Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (92 page)

And the next morning Maggie went, as we have seen. Sitting on the coach on their way home, the brother and sister talked to each other in sad, interrupted whispers.

“They say Mr. Wakem has got a mortgage or something on the land, Tom,” said Maggie. “It was the letter with that news in it that made father ill, they think.”

“I believe that scoundrel’s been planning all along to ruin my father,” said Tom, leaping from the vaguest impressions to a definite conclusion. “I’ll make him feel for it when I’m a man. Mind you never speak to Philip again.”

“Oh, Tom!” said Maggie, in a tone of sad remonstrance; but she had no spirit to dispute anything then, still less to vex Tom by opposing him.

CHAPTER II

Mrs. Tulliver’s Teraphim, or Household Gods

When the coach set down Tom and Maggie, it was five hours since she had started from home, and she was thinking with some trembling that her father had perhaps missed her, and asked for “the little wench” in vain. She thought of no other change that might have happened.

She hurried along the gravel-walk and entered the house before Tom; but in the entrance she was startled by a strong smell of tobacco. The parlor door was ajar; that was where the smell came from. It was very strange; could any visitor be smoking at a time like this? Was her mother there? If so, she must be told that Tom was come. Maggie, after this pause of surprise, was only in the act of opening the door when Tom came up, and they both looked into the parlor together.

There was a coarse, dingy man, of whose face Tom had some vague recollection, sitting in his father’s chair, smoking, with a jug and glass beside him.

The truth flashed on Tom’s mind in an instant. To “have the bailiff in the house,” and “to be sold up,” were phrases which he had been used to, even as a little boy; they were part of the disgrace and misery of “failing,” of losing all one’s money, and being ruined,–sinking into the condition of poor working people. It seemed only natural this should happen, since his father had lost all his property, and he thought of no more special cause for this particular form of misfortune than the loss of the lawsuit. But the immediate presence of this disgrace was so much keener an experience to Tom than the worst form of apprehension, that he felt at this moment as if his real trouble had only just begin; it was a touch on the irritated nerve compared with its spontaneous dull aching.

“How do you do, sir?” said the man, taking the pipe out of his mouth, with rough, embarrassed civility. The two young startled faces made him a little uncomfortable.

But Tom turned away hastily without speaking; the sight was too hateful. Maggie had not understood the appearance of this stranger, as Tom had. She followed him, whispering: “Who can it be, Tom? What is the matter?” Then, with a sudden undefined dread lest this stranger might have something to do with a change in her father, she rushed upstairs, checking herself at the bedroom door to throw off her bonnet, and enter on tiptoe. All was silent there; her father was lying, heedless of everything around him, with his eyes closed as when she had left him. A servant was there, but not her mother.

“Where’s my mother?” she whispered. The servant did not know.

Maggie hastened out, and said to Tom; “Father is lying quiet; let us go and look for my mother. I wonder where she is.”

Mrs. Tulliver was not downstairs, not in any of the bedrooms. There was but one room below the attic which Maggie had left unsearched; it was the storeroom, where her mother kept all her linen and all the precious “best things” that were only unwrapped and brought out on special occasions.

Tom, preceding Maggie, as they returned along the passage, opened the door of this room, and immediately said, “Mother!”

Mrs. Tulliver was seated there with all her laid-up treasures. One of the linen chests was open; the silver teapot was unwrapped from its many folds of paper, and the best china was laid out on the top of the closed linen-chest; spoons and skewers and ladles were spread in rows on the shelves; and the poor woman was shaking her head and weeping, with a bitter tension of the mouth, over the mark, “Elizabeth Dodson,” on the corner of some tablecloths she held in her lap.

She dropped them, and started up as Tom spoke.

“Oh, my boy, my boy!” she said, clasping him round the neck. “To think as I should live to see this day! We’re ruined–everything’s going to be sold up–to think as your father should ha’ married me to bring me to this! We’ve got nothing–we shall be beggars–we must go to the workhouse––”

She kissed him, then seated herself again, and took another tablecloth on her lap, unfolding it a little way to look at the pattern, while the children stood by in mute wretchedness, their minds quite filled for the moment with the words “beggars” and “workhouse.”

