The Mill on the Floss

ow a Hen Takes to Stratagem

The days passed, and Mr Tulliver showed, at least to the eyes of the
medical man, stronger and stronger symptoms of a gradual return to his
normal condition; the paralytic obstruction was, little by little,
losing its tenacity, and the mind was rising from under it with fitful
struggles, like a living creature making its way from under a great
snowdrift, that slides and slides again, and shuts up the newly made
opening.

Time would have seemed to creep to the watchers by the bed, if it had
only been measured by the doubtful, distant hope which kept count of
the moments within the chamber; but it was measured for them by a
fast-approaching dread which made the nights come too quickly. While Mr
Tulliver was slowly becoming himself again, his lot was hastening
toward its moment of most palpable change. The taxing-masters had done
their work like any respectable gunsmith conscientiously preparing the
musket, that, duly pointed by a brave arm, will spoil a life or two.
Allocaturs, filing of bills in Chancery, decrees of sale, are legal
chain-shot or bomb-shells that can never hit a solitary mark, but must
fall with widespread shattering. So deeply inherent is it in this life
of ours that men have to suffer for each other’s sins, so inevitably
diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and
we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in
pulsations of unmerited pain.

By the beginning of the second week in January, the bills were out
advertising the sale, under a decree of Chancery, of Mr Tulliver’s
farming and other stock, to be followed by a sale of the mill and land,
held in the proper after-dinner hour at the Golden Lion. The miller
himself, unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in that
first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought of; and
often in his conscious hours talked in a feeble, disjointed manner of
plans he would carry out when he “got well.” The wife and children were
not without hope of an issue that would at least save Mr Tulliver from
leaving the old spot, and seeking an entirely strange life. For uncle
Deane had been induced to interest himself in this stage of the
business. It would not, he acknowledged, be a bad speculation for Guest
& Co. to buy Dorlcote Mill, and carry on the business, which was a good
one, and might be increased by the addition of steam power; in which
case Tulliver might be retained as manager. Still, Mr Deane would say
nothing decided about the matter; the fact that Wakem held the mortgage
on the land might put it into his head to bid for the whole estate, and
further, to outbid the cautious firm of Guest & Co., who did not carry
on business on sentimental grounds. Mr Deane was obliged to tell Mrs
Tulliver something to that effect, when he rode over to the mill to
inspect the books in company with Mrs Glegg; for she had observed that
“if Guest & Co. would only think about it, Mr Tulliver’s father and
grandfather had been carrying on Dorlcote Mill long before the oil-mill
of that firm had been so much as thought of.”

Mr Deane, in reply, doubted whether that was precisely the relation
between the two mills which would determine their value as investments.
As for uncle Glegg, the thing lay quite beyond his imagination; the
good-natured man felt sincere pity for the Tulliver family, but his
money was all locked up in excellent mortgages, and he could run no
risk; that would be unfair to his own relatives; but he had made up his
mind that Tulliver should have some new flannel waistcoats which he had
himself renounced in favour of a more elastic commodity, and that he
would buy Mrs Tulliver a pound of tea now and then; it would be a
journey which his benevolence delighted in beforehand, to carry the tea
and see her pleasure on being assured it was the best black.

Still, it was clear that Mr Deane was kindly disposed toward the
Tullivers. One day he had brought Lucy, who was come home for the
Christmas holidays, and the little blond angel-head had pressed itself
against Maggie’s darker cheek with many kisses and some tears. These
fair slim daughters keep up a tender spot in the heart of many a
respectable partner in a respectable firm, and perhaps Lucy’s anxious,
pitying questions about her poor cousins helped to make uncle Deane
more prompt in finding Tom a temporary place in the warehouse, and in
putting him in the way of getting evening lessons in book-keeping and
calculation.

