Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (96 page)

“Well, uncle,” said Tom, with a slight complaint in his tone, “that’s what I should like to do. Can’t I get on in the same way?”

“In the same way?” said Mr. Deane, eyeing Tom with quiet deliberation. “There go two or three questions to that, Master Tom. That depends on what sort of material you are, to begin with, and whether you’ve been put into the right mill. But I’ll tell you what it is. Your poor father went the wrong way to work in giving you an education. It wasn’t my business, and I didn’t interfere; but it is as I thought it would be. You’ve had a sort of learning that’s all very well for a young fellow like our Mr. Stephen Guest, who’ll have nothing to do but sign checks all his life, and may as well have Latin inside his head as any other sort of stuffing.”

“But, uncle,” said Tom, earnestly, “I don’t see why the Latin need hinder me from getting on in business. I shall soon forget it all; it makes no difference to me. I had to do my lessons at school, but I always thought they’d never be of any use to me afterward; I didn’t care about them.”

“Ay, ay, that’s all very well,” said Mr. Deane; “but it doesn’t alter what I was going to say. Your Latin and rigmarole may soon dry off you, but you’ll be but a bare stick after that. Besides, it’s whitened your hands and taken the rough work out of you. And what do you know? Why, you know nothing about book-keeping, to begin with, and not so much of reckoning as a common shopman. You’ll have to begin at a low round of the ladder, let me tell you, if you mean to get on in life. It’s no use forgetting the education your father’s been paying for, if you don’t give yourself a new un.”

Tom bit his lips hard; he felt as if the tears were rising, and he would rather die than let them.

“You want me to help you to a situation,” Mr. Deane went on; “well, I’ve no fault to find with that. I’m willing to do something for you. But you youngsters nowadays think you’re to begin with living well and working easy; you’ve no notion of running afoot before you get horseback. Now, you must remember what you are,–you’re a lad of sixteen, trained to nothing particular. There’s heaps of your sort, like so many pebbles, made to fit in nowhere. Well, you might be apprenticed to some business,–a chemist’s and druggist’s perhaps; your Latin might come in a bit there––”

Tom was going to speak, but Mr. Deane put up his hand and said:

“Stop! hear what I’ve got to say. You don’t want to be a ‘prentice,–I know, I know,–you want to make more haste, and you don’t want to stand behind a counter. But if you’re a copying-clerk, you’ll have to stand behind a desk, and stare at your ink and paper all day; there isn’t much out-look there, and you won’t be much wiser at the end of the year than at the beginning. The world isn’t made of pen, ink, and paper, and if you’re to get on in the world, young man, you must know what the world’s made of. Now the best chance for you ‘ud be to have a place on a wharf, or in a warehouse, where you’d learn the smell of things, but you wouldn’t like that, I’ll be bound; you’d have to stand cold and wet, and be shouldered about by rough fellows. You’re too fine a gentleman for that.”

Mr. Deane paused and looked hard at Tom, who certainly felt some inward struggle before he could reply.

“I would rather do what will be best for me in the end, sir; I would put up with what was disagreeable.”

“That’s well, if you can carry it out. But you must remember it isn’t only laying hold of a rope, you must go on pulling. It’s the mistake you lads make that have got nothing either in your brains or your pocket, to think you’ve got a better start in the world if you stick yourselves in a place where you can keep your coats clean, and have the shopwenches take you for fine gentlemen. That wasn’t the way I started, young man; when I was sixteen, my jacket smelt of tar, and I wasn’t afraid of handling cheeses. That’s the reason I can wear good broadcloth now, and have my legs under the same table with the heads of the best firms in St. Ogg’s.”

Uncle Deane tapped his box, and seemed to expand a little under his waistcoat and gold chain, as he squared his shoulders in the chair.

“Is there any place at liberty that you know of now, uncle, that I should do for? I should like to set to work at once,” said Tom, with a slight tremor in his voice.

“Stop a bit, stop a bit; we mustn’t be in too great a hurry. You must bear in mind, if I put you in a place you’re a bit young for, because you happen to be my nephew, I shall be responsible for you. And there’s no better reason, you know, than your being my nephew; because it remains to be seen whether you’re good for anything.”

“I hope I shall never do you any discredit, uncle,” said Tom, hurt, as all boys are at the statement of the unpleasant truth that people feel no ground for trusting them. “I care about my own credit too much for that.”

