 Book 1, Chapter 13, of the Mill on the Floss. Book 1, Boy and Girl, Chapter 13, Mr. Tulliver Further Untangles the Skeen of Life. Owing to this new adjustment of Mrs. Glegg's thoughts, Mrs. Poolett found her task of mediation the next day surprisingly easy. Mrs. Glegg indeed checked her rather sharply for thinking it would be necessary to tell her elder sister what was the right mode of behavior and family matters. Mrs. Poolett's argument that it would look ill in the neighborhood if people should have it in their power to say that there was a quarrel in the family was particularly offensive. If the family name never suffered except through Mrs. Glegg, Mrs. Poolett might lay her head on her pillow in perfect confidence. It's not to be expected, I suppose, observed Mrs. Glegg by way of winding up the subject, as I shall go to the mill again before Bessie comes to see me, or as I shall go and fall down on my knees to Mr. Tulliver, and ask his pardon for showing him favors. But I shall bear no malice, and when Mr. Tulliver speaks civil to me, I'll speak civil to him. Nobody has any call to tell me what's becoming. Finding it unnecessary to plead for the Tullivers, it was natural that Aunt Poolett should relax a little in her anxiety for them, and recurred to the annoyance she had suffered yesterday from the offspring of that apparently ill-fated house. Mrs. Glegg heard a circumstantial narrative, to which Mr. Poolett's remarkable memory furnished some items. And while Aunt Poolett pitied poor Bessie's bad luck with her children, and expressed a half-formed project of paying for Maggie's being sent to a distant boarding school, which would not prevent her being so brown, but might tend to subdue some other vices in her, Aunt Glegg blamed Bessie for her weakness and appealed to all witnesses who should be living when the Tulliver children had churned out ill, that she, Mrs. Glegg, had always said how it would be from the very first, observing that it was wonderful to herself how all her words came true. Then I may call until Bessie you'll bear no malice, and everything be as it was before, Mrs. Poolett said just before parting. Yes, you may, Sophie, said Mrs. Glegg, you may tell Mr. Tulliver and Bessie too as I'm not going to behave ill because folks behave ill to me. I know it's my place as the eldest to set an example in every respect, and I do it. Nobody can say different of me if they'll keep to the truth. Mrs. Glegg, being in this state of satisfaction and her own lofty magnanimity, I leave you to judge what effect was produced on her by the reception of a short letter from Mr. Tulliver that very evening, after Mrs. Poolett's departure, informing her that she needn't trouble her mind about her five hundred pounds, for it should be paid back to her in the course of the next month at farthest, together with the interest due thereon until the time of payment. And furthermore, that Mr. Tulliver had no wish to behave uncivially to Mrs. Glegg, and she was welcomed to his house whenever she liked to come, but he desired no favors from her, either for himself or his children. It was poor Mrs. Tulliver who had hastened this catastrophe entirely through that irrepressible hopefulness of hers, which led her to expect that similar causes may at any time produce different results. It had very often occurred in her experience that Mr. Tulliver had done something because other people had said he was not able to do it, or had pitied him for his supposed inability, or in any other way, peaked his pride. Still she thought today, if she told him when he came into T that Sister Poolett was gone to try and make everything up with Sister Glegg, so that he needn't think about paying in the money, it would give a cheerful effect to the meal. Mr. Tulliver had never slackened in his resolve to raise the money, but now he at once determined to write a letter to Mrs. Glegg, which should cut off all possibility of mistake. Mrs. Poolett gone to beg and pray for him, indeed. Mr. Tulliver did not willingly write a letter, and found the relation between spoken and written language, briefly known as spelling, one of the most puzzling things in this puzzling world. For the less, like all fervid writing, the task was done in less time than usual, and if the spelling differed from Mrs. Glegg's, why she belonged like himself, to a generation with whom spelling was a matter of private judgment. Mrs. Glegg did not alter her will and consequence of this letter, and cut off the Tulliver children from their sixth and seventh share in her thousand pounds, for she had her principles. No one must be able to say of her when she was dead that she had not divided her money with perfect fairness among her own kin. In the matter of wills, personal qualities were subordinate to the great fundamental fact of blood, and to be determined in the distribution of your property by caprice and not make your legacies bear a direct ratio to degrees of kinship was a prospective disgrace that would have embittered her life. This had always been a principle in the Dodson family. It was one form of that sense of honor and rectitude which was a proud tradition in such families, a tradition which has been the salt of our provincial society. But though the letter could not shake Mrs. Glegg's principles, it made the family breach much more difficult to mend, and as to the effect it produced on Mrs. Glegg's opinion of Mr. Tulliver, she begged to be understood from that time forth that she had nothing whatever to say about him. His state of mind apparently was too corrupt for her to contemplate it for a moment. It was not until the evening before Tom went to school at the beginning of August that Mrs. Glegg paid a visit to her sister Tulliver, sitting in her gig all the while, and showing her displeasure by markedly abstaining from all advice and criticism. Four, as she observed to her sister Dean, Bessie must bear the consequence of having such a husband, though I'm sorry for her, and Mrs. Dean agreed that Bessie was pityable. That evening Tom observed to Maggie, oh my, Maggie, and Ms. Glegg's beginning to come again, I'm glad I'm going to school. You'll catch it all now. Maggie was already so full of sorrow at the thought of Tom's going away from her that this playful exultation of his seemed very unkind, and she cried herself to sleep that night. Mr. Tulliver's prompt procedure entailed on him further promptitude in finding the convenient person who was desirous of lending five hundred pounds on bond. It must be no client of Wacom's, he said to himself, and yet at the end of a fortnight it turned out to the contrary, not because Mr. Tulliver's will was feeble, but because external fact was stronger. Wacom's client was the only convenient person to be found. Mr. Tulliver had a destiny as well as Oedipus, and in this case he might plead, like Oedipus, that his deed was inflicted on him rather than committed by him. End of Book 1, Chapter 13, Recording by Leanne Howlett. The Milne on the Floss by George Elliot. Book 2. Skill-time. Chapter 1. Tom's First Heart. Tom Tulliver's sufferings during the first quarter he was at King's Lawton under the distinguished care of the Reverend Walter Stelling were rather severe. At Mr. Jacob's Academy life had not presented itself to him as a difficult problem. There were plenty of fellows to play with, and Tom, being good at all active games, fighting especially, had that precedence among them which appeared to him inseparable from the personality of Tom Tulliver. Mr. Jacob's himself, familiarly known as Old Goggle, from his habit of wearing spectacles, imposed no painful awe, and if it was the property of snuffy old hypocrites like him, to write, like copper plate, and surround their signatures with Uruvesques, to spell without forethought, and to spout, my name is Norval, without bungling. Tom, for his part, was glad he was not in danger of those mean accomplishments. He was not going to be a snuffy schoolmaster, he, but a substantial man, like his father, who used to go hunting when he was younger, and rode a capital black mare, as pretty a bit of horse flesh as ever you saw. Tom had heard what her points were a hundred times. He meant to go hunting too, and to be generally respected. When people were grown up, he considered nobody inquired about their writing and spelling. When he was a man, he should be master of everything, and do just as he liked. It had been very difficult for him to reconcile himself to the idea that his school time was to be prolonged, and that he was not to be brought up to his father's business, which he had always thought extremely pleasant, for it was nothing but writing about, giving orders, and going to market. And he thought that a clergyman would give him a great many scripture lessons, and probably make him learn the gospel and epistle on a Sunday, as well as the collect. But in the absence of Pacific information, it was impossible for him to imagine that school and schoolmaster would be something entirely different from the academy of Mr Jacobs. So not to be at a deficiency, in case of his finding genial companions, he had taken