That might have cheered the lad and fed his hopes a little, if there
had not come at the same time the much-dreaded blow of finding that his
father must be a bankrupt, after all; at least, the creditors must be
asked to take less than their due, which to Tom’s untechnical mind was
the same thing as bankruptcy. His father must not only be said to have
“lost his property,” but to have “failed,”—the word that carried the
worst obloquy to Tom’s mind. For when the defendant’s claim for costs
had been satisfied, there would remain the friendly bill of Mr Gore,
and the deficiency at the bank, as well as the other debts which would
make the assets shrink into unequivocal disproportion; “not more than
ten or twelve shillings in the pound,” predicted Mr Deane, in a decided
tone, tightening his lips; and the words fell on Tom like a scalding
liquid, leaving a continual smart.

He was sadly in want of something to keep up his spirits a little in
the unpleasant newness of his position,—suddenly transported from the
easy carpeted ennui of study-hours at Mr Stelling’s, and the busy
idleness of castle-building in a “last half” at school, to the
companionship of sacks and hides, and bawling men thundering down heavy
weights at his elbow. The first step toward getting on in the world was
a chill, dusty, noisy affair, and implied going without one’s tea in
order to stay in St Ogg’s and have an evening lesson from a one-armed
elderly clerk, in a room smelling strongly of bad tobacco. Tom’s young
pink-and-white face had its colours very much deadened by the time he
took off his hat at home, and sat down with keen hunger to his supper.
No wonder he was a little cross if his mother or Maggie spoke to him.

But all this while Mrs Tulliver was brooding over a scheme by which
she, and no one else, would avert the result most to be dreaded, and
prevent Wakem from entertaining the purpose of bidding for the mill.
Imagine a truly respectable and amiable hen, by some portentous
anomaly, taking to reflection and inventing combinations by which she
might prevail on Hodge not to wring her neck, or send her and her
chicks to market; the result could hardly be other than much cackling
and fluttering. Mrs Tulliver, seeing that everything had gone wrong,
had begun to think she had been too passive in life; and that, if she
had applied her mind to business, and taken a strong resolution now and
then, it would have been all the better for her and her family. Nobody,
it appeared, had thought of going to speak to Wakem on this business of
the mill; and yet, Mrs Tulliver reflected, it would have been quite the
shortest method of securing the right end. It would have been of no
use, to be sure, for Mr Tulliver to go,—even if he had been able and
willing,—for he had been “going to law against Wakem” and abusing him
for the last ten years; Wakem was always likely to have a spite against
him. And now that Mrs Tulliver had come to the conclusion that her
husband was very much in the wrong to bring her into this trouble, she
was inclined to think that his opinion of Wakem was wrong too. To be
sure, Wakem had “put the bailies in the house, and sold them up”; but
she supposed he did that to please the man that lent Mr Tulliver the
money, for a lawyer had more folks to please than one, and he wasn’t
likely to put Mr Tulliver, who had gone to law with him, above
everybody else in the world. The attorney might be a very reasonable
man; why not? He had married a Miss Clint, and at the time Mrs Tulliver
had heard of that marriage, the summer when she wore her blue satin
spencer, and had not yet any thoughts of Mr Tulliver, she knew no harm
of Wakem. And certainly toward herself, whom he knew to have been a
Miss Dodson, it was out of all possibility that he could entertain
anything but good-will, when it was once brought home to his
observation that she, for her part, had never wanted to go to law, and
indeed was at present disposed to take Mr Wakem’s view of all subjects
rather than her husband’s. In fact, if that attorney saw a respectable
matron like herself disposed “to give him good words,” why shouldn’t he
listen to her representations? For she would put the matter clearly
before him, which had never been done yet. And he would never go and
bid for the mill on purpose to spite her, an innocent woman, who
thought it likely enough that she had danced with him in their youth at
Squire Darleigh’s, for at those big dances she had often and often
danced with young men whose names she had forgotten.