“Well done, Tom, well done! That’s the right spirit, and I never refuse to help anybody if they’ve a mind to do themselves justice. There’s a young man of two-and-twenty I’ve got my eye on now. I shall do what I can for that young man; he’s got some pith in him. But then, you see, he’s made good use of his time,–a first-rate calculator,–can tell you the cubic contents of anything in no time, and put me up the other day to a new market for Swedish bark; he’s uncommonly knowing in manufactures, that young fellow.”

“I’d better set about learning book-keeping, hadn’t I, uncle?” said Tom, anxious to prove his readiness to exert himself.

“Yes, yes, you can’t do amiss there. But–Ah, Spence, you’re back again. Well Tom, there’s nothing more to be said just now, I think, and I must go to business again. Good-by. Remember me to your mother.”

Mr. Deane put out his hand, with an air of friendly dismissal, and Tom had not courage to ask another question, especially in the presence of Mr. Spence. So he went out again into the cold damp air. He had to call at his uncle Glegg’s about the money in the Savings Bank, and by the time he set out again the mist had thickened, and he could not see very far before him; but going along River Street again, he was startled, when he was within two yards of the projecting side of a shop-window, by the words “Dorlcote Mill” in large letters on a hand-bill, placed as if on purpose to stare at him. It was the catalogue of the sale to take place the next week; it was a reason for hurrying faster out of the town.

Poor Tom formed no visions of the distant future as he made his way homeward; he only felt that the present was very hard. It seemed a wrong toward him that his uncle Deane had no confidence in him,–did not see at once that he should acquit himself well, which Tom himself was as certain of as of the daylight. Apparently he, Tom Tulliver, was likely to be held of small account in the world; and for the first time he felt a sinking of heart under the sense that he really was very ignorant, and could do very little. Who was that enviable young man that could tell the cubic contents of things in no time, and make suggestions about Swedish bark! Tom had been used to be so entirely satisfied with himself, in spite of his breaking down in a demonstration, and construing nunc illas promite vires as “now promise those men”; but now he suddenly felt at a disadvantage, because he knew less than some one else knew. There must be a world of things connected with that Swedish bark, which, if he only knew them, might have helped him to get on. It would have been much easier to make a figure with a spirited horse and a new saddle.

Two hours ago, as Tom was walking to St. Ogg’s, he saw the distant future before him as he might have seen a tempting stretch of smooth sandy beach beyond a belt of flinty shingles; he was on the grassy bank then, and thought the shingles might soon be passed. But now his feet were on the sharp stones; the belt of shingles had widened, and the stretch of sand had dwindled into narrowness.

“What did my Uncle Deane say, Tom?” said Maggie, putting her arm through Tom’s as he was warming himself rather drearily by the kitchen fire. “Did he say he would give you a situation?”

“No, he didn’t say that. He didn’t quite promise me anything; he seemed to think I couldn’t have a very good situation. I’m too young.”

“But didn’t he speak kindly, Tom?”

“Kindly? Pooh! what’s the use of talking about that? I wouldn’t care about his speaking kindly, if I could get a situation. But it’s such a nuisance and bother; I’ve been at school all this while learning Latin and things,–not a bit of good to me,–and now my uncle says I must set about learning book-keeping and calculation, and those things. He seems to make out I’m good for nothing.”

Tom’s mouth twitched with a bitter expression as he looked at the fire.

“Oh, what a pity we haven’t got Dominie Sampson!” said Maggie, who couldn’t help mingling some gayety with their sadness. “If he had taught me book-keeping by double entry and after the Italian method, as he did Lucy Bertram, I could teach you, Tom.”

“You teach! Yes, I dare say. That’s always the tone you take,” said Tom.

“Dear Tom, I was only joking,” said Maggie, putting her cheek against his coat-sleeve.

“But it’s always the same, Maggie,” said Tom, with the little frown he put on when he was about to be justifiably severe. “You’re always setting yourself up above me and every one else, and I’ve wanted to tell you about it several times. You ought not to have spoken as you did to my uncles and aunts; you should leave it to me to take care of my mother and you, and not put yourself forward. You think you know better than any one, but you’re almost always wrong. I can judge much better than you can.”

Poor Tom! he had just come from being lectured and made to feel his inferiority; the reaction of his strong, self-asserting nature must take place somehow; and here was a case in which he could justly show himself dominant. Maggie’s cheek flushed and her lip quivered with conflicting resentment and affection, and a certain awe as well as admiration of Tom’s firmer and more effective character. She did not answer immediately; very angry words rose to her lips, but they were driven back again, and she said at last:

“You often think I’m conceited, Tom, when I don’t mean what I say at all in that way. I don’t mean to put myself above you; I know you behaved better than I did yesterday. But you are always so harsh to me, Tom.”