“To think o’ these cloths as I spun myself,” she went on, lifting things out and turning them over with an excitement all the more strange and piteous because the stout blond woman was usually so passive,–if she had been ruffled before, it was at the surface merely,–”and Job Haxey wove ‘em, and brought the piece home on his back, as I remember standing at the door and seeing him come, before I ever thought o’ marrying your father! And the pattern as I chose myself, and bleached so beautiful, and I marked ‘em so as nobody ever saw such marking,–they must cut the cloth to get it out, for it’s a particular stitch. And they’re all to be sold, and go into strange people’s houses, and perhaps be cut with the knives, and wore out before I’m dead. You’ll never have one of ‘em, my boy,” she said, looking up at Tom with her eyes full of tears, “and I meant ‘em for you. I wanted you to have all o’ this pattern. Maggie could have had the large check–it never shows so well when the dishes are on it.”

Tom was touched to the quick, but there was an angry reaction immediately. His face flushed as he said:

“But will my aunts let them be sold, mother? Do they know about it? They’ll never let your linen go, will they? Haven’t you sent to them?”

“Yes, I sent Luke directly they’d put the bailies in, and your aunt Pullet’s been–and, oh dear, oh dear, she cries so and says your father’s disgraced my family and made it the talk o’ the country; and she’ll buy the spotted cloths for herself, because she’s never had so many as she wanted o’ that pattern, and they sha’n’t go to strangers, but she’s got more checks a’ready nor she can do with.” (Here Mrs. Tulliver began to lay back the tablecloths in the chest, folding and stroking them automatically.) “And your uncle Glegg’s been too, and he says things must be bought in for us to lie down on, but he must talk to your aunt; and they’re all coming to consult. But I know they’ll none of ‘em take my chany,” she added, turning toward the cups and saucers, “for they all found fault with ‘em when I bought ‘em, ‘cause o’ the small gold sprig all over ‘em, between the flowers. But there’s none of ‘em got better chany, not even your aunt Pullet herself; and I bought it wi’ my own money as I’d saved ever since I was turned fifteen; and the silver teapot, too,–your father never paid for ‘em. And to think as he should ha’ married me, and brought me to this.”

Mrs. Tulliver burst out crying afresh, and she sobbed with her handkerchief at her eyes a few moments, but then removing it, she said in a deprecating way, still half sobbing, as if she were called upon to speak before she could command her voice,–

“And I did say to him times and times, ‘Whativer you do, don’t go to law,’ and what more could I do? I’ve had to sit by while my own fortin’s been spent, and what should ha’ been my children’s, too. You’ll have niver a penny, my boy–but it isn’t your poor mother’s fault.”

She put out one arm toward Tom, looking up at him piteously with her helpless, childish blue eyes. The poor lad went to her and kissed her, and she clung to him. For the first time Tom thought of his father with some reproach. His natural inclination to blame, hitherto kept entirely in abeyance toward his father by the predisposition to think him always right, simply on the ground that he was Tom Tulliver’s father, was turned into this new channel by his mother’s plaints; and with his indignation against Wakem there began to mingle some indignation of another sort. Perhaps his father might have helped bringing them all down in the world, and making people talk of them with contempt, but no one should talk long of Tom Tulliver with contempt.

The natural strength and firmness of his nature was beginning to assert itself, urged by the double stimulus of resentment against his aunts, and the sense that he must behave like a man and take care of his mother.

“Don’t fret, mother,” he said tenderly. “I shall soon be able to get money; I’ll get a situation of some sort.”

“Bless you, my boy!” said Mrs. Tulliver, a little soothed. Then, looking round sadly, “But I shouldn’t ha’ minded so much if we could ha’ kept the things wi’ my name on ‘em.”

Maggie had witnessed this scene with gathering anger. The implied reproaches against her father–her father, who was lying there in a sort of living death–neutralized all her pity for griefs about tablecloths and china; and her anger on her father’s account was heightened by some egoistic resentment at Tom’s silent concurrence with her mother in shutting her out from the common calamity. She had become almost indifferent to her mother’s habitual depreciation of her, but she was keenly alive to any sanction of it, however passive, that she might suspect in Tom. Poor Maggie was by no means made up of unalloyed devotedness, but put forth large claims for herself where she loved strongly. She burst out at last in an agitated, almost violent tone: “Mother, how can you talk so; as if you cared only for things with your name on, and not for what has my father’s name too; and to care about anything but dear father himself!–when he’s lying there, and may never speak to us again. Tom, you ought to say so too; you ought not to let any one find fault with my father.”