care to carry with him a small box of percussion caps. Not that there was anything particular to be done with them, but they would serve to impress strange boys with a sense of his familiarity with guns. Thus poor Tom, though he saw very clearly through Maggie's illusions, was not without illusions of his own, which were to be cruelly dissipated by his enlarged experience at Tim's Lawton. He had not been there a fortnight before it was evident to him that life complicated not only with the Latin grammar, but with a new standard of English pronunciation, was a very difficult business made all the more obscure by a thick mist of bashfulness. Tom, as you have observed, was never an exception among boys for ease of address. But the difficulty of annunciation, a monosyllable in reply to Mr or Mrs Dulling, was so great that he even dreaded to be asked at table whether he would have more pudding. As to the percussion caps, he had almost resolved in the bitterness of his heart that he would throw them into a neighbouring pond, for not only was he the solitary pupil, but he begun even to have a certain scepticism about guns and a general sense that his theory of life was undermined. For Mr Dulling thought nothing of guns or horses either, apparently, and yet it was impossible for Tom to despise Mr Dulling as he had despised old goggles. If there were anything that was not thoroughly genuine about Mr Dulling, it lay quite beyond Tom's power to detect it. It is only by a wide comparison of facts that the wisest full-grown man can distinguish well-rolled barrels from mere supernal thunder. Mr Dulling was a well-sized, broad-chested man, not yet thirty, with flecks and hair standing erect, and large, lightish gray eyes which were always very wide open. He had a sonorous bass voice and an air of defined self-confidence, inclining to brazeness. He had entered on his career with great vigor and intended to make a considerable impression on his fellow men. The reverent Walter Dulling was not a man who would remain among the inferior clergy or his life. He had a true British determination to push his way in the world as a schoolmaster in the first place, for there were capital master ships of grammar schools to be had, and Mr Dulling meant to have one of them. But as a preacher also, for he meant always to preach in a striking manner, so as to have his congregation swell by admirers from neighbouring parishes, and to produce a great sensation whenever he took occasional duty for a brother clergyman of minor gifts. The style of preaching he had chosen was the extemporaneous, which was held little short of the miraculous in rural parishes like King's Lawton. Some passages of Nassilian and Bordelu, which he knew by heart, were really very effective when rolled out in Mr Dulling's deepest tones, but as comparatively feeble appeals of his own were delivered in the same loud and impressive manner, they were often thought quite a striking by his hearers. Mr Dulling's doctrine was of no particular school, if anything, it had a tinge of evangelicalism, from that was the telling thing, just then in the diocese to which King's Lawton belonged. In short, Mr Dulling was a man who meant to rise in his profession, and to rise by merit, clearly, since he had no interest beyond what might be promised by a problematic relationship to a great lawyer who had not yet become Lord Chancellor. A clergyman who has such vigorous intentions naturally gets a little into debt at starting. It is not to be expected that he will live in the meager style of a man who means to be a poor curate all his life, and if the few hundreds Mr Timpson advanced toward his daughter's fortune did not surprise for the purchase of handsome furniture, together with a stock of wine, a grand piano, and the laying out of a superior flower garden. It followed in the most rigorous manner, either that these things must be procured by some other means, or else that the reverend Mr Dulling must go without them, which last alternative would be an observed procrastination at the fruits of success, where success was certain. Mr Dulling was so broad-chested and resolute that he felt equal to anything. He would become celebrated by shaking the consciences of his hearers, and he would buy and buy edit, a Greek play, and invent several new readings. He had not yet selected the play, but having been married little more than two years, his leisure time had been much occupied with attentions to Mr Dulling, that he had told that fine women what he meant to do someday, and she felt great confidence in her husband as a man who understood everything of that sort. That the immediate step to future success was to bring on Tom Tulliver during this first half year. For, by a singular coincidence, there had been some negotiation concerning another pupil from the same neighborhood, and it might further a decision in Mr Dulling's favour, if it were understood that young Tulliver, who Mr Dulling observed in conjugal privacy, with rather a rough cub, had made prodigious progress in a short time. It was on this ground that he was severe with Tom about his lessons. He was clearly a boy whose powers would never be developed through the medium of the Latin grammar, without the application of some sternness. Not that Mr Dulling was a harsh tempered or unkind man, quite the contrary. He was jacos with Tom at table, and corrected his provincialisms and his deportment in the most playful manner. But poor Tom was only the more cowed and confused by this double novelty, that he had never been used to jokes at all like Mr Dulling's, and for the first time in his life he had a painful sense that he was all wrong somehow. When Mr Dulling said, as the roast beef was being uncovered, now Tulliver, which would you rather decline, roast beef or the Latin for it? Tom, to whom, in his coolest moments of pun, would have been a hard nut, was thrown into a state of embarrassed alarm that made everything dim to him, except the feeling that he would rather not have anything to do with Latin. Of course, he answered, roast beef, whereupon there followed much laughter and some practical joking with the plates, from which Tom gathered, that he had in some mysterious way refused beef, and in fact made himself appear a silly. If he could have seen a fellow pupil undergo these painful operations and survive them in good spirits, he might soon have taken them as a matter of course. But there are two expensive forms of education, either of which a parent may procure for his son by sending him as a solitary pupil to a clergyman. One is the enjoyment of the reverent gentleman's undivided neglect. The other is the endurance of the reverent gentleman's undivided attention. It was the latter privilege for which Mr Tulliver paid a high price in Tom's initially months at King's Lawton. That respectable miller and molster had left Tom behind and driven Homewood in a state of great mental satisfaction. He had considered that it was a happy moment for him when he had thought of asking Riley's advice about a tutor for Tom. Mr Stelling's eyes were so wide open and he talked in such an offhand matter-of-fact way, answering every difficult slow remark of Mr Tulliver's with, I see, my good sir, I see. To be sure, to be sure, you want your son to be a man who will make his way in the world. That Mr Tulliver was delighted to find in him a clergyman whose knowledge was so applicable to the everyday affairs of this life, except Councillor Wilde whom he had heard at the last sessions. Mr Tulliver thought the reverent Mr Stelling was the shrewdest fellow he had ever met with, not unlike Wilde. In fact, he had the same way of sticking his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. Mr Tulliver was not by any means an exception in mistaking brazeness for shrewdness. Most laymen thought Stelling shrewd, and a man of remarkable powers generally, it was chiefly by his clerical brethren that he was considered rather a full fellow. But he told Mr Tulliver several stories about swing and insidirism and asked him advice about feeding pigs in so thoroughly secular and judicious a manner with so much polished glibness of tongue that the miller thought he was the very thing he wanted for Tom. He had no doubt this first-rate man was acquainted with every branch of information, and knew exactly what Tom must learn in order to become a match for the lawyers, which poor Mr Tulliver himself did not know, and so was necessarily thrown for self-direction on this wide kind of inference. It is hardly fair to laugh at him, for I have known much more highly instructed persons than he make inferences quite as wide, and not at all wiser. As for Mr Tulliver, finding that Mrs Stelling's views as to the airing of linen and the frequent recurrence of hunger in a growing boy entirely coincided with her own, moreover that Mrs Stelling, though so young a woman, and only anticipating her second confinement, had gone through very nearly the same experience as herself with regard to the behaviour and fundamental character of the monthly nurse. She expressed great contentment to her husband when they drove away at leaving Tom with a woman who, in spite of her youth, seemed quite sensible and motherly, and asked advice as prettily as could be. They must be very well off, though, said Mrs Tulliver, for everything's as nice as can be all over the house, and that watered silk she had on cost a pretty penny. Sister Pullett has got one like it. Ah, said Mr Tulliver, he's got some income besides the curacy, I reckon. Perhaps her father allows him something. There's Tom, or be another hundred to him, and not much trouble, either. By his own account, he says, teaching comes natural to him. That's wonderful now, added Mr Tulliver, turning his head on one side, and giving his horse a meditative tickling on the flank. Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally to Mr Stelling, that he said about it with that uniformity of method and independence of circumstances, which distinguish the actions of animals understood to be under the immediate teaching of nature. Mr Broderick's amiable beaver, as that charming naturalist tells us, visit himself as earnestly in constructing a dam, in a room up three pairs of stairs in London, as if he had been laying his foundation in a stream or lake in Upper Canada. It was Vinnie's function to build the absence of water, or a possible progeny, was an accident, for which he was not accountable. With the same unnearing instinct, Mr Stelling set to work, at his natural method of instilling the etym grammar and Euclid into the mind of Tom Tulliver. This, he considered, was the only basis of solid instruction. All other means of education were mere charlatism, and could produce nothing better than smatterers. Fixed on this firm basis, a man might observe the display of various or special knowledge, made by irregularly educated people, with a pitying smile. All that sort of thing was very well, but it was impossible, these people could form sound opinions. In holding this conviction, Mr Stelling was not bias, as some tutors have been, by the excessive accuracy or extent of his own scholarship, and as to his views about Euclid, no opinion could have been freer from the personal partiality. Mr Stelling was very far from being led astray by enthusiasm, either religious or intellectual. On the other hand, he had no secret belief that everything was humbug. He thought religion was a very excellent thing, an Aristotle, a great authority, and deeneries, and prevents useful institutions, and Great Britain, the providential bullwool, a produtism, and faith in the unseen, a great support to afflicted minds. He believed in all these things, as a Swiss hotel keeper believes in the beauty of the scenery around him, and in the pleasure it gives to artistic visitors. And in the same way Mr Stelling believed in his method of education, he had no doubt that he was doing the very best thing for Mr Tulliver's boy. Of course, when the miller talked of mapping and summing in a vague and diffident manner, Mr Stelling had set his mind at rest by an assurance that he understood what was wanted, that how was it possible that the good man could form any reasonable judgment about the matter. Mr Stelling's duty was to teach the lad in the only right way. Indeed, he knew no other. He had not wasted his time in the acquirement of anything abnormal. He very soon set down poor Tom as a thoroughly stupid lad, for though by hard labour he could get particular declensions into his brain. Anything so abstract as the relation between cases and terminations could by no means get such a lodgement there as to enable him to recognise a changed genitive or dative. He struck Mr Stelling as something more than natural stupidity. He suspected obstinacy, or at any rate indifference, and lectured Tom severely on his want of thorough application. You feel no interest in what you're doing, sir, Mr Stelling would say, and the reproach was painfully true. Tom had never found any difficulty in discerning a pointer from a setter, when once he had been told the distinction, and his perceptive powers were not at all deficient. I fancy they were quite as strong as those of Reverend Mr Stelling, for Tom could predict with accuracy what number of horses were cantering behind him. He could throw a stone right into the centre of a given ripple. He could guess to a fraction how many lengths of his stick it would take to reach across the playground, and could draw almost perfect squares on his slate without any measurement. But Mr Stelling took no note of these things. He only observed that Tom's fecalities veiled him before the abstractions hideously symbolised to him in the pages of their Ethan grammar, and that he was in a state bordering on idiocy, with regard to the demonstration that two given triangles must be equal. Though he could discern with great promptitude and certainty the fact that they were equal. Whence Mr Stelling concluded that Tom's brain, then peculiarly impervious to etymology and demonstrations, was peculiarly in need of being ploughed and harrowed by these patent implements, it was his favourite metaphor that the classics and geometry constituted, that culture of the mind which prepared it for the reception of any subsequent crop. I say nothing against Mr Stelling's theory. If we are to have one regimen for all minds, he seems to me as good as any other. I only know it turned out as uncomfortably for Tom Tulliver as if he had been plied with cheese in order to remedy a gastric weakness which prevented him from digesting it. It is astonishing what a different result one gets by changing the medical. One's core, the brain, an intellectual stomach, and one's ingenuous conception of the classics and geometry as ploughs and harrows seem to settle nothing. But then it is open to someone else to follow great authorities and call the mind a shoot, a white paper, or a mirror, in which case one's knowledge of the digestive process becomes quite irrelevant. It was doubtless an ingenuous idea to call the camel the ship of the desert, but it would hardly lead one far in training that useful beast. O Aristotle, if you had had the advantage of being the freshest modern, instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of metaphorical speech as a sign of high intelligence, with the lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself in speech without metaphor, that we can so seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it is something else. Tom Tulliver, being abundant in no form of speech, did not use any metaphor to declare his views as to the nature of Latin. He never called it an instrument of torture, and it was not until he had got on someway in the next half year and in the delectus that he was advanced enough to call it a bore and beastly stuff. At present in relation to this demand that he should learn Latin declensions and conjugations, Tom was in a state of as blank unimaginativeness concerning the cause and tendency of his sufferings, as if he had been an innocent true mouse imprisoned in the split trunk of an ash tree in order to cure loneliness in cattle. It is doubtless, almost incredible, to instructed minds of the present day that a boy of twelve not belonging strictly to the masses, who are now understood to have the monopoly of mental darkness, should have had no distinct idea how they came to be such a thing as Latin on this earth, yet so it was with Tom. It would have taken a long while to make conceivable to him that there ever existed a people who bought and sold sheep and oxen, and transacted the everyday affairs of life through the medium of this language, and still longer to make him understand why he should be called upon to learn it, when its connection with those affairs had become entirely latent. So far as Tom had gained any acquaintance with the Romans at Mr Jacob's academy, his knowledge was strictly correct, but it went no farther than the fact that they were in the New Testament, and Mr Stelling was not the man to enfeeble and emasculate his pupil's mind by simplifying and explaining, or to reduce the tonic effect of etymology by mixing it with smattering, extraneous information, such as is given to girls. Yet strange to say, under this vigorous treatment, Tom became more like a girl than he had ever been in his life before. He had a large share of pride, which had hitherto found itself very comfortable in the world, despising old goggles, and reposing in the sense of unquestioned rights, but now this same pride met with nothing but bruises and crushings. Tom was too clear-sighted not to be aware that Mr Stelling's standard of things was quite different, was certainly something higher in the eyes of the world than that of the people he had been living amongst, and that, brought in contact with it, he, Tom Tulliver, appeared uncouth and stupid. He was by no means indifferent to this, and his pride got into an uneasy condition, which quite nullified his boyish self-satisfaction, and gave him something at the girl's susceptibility. He was a very firm, not to say obstinate, disposition, but there was no brute like rebellion and recklessness in his nature. The human sensibilities pre-dominated, and