Mrs Tulliver hid these reasonings in her own bosom; for when she had
thrown out a hint to Mr Deane and Mr Glegg that she wouldn’t mind going
to speak to Wakem herself, they had said, “No, no, no,” and “Pooh,
pooh,” and “Let Wakem alone,” in the tone of men who were not likely to
give a candid attention to a more definite exposition of her project;
still less dared she mention the plan to Tom and Maggie, for “the
children were always so against everything their mother said”; and Tom,
she observed, was almost as much set against Wakem as his father was.
But this unusual concentration of thought naturally gave Mrs Tulliver
an unusual power of device and determination; and a day or two before
the sale, to be held at the Golden Lion, when there was no longer any
time to be lost, she carried out her plan by a stratagem. There were
pickles in question, a large stock of pickles and ketchup which Mrs
Tulliver possessed, and which Mr Hyndmarsh, the grocer, would certainly
purchase if she could transact the business in a personal interview, so
she would walk with Tom to St Ogg’s that morning; and when Tom urged
that she might let the pickles be at present,—he didn’t like her to go
about just yet,—she appeared so hurt at this conduct in her son,
contradicting her about pickles which she had made after the family
receipts inherited from his own grandmother, who had died when his
mother was a little girl, that he gave way, and they walked together
until she turned toward Danish Street, where Mr Hyndmarsh retailed his
grocery, not far from the offices of Mr Wakem.

That gentleman was not yet come to his office; would Mrs Tulliver sit
down by the fire in his private room and wait for him? She had not long
to wait before the punctual attorney entered, knitting his brow with an
examining glance at the stout blond woman who rose, curtsying
deferentially,—a tallish man, with an aquiline nose and abundant
iron-gray hair. You have never seen Mr Wakem before, and are possibly
wondering whether he was really as eminent a rascal, and as crafty,
bitter an enemy of honest humanity in general, and of Mr Tulliver in
particular, as he is represented to be in that eidolon or portrait of
him which we have seen to exist in the miller’s mind.

It is clear that the irascible miller was a man to interpret any
chance-shot that grazed him as an attempt on his own life, and was
liable to entanglements in this puzzling world, which, due
consideration had to his own infallibility, required the hypothesis of
a very active diabolical agency to explain them. It is still possible
to believe that the attorney was not more guilty toward him than an
ingenious machine, which performs its work with much regularity, is
guilty toward the rash man who, venturing too near it, is caught up by
some fly-wheel or other, and suddenly converted into unexpected
mince-meat.

But it is really impossible to decide this question by a glance at his
person; the lines and lights of the human countenance are like other
symbols,—not always easy to read without a key. On an a priori view
of Wakem’s aquiline nose, which offended Mr Tulliver, there was not
more rascality than in the shape of his stiff shirt-collar, though this
too along with his nose, might have become fraught with damnatory
meaning when once the rascality was ascertained.

“Mrs Tulliver, I think?” said Mr Wakem.

“Yes, sir; Miss Elizabeth Dodson as was.”

“Pray be seated. You have some business with me?”

“Well, sir, yes,” said Mrs Tulliver, beginning to feel alarmed at her
own courage, now she was really in presence of the formidable man, and
reflecting that she had not settled with herself how she should begin.
Mr Wakem felt in his waistcoat pockets, and looked at her in silence.

“I hope, sir,” she began at last,—“I hope, sir, you’re not a-thinking
as I bear you any ill-will because o’ my husband’s losing his
lawsuit, and the bailies being put in, and the linen being sold,—oh
dear!—for I wasn’t brought up in that way. I’m sure you remember my
father, sir, for he was close friends with Squire Darleigh, and we
allays went to the dances there, the Miss Dodsons,—nobody could be more
looked on,—and justly, for there was four of us, and you’re quite aware
as Mrs Glegg and Mrs Deane are my sisters. And as for going to law and
losing money, and having sales before you’re dead, I never saw anything
o’ that before I was married, nor for a long while after. And I’m not
to be answerable for my bad luck i’ marrying out o’ my own family into
one where the goings-on was different. And as for being drawn in t’
abuse you as other folks abuse you, sir, that I niver was, and nobody
can say it of me.”

