The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot [books to read to increase intelligence .txt] 📗

The next day, at ten o’clock, Tom was on his way to St. Ogg’s, to see his uncle Deane, who was to come home last night, his aunt had said; and Tom had made up his mind that his uncle Deane was the right person to ask for advice about getting some employment. He was in a great way of business; he had not the narrow notions of uncle Glegg; and he had risen in the world on a scale of advancement which accorded with Tom’s ambition.

It was a dark, chill, misty morning, likely to end in rain,—one of those mornings when even happy people take refuge in their hopes. And Tom was very unhappy; he felt the humiliation as well as the prospective hardships of his lot with all the keenness of a proud nature; and with all his resolute dutifulness toward his father there mingled an irrepressible indignation against him which gave misfortune the less endurable aspect of a wrong. Since these were the consequences of going to law, his father was really blamable, as his aunts and uncles had always said he was; and it was a significant indication of Tom’s character, that though he thought his aunts ought to do something more for his mother, he felt nothing like Maggie’s violent resentment against them for showing no eager tenderness and generosity. There were no impulses in Tom that led him to expect what did not present itself to him as a right to be demanded. Why should people give away their money plentifully to those who had not taken care of their own money? Tom saw some justice in severity; and all the more, because he had confidence in himself that he should never deserve that just severity. It was very hard upon him that he should be put at this disadvantage in life by his father’s want of prudence; but he was not going to complain and to find fault with people because they did not make everything easy for him. He would ask no one to help him, more than to give him work and pay him for it. Poor Tom was not without his hopes to take refuge in under the chill damp imprisonment of the December fog, which seemed only like a part of his home troubles. At sixteen, the mind that has the strongest affinity for fact cannot escape illusion and self-flattery; and Tom, in sketching his future, had no other guide in arranging his facts than the suggestions of his own brave self-reliance. Both Mr. Glegg and Mr. Deane, he knew, had been very poor once; he did not want to save money slowly and retire on a moderate fortune like his uncle Glegg, but he would be like his uncle Deane—get a situation in some great house of business and rise fast. He had scarcely seen anything of his uncle Deane for the last three years—the two families had been getting wider apart; but for this very reason Tom was the more hopeful about applying to him. His uncle Glegg, he felt sure, would never encourage any spirited project, but he had a vague imposing idea of the resources at his uncle Deane’s command. He had heard his father say, long ago, how Deane had made himself so valuable to Guest & Co. that they were glad enough to offer him a share in the business; that was what Tom resolved he would do. It was intolerable to think of being poor and looked down upon all one’s life. He would provide for his mother and sister, and make every one say that he was a man of high character. He leaped over the years in this way, and, in the haste of strong purpose and strong desire, did not see how they would be made up of slow days, hours, and minutes.

By the time he had crossed the stone bridge over the Floss and was entering St. Ogg’s, he was thinking that he would buy his father’s mill and land again when he was rich enough, and improve the house and live there; he should prefer it to any smarter, newer place, and he could keep as many horses and dogs as he liked.

Walking along the street with a firm, rapid step, at this point in his reverie he was startled by some one who had crossed without his notice, and who said to him in a rough, familiar voice:

“Why, Master Tom, how’s your father this morning?” It was a publican of St. Ogg’s, one of his father’s customers.

Tom disliked being spoken to just then; but he said civilly, “He’s still very ill, thank you.”

“Ay, it’s been a sore chance for you, young man, hasn’t it,—this lawsuit turning out against him?” said the publican, with a confused, beery idea of being good-natured.

Tom reddened and passed on; he would have felt it like the handling of a bruise, even if there had been the most polite and delicate reference to his position.

“That’s Tulliver’s son,” said the publican to a grocer standing on the adjacent door-step.

“Ah!” said the grocer, “I thought I knew his features. He takes after his mother’s family; she was a Dodson. He’s a fine, straight youth; what’s he been brought up to?”

“Oh! to turn up his nose at his father’s customers, and be a fine gentleman,—not much else, I think.”

Tom, roused from his dream of the future to a thorough consciousness of the present, made all the greater haste to reach the warehouse offices of Guest & Co., where he expected to find his uncle Deane. But this was Mr. Deane’s morning at the band, a clerk told him, and with some contempt for his ignorance; Mr. Deane was not to be found in River Street on a Thursday morning.

At the bank Tom was admitted into the private room where his uncle was, immediately after sending in his name. Mr. Deane was auditing accounts; but he looked up as Tom entered, and putting out his hand, said, “Well, Tom, nothing fresh the matter at home, I hope? How’s your father?”

“Much the same, thank you, uncle,” said Tom, feeling nervous. “But I want to speak to you, please, when you’re at liberty.”

“Sit down, sit down,” said Mr. Deane, relapsing into his accounts, in which he and the managing-clerk remained so absorbed for the next half-hour that Tom began to wonder whether he should have to sit in this way till the bank closed,—there seemed so little tendency toward a conclusion in the quiet, monotonous procedure of these sleek, prosperous men of business. Would his uncle give him a place in the bank? It would be very dull, prosy work, he thought, writing there forever to the loud ticking of a timepiece. He preferred some other way of getting rich. But at last there was a change; his uncle took a pen and wrote something with a flourish at the end.

“You’ll just step up to Torry’s now, Mr. Spence, will you?” said Mr. Deane, and the clock suddenly became less loud and deliberate in Tom’s ears.

“Well, Tom,” said Mr. Deane, when they were alone, turning his substantial person a little in his chair, and taking out his snuff-box; “what’s the business, my boy; what’s the business?” Mr. Deane, who had heard from his wife what had passed the day before, thought Tom was come to appeal to him for some means of averting the sale.

“I hope you’ll excuse me for troubling you, uncle,” said Tom, coloring, but speaking in a tone which, though, tremulous, had a certain proud independence in it; “but I thought you were the best person to advise me what to do.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Deane, reserving his pinch of snuff, and looking at Tom with new attention, “let us hear.”

“I want to get a situation, uncle, so that I may earn some money,” said Tom, who never fell into circumlocution.

“A situation?” said Mr. Deane, and then took his pinch of snuff with elaborate justice to each nostril. Tom thought snuff-taking a most provoking habit.

“Why, let me see, how old are you?” said Mr. Deane, as he threw himself backward again.

“Sixteen; I mean, I am going in seventeen,” said Tom, hoping his uncle noticed how much beard he had.

“Let me see; your father had some notion of making you an engineer, I think?”

“But I don’t think I could get any money at that for a long while, could I?”

“That’s true; but people don’t get much money at anything, my boy, when they’re only sixteen. You’ve had a good deal of schooling, however; I suppose you’re pretty well up in accounts, eh?