if it had occurred to him, that he could enable himself to show some quickness at his lessons, and so acquire Mr Stelling's approbation, by standing on one leg for an inconvenient length of time, or wrapping his head moderately against the wall, or any voluntary action of that sort, he would certainly have tried it. But no, Tom had never heard that these measures would brighten the understanding, or strengthen the verbal memory, and he was not given to hypothesis and experiment. It did occur to him that he could perhaps get some help by praying for it, but as the priest, he said every evening, were forms learned by heart. He rather shrank from the novelty and irregularity of introducing an extempore passage on a topic of petition, for which he was not aware of any precedent. But one day, when he had broken down for the fifth time, in the supines of the third conjugation, and Mr Stelling convinced that this must be carelessness, since it transcended the bounds of possible stupidity, had lectured him very seriously, pointing out that if he failed to seize the present golden opportunity of learning supines, he would have to regret it when he become a man. Tom, more miserable than usual, determined to try his sole resource, and that evening, after his usual form of prayer, for his parents and little sister, he had begun to pray for Maggie when she was a baby, and that he might be able always to keep God's commandments, he added, in the same low whisper, and pleased to make me always remember my Latin. He paused a little to consider how he should pray about Euclid, whether he should ask to see what it meant, or whether there was any other mental state which would be more applicable to the case. But at last he added, and made Mr Stelling say, I shan't do Euclid any more. Amen. The fact that he got through his supines without mistake the next day encouraged him to persevere in his appendix to his prayers, and neutralised any scepticism that might have arisen from Mr Stelling's continued demand for Euclid. But his faith broke down under the apparent absence of all help when he got into the irregular verbs. It seemed clear that Tom's despair under the compresses of the present tense did not constitute a notice worthy of interference, and since this was the climax of his difficulties, where was the use of praying for help any longer? He made up his mind to this conclusion in one of his dull lonely evenings, which he spent in the study preparing his lessons for the morrow. His eyes were apt to get dim over the page, though he hated crying and was ashamed of it. He couldn't help thinking with some affection even of Spouncer, whom he used to fight and quarrel with. He would have felt at home with Spouncer, and in a condition of superiority, and then the mill and the river, and yet, pricking up his ears, ready to obey the least sign when Tom said, Oi, would all come before him in a sort of calenture. When his fingers played absently in his pocket with the great knife and his coil of whip cord, and other relics of the past, Tom, as I said, had never been so much like a girl in his life before, and at that epoch of irregular verbs, his spirit was further depressed by a new means of mental development which had been thought of for him out of school hours. Mrs. Delling had lately had her second baby, and as nothing could be more solitary for a boy than to feel himself useful, Mrs. Delling considered she was doing Tom a service by setting him to watch the little chair of Ballora while the nurse was occupied with the sickly baby. It was quite a pretty employment for Tom to take little Laura out in the sunniest hour of the autumn day. It would help to make him feel that Lawton Parsonage was a home for him, and that he was one of the family. The little chair of Ballora, not being an accomplished forker at present, had a ribbon fastened round her waist, by which Tom held her as if she had been a little doll during the minutes in which she chose to walk. But as these were rare, he was for the most part carrying this fine child round and round the garden, within sight of Mrs. Delling's window, according to orders. If anyone considers this unfair and even oppressive toward Tom, I beg him to consider that there are feminine virtues which are with difficulty combined, even if they are not incompatible. When the wife over poor curate contrives, under all her disadvantages, to dress extremely well and to have a style of corfew, which requires that her nurse shall occasionally officiate as ladies made, when, moreover, her dinner parties and her drawing room show that elegance and completeness of appointment to which ordinary women might imagine a large income necessary. It would be unreasonable to expect of her that she should employ a second nurse, or even act as a nurse herself. Mr. Delling knew better. He saw that his wife did wonders already and was proud of her. It was certainly not the best thing in the world for young Tulliver's gate to carry a heavy child, but he had plenty of exercise in long walks with himself, and next half year Mr. Delling would see about having a drilling master. Among the many means whereby Mr. Delling intended to be more fortunate than the bulk of his fellow men, he had entirely given up that of having his own way in his own house. What then? He had married as kind a little soul as ever breathed, according to Mr. Riley, who had been acquainted with Mr. Delling's blonde ringlets and smiling dominion throughout her maiden life, and on the strength of that knowledge would have been ready any day to pronounce that whatever domestic differences might arise in her married life must be entirely Mr. Delling's pulp. If Tom had had a worse disposition, he would certainly have hated the little chair of Blora, but he was too kind-hearted a lad for that. There was too much in him of the fibre that turns to true manliness, and to protecting pity for the weak. I am afraid he hated Mr. Delling and contracted a lasting dislike to pale blonde ringlets and broad flats, as directly associated with haughtiness of manner, and a frequent reference to other people's duty. But he couldn't help playing with little Laura, and, liking to amuse her, he even sacrificed his percussion caps for her sake, in despair at their ever serving a greater purpose, thinking the small flash and bang would delight her, and thereby drawing down on himself a rebuke from Mrs. Delling for teaching her child to play with fire. Laura was a sort of play fellow, and, oh, how Tom Long could play fellas. In his secret heart he earned to have Maggie with him, and was almost ready to dote on her exasperating acts of forgetfulness, though, when he was at home, he always represented it as a great favour on his part to let Maggie drop by his side on his pleasure excursions. And before this dreary half-year was ended, Maggie actually came. Mrs. Delling had given a general invitation for the little girl to come and stay with her brother, so when Mr. Tulliver drove over to King's Thornton late in October, Maggie came too, with the sense that she was taking a great journey, and beginning to see the world. It was Mr. Tulliver's first visit to see Tom, for the lad must learn not to think too much about home. Well, my lad, he said to Tom, when Mr. Delling had left the room to announce the arrival to his wife, and Maggie had begun to kiss Tom freely. You look really, school agrees with you. Tom wished he had looked rather real. I don't think I am well, Father, said Tom. I wish you'd asked Mr. Delling not to let me do Euclid. It brings on the toothache. I think. The toothache was the only lady to which Tom had ever been subject. Euclid, my lad. Why? What's that? said Mr. Tulliver. Oh, I don't know. It's definitions and axioms and triangles and things. It's a book I've got to learn in. There's no sense in it. Go go, said Mr. Tulliver, reprovingly. You mustn't say so. You must learn what your master tells you. He knows what it's right for you to learn. I'll help you now, Tom, said Maggie, with a little air of patronising consolation. I've come to stay ever so long. If Mr. Delling asks me, I've brought my box and my pinnacles. Haven't I, Father? You help me. You silly little thing, said Tom, in such high spirits at this announcement, that he quite enjoyed the idea of confounding Maggie by showing her a page of Euclid. I should like to see you doing one of my lessons. Why? I learned Latin too. Girls never learn such things. They're too silly. I know what Latin is very well, said Maggie confidently. Latin's a language. There are Latin words in the dictionary. There's bonus, a gift. Now, you're just wrong there, Miss Maggie, said Tom, secretly astonished. You think you're very wise, but bonus means good, as it happens. Bonus, boner, boner. Well, that's no reason why it should mean gift, said Maggie, stoutly. It may mean several things. Almost every word does. There's lawn. It means the grass plot, as well as the stuffed pocket handkerchiefs are made of. Well done, little one, said Mr. Tulliver. Laughing while Tom felt rather disgusted with Maggie's knowingness, though beyond measure cheerful at the