With the last words the resentment was rising again.

“No, I’m not harsh,” said Tom, with severe decision. “I’m always kind to you, and so I shall be; I shall always take care of you. But you must mind what I say.”

Their mother came in now, and Maggie rushed away, that her burst of tears, which she felt must come, might not happen till she was safe upstairs. They were very bitter tears; everybody in the world seemed so hard and unkind to Maggie; there was no indulgence, no fondness, such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother’s narrow griefs, perhaps of her father’s heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no superadded life in the life of others; though we who looked on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer’s present.

Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a sense of home in it.

No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it.

CHAPTER VI

Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-Knife

In that dark time of December, the sale of the household furniture lasted beyond the middle of the second day. Mr. Tulliver, who had begun, in his intervals of consciousness, to manifest an irritability which often appeared to have as a direct effect the recurrence of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility, had lain in this living death throughout the critical hours when the noise of the sale came nearest to his chamber. Mr. Turnbull had decided that it would be a less risk to let him remain where he was than to remove him to Luke’s cottage,–a plan which the good Luke had proposed to Mrs. Tulliver, thinking it would be very bad if the master were “to waken up” at the noise of the sale; and the wife and children had sat imprisoned in the silent chamber, watching the large prostrate figure on the bed, and trembling lest the blank face should suddenly show some response to the sounds which fell on their own ears with such obstinate, painful repetition.

But it was over at last, that time of importunate certainty and eye-straining suspense. The sharp sound of a voice, almost as metallic as the rap that followed it, had ceased; the tramping of footsteps on the gravel had died out. Mrs. Tulliver’s blond face seemed aged ten years by the last thirty hours; the poor woman’s mind had been busy divining when her favorite things were being knocked down by the terrible hammer; her heart had been fluttering at the thought that first one thing and then another had gone to be identified as hers in the hateful publicity of the Golden Lion; and all the while she had to sit and make no sign of this inward agitation. Such things bring lines in well-rounded faces, and broaden the streaks of white among the hairs that once looked as if they had been dipped in pure sunshine. Already, at three o’clock, Kezia, the good-hearted, bad-tempered housemaid, who regarded all people that came to the sale as her personal enemies, the dirt on whose feet was of a peculiarly vile quality, had begun to scrub and swill with an energy much assisted by a continual low muttering against “folks as came to buy up other folk’s things,” and made light of “scrazing” the tops of mahogany tables over which better folks than themselves had had to–suffer a waste of tissue through evaporation. She was not scrubbing indiscriminately, for there would be further dirt of the same atrocious kind made by people who had still to fetch away their purchases; but she was bent on bringing the parlor, where that “pipe-smoking pig,” the bailiff, had sat, to such an appearance of scant comfort as could be given to it by cleanliness and the few articles of furniture bought in for the family. Her mistress and the young folks should have their tea in it that night, Kezia was determined.

It was between five and six o’clock, near the usual teatime, when she came upstairs and said that Master Tom was wanted. The person who wanted him was in the kitchen, and in the first moments, by the imperfect fire and candle light, Tom had not even an indefinite sense of any acquaintance with the rather broad-set but active figure, perhaps two years older than himself, that looked at him with a pair of blue eyes set in a disc of freckles, and pulled some curly red locks with a strong intention of respect. A low-crowned oilskin-covered hat, and a certain shiny deposit of dirt on the rest of the costume, as of tablets prepared for writing upon, suggested a calling that had to do with boats; but this did not help Tom’s memory.

“Sarvant, Master Tom,” said he of the red locks, with a smile which seemed to break through a self-imposed air of melancholy. “You don’t know me again, I doubt,” he went on, as Tom continued to look at him inquiringly; “but I’d like to talk to you by yourself a bit, please.”

“There’s a fire i’ the parlor, Master Tom,” said Kezia, who objected to leaving the kitchen in the crisis of toasting.

“Come this way, then,” said Tom, wondering if this young fellow belonged to Guest & Co.’s Wharf, for his imagination ran continually toward that particular spot; and uncle Deane might any time be sending for him to say that there was a situation at liberty.

