The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (good novels to read in english .txt) 📕
Mrs. Tulliver rapped the window sharply, beckoned, and shook herhead,--a process which she repeated more than once before she returnedto her chair.
"You talk o' 'cuteness, Mr. Tulliver," she observed as she sat down,"but I'm sure the child's half an idiot i' some things; for if I sendher upstairs to fetch anything, she forgets what she's gone for, an'perhaps 'ull sit down on the floor i' the sunshine an' plait her hairan' sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur', all the while I'm waitingfor her downstairs. That niver run i' my family, thank God! no morenor a brown skin as makes her look like a mulatter. I don't like tofly i' the face o' Providence, but it seems hard as I should have butone gell, an' her s
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- Author: George Eliot
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Mrs. Tulliver burst out crying afresh, and she sobbed with her handkerchief at her eyes a few moments, but then removing it, she said in a deprecating way, still half sobbing, as if she were called upon to speak before she could command her voice,—
“And I did say to him times and times, ‘Whativer you do, don’t go to law,’ and what more could I do? I’ve had to sit by while my own fortin’s been spent, and what should ha’ been my children’s, too. You’ll have niver a penny, my boy—but it isn’t your poor mother’s fault.”
She put out one arm toward Tom, looking up at him piteously with her helpless, childish blue eyes. The poor lad went to her and kissed her, and she clung to him. For the first time Tom thought of his father with some reproach. His natural inclination to blame, hitherto kept entirely in abeyance toward his father by the predisposition to think him always right, simply on the ground that he was Tom Tulliver’s father, was turned into this new channel by his mother’s plaints; and with his indignation against Wakem there began to mingle some indignation of another sort. Perhaps his father might have helped bringing them all down in the world, and making people talk of them with contempt, but no one should talk long of Tom Tulliver with contempt.
The natural strength and firmness of his nature was beginning to assert itself, urged by the double stimulus of resentment against his aunts, and the sense that he must behave like a man and take care of his mother.
“Don’t fret, mother,” he said tenderly. “I shall soon be able to get money; I’ll get a situation of some sort.”
“Bless you, my boy!” said Mrs. Tulliver, a little soothed. Then, looking round sadly, “But I shouldn’t ha’ minded so much if we could ha’ kept the things wi’ my name on ‘em.”
Maggie had witnessed this scene with gathering anger. The implied reproaches against her father—her father, who was lying there in a sort of living death—neutralized all her pity for griefs about tablecloths and china; and her anger on her father’s account was heightened by some egoistic resentment at Tom’s silent concurrence with her mother in shutting her out from the common calamity. She had become almost indifferent to her mother’s habitual depreciation of her, but she was keenly alive to any sanction of it, however passive, that she might suspect in Tom. Poor Maggie was by no means made up of unalloyed devotedness, but put forth large claims for herself where she loved strongly. She burst out at last in an agitated, almost violent tone: “Mother, how can you talk so; as if you cared only for things with your name on, and not for what has my father’s name too; and to care about anything but dear father himself!—when he’s lying there, and may never speak to us again. Tom, you ought to say so too; you ought not to let any one find fault with my father.”
Maggie, almost choked with mingled grief and anger, left the room, and took her old place on her father’s bed. Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed all her life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.
Her father had always defended and excused her, and her loving remembrance of his tenderness was a force within her that would enable her to do or bear anything for his sake.
Tom was a little shocked at Maggie’s outburst,—telling him as well as his mother what it was right to do! She ought to have learned better than have those hectoring, assuming manners, by this time. But he presently went into his father’s room, and the sight there touched him in a way that effaced the slighter impressions of the previous hour. When Maggie saw how he was moved, she went to him and put her arm round his neck as he sat by the bed, and the two children forgot everything else in the sense that they had one father and one sorrow.
It was at eleven o’clock the next morning that the aunts and uncles came to hold their consultation. The fire was lighted in the large parlor, and poor Mrs. Tulliver, with a confused impression that it was a great occasion, like a funeral, unbagged the bell-rope tassels, and unpinned the curtains, adjusting them in proper folds, looking round and shaking her head sadly at the polished tops and legs of the tables, which sister Pullet herself could not accuse of insufficient brightness.
Mr. Deane was not coming, he was away on business; but Mrs. Deane appeared punctually in that handsome new gig with the head to it, and the livery-servant driving it, which had thrown so clear a light on several traits in her character to some of her female friends in St. Ogg’s. Mr. Deane had been advancing in the world as rapidly as Mr. Tulliver had been going down in it; and in Mrs. Deane’s house the Dodson linen and plate were beginning to hold quite a subordinate position, as a mere supplement to the handsomer articles of the same kind, purchased in recent years,—a change which had caused an occasional coolness in the sisterly intercourse between her and Mrs. Glegg, who felt that Susan was getting “like the rest,” and there would soon be little of the true Dodson spirit surviving except in herself, and, it might be hoped, in those nephews who supported the Dodson name on the family land, far away in the Wolds.