thought that she was going to stay with him. Her conceit would soon be overruled by the actual inspection of his books. Mrs. Stelling, in her pressing invitation, did not mention a longer time than a week for Maggie's stay. But Mr. Stelling, who took her between his knees and asked her where she stole her dark eyes from, insisted that she must stay a fortnight. Maggie thought Mr. Stelling was a charming man, and Mr. Tulliver was quite proud to leave his little winch, where she would have an opportunity of showing her cleverness to appreciating strangers. So it was agreed that she should not be fetched home till the end of the fortnight. Now, then, come with me into the study, Maggie, said Tom, as their father drove away. What do you shake and toss your head now for? You silly! He continued, for though her hair was now under a new dispensation, and was brushed smoothly behind her ears. She seemed still in imagination to be tossing it out of her eyes. It makes you look as if you were crazy. Oh, I can't help it, said Maggie impatiently. Don't tease me, Tom. Oh, what books! She exclaimed, as she saw the bookcases in the study. How should I like to have as many books as that? Why, you couldn't read one of them, said Tom triumphantly. They're all Latin. No, they aren't, said Maggie. I can read the back of this, history of the decline and form of the Roman Empire. Well, what does that mean? You don't know, said Tom, wagging his head. But I could soon find out, said Maggie scornfully. Why, how? I should look inside and see what it was about. You'd better not, Miss Maggie, said Tom, seeing her hand on the volume. Mr. Stelling lets nobody touch his books without leave, and I shall catch it, if you take it out. Oh, very well. Let me see all your books, then, said Maggie, turning to throw her arms around Tom's neck and rub his cheek with her small round nose. Tom, in the gladness of his heart, at having dear old Maggie to dispute with and crow over again, seized her round the waist, and began to jump with her round the large library table, away they jumped with more and more bigger, till Maggie's hair flew from behind her ears and twirled about like an animated mop. But the revolutions round the table became more and more irregular in this week, till at last reaching Mr. Stelling's reading stand. They sent its thundering down with its heavy lexicons to the floor. Happily it was the ground floor, and the study was a one-story wing to the house, so that the downfall made no alarming resonance. Though Tom stood dizzy and aghast for a few minutes, fretting the appearance of Mr. or Mrs. Stelling. Oh, I say, Maggie, said Tom at last, lifting up the stand. We must keep quiet here, you know, if we break anything, Mrs. Stelling will make us cry peccaby. What's that? said Maggie. Oh, it's the Latin for a good scolding, said Tom, not without some pride in his knowledge. Is she a crosswoman? said Maggie. I believe you, said Tom, with an emphatic nod. I think all women are crosser than men, said Maggie. Aunt Glebe's a great deal crosser than Uncle Glebe, and mother scolds me more than father does. Well, you'll be a woman someday, said Tom, so you needn't talk. But I shall be a clever woman, said Maggie, with a toss. Oh, I dare say, and a nasty conceited thing, everybody'll hate you. But you oughtn't to hate me, Tom, it'll be very wicked of you, for I shall be your sister. Yes, but if you're a nasty, disagreeable thing, I shall hate you. Oh, but Tom, you won't. I shan't be disagreeable. I shall be very good to you, and I shall be very good to everybody. You won't hate me, really, will you, Tom? Oh, bother, never mind. Come, it's time for me to learn my lessons. See here, what I've got to do, said Tom, drawing Maggie toward him, and showing her his theorem, while she pushed her hair behind her ears, and prepared herself to prove her capability of helping him in Euclid. She began to read with full confidence in her own powers, but presently becoming quite bewildered, her face flushed with irritation. It was unavoidable. She must confess her incompetency, and she was not fond of humiliation. It's nonsense, she said, and very ugly stuff. Nobody need want to make it out. Ah, there, now, Miss Maggie, said Tom, drawing the book away, and wagging his head at her. You see, you're not so clever as you thought you were. Oh, said Maggie, pouting, I daresay I could make it out, if I'd learned what goes before, as you have. But that's what you just couldn't, Miss Wisdom, said Tom. For it's all the harder when you know what goes before. For then, you've got to say what definition three is, and what axiom five is. But get along with you now. I must go on with this. Here's the Latin grammar. See what you can make of that. Maggie found the Latin grammar quite soothing after her mathematical mortification, for she delighted in new words, and quickly found that there was an English key at the end, which would make her very wise about Latin at slight expense. She presently made up her mind to skip the rules in the syntax. The examples become so absorbing. These mysterious sentences snatched from an unknown context, like strange horns of beasts and leaves of unknown plants, brought from some far off region, gave boundless scope to her imagination, and were all the more fascinating because they were in a peculiar tongue of their own, which she could learn to interpret. It was really very interesting. The Latin grammar that Tom had said no girls could learn, and she was proud because she found it interesting. The most fragmentary examples were her favourites. Moore's almond bus as communists would have been to June. Only she liked to know the Latin, but the fortunate gentleman whom everyone congratulated because he had a son endowed with such a disposition afforded her a great deal of pleasant conjecture, and she was quite lost in the thick grove penetrable by no star. When Tom called out, now then Maggie, give us the grammar. Oh, Tom, it's such a pretty book, she said, as she jumped out of the large arm chair to give it him. It's much prettier than the dictionary. I could learn Latin very soon. I don't think it's at all hard. Oh, I know what you've been doing, said Tom. You've been reading the English at the end. Any donkey can do that. Tom seized the book and opened it with a determined and business like air, as much as to say that he had a lesson to learn which no donkeys would find themselves equal to. Maggie rather picked, turned to the bookcases to amuse herself with puzzling out the titles. Presently Tom called to her. Here, Maggie, come and hear if I can say this. Stand at that end of the table when Mr. Stelling sits when he hears me. Maggie obeyed and took the open book. Where do you begin, Tom? Oh, I begin at Appellativa Arborum, because I say all over again what I've been learning this week. Tom sailed along pretty well for three lines and Maggie was beginning to forget her office, a prompter, in speculating as to what Ma could mean, which came twice over when he stuck fast at St. Aetian Volocrum. Don't tell me, Maggie, St. Aetian Volocrum. St. Aetian Volocrum. Ud Ostria set us. No, said Maggie, opening her mouth and shaking her head. St. Aetian Volocrum said Tom very slowly, as if the next words might be expected to come sooner when he gave them the strong hint that they were waited for. C-E-U, said Maggie, getting impatient. Oh, I know, hold your tongue, said Tom. C-Paso, Hirondo, Ferrarum, Ferrarum. Tom took his pencil and made several hard dots with it on his book cover. Ferrarum. Oh dear, oh dear, Tom, said Maggie, what a time you are. Ud. Ud Ostria. No, no, said Maggie. Ud Tigris. Oh yes, now I can do, said Tom. It was Tigris, bolts, I'd forgotten. Ud Tigris got loops, at Piskium. With some further stammering and repetition, Tom got through the next few lines. Now then, he said, the next is what I've just learned for tomorrow. Give me hold of the book a minute. After some whispered gabbling, assisted by the beating of his fist on the table, Tom returned the book. Mascula nominar inna, he began. No, Tom, said Maggie. That doesn't come next. It's nomin non Crescan genitivo. Crescans genitivo, exclaimed Tom. With a derisible arm, for Tom had learned this omitted passage for his yesterday's lesson. And a young gentleman does not require an intimate or extensive acquaintance with Latin before he can feel the pitiable absurdity of the false quantity. Crescans genitivo, what a little silly you are, Maggie. Well, you needn't laugh, Tom, for you didn't remember it at all. I'm sure it's felt so. How is I to know? I told you girls couldn't learn Latin. It's nomin non Crescans genitivo. Very well then, said Maggie, pouty. I can say that as well as you can, and you don't mind your stops. For you ought to stop twice as long at a semicolon as you do at a comma, and you make the longest stops where there ought to be no stop at all. Oh well, don't chatter, let me go on. They were presently fetched to spend the rest of the evening in the drawing room, and Maggie became so animated with Mr. Stelling, who she felt sure admired her cleverness that Tom was rather amazed and alarmed at