Mrs Tulliver shook her head a little, and looked at the hem of her
pocket handkerchief.

“I’ve no doubt of what you say, Mrs Tulliver,” said Mr Wakem, with cold
politeness. “But you have some question to ask me?”

“Well, sir, yes. But that’s what I’ve said to myself,—I’ve said you’d
had some nat’ral feeling; and as for my husband, as hasn’t been himself
for this two months, I’m not a-defending him, in no way, for being so
hot about th’ erigation,—not but what there’s worse men, for he never
wronged nobody of a shilling nor a penny, not willingly; and as for his
fieriness and lawing, what could I do? And him struck as if it was with
death when he got the letter as said you’d the hold upo’ the land. But
I can’t believe but what you’ll behave as a gentleman.”

“What does all this mean, Mrs Tulliver?” said Mr Wakem rather sharply.
“What do you want to ask me?”

“Why, sir, if you’ll be so good,” said Mrs Tulliver, starting a little,
and speaking more hurriedly,—“if you’ll be so good not to buy the mill
an’ the land,—the land wouldn’t so much matter, only my husband ull’ be
like mad at your having it.”

Something like a new thought flashed across Mr Wakem’s face as he said,
“Who told you I meant to buy it?”

“Why, sir, it’s none o’ my inventing, and I should never ha’ thought of
it; for my husband, as ought to know about the law, he allays used to
say as lawyers had never no call to buy anything,—either lands or
houses,—for they allays got ’em into their hands other ways. An’ I
should think that ’ud be the way with you, sir; and I niver said as
you’d be the man to do contrairy to that.”

“Ah, well, who was it that did say so?” said Wakem, opening his desk,
and moving things about, with the accompaniment of an almost inaudible
whistle.

“Why, sir, it was Mr Glegg and Mr Deane, as have all the management;
and Mr Deane thinks as Guest & Co. ’ud buy the mill and let Mr Tulliver
work it for ’em, if you didn’t bid for it and raise the price. And it
’ud be such a thing for my husband to stay where he is, if he could get
his living: for it was his father’s before him, the mill was, and his
grandfather built it, though I wasn’t fond o’ the noise of it, when
first I was married, for there was no mills in our family,—not the
Dodson’s,—and if I’d known as the mills had so much to do with the law,
it wouldn’t have been me as ’ud have been the first Dodson to marry
one; but I went into it blindfold, that I did, erigation and
everything.”

“What! Guest & Co. would keep the mill in their own hands, I suppose,
and pay your husband wages?”

“Oh dear, sir, it’s hard to think of,” said poor Mrs Tulliver, a little
tear making its way, “as my husband should take wage. But it ’ud look
more like what used to be, to stay at the mill than to go anywhere
else; and if you’ll only think—if you was to bid for the mill and buy
it, my husband might be struck worse than he was before, and niver get
better again as he’s getting now.”

“Well, but if I bought the mill, and allowed your husband to act as my
manager in the same way, how then?” said Mr Wakem.

“Oh, sir, I doubt he could niver be got to do it, not if the very mill
stood still to beg and pray of him. For your name’s like poison to him,
it’s so as never was; and he looks upon it as you’ve been the ruin of
him all along, ever since you set the law on him about the road through
the meadow,—that’s eight year ago, and he’s been going on ever since—as
I’ve allays told him he was wrong——”

“He’s a pig-headed, foul-mouthed fool!” burst out Mr Wakem, forgetting
himself.

“Oh dear, sir!” said Mrs Tulliver, frightened at a result so different
from the one she had fixed her mind on; “I wouldn’t wish to contradict
you, but it’s like enough he’s changed his mind with this illness,—he’s
forgot a many things he used to talk about. And you wouldn’t like to
have a corpse on your mind, if he was to die; and they do say as it’s
allays unlucky when Dorlcote Mill changes hands, and the water might
all run away, and then—not as I’m wishing you any ill-luck, sir, for
I forgot to tell you as I remember your wedding as if it was yesterday;
Mrs Wakem was a Miss Clint, I know that; and my boy, as there isn’t a
nicer, handsomer, straighter boy nowhere, went to school with your
son——”

Mr Wakem rose, opened the door, and called to one of his clerks.

