The Mill on the Floss (25 page)

"Gore's no fool; you needn't tell me that," he observed
presently, in a pugnacious tone, as if poor Gritty had been urging
that lawyer's capabilities; "but, you see, he isn't up to the law
as Wakem is. And water's a very particular thing; you can't pick it
up with a pitchfork. That's why it's been nuts to Old Harry and the
lawyers. It's plain enough what's the rights and the wrongs of
water, if you look at it straight-forrard; for a river's a river,
and if you've got a mill, you must have water to turn it; and it's
no use telling me Pivart's erigation and nonsense won't stop my
wheel; I know what belongs to water better than that. Talk to me o'
what th' engineers say! I say it's common sense, as Pivart's dikes
must do me an injury. But if that's their engineering, I'll put Tom
to it by-and-by, and he shall see if he can't find a bit more sense
in th' engineering business than what
that
comes to."

Tom, looking round with some anxiety at this announcement of his
prospects, unthinkingly withdrew a small rattle he was amusing baby
Moss with, whereupon she, being a baby that knew her own mind with
remarkable clearness, instantaneously expressed her sentiments in a
piercing yell, and was not to be appeased even by the restoration
of the rattle, feeling apparently that the original wrong of having
it taken from her remained in all its force. Mrs. Moss hurried away
with her into another room, and expressed to Mrs. Tulliver, who
accompanied her, the conviction that the dear child had good
reasons for crying; implying that if it was supposed to be the
rattle that baby clamored for, she was a misunderstood baby. The
thoroughly justifiable yell being quieted, Mrs. Moss looked at her
sister-in-law and said,–

"I'm sorry to see brother so put out about this water work."

"It's your brother's way, Mrs. Moss; I'd never anything o' that
sort before I was married," said Mrs. Tulliver, with a half-implied
reproach. She always spoke of her husband as "your brother" to Mrs.
Moss in any case when his line of conduct was not matter of pure
admiration. Amiable Mrs. Tulliver, who was never angry in her life,
had yet her mild share of that spirit without which she could
hardly have been at once a Dodson and a woman. Being always on the
defensive toward her own sisters, it was natural that she should be
keenly conscious of her superiority, even as the weakest Dodson,
over a husband's sister, who, besides being poorly off, and
inclined to "hang on" her brother, had the good-natured
submissiveness of a large, easy-tempered, untidy, prolific woman,
with affection enough in her not only for her own husband and
abundant children, but for any number of collateral relations.

"I hope and pray he won't go to law," said Mrs. Moss, "for
there's never any knowing where that'll end. And the right doesn't
allays win. This Mr. Pivart's a rich man, by what I can make out,
and the rich mostly get things their own way."

"As to that," said Mrs. Tulliver, stroking her dress down, "I've
seen what riches are in my own family; for my sisters have got
husbands as can afford to do pretty much what they like. But I
think sometimes I shall be drove off my head with the talk about
this law and erigation; and my sisters lay all the fault to me, for
they don't know what it is to marry a man like your brother; how
should they? Sister Pullet has her own way from morning till
night."

"Well," said Mrs. Moss, "I don't think I should like my husband
if he hadn't got any wits of his own, and I had to find head-piece
for him. It's a deal easier to do what pleases one's husband, than
to be puzzling what else one should do."

"If people come to talk o' doing what pleases their husbands,"
said Mrs. Tulliver, with a faint imitation of her sister Glegg,
"I'm sure your brother might have waited a long while before he'd
have found a wife that 'ud have let him have his say in everything,
as I do. It's nothing but law and erigation now, from when we first
get up in the morning till we go to bed at night; and I never
contradict him; I only say, 'Well, Mr. Tulliver, do as you like;
but whativer you do, don't go to law."