People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes; and it seems superfluous, when we consider the remote geographical position of the Ethiopians, and how very little the Greeks had to do with them, to inquire further why Homer calls them “blameless.”
Mrs. Deane was the first to arrive; and when she had taken her seat in the large parlor, Mrs. Tulliver came down to her with her comely face a little distorted, nearly as it would have been if she had been crying. She was not a woman who could shed abundant tears, except in moments when the prospect of losing her furniture became unusually vivid, but she felt how unfitting it was to be quite calm under present circumstances.
“Oh, sister, what a world this is!” she exclaimed as she entered; “what trouble, oh dear!”
Mrs. Deane was a thin-lipped woman, who made small well-considered speeches on peculiar occasions, repeating them afterward to her husband, and asking him if she had not spoken very properly.
“Yes, sister,” she said deliberately, “this is a changing world, and we don’t know to-day what may happen tomorrow. But it’s right to be prepared for all things, and if trouble’s sent, to remember as it isn’t sent without a cause. I’m very sorry for you as a sister, and if the doctor orders jelly for Mr. Tulliver, I hope you’ll let me know. I’ll send it willingly; for it is but right he should have proper attendance while he’s ill.”
“Thank you, Susan,” said Mrs. Tulliver, rather faintly, withdrawing her fat hand from her sister’s thin one. “But there’s been no talk o’ jelly yet.” Then after a moment’s pause she added, “There’s a dozen o’ cut jelly-glasses upstairs—I shall never put jelly into ‘em no more.”
Her voice was rather agitated as she uttered the last words, but the sound of wheels diverted her thoughts. Mr. and Mrs. Glegg were come, and were almost immediately followed by Mr. and Mrs. Pullet.
Mrs. Pullet entered crying, as a compendious mode, at all times, of expressing what were her views of life in general, and what, in brief, were the opinions she held concerning the particular case before her.
Mrs. Glegg had on her fuzziest front, and garments which appeared to have had a recent resurrection from rather a creasy form of burial; a costume selected with the high moral purpose of instilling perfect humility into Bessy and her children.
“Mrs. G., won’t you come nearer the fire?” said her husband, unwilling to take the more comfortable seat without offering it to her.
“You see I’ve seated myself here, Mr. Glegg,” returned this superior woman; “you can roast yourself, if you like.”
“Well,” said Mr. Glegg, seating himself good-humoredly, “and how’s the poor man upstairs?”
“Dr. Turnbull thought him a deal better this morning,” said Mrs. Tulliver; “he took more notice, and spoke to me; but he’s never known Tom yet,—looks at the poor lad as if he was a stranger, though he said something once about Tom and the pony. The doctor says his memory’s gone a long way back, and he doesn’t know Tom because he’s thinking of him when he was little. Eh dear, eh dear!”
“I doubt it’s the water got on his brain,” said aunt Pullet, turning round from adjusting her cap in a melancholy way at the pier-glass. “It’s much if he ever gets up again; and if he does, he’ll most like be childish, as Mr. Carr was, poor man! They fed him with a spoon as if he’d been a babby for three year. He’d quite lost the use of his limbs; but then he’d got a Bath chair, and somebody to draw him; and that’s what you won’t have, I doubt, Bessy.”
“Sister Pullet,” said Mrs. Glegg, severely, “if I understand right, we’ve come together this morning to advise and consult about what’s to be done in this disgrace as has fallen upon the family, and not to talk o’ people as don’t belong to us. Mr. Carr was none of our blood, nor noways connected with us, as I’ve ever heared.”
“Sister Glegg,” said Mrs. Pullet, in a pleading tone, drawing on her gloves again, and stroking the fingers in an agitated manner, “if you’ve got anything disrespectful to say o’ Mr. Carr, I do beg of you as you won’t say it to me. I know what he was,” she added, with a sigh; “his breath was short to that degree as you could hear him two rooms off.”
“Sophy!” said Mrs. Glegg, with indignant disgust, “you do talk o’ people’s complaints till it’s quite undecent. But I say again, as I said before, I didn’t come away from home to talk about acquaintances, whether they’d short breath or long. If we aren’t come together for one to hear what the other ‘ull do to save a sister and her children from the parish, I shall go back. One can’t act without the other, I suppose; it isn’t to be expected as I should do everything.”
“Well, Jane,” said Mrs. Pullet, “I don’t see as you’ve been so very forrard at doing. So far as I know, this is the first time as here you’ve been, since it’s been known as the bailiff’s in the house; and I was here yesterday, and looked at all Bessy’s linen and things, and I told her I’d buy in the spotted tablecloths. I couldn’t speak fairer; for as for the teapot as she doesn’t want to go out o’ the family, it stands to sense I can’t do with two silver teapots, not
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