“You must excuse me for interrupting you, Mrs Tulliver; I have business
that must be attended to; and I think there is nothing more necessary
to be said.”

“But if you would bear it in mind, sir,” said Mrs Tulliver, rising,
“and not run against me and my children; and I’m not denying Mr
Tulliver’s been in the wrong, but he’s been punished enough, and
there’s worse men, for it’s been giving to other folks has been his
fault. He’s done nobody any harm but himself and his family,—the more’s
the pity,—and I go and look at the bare shelves every day, and think
where all my things used to stand.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll bear it in mind,” said Mr Wakem, hastily, looking
toward the open door.

“And if you’d please not to say as I’ve been to speak to you, for my
son ’ud be very angry with me for demeaning myself, I know he would,
and I’ve trouble enough without being scolded by my children.”

Poor Mrs Tulliver’s voice trembled a little, and she could make no
answer to the attorney’s “good morning,” but curtsied and walked out in
silence.

“Which day is it that Dorlcote Mill is to be sold? Where’s the bill?”
said Mr Wakem to his clerk when they were alone.

“Next Friday is the day,—Friday at six o’clock.”

“Oh, just run to Winship’s the auctioneer, and see if he’s at home. I
have some business for him; ask him to come up.”

Although, when Mr Wakem entered his office that morning, he had had no
intention of purchasing Dorlcote Mill, his mind was already made up.
Mrs Tulliver had suggested to him several determining motives, and his
mental glance was very rapid; he was one of those men who can be prompt
without being rash, because their motives run in fixed tracks, and they
have no need to reconcile conflicting aims.

To suppose that Wakem had the same sort of inveterate hatred toward
Tulliver that Tulliver had toward him would be like supposing that a
pike and a roach can look at each other from a similar point of view.
The roach necessarily abhors the mode in which the pike gets his
living, and the pike is likely to think nothing further even of the
most indignant roach than that he is excellent good eating; it could
only be when the roach choked him that the pike could entertain a
strong personal animosity. If Mr Tulliver had ever seriously injured or
thwarted the attorney, Wakem would not have refused him the distinction
of being a special object of his vindictiveness. But when Mr Tulliver
called Wakem a rascal at the market dinner-table, the attorneys’
clients were not a whit inclined to withdraw their business from him;
and if, when Wakem himself happened to be present, some jocose
cattle-feeder, stimulated by opportunity and brandy, made a thrust at
him by alluding to old ladies’ wills, he maintained perfect sang
froid, and knew quite well that the majority of substantial men then
present were perfectly contented with the fact that “Wakem was Wakem”;
that is to say, a man who always knew the stepping-stones that would
carry him through very muddy bits of practice. A man who had made a
large fortune, had a handsome house among the trees at Tofton, and
decidedly the finest stock of port-wine in the neighbourhood of St
Ogg’s, was likely to feel himself on a level with public opinion. And I
am not sure that even honest Mr Tulliver himself, with his general view
of law as a cockpit, might not, under opposite circumstances, have seen
a fine appropriateness in the truth that “Wakem was Wakem”; since I
have understood from persons versed in history, that mankind is not
disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors when their
victory is on the right side. Tulliver, then, could be no obstruction
to Wakem; on the contrary, he was a poor devil whom the lawyer had
defeated several times; a hot-tempered fellow, who would always give
you a handle against him. Wakem’s conscience was not uneasy because he
had used a few tricks against the miller; why should he hate that
unsuccessful plaintiff, that pitiable, furious bull entangled in the
meshes of a net?