Mrs. Tulliver, as we have seen, was not without influence over
her husband. No woman is; she can always incline him to do either
what she wishes, or the reverse; and on the composite impulses that
were threatening to hurry Mr. Tulliver into "law," Mrs. Tulliver's
monotonous pleading had doubtless its share of force; it might even
be comparable to that proverbial feather which has the credit or
discredit of breaking the camel's back; though, on a strictly
impartial view, the blame ought rather to lie with the previous
weight of feathers which had already placed the back in such
imminent peril that an otherwise innocent feather could not settle
on it without mischief. Not that Mrs. Tulliver's feeble beseeching
could have had this feather's weight in virtue of her single
personality; but whenever she departed from entire assent to her
husband, he saw in her the representative of the Dodson family; and
it was a guiding principle with Mr. Tulliver to let the Dodsons
know that they were not to domineer over
him
, or–more
specifically–that a male Tulliver was far more than equal to four
female Dodsons, even though one of them was Mrs. Glegg.

But not even a direct argument from that typical Dodson female
herself against his going to law could have heightened his
disposition toward it so much as the mere thought of Wakem,
continually freshened by the sight of the too able attorney on
market-days. Wakem, to his certain knowledge, was (metaphorically
speaking) at the bottom of Pivart's irrigation; Wakem had tried to
make Dix stand out, and go to law about the dam; it was
unquestionably Wakem who had caused Mr. Tulliver to lose the suit
about the right of road and the bridge that made a thoroughfare of
his land for every vagabond who preferred an opportunity of
damaging private property to walking like an honest man along the
highroad; all lawyers were more or less rascals, but Wakem's
rascality was of that peculiarly aggravated kind which placed
itself in opposition to that form of right embodied in Mr.
Tulliver's interests and opinions. And as an extra touch of
bitterness, the injured miller had recently, in borrowing the five
hundred pounds, been obliged to carry a little business to Wakem's
office on his own account. A hook-nosed glib fellow! as cool as a
cucumber,–always looking so sure of his game! And it was vexatious
that Lawyer Gore was not more like him, but was a bald,
round-featured man, with bland manners and fat hands; a game-cock
that you would be rash to bet upon against Wakem. Gore was a sly
fellow. His weakness did not lie on the side of scrupulosity; but
the largest amount of winking, however significant, is not
equivalent to seeing through a stone wall; and confident as Mr.
Tulliver was in his principle that water was water, and in the
direct inference that Pivart had not a leg to stand on in this
affair of irrigation, he had an uncomfortable suspicion that Wakem
had more law to show against this (rationally) irrefragable
inference than Gore could show for it. But then, if they went to
law, there was a chance for Mr. Tulliver to employ Counsellor Wylde
on his side, instead of having that admirable bully against him;
and the prospect of seeing a witness of Wakem's made to perspire
and become confounded, as Mr. Tulliver's witness had once been, was
alluring to the love of retributive justice.

Much rumination had Mr. Tulliver on these puzzling subjects
during his rides on the gray horse; much turning of the head from
side to side, as the scales dipped alternately; but the probable
result was still out of sight, only to be reached through much hot
argument and iteration in domestic and social life. That initial
stage of the dispute which consisted in the narration of the case
and the enforcement of Mr. Tulliver's views concerning it
throughout the entire circle of his connections would necessarily
take time; and at the beginning of February, when Tom was going to
school again, there were scarcely any new items to be detected in
his father's statement of the case against Pivart, or any more
specific indication of the measures he was bent on taking against
that rash contravener of the principle that water was water.
Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of
progress, and Mr. Tulliver's heat was certainly more and more
palpable. If there had been no new evidence on any other point,
there had been new evidence that Pivart was as "thick as mud" with
Wakem.

"Father," said Tom, one evening near the end of the holidays,
"uncle Glegg says Lawyer Wakem
is
going to send his son to
Mr. Stelling. It isn't true, what they said about his going to be
sent to France. You won't like me to go to school with Wakem's son,
shall you?"

"It's no matter for that, my boy," said Mr. Tulliver; "don't you
learn anything bad of him, that's all. The lad's a poor deformed
creatur, and takes after his mother in the face; I think there
isn't much of his father in him. It's a sign Wakem thinks high o'
Mr. Sterling, as he sends his son to him, and Wakem knows meal from
bran."

Mr. Tulliver in his heart was rather proud of the fact that his
son was to have the same advantages as Wakem's; but Tom was not at
all easy on the point. It would have been much clearer if the
lawyer's son had not been deformed, for then Tom would have had the
prospect of pitching into him with all that freedom which is
derived from a high moral sanction.