The bright fire in the parlor was the only light that showed the few chairs, the bureau, the carpetless floor, and the one table–no, not the one table; there was a second table, in a corner, with a large Bible and a few other books upon it. It was this new strange bareness that Tom felt first, before he thought of looking again at the face which was also lit up by the fire, and which stole a half-shy, questioning glance at him as the entirely strange voice said:

“Why! you don’t remember Bob, then, as you gen the pocket-knife to, Mr. Tom?”

The rough-handled pocket-knife was taken out in the same moment, and the largest blade opened by way of irresistible demonstration.

“What! Bob Jakin?” said Tom, not with any cordial delight, for he felt a little ashamed of that early intimacy symbolized by the pocket-knife, and was not at all sure that Bob’s motives for recalling it were entirely admirable.

“Ay, ay, Bob Jakin, if Jakin it must be, ‘cause there’s so many Bobs as you went arter the squerrils with, that day as I plumped right down from the bough, and bruised my shins a good un–but I got the squerril tight for all that, an’ a scratter it was. An’ this littlish blade’s broke, you see, but I wouldn’t hev a new un put in, ‘cause they might be cheatin’ me an’ givin’ me another knife instid, for there isn’t such a blade i’ the country,–it’s got used to my hand, like. An’ there was niver nobody else gen me nothin’ but what I got by my own sharpness, only you, Mr. Tom; if it wasn’t Bill Fawks as gen me the terrier pup istid o’ drowndin’t it, an’ I had to jaw him a good un afore he’d give it me.”

Bob spoke with a sharp and rather treble volubility, and got through his long speech with surprising despatch, giving the blade of his knife an affectionate rub on his sleeve when he had finished.

“Well, Bob,” said Tom, with a slight air of patronage, the foregoing reminscences having disposed him to be as friendly as was becoming, though there was no part of his acquaintance with Bob that he remembered better than the cause of their parting quarrel; “is there anything I can do for you?”

“Why, no, Mr. Tom,” answered Bob, shutting up his knife with a click and returning it to his pocket, where he seemed to be feeling for something else. “I shouldn’t ha’ come back upon you now ye’re i’ trouble, an’ folks say as the master, as I used to frighten the birds for, an’ he flogged me a bit for fun when he catched me eatin’ the turnip, as they say he’ll niver lift up his head no more,–I shouldn’t ha’ come now to ax you to gi’ me another knife ‘cause you gen me one afore. If a chap gives me one black eye, that’s enough for me; I sha’n’t ax him for another afore I sarve him out; an’ a good turn’s worth as much as a bad un, anyhow. I shall niver grow down’ards again, Mr. Tom, an’ you war the little chap as I liked the best when I war a little chap, for all you leathered me, and wouldn’t look at me again. There’s Dick Brumby, there, I could leather him as much as I’d a mind; but lors! you get tired o’ leatherin’ a chap when you can niver make him see what you want him to shy at. I’n seen chaps as ‘ud stand starin’ at a bough till their eyes shot out, afore they’d see as a bird’s tail warn’t a leaf. It’s poor work goin’ wi’ such raff. But you war allays a rare un at shying, Mr. Tom, an’ I could trusten to you for droppin’ down wi’ your stick in the nick o’ time at a runnin’ rat, or a stoat, or that, when I war a-beatin’ the bushes.”

Bob had drawn out a dirty canvas bag, and would perhaps not have paused just then if Maggie had not entered the room and darted a look of surprise and curiosity at him, whereupon he pulled his red locks again with due respect. But the next moment the sense of the altered room came upon Maggie with a force that overpowered the thought of Bob’s presence. Her eyes had immediately glanced from him to the place where the bookcase had hung; there was nothing now but the oblong unfaded space on the wall, and below it the small table with the Bible and the few other books.

“Oh, Tom!” she burst out, clasping her hands, “where are the books? I thought my uncle Glegg said he would buy them. Didn’t he? Are those all they’ve left us?”

“I suppose so,” said Tom, with a sort of desperate indifference. “Why should they buy many books when they bought so little furniture?”

“Oh, but, Tom,” said Maggie, her eyes filling with tears, as she rushed up to the table to see what books had been rescued. “Our dear old Pilgrim’s Progress that you colored with your little paints; and that picture of Pilgrim with a mantle on, looking just like a turtle–oh dear!” Maggie went on, half sobbing as she turned over the few books, “I thought we should never part with that while we lived; everything is going away from us; the end of our lives will have nothing in it like the beginning!”