Maggie, almost choked with mingled grief and anger, left the room, and took her old place on her father’s bed. Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed all her life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.

Her father had always defended and excused her, and her loving remembrance of his tenderness was a force within her that would enable her to do or bear anything for his sake.

Tom was a little shocked at Maggie’s outburst,–telling him as well as his mother what it was right to do! She ought to have learned better than have those hectoring, assuming manners, by this time. But he presently went into his father’s room, and the sight there touched him in a way that effaced the slighter impressions of the previous hour. When Maggie saw how he was moved, she went to him and put her arm round his neck as he sat by the bed, and the two children forgot everything else in the sense that they had one father and one sorrow.

CHAPTER III

The Family Council

It was at eleven o’clock the next morning that the aunts and uncles came to hold their consultation. The fire was lighted in the large parlor, and poor Mrs. Tulliver, with a confused impression that it was a great occasion, like a funeral, unbagged the bell-rope tassels, and unpinned the curtains, adjusting them in proper folds, looking round and shaking her head sadly at the polished tops and legs of the tables, which sister Pullet herself could not accuse of insufficient brightness.

Mr. Deane was not coming, he was away on business; but Mrs. Deane appeared punctually in that handsome new gig with the head to it, and the livery-servant driving it, which had thrown so clear a light on several traits in her character to some of her female friends in St. Ogg’s. Mr. Deane had been advancing in the world as rapidly as Mr. Tulliver had been going down in it; and in Mrs. Deane’s house the Dodson linen and plate were beginning to hold quite a subordinate position, as a mere supplement to the handsomer articles of the same kind, purchased in recent years,–a change which had caused an occasional coolness in the sisterly intercourse between her and Mrs. Glegg, who felt that Susan was getting “like the rest,” and there would soon be little of the true Dodson spirit surviving except in herself, and, it might be hoped, in those nephews who supported the Dodson name on the family land, far away in the Wolds.

People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes; and it seems superfluous, when we consider the remote geographical position of the Ethiopians, and how very little the Greeks had to do with them, to inquire further why Homer calls them “blameless.”

Mrs. Deane was the first to arrive; and when she had taken her seat in the large parlor, Mrs. Tulliver came down to her with her comely face a little distorted, nearly as it would have been if she had been crying. She was not a woman who could shed abundant tears, except in moments when the prospect of losing her furniture became unusually vivid, but she felt how unfitting it was to be quite calm under present circumstances.

“Oh, sister, what a world this is!” she exclaimed as she entered; “what trouble, oh dear!”

Mrs. Deane was a thin-lipped woman, who made small well-considered speeches on peculiar occasions, repeating them afterward to her husband, and asking him if she had not spoken very properly.

“Yes, sister,” she said deliberately, “this is a changing world, and we don’t know to-day what may happen tomorrow. But it’s right to be prepared for all things, and if trouble’s sent, to remember as it isn’t sent without a cause. I’m very sorry for you as a sister, and if the doctor orders jelly for Mr. Tulliver, I hope you’ll let me know. I’ll send it willingly; for it is but right he should have proper attendance while he’s ill.”

“Thank you, Susan,” said Mrs. Tulliver, rather faintly, withdrawing her fat hand from her sister’s thin one. “But there’s been no talk o’ jelly yet.” Then after a moment’s pause she added, “There’s a dozen o’ cut jelly-glasses upstairs–I shall never put jelly into ‘em no more.”

Her voice was rather agitated as she uttered the last words, but the sound of wheels diverted her thoughts. Mr. and Mrs. Glegg were come, and were almost immediately followed by Mr. and Mrs. Pullet.

Mrs. Pullet entered crying, as a compendious mode, at all times, of expressing what were her views of life in general, and what, in brief, were the opinions she held concerning the particular case before her.

Mrs. Glegg had on her fuzziest front, and garments which appeared to have had a recent resurrection from rather a creasy form of burial; a costume selected with the high moral purpose of instilling perfect humility into Bessy and her children.