Chapter III
The New Schoolfellow

It was a cold, wet January day on which Tom went back to school;
a day quite in keeping with this severe phase of his destiny. If he
had not carried in his pocket a parcel of sugar-candy and a small
Dutch doll for little Laura, there would have been no ray of
expected pleasure to enliven the general gloom. But he liked to
think how Laura would put out her lips and her tiny hands for the
bits of sugarcandy; and to give the greater keenness to these
pleasures of imagination, he took out the parcel, made a small hole
in the paper, and bit off a crystal or two, which had so solacing
an effect under the confined prospect and damp odors of the
gig-umbrella, that he repeated the process more than once on his
way.

"Well, Tulliver, we're glad to see you again," said Mr.
Stelling, heartily. "Take off your wrappings and come into the
study till dinner. You'll find a bright fire there, and a new
companion."

Tom felt in an uncomfortable flutter as he took off his woollen
comforter and other wrappings. He had seen Philip Wakem at St.
Ogg's, but had always turned his eyes away from him as quickly as
possible. He would have disliked having a deformed boy for his
companion, even if Philip had not been the son of a bad man. And
Tom did not see how a bad man's son could be very good. His own
father was a good man, and he would readily have fought any one who
said the contrary. He was in a state of mingled embarrassment and
defiance as he followed Mr. Stelling to the study.

"Here is a new companion for you to shake hands with, Tulliver,"
said that gentleman on entering the study,–"Master Philip Wakem. I
shall leave you to make acquaintance by yourselves. You already
know something of each other, I imagine; for you are neighbors at
home."

Tom looked confused and awkward, while Philip rose and glanced
at him timidly. Tom did not like to go up and put out his hand, and
he was not prepared to say, "How do you do?" on so short a
notice.

Mr. Stelling wisely turned away, and closed the door behind him;
boys' shyness only wears off in the absence of their elders.

Philip was at once too proud and too timid to walk toward Tom.
He thought, or rather felt, that Tom had an aversion to looking at
him; every one, almost, disliked looking at him; and his deformity
was more conspicuous when he walked. So they remained without
shaking hands or even speaking, while Tom went to the fire and
warmed himself, every now and then casting furtive glances at
Philip, who seemed to be drawing absently first one object and then
another on a piece of paper he had before him. He had seated
himself again, and as he drew, was thinking what he could say to
Tom, and trying to overcome his own repugnance to making the first
advances.

Tom began to look oftener and longer at Philip's face, for he
could see it without noticing the hump, and it was really not a
disagreeable face,–very old-looking, Tom thought. He wondered how
much older Philip was than himself. An anatomist–even a mere
physiognomist–would have seen that the deformity of Philip's spine
was not a congenital hump, but the result of an accident in
infancy; but you do not expect from Tom any acquaintance with such
distinctions; to him, Philip was simply a humpback. He had a vague
notion that the deformity of Wakem's son had some relation to the
lawyer's rascality, of which he had so often heard his father talk
with hot emphasis; and he felt, too, a half-admitted fear of him as
probably a spiteful fellow, who, not being able to fight you, had
cunning ways of doing you a mischief by the sly. There was a
humpbacked tailor in the neighborhood of Mr. Jacobs's academy, who
was considered a very unamiable character, and was much hooted
after by public-spirited boys solely on the ground of his
unsatisfactory moral qualities; so that Tom was not without a basis
of fact to go upon. Still, no face could be more unlike that ugly
tailor's than this melancholy boy's face,–the brown hair round it
waved and curled at the ends like a girl's; Tom thought that truly
pitiable. This Wakem was a pale, puny fellow, and it was quite
clear he would not be able to play at anything worth speaking of;
but he handled his pencil in an enviable manner, and was apparently
making one thing after another without any trouble. What was he
drawing? Tom was quite warm now, and wanted something new to be
going forward. It was certainly more agreeable to have an
ill-natured humpback as a companion than to stand looking out of
the study window at the rain, and kicking his foot against the
washboard in solitude; something would happen every day,–"a quarrel
or something"; and Tom thought he should rather like to show Philip
that he had better not try his spiteful tricks on
him
. He
suddenly walked across the hearth and looked over Philip's
paper.