her audacity. But she was suddenly subdued by Mr. Stelling's, alluding to a little girl of whom he had heard that she once ran away to the Gypsies. What a very odd little girl that must be, said Mrs. Stelling, meaning to be playful, but a playfulness that turned on her supposed oddity was not at all to Maggie's taste. She feared that Mr. Stelling, after all, did not think much of her, and went to bed in rather low spirits. Mrs. Stelling, she felt, looked at her as if she thought her hair was very ugly because it hung down straight behind. Nevertheless, it was a very happy fortnight to Maggie this visit to Tom. She was allowed to be in the study while he had his lessons, and in her various readings got very deep into the examples in the Latin grammar. The astronomer who hated women generally caused her so much puzzling speculation that she one day asked Mr. Stelling if all astronomers hated women, or whether it was only this particular astronomer, but for stalling his answer, she said, I suppose it's all astronomers, because you know, they live up in the high towers, and if the women came there, they might talk and hinder them from looking at the stars. Mr. Stelling liked her prattle immensely, and they were on the best terms. She told Tom she would like to go to school to Mr. Stelling, as he did, and learn just the same things. She knew she could do Euclid, because she had looked into it again, and she saw what ABC meant. They were the names of the lines. I'm sure you couldn't do it now, said Tom, and I'll just ask Mr. Stelling if you could. I don't mind, said the little conceited minx. I'll ask it myself. Mr. Stelling, she said that same evening, when they were in the drawing room, couldn't I do Euclid, and all Tom's lessons, if you were to teach me instead of him? No, you couldn't, said Tom, indignantly. Girls can't do Euclid, can they, sir? They can pick up a little of everything, I daresay, said Mr. Stelling. They've a great deal of superficial cleverness, but they couldn't go far into anything. They're quick and shallow. Tom, delighted with this verdict, telegraphed his triumph by wagging his head at Maggie, behind Mr. Stelling's chair. As for Maggie, she had hardly ever been so mortified. She had been so proud to be called quick all her little life, and now it appeared that this quickness was the brand of inferiority. It would have been better to be slow, like Tom. Ha-ha, Miss Maggie, said Tom, when they were alone. You see, it's not such a fine thing to be quick. You'll never go far into anything, you know? And Maggie was so oppressed by this dreadful destiny that she had no spirit for a retort. But when this small apparatus of shallow quickness was fetched away in the gig by Luke, and the study was once more quite lonely for Tom, he missed her grievously. He had really been brighter and had got through his lessons better. Since she had been there. And she had asked Mr. Stelling so many questions about the Roman Empire, and whether there really ever was a man who said, in Latin, I would not buy it for a farthing, or a rotten nut, or whether that had only been turned into Latin. But Tom had actually come to a dim understanding of the fact that there had once been people upon the earth who were so fortunate as to know Latin without learning it through the medium of the Aetan grammar. This luminous idea was a great addition to his historical acquirements during this half-year, which were otherwise confined to an epitomized history of the Jews. But the dreary half-year did come to an end. How glad Tom was to see the last yellow leaves fluttering before the cold wind. The dark afternoons and the first December snow seemed to him far livelier than the August sunshine, and that he might make himself the shoreer about the flight of the days that were carrying him homeward. He stuck twenty-one sticks deep in a corner of the garden, when he was three weeks from the holidays, and pulled one out every day with a great wrench, throwing it to a distance with a vigor of will which would have carried it to limbo, if it had been in the nature of sticks to travel so far. But it was worth purchasing, even at the heavy prices of the Latin grammar, the happiness of seeing the bright light in the parlour at home, as the gig passed noiselessly over the snow-covered bridge. The happiness of passing from the cold air to the warmth and the kisses and the smiles of that familiar heart, where the pattern of the rope and the grate and the fire irons were first ideas that it was no more possible to criticise than the solidity and extension of matter. There is no sense of ease, like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born, where objects became dear to us before we had known the labour of choice, and where the outer world seemed only an extension of our own personality. We accepted and loved it as we accepted our own sense of existence and our own limbs. Very commonplace, even ugly, that furniture of our early home might look, if it were put up to the option, an improved taste in upholstery scorns it, and is not describing after something better and better in our surroundings the grand characteristic that distinguishes man from the brute, or to satisfy a scrupulous accuracy of definition that distinguishes the British man from the foreign brute. But heaven knows where that striving might lead us, if our affections had not a trick of twining round those old inferior things, if the loves and sanctities of our life had no deep immovable roots in memory. One's delight in an elderberry bush overhanging the confused loopage of a hedgerow bank, as a more gladdening sight than the finest cistus or fuchsia, spreading itself on the softest undulating turf, is an entirely unjustifiable preference to a nursery gardener, or to any of those regulated minds who are free from the witness of any attachment that does not rest on a demonstrable superiority of qualities. And there is no better reason for preferring this elderberry bush than that it stirs an early memory that it is no novelty in my life, speaking to me merely through my present sensibilities to form and colour, but the long companion of my existence that wove itself into my joys when joys were vivid. End of book two chapter one. Chapter two of book two of The Mill on the Floss. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Gillian Upton. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliott. Chapter two book two. The Christmas holidays. Final Christmas with the snowy hair and ruddy face had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion and had set off his rich gifts of warmth and colour with all the heightening contrast of frost and snow. Snow lay on the croft and riverbank in undulation softer than the limbs of infancy. It lay with the neatest finished border on every sloping roof making the dark red gable stand out with a new depth of colour. It weighed heavily on the laurels and fir trees till it fell from them with a shuddering sound. It clothed the rough turnip field with whiteness and made the sheep look like dark blotches. The gates were all blocked up with the sloping drifts and here and there a disregarded four-footed beast stood as if petrified in unrecumbent sadness. There was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens too were one still pale cloud. No sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow. But old Christmas smiled as he laid this cruel seeming spell on the outdoor world, for he meant to light up home with new brightness, to deepen all the richness of indoor colour and give a keener edge of delight to the warm fragrance of food. He meant to prepare a sweet imprisonment that would strengthen the primitive fellowship of kindred and make the sunshine of familiar human faces as welcome as the hidden day star. His kindness fell but hardly on the homeless, fell but hardly on the homes where the hearth was not very warm and where the food had little fragrance, where the human faces had no sunshine in them but rather the leaden blank-eyed gaze of unexpected want. But the fine old season meant well, and if he had not learned the secret how to bless men impartially, it is because his father, time with ever unrelenting purpose, still hides that secret in his own mighty slow-beating heart. And yet this Christmas day, in spite of Tom's fresh delight in home, was not, he thought, somehow or other, quite so happy as it had always been before. The red berries were just as abundant on the holly, and he and Maggie had dressed all the windows and mantelpieces and picture frames on Christmas Eve with as much taste as ever, wedding the thick set scarlet clusters with branches of the black berry-divey. There had been singing under the windows after midnight, supernatural singing Maggie always felt in spite of Tom's contemptuous insistence that the singers were old patch, the parish clerk, and the rest of the church choir. She trembled with awe when their caroling broke in upon her dreams, and the image of men in fustian clothes was always thrust away by the vision of angels resting on the parted cloud. The midnight chant had helped as usual to lift