Still, among the various excesses to which human nature is subject,
moralists have never numbered that of being too fond of the people who
openly revile us. The successful Yellow candidate for the borough of
Old Topping, perhaps, feels no pursuant meditative hatred toward the
Blue editor who consoles his subscribers with vituperative rhetoric
against Yellow men who sell their country, and are the demons of
private life; but he might not be sorry, if law and opportunity
favoured, to kick that Blue editor to a deeper shade of his favourite
colour. Prosperous men take a little vengeance now and then, as they
take a diversion, when it comes easily in their way, and is no
hindrance to business; and such small unimpassioned revenges have an
enormous effect in life, running through all degrees of pleasant
infliction, blocking the fit men out of places, and blackening
characters in unpremeditated talk. Still more, to see people who have
been only insignificantly offensive to us reduced in life and
humiliated, without any special effort of ours, is apt to have a
soothing, flattering influence. Providence or some other prince of this
world, it appears, has undertaken the task of retribution for us; and
really, by an agreeable constitution of things, our enemies somehow
don’t prosper.

Wakem was not without this parenthetic vindictiveness toward the
uncomplimentary miller; and now Mrs Tulliver had put the notion into
his head, it presented itself to him as a pleasure to do the very thing
that would cause Mr Tulliver the most deadly mortification,—and a
pleasure of a complex kind, not made up of crude malice, but mingling
with it the relish of self-approbation. To see an enemy humiliated
gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the
highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent
action or concession on his behalf. That is a sort of revenge which
falls into the scale of virtue, and Wakem was not without an intention
of keeping that scale respectably filled. He had once had the pleasure
of putting an old enemy of his into one of the St Ogg’s alms-houses, to
the rebuilding of which he had given a large subscription; and here was
an opportunity of providing for another by making him his own servant.
Such things give a completeness to prosperity, and contribute elements
of agreeable consciousness that are not dreamed of by that
short-sighted, overheated vindictiveness which goes out of its way to
wreak itself in direct injury. And Tulliver, with his rough tongue
filed by a sense of obligation, would make a better servant than any
chance-fellow who was cap-in-hand for a situation. Tulliver was known
to be a man of proud honesty, and Wakem was too acute not to believe in
the existence of honesty. He was given to observing individuals, not
to judging of them according to maxims, and no one knew better than he
that all men were not like himself. Besides, he intended to overlook
the whole business of land and mill pretty closely; he was fond of
these practical rural matters. But there were good reasons for
purchasing Dorlcote Mill, quite apart from any benevolent vengeance on
the miller. It was really a capital investment; besides, Guest & Co.
were going to bid for it. Mr Guest and Mr Wakem were on friendly dining
terms, and the attorney liked to predominate over a ship-owner and
mill-owner who was a little too loud in the town affairs as well as in
his table-talk. For Wakem was not a mere man of business; he was
considered a pleasant fellow in the upper circles of St Ogg’s—chatted
amusingly over his port-wine, did a little amateur farming, and had
certainly been an excellent husband and father; at church, when he went
there, he sat under the handsomest of mural monuments erected to the
memory of his wife. Most men would have married again under his
circumstances, but he was said to be more tender to his deformed son
than most men were to their best-shapen offspring. Not that Mr Wakem
had not other sons beside Philip; but toward them he held only a
chiaroscuro parentage, and provided for them in a grade of life duly
beneath his own. In this fact, indeed, there lay the clenching motive
to the purchase of Dorlcote Mill. While Mrs Tulliver was talking, it
had occurred to the rapid-minded lawyer, among all the other
circumstances of the case, that this purchase would, in a few years to
come, furnish a highly suitable position for a certain favourite lad
whom he meant to bring on in the world.

These were the mental conditions on which Mrs Tulliver had undertaken
to act persuasively, and had failed; a fact which may receive some
illustration from the remark of a great philosopher, that fly-fishers
fail in preparing their bait so as to make it alluring in the right
quarter, for want of a due acquaintance with the subjectivity of
fishes.