Maggie turned away from the table and threw herself into a chair, with the big tears ready to roll down her cheeks, quite blinded to the presence of Bob, who was looking at her with the pursuant gaze of an intelligent dumb animal, with perceptions more perfect than his comprehension.

“Well, Bob,” said Tom, feeling that the subject of the books was unseasonable, “I suppose you just came to see me because we’re in trouble? That was very good-natured of you.”

“I’ll tell you how it is, Master Tom,” said Bob, beginning to untwist his canvas bag. “You see, I’n been with a barge this two ‘ear; that’s how I’n been gettin’ my livin’,–if it wasn’t when I was tentin’ the furnace, between whiles, at Torry’s mill. But a fortni’t ago I’d a rare bit o’ luck,–I allays thought I was a lucky chap, for I niver set a trap but what I catched something; but this wasn’t trap, it was a fire i’ Torry’s mill, an’ I doused it, else it ‘ud set th’ oil alight, an’ the genelman gen me ten suvreigns; he gen me ‘em himself last week. An’ he said first, I was a sperrited chap,–but I knowed that afore,–but then he outs wi’ the ten suvreigns, an’ that war summat new. Here they are, all but one!” Here Bob emptied the canvas bag on the table. “An’ when I’d got ‘em, my head was all of a boil like a kettle o’ broth, thinkin’ what sort o’ life I should take to, for there war a many trades I’d thought on; for as for the barge, I’m clean tired out wi’t, for it pulls the days out till they’re as long as pigs’ chitterlings. An’ I thought first I’d ha’ ferrets an’ dogs, an’ be a rat-catcher; an’ then I thought as I should like a bigger way o’ life, as I didn’t know so well; for I’n seen to the bottom o’ rat-catching; an’ I thought, an’ thought, till at last I settled I’d be a packman,–for they’re knowin’ fellers, the packmen are,–an’ I’d carry the lightest things I could i’ my pack; an’ there’d be a use for a feller’s tongue, as is no use neither wi’ rats nor barges. An’ I should go about the country far an’ wide, an’ come round the women wi’ my tongue, an’ get my dinner hot at the public,–lors! it ‘ud be a lovely life!”

Bob paused, and then said, with defiant decision, as if resolutely turning his back on that paradisaic picture:

“But I don’t mind about it, not a chip! An’ I’n changed one o’ the suvreigns to buy my mother a goose for dinner, an’ I’n bought a blue plush wescoat, an’ a sealskin cap,–for if I meant to be a packman, I’d do it respectable. But I don’t mind about it, not a chip! My yead isn’t a turnip, an’ I shall p’r’aps have a chance o’ dousing another fire afore long. I’m a lucky chap. So I’ll thank you to take the nine suvreigns, Mr. Tom, and set yoursen up with ‘em somehow, if it’s true as the master’s broke. They mayn’t go fur enough, but they’ll help.”

Tom was touched keenly enough to forget his pride and suspicion.

“You’re a very kind fellow, Bob,” he said, coloring, with that little diffident tremor in his voice which gave a certain charm even to Tom’s pride and severity, “and I sha’n’t forget you again, though I didn’t know you this evening. But I can’t take the nine sovereigns; I should be taking your little fortune from you, and they wouldn’t do me much good either.”

“Wouldn’t they, Mr. Tom?” said Bob, regretfully. “Now don’t say so ‘cause you think I want ‘em. I aren’t a poor chap. My mother gets a good penn’orth wi’ picking feathers an’ things; an’ if she eats nothin’ but bread-an’-water, it runs to fat. An’ I’m such a lucky chap; an’ I doubt you aren’t quite so lucky, Mr. Tom,–th’ old master isn’t, anyhow,–an’ so you might take a slice o’ my luck, an’ no harm done. Lors! I found a leg o’ pork i’ the river one day; it had tumbled out o’ one o’ them round-sterned Dutchmen, I’ll be bound. Come, think better on it, Mr. Tom, for old ‘quinetance’ sake, else I shall think you bear me a grudge.”

Bob pushed the sovereigns forward, but before Tom could speak Maggie, clasping her hands, and looking penitently at Bob. said:

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Bob; I never thought you were so good. Why, I think you’re the kindest person in the world!”

Bob had not been aware of the injurious opinion for which Maggie was performing an inward act of penitence, but he smiled with pleasure at this handsome eulogy,–especially from a young lass who, as he informed his mother that evening, had “such uncommon eyes, they looked somehow as they made him feel nohow.”