the morning above the level of common days, and then there were the smell of hot toast and ale from the kitchen at the breakfast hour. The favourite anthem, the green bows and the short sermon, gave the appropriate festival character to the churchgoing, and aunt and uncle Moss, with all their seven children, were looking like so many reflectors of the bright parlour fire, when the churchgoers came back, stamping the snow from their feet. The plum pudding was of the same handsome roundness as ever, and came in with the symbolic blue flames around it, as if it had been heroically snatched from the nether fires into which it had been thrown by disceptic puritums. The dessert was as splendid as ever, with its golden oranges, brown nuts, and the crystalline light and dark of apple jelly and damson cheese. In all these things, Christmas was as it had always been, since Tom could remember. It was only distinguished, if by anything, by superior sliding and snowballs. Christmas was cheery, but not so Mr Tulliver. He was irate and defiant, and Tom, though he espoused his father's quarrels and shared his father's sense of injury, was not without some of the feeling that oppressed Maggie, when Mr Tulliver got louder and more angry in narration and assertion, with the increased leisure of dessert. The attention that Tom might have concentrated on his nuts and wine was distracted by a sense that there were rascally enemies in the world, and that the business of grown-up life could hardly be conducted without a good deal of quarrelling. Now Tom was not fond of quarrelling unless it could soon be put an end to by a fair stand-up fight with an adversary whom he had every chance of thrashing, and his father's irritable talk made him uncomfortable, though he never accounted to himself for the feeling or conceived the notion that his father was faulty in this respect. The particular embodiment of the evil principle now exciting Mr Tulliver's determined resistance was Mr Peavart, who, having lands higher up the ripple, was taking measures for their irrigation, which either were, or would be, or were bound to be, on the principle that water was, and infringement on Mr Tulliver's legitimate share of water power. Dix, who had a mill on the stream, was a feeble auxiliary of old Harry compared with Peavart. Dix had been brought to his senses by arbitration, and Wakeham's advice had not carried him far. No, Dix, Mr Tulliver considered, had been as good as nowhere in point of law, and in the intensity of his indignation against Peavart, his contempt for a baffled adversary like Dix began to wear the air of a friendly attachment. He had no male audience today except Mr Moss, who knew nothing, as he said, but nature and mills, and could only assent to Mr Tulliver's argument on the a priori ground of family relationship and monetary obligation. But Mr Tulliver did not talk with the futile intention of convincing his audience. He talked to relieve himself, while good Mr Moss made strong efforts to keep his eyes wide open, in spite of the sleepiness, which an unusually good dinner produced in his hard work frame. Mrs Moss, more alive to the subject, and interested in everything that affected her brother, listened, and put in a word as often as maternal preoccupations allowed. Why, Peavart's a new name here about, brother, isn't it, she said. He didn't own the land in father's time, nor yours either, before I was married. New name? Yes, I should think it is a new name, said Mr Tulliver with angry emphasis. Dahlcoat mills been in our family a hundred year and better, and nobody ever heard of a Peavart meddling with the river. Till this fellow came, and bought Binkham's farm out of hand, before anybody else could so much as say snap. But I'll Peavart him, added Mr Tulliver, lifting his glass with a sense that he had defined his resolution in an unmistakable manner. You won't be forced to go to law with him, I hope, brother, said Mrs Moss with some anxiety. I don't know what I shall be forced to, but I know what I shall force him to, with his dykes and irrigations. If there's any law to be brought to bear at right side, I know well enough who's at the bottom of it. He's got Wacom to back him and egg him on. I know Wacom tells him the law can't touch him for it, but this folks can handle the law besides Wacom. It takes a big rascal to beat him, but there's bigger to be found, as no more of things announce at law, else I'll come Wacom to lose Brumley's suit for him. Mr Tulliver was a strictly honest man, and proud of being honest, but he considered that in law the ends of justice could only be achieved by employing a stronger knave to frustrate a weaker. Law was a sort of cock fight, in which it was the business of injured honesty to get a game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs. Gaw's no fool, he didn'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 laws, Wacom 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 Ari and the lawyers. It's plain enough what's the rights and wrongs of water, if you look at it straightforward. For a river's a river, and if you've got a mill, you must have water to turn it. And it's your use telling me, Pivart's irrigation and nonsense won't stop my wheel. I know what belongs to water better than that. Talk to me what the engineers say. It's common sense, as Pivart's dykes 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 the 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 clamoured 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 that sort before I were 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 a 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 towards 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 you won't go to law, said Mrs. Moss, for there's never any knowing where that'll end, and the right doesn't always win. This Mr. Peavart'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 a talk about this law and irrigation, 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 Pullett 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 headpiece 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 of doing what pleases their husband, 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 had let him have his say in everything as I do. It's nothing but law and irrigation now, from when we first get up in the morning till we go to bed at night, and I'm never contradicting. I only say, well, Mr. Tulliver, do as you like, but whatever you do, don't go to law. Mrs. Tulliver, as we've 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 a 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 featherweight 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. Gleg. But not even a direct argument from that typical Dodson female herself against his going to law could have heightened his disposition towards it so much as the mere thought of Wacom, continually freshened by the sight of the two able attorney on market days. Wacom, to his certain knowledge, was, metaphorically speaking, at the bottom of Pughart's irrigation. Wacom had tried to make dicks stand out and go to law about the dam. It was unquestionably Wacom 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 high road. All lawyers were more or less rascals, but Wacom'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 £500, been obliged to carry a little business to Wacom's office on his own account. A hook-nosed glib fellow, as cool as cucumber, always looking so sure of his gain, 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 Wacom. Gore was a sly fellow. His weakness did not lie on the side of scrupulosity, but the large 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 fair of irrigation, he had an uncomfortable suspicion that Wacom had more law to show against this, rationally, irrefragible inference than Gore could show for it. But then, if they went to law, there was a chance for Mr. Tulliver to employ councillor Wilde on his side, instead of having that admirable bully against him, and the prospect of seeing a witness of Wacom'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 grey 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 was scarcely any new items to be detected in his father's statement of the case against Peavellot, or any more specific indication of the measures he was bent on taking against that rash contravena 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 Peavellot was as thick as mud with Wacom. Father said, Tom, one evening near the end of the holidays, Uncle Gleg says lawyer Wacom 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 Wacom'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 lads are poor, deformed critter, and takes after his mother in the face. I think there isn't much of his father in him. It's a sign Wacom thinks higher, Mr. Stelling, as he sends his son to him, and Wacom 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 Wacom'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. End of chapter. Chapter 3 of Book 2 of The Mill on the Floss. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jillian Upton. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliott. Chapter 3, Book 2. The New School Fellow. 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 sugar candy, 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-so lacing an effect under the confined prospect and damp odours of the gig umbrella that he repeated the process more than once on his way. Well, Dulliver, 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 woolen comforter and other wrappings. He had seen Philip Wakeham at St. Ogs, 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 anyone 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, Dulliver, said that gentleman, on entering the study. Master Philip Wakeham, I shall leave you to make acquaintance by yourselves. You already know something of each other, I imagine, for you are neighbours 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. Boy's 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. Everyone almost disliked looking at him, and his deformity was more conspicuous when he walked. 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 repayments 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 Wakeham'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 humpback tailor in the neighbourhood of Mr. Jacobs Academy, who was considered a very unameable 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 Wakeham 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. Why? That's a donkey with panniers and a spaniel and partridges in the corn, he exclaimed, his tongue being completely loose by surprise and admiration. Oh, my buttons! I wish I could draw like that. I'm to learn drawing this hearth. I wonder if I shall learn to make dogs and donkeys. Oh, you can do them without learning, said Philip. I never learn drawing. Never learn, said Tom in amazement. Why, when I make dogs and horses and those things, the heads and the legs won't come right, though I can see how they ought to be very well. I can make houses and all sorts of chimneys, chimneys all going down the wall and windows in the roof and all that, but I dare say I could do dogs and horses if I was to try more, he added, reflecting that Philip might falsely suppose that he was going to knock under if he were too frank about the imperfection of his accomplishments. Oh yes, said Philip, it's very easy. You've only to look well at things and draw them over and over again. What you do wrong once, you can alter the next time. But haven't you been taught anything, said Tom, beginning to have a puzzled suspicion that Philip's crooked back might be the source of remarkable faculties? I thought you'd been to school a long while. Yes, said Philip, smiling. I've been taught Latin and Greek and mathematics and writing and such things. Oh, but I say, you don't like Latin, though, do you? Said Tom, lowering his voice confidentially. Pretty well, I don't care much about it, said Philip. Ah, but perhaps you haven't got into the proprio quai maribus, said Tom, nodding his head sideways, as much as to say that was the test it was easy taking till you came to that. Philip felt some bitter complacency in the promising stupidity of this well-made, active-looking boy, but made polite by his own extreme sensitiveness, as well as by his desire to conciliate. He checked his inclination to laugh and said quietly, I've done with the grammar. I don't learn that anymore. Then you won't have the same lessons as I shall, said Tom, with a sense of disappointment. No, but I dare say I can help you. I should be very glad to help you if I can. Tom did not say thank you, for he was quite absorbed in the thought that Wakeham's son did not seem so spiteful a fellow as might have been expected. I say, he said presently, do you love your father? Yes, said Philip, colouring deeply. Don't you love yours? Oh yes, I only wanted to know, said Tom, rather ashamed of himself. Now he saw Philip colouring and looking uncomfortable. He found much difficulty in adjusting his attitude of mind towards the sump of a lawyer at Wakeham, and it had occurred to him that if Philip disliked his father, that fact might go some way toward clearing up his perplexity. Shall you learn drawing now, he said, by way of changing the subject? No, said Philip. My father wishes me to give all my time to other things now. What, Latin and Euclid, and those things, said Tom. Yes, said Philip, who had left off using his pencil and was resting his head on one hand, while Tom was leaning forward on both elbows and looking with increasing admiration at the dog and the donkey. And you don't mind that, said Tom, with strong curiosity. No, I like to know what everybody else has to say. I like to know what everybody else knows. I can study what I like by and by. I can't think why anybody should learn Latin, said Tom. It's no good. It's part of the education of a gentleman, said Philip. All gentlemen learn the same things. What, do you think Sir John Craig, the master of the Harriers, knows Latin, said Tom, would often thought he should like to resemble Sir John Craig? He learned it when he was a boy, of course, said Philip. But I dare say he's forgotten it. Oh, well, I can do that, then, said Tom, not with any epigrammatic intention, but with serious satisfaction at the idea that, as far as Latin was concerned, there was no hindrance to his resembling Sir John Craig. Only you're obliged to remember it while you're at school, else you've got to learn ever so many lines of speaker. Mr. Stellings very particular, did you know? He'll have you up ten times if you say noun for jam, and he won't let you go a letter wrong, I can tell you. Oh, I don't mind, said Philip, unable to choke a laugh. I can remember things easily, and there are some lessons I'm very fond of. I'm very fond of Greek history and everything about the Greeks. I should love to have been a Greek and have fought the Persians, and then have come home and have written tragedies, or else have been listened to by everybody for my wisdom, like Socrates, and have died a grand death. Philip, you perceive, was not without a wish to impress the well-made barbarian with a sense of his mental superiority. Why were the Greeks great fighters, said Tom, who saw a vista in this direction? Is there anything like David and Goliath and Samson in the Greek history? Those are the only bits I like in the history of the Jews. Oh, there are very fine stories of that sort about the Greeks, about the heroes of early times who killed the wild beasts as Samson did, and in The Odyssey, that's a beautiful poem. There's a more wonderful giant than Goliath. Polyphomy, who had only one eye in the middle of his forehead, and Ulysses, a little fellow, but very wise and cunning, got a red-hot pine tree and stuck it into this one eye and made him roar like a thousand balls. Oh, what fun, said Tom, jumping away from the table and stamping first with one leg and then the other. I say, can you tell me all about those stories? Because I shan't learn Greek, you know. Shall I, he added, pausing in his stamping with sudden alarm, lest the contrary might be possible. Does every gentleman learn Greek? Will Mr. Stelling make me begin with it, do you think? No, I should think not. Very likely not, said Philip. But you may read those stories without knowing Greek. I've got them in English. Oh, but I don't like reading. I'd soon have you tell them me. But only the fighting ones, you know. My sister Maggie is always wanting to tell me stories, but they're stupid things. Girls' stories always are. Can you tell a good many fighting stories? Oh, yes, said Philip, lots of them. Beside the Greek stories, I can tell you about Richard, Curde Leon and Saladin and about William Wallace and Robert Bruce and James Douglas. I know no end. You're older than I am, aren't you? said Tom. Why? How old are you? I'm 15. I'm only going on 14, said Tom. But I thrashed all the fellows at Jacobs. That's where I was before I came here. And I beat them all at Bandy and climbing. And I wish Mr. Stelling would let us go fishing. I could show you how to fish. You could fish, couldn't you? It's only standing and sitting still, you know. Tom, in his turn, wish to make the balance dip in his favour. This hunchback must not suppose that his acquaintance with fighting stories put him on a par with an actual fighting hero like Tom Tulliver. Philip Winston did this allusion to his unfitness for active sports. And he answered almost peevishly, I can't bear fishing. I think people look like fools. Sitting watching a line hour after hour or else throwing and throwing and catching nothing. Ah, but you wouldn't say they looked like fools when they landed a big pike. I can tell you, said Tom, who had never caught anything that was big in his life but whose imagination was on the stretch with indignant zeal for the honour of sport. Wakeham's son, it was plain, had his disagreeable points and must be kept in due check. Happily for the harmony of this first interview they were now called to dinner and Philip was not allowed to develop father, his unsound views on the subject of fishing. But Tom said to himself, that was just what he should have expected from a hunchback.