“Mrs. G., won’t you come nearer the fire?” said her husband, unwilling to take the more comfortable seat without offering it to her.

“You see I’ve seated myself here, Mr. Glegg,” returned this superior woman; “you can roast yourself, if you like.”

“Well,” said Mr. Glegg, seating himself good-humoredly, “and how’s the poor man upstairs?”

“Dr. Turnbull thought him a deal better this morning,” said Mrs. Tulliver; “he took more notice, and spoke to me; but he’s never known Tom yet,–looks at the poor lad as if he was a stranger, though he said something once about Tom and the pony. The doctor says his memory’s gone a long way back, and he doesn’t know Tom because he’s thinking of him when he was little. Eh dear, eh dear!”

“I doubt it’s the water got on his brain,” said aunt Pullet, turning round from adjusting her cap in a melancholy way at the pier-glass. “It’s much if he ever gets up again; and if he does, he’ll most like be childish, as Mr. Carr was, poor man! They fed him with a spoon as if he’d been a babby for three year. He’d quite lost the use of his limbs; but then he’d got a Bath chair, and somebody to draw him; and that’s what you won’t have, I doubt, Bessy.”

“Sister Pullet,” said Mrs. Glegg, severely, “if I understand right, we’ve come together this morning to advise and consult about what’s to be done in this disgrace as has fallen upon the family, and not to talk o’ people as don’t belong to us. Mr. Carr was none of our blood, nor noways connected with us, as I’ve ever heared.”

“Sister Glegg,” said Mrs. Pullet, in a pleading tone, drawing on her gloves again, and stroking the fingers in an agitated manner, “if you’ve got anything disrespectful to say o’ Mr. Carr, I do beg of you as you won’t say it to me. I know what he was,” she added, with a sigh; “his breath was short to that degree as you could hear him two rooms off.”

“Sophy!” said Mrs. Glegg, with indignant disgust, “you do talk o’ people’s complaints till it’s quite undecent. But I say again, as I said before, I didn’t come away from home to talk about acquaintances, whether they’d short breath or long. If we aren’t come together for one to hear what the other ‘ull do to save a sister and her children from the parish, I shall go back. One can’t act without the other, I suppose; it isn’t to be expected as I should do everything.”

“Well, Jane,” said Mrs. Pullet, “I don’t see as you’ve been so very forrard at doing. So far as I know, this is the first time as here you’ve been, since it’s been known as the bailiff’s in the house; and I was here yesterday, and looked at all Bessy’s linen and things, and I told her I’d buy in the spotted tablecloths. I couldn’t speak fairer; for as for the teapot as she doesn’t want to go out o’ the family, it stands to sense I can’t do with two silver teapots, not if it hadn’t a straight spout, but the spotted damask I was allays fond on.”

“I wish it could be managed so as my teapot and chany and the best castors needn’t be put up for sale,” said poor Mrs. Tulliver, beseechingly, “and the sugar-tongs the first things ever I bought.”

“But that can’t be helped, you know,” said Mr. Glegg. “If one o’ the family chooses to buy ‘em in, they can, but one thing must be bid for as well as another.”

“And it isn’t to be looked for,” said uncle Pullet, with unwonted independence of idea, “as your own family should pay more for things nor they’ll fetch. They may go for an old song by auction.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Mrs. Tulliver, “to think o’ my chany being sold i’ that way, and I bought it when I was married, just as you did yours, Jane and Sophy; and I know you didn’t like mine, because o’ the sprig, but I was fond of it; and there’s never been a bit broke, for I’ve washed it myself; and there’s the tulips on the cups, and the roses, as anybody might go and look at ‘em for pleasure. You wouldn’t like your chany to go for an old song and be broke to pieces, though yours has got no color in it, Jane,–it’s all white and fluted, and didn’t cost so much as mine. And there’s the castors, sister Deane, I can’t think but you’d like to have the castors, for I’ve heard you say they’re pretty.”

“Well, I’ve no objection to buy some of the best things,” said Mrs. Deane, rather loftily; “we can do with extra things in our house.”

