough to divert the mind temporarily from personal grievances. 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 brindled dog, half mastiff, half bull-dog, as large as a lion. Then there were white railings and white gates all about, and glittering weathercocks of various design, and garden-walks paved with pebbles in beautiful patterns,–nothing was quite common at Garum Firs; and Tom thought that the unusual size of the toads there was simply due to the general unusualness which characterized uncle Pullet’s possessions as a gentleman farmer. Toads who paid rent were naturally leaner. As for the house, it was not less remarkable; it had a receding centre, and two wings with battlemented turrets, and was covered with glittering white stucco.

Uncle Pullet had seen the expected party approaching from the window, and made haste to unbar and unchain the front door, kept always in this fortified condition from fear of tramps, who might be supposed to know of the glass case of stuffed birds in the hall, and to contemplate rushing in and carrying it away on their heads. Aunt Pullet, too, appeared at the doorway, and as soon as her sister was within hearing said, “Stop the children, for God’s sake! Bessy; don’t let ‘em come up the door-steps; Sally’s bringing the old mat and the duster, to rub their shoes.”

Mrs. Pullet’s front-door mats were by no means intended to wipe shoes on; the very scraper had a deputy to do its dirty work. Tom rebelled particularly against this shoewiping, which he always considered in the light of an indignity to his sex. He felt it as the beginning of the disagreeables incident to a visit at aunt Pullet’s, where he had once been compelled to sit with towels wrapped round his boots; a fact which may serve to correct the too-hasty conclusion that a visit to Garum Firs must have been a great treat to a young gentleman fond of animals,–fond, that is, of throwing stones at them.

The next disagreeable was confined to his feminine companions; it was the mounting of the polished oak stairs, which had very handsome carpets rolled up and laid by in a spare bedroom, so that the ascent of these glossy steps might have served, in barbarous times, as a trial by ordeal from which none but the most spotless virtue could have come off with unbroken limbs. Sophy’s weakness about these polished stairs was always a subject of bitter remonstrance on Mrs. Glegg’s part; but Mrs. Tulliver ventured on no comment, only thinking to herself it was a mercy when she and the children were safe on the landing.

“Mrs. Gray has sent home my new bonnet, Bessy,” said Mrs. Pullet, in a pathetic tone, as Mrs. Tulliver adjusted her cap.

“Has she, sister?” said Mrs. Tulliver, with an air of much interest. “And how do you like it?”

“It’s apt to make a mess with clothes, taking ‘em out and putting ‘em in again,” said Mrs. Pullet, drawing a bunch of keys from her pocket and looking at them earnestly, “but it ‘ud be a pity for you to go away without seeing it. There’s no knowing what may happen.”

Mrs. Pullet shook her head slowly at this last serious consideration, which determined her to single out a particular key.

“I’m afraid it’ll be troublesome to you getting it out, sister,” said Mrs. Tulliver; “but I should like to see what sort of a crown she’s made you.”

Mrs. Pullet rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one wing of a very bright wardrobe, where you may have hastily supposed she would find a new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition could only have arisen from a too-superficial acquaintance with the habits of the Dodson family. In this wardrobe Mrs. Pullet was seeking something small enough to be hidden among layers of linen,–it was a door-key.

“You must come with me into the best room,” said Mrs. Pullet.

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

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

So they went in procession along the bright and slippery corridor, dimly lighted by the semi-lunar top of the window which rose above the closed shutter; it was really quite solemn. Aunt Pullet paused and unlocked a door which opened on something still more solemn than the passage,–a darkened room, in which the outer light, entering feebly, showed what looked like the corpses of furniture in white shrouds. Everything that was not shrouded stood with its legs upward. Lucy laid hold of Maggie’s frock, and Maggie’s heart beat rapidly.

Aunt Pullet half-opened the shutter and then unlocked the wardrobe, with a melancholy deliberateness which was quite in keeping with the funereal solemnity of the scene. The delicious scent of rose-leaves that issued from the wardrobe made the process of taking out sheet after sheet of silver paper quite pleasant to assist at, though the sight of the bonnet at last was an anticlimax to Maggie, who would have preferred something more strikingly preternatural. But few things could have been more impressive to Mrs. Tulliver. She looked all round it in silence for some moments, and then said emphatically, “Well, sister, I’ll never speak against the full crowns again!”

It was a great concession, and Mrs. Pullet felt it; she felt something was due to it.

“You’d like to see it on, sister?” she said sadly. “I’ll open the shutter a bit further.”

“Well, if you don’t mind taking off your cap, sister,” said Mrs. Tulliver.

Mrs. Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown silk scalp with a jutting promontory of curls which was common to the more mature and judicious women of those times, and placing the bonnet on her head, turned slowly round, like a draper’s lay-figure, that Mrs. Tulliver might miss no point of view.

“I’ve sometimes thought there’s a loop too much o’ ribbon on this left side, sister; what do you think?” said Mrs. Pullet.

Mrs. Tulliver looked earnestly at the point indicated, and turned her head on one side. “Well, I think it’s best as it is; if you meddled with it, sister, you might repent.”

“That’s true,” said aunt Pullet, taking off the bonnet and looking at it contemplatively.

“How much might she charge you for that bonnet, sister?” said Mrs. Tulliver, whose mind was actively engaged on the possibility of getting a humble imitation of this chef-d’œuvre made from a piece of silk she had at home.

Mrs. Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her head, and then whispered, “Pullet pays for it; he said I was to have the best bonnet at Garum Church, let the next best be whose it would.”

She began slowly to adjust the trimmings, in preparation for returning it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts seemed to have taken a melancholy turn, for she shook her head.

“Ah,” she said at last, “I may never wear it twice, sister; who knows?”

“Don’t talk o’ that sister,” answered Mrs. Tulliver. “I hope you’ll have your health this summer.”