“Best things!” exclaimed Mrs. Glegg, with severity, which had gathered intensity from her long silence. “It drives me past patience to hear you all talking o’ best things, and buying in this, that, and the other, such as silver and chany. You must bring your mind to your circumstances, Bessy, and not be thinking o’ silver and chany; but whether you shall get so much as a flock-bed to lie on, and a blanket to cover you, and a stool to sit on. You must remember, if you get ‘em, it’ll be because your friends have bought ‘em for you, for you’re dependent upon them for everything; for your husband lies there helpless, and hasn’t got a penny i’ the world to call his own. And it’s for your own good I say this, for it’s right you should feel what your state is, and what disgrace your husband’s brought on your own family, as you’ve got to look to for everything, and be humble in your mind.”

Mrs. Glegg paused, for speaking with much energy for the good of others is naturally exhausting.

Mrs. Tulliver, always borne down by the family predominance of sister Jane, who had made her wear the yoke of a younger sister in very tender years, said pleadingly:

“I’m sure, sister, I’ve never asked anybody to do anything, only buy things as it ‘ud be a pleasure to ‘em to have, so as they mightn’t go and be spoiled i’ strange houses. I never asked anybody to buy the things in for me and my children; though there’s the linen I spun, and I thought when Tom was born,–I thought one o’ the first things when he was lying i’ the cradle, as all the things I’d bought wi’ my own money, and been so careful of, ‘ud go to him. But I’ve said nothing as I wanted my sisters to pay their money for me. What my husband has done for his sister’s unknown, and we should ha’ been better off this day if it hadn’t been as he’s lent money and never asked for it again.”

“Come, come,” said Mr. Glegg, kindly, “don’t let us make things too dark. What’s done can’t be undone. We shall make a shift among us to buy what’s sufficient for you; though, as Mrs. G. says, they must be useful, plain things. We mustn’t be thinking o’ what’s unnecessary. A table, and a chair or two, and kitchen things, and a good bed, and such-like. Why, I’ve seen the day when I shouldn’t ha’ known myself if I’d lain on sacking i’stead o’ the floor. We get a deal o’ useless things about us, only because we’ve got the money to spend.”

“Mr. Glegg,” said Mrs. G., “if you’ll be kind enough to let me speak, i’stead o’ taking the words out o’ my mouth,–I was going to say, Bessy, as it’s fine talking for you to say as you’ve never asked us to buy anything for you; let me tell you, you ought to have asked us. Pray, how are you to be purvided for, if your own family don’t help you? You must go to the parish, if they didn’t. And you ought to know that, and keep it in mind, and ask us humble to do what we can for you, i’stead o’ saying, and making a boast, as you’ve never asked us for anything.”

“You talked o’ the Mosses, and what Mr. Tulliver’s done for ‘em,” said uncle Pullet, who became unusually suggestive where advances of money were concerned. “Haven’t they been anear you? They ought to do something as well as other folks; and if he’s lent ‘em money, they ought to be made to pay it back.”

“Yes, to be sure,” said Mrs. Deane; “I’ve been thinking so. How is it Mr. and Mrs. Moss aren’t here to meet us? It is but right they should do their share.”

“Oh, dear!” said Mrs. Tulliver, “I never sent ‘em word about Mr. Tulliver, and they live so back’ard among the lanes at Basset, they niver hear anything only when Mr. Moss comes to market. But I niver gave ‘em a thought. I wonder Maggie didn’t, though, for she was allays so fond of her aunt Moss.”

“Why don’t your children come in, Bessy?” said Mrs. Pullet, at the mention of Maggie. “They should hear what their aunts and uncles have got to say; and Maggie,–when it’s me as have paid for half her schooling, she ought to think more of her aunt Pullet than of aunt Moss. I may go off sudden when I get home to-day; there’s no telling.”

“If I’d had my way,” said Mrs. Glegg, “the children ‘ud ha’ been in the room from the first. It’s time they knew who they’ve to look to, and it’s right as somebody should talk to ‘em, and let ‘em know their condition i’ life, and what they’re come down to, and make ‘em feel as they’ve got to suffer for their father’s faults.”

“Well, I’ll go and fetch ‘em, sister,” said Mrs. Tulliver, resignedly. She was quite crushed now, and thought of the treasures in the storeroom with no other feeling than blank despair.

She went upstairs to fetch Tom and Maggie, who were both in their father’s room, and was on her way down again, when the sight of the storeroom door suggested a new thought to her. She went toward it, and left the children to go down by themselves.