The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot [rocket ebook reader txt] 📗

Saturnalian time to Kezia; she could scold her betters with unreproved freedom. On this particular occasion there were drying clothes to be fetched in; she wished to know if one pair of hands could do everything indoors and out, and observed that she should have thought it would be good for Mrs. Tulliver to put on her bonnet, and get a breath of fresh air by doing that needful piece of work. Poor Mrs. Tulliver went submissively downstairs; to be ordered about by a servant was the last remnant of her household dignities⁠—she would soon have no servant to scold her. Mr. Tulliver was resting in his chair a little after the fatigue of dressing, and Maggie and Tom were seated near him, when Luke entered to ask if he should help master downstairs.

“Ay, ay, Luke; stop a bit, sit down,” said Mr. Tulliver pointing his stick toward a chair, and looking at him with that pursuant gaze which convalescent persons often have for those who have tended them, reminding one of an infant gazing about after its nurse. For Luke had been a constant night-watcher by his master’s bed.

“How’s the water now, eh, Luke?” said Mr. Tulliver. “Dix hasn’t been choking you up again, eh?”

“No, sir, it’s all right.”

“Ay, I thought not; he won’t be in a hurry at that again, now Riley’s been to settle him. That was what I said to Riley yesterday⁠—I said⁠—”

Mr. Tulliver leaned forward, resting his elbows on the armchair, and looking on the ground as if in search of something, striving after vanishing images like a man struggling against a doze. Maggie looked at Tom in mute distress, their father’s mind was so far off the present, which would by-and-by thrust itself on his wandering consciousness! Tom was almost ready to rush away, with that impatience of painful emotion which makes one of the differences between youth and maiden, man and woman.

“Father,” said Maggie, laying her hand on his, “don’t you remember that Mr. Riley is dead?”

“Dead?” said Mr. Tulliver, sharply, looking in her face with a strange, examining glance.

“Yes, he died of apoplexy nearly a year ago. I remember hearing you say you had to pay money for him; and he left his daughters badly off; one of them is under-teacher at Miss Firniss’s, where I’ve been to school, you know.”

“Ah?” said her father, doubtfully, still looking in her face. But as soon as Tom began to speak he turned to look at him with the same inquiring glances, as if he were rather surprised at the presence of these two young people. Whenever his mind was wandering in the far past, he fell into this oblivion of their actual faces; they were not those of the lad and the little wench who belonged to that past.

“It’s a long while since you had the dispute with Dix, father,” said Tom. “I remember your talking about it three years ago, before I went to school at Mr. Stelling’s. I’ve been at school there three years; don’t you remember?”

Mr. Tulliver threw himself backward again, losing the childlike outward glance under a rush of new ideas, which diverted him from external impressions.

“Ay, ay,” he said, after a minute or two, “I’ve paid a deal o’ money⁠—I was determined my son should have a good eddication; I’d none myself, and I’ve felt the miss of it. And he’ll want no other fortin, that’s what I say⁠—if Wakem was to get the better of me again⁠—”

The thought of Wakem roused new vibrations, and after a moment’s pause he began to look at the coat he had on, and to feel in his side-pocket. Then he turned to Tom, and said in his old sharp way, “Where have they put Gore’s letter?”

It was close at hand in a drawer, for he had often asked for it before.

“You know what there is in the letter, father?” said Tom, as he gave it to him.

“To be sure I do,” said Mr. Tulliver, rather angrily. “What o’ that? If Furley can’t take to the property, somebody else can; there’s plenty o’ people in the world besides Furley. But it’s hindering⁠—my not being well⁠—go and tell ’em to get the horse in the gig, Luke; I can get down to St. Ogg’s well enough⁠—Gore’s expecting me.”

“No, dear father!” Maggie burst out entreatingly; “it’s a very long while since all that; you’ve been ill a great many weeks⁠—more than two months; everything is changed.”

Mr. Tulliver looked at them all three alternately with a startled gaze; the idea that much had happened of which he knew nothing had often transiently arrested him before, but it came upon him now with entire novelty.

“Yes, father,” said Tom, in answer to the gaze. “You needn’t trouble your mind about business until you are quite well; everything is settled about that for the present⁠—about the mill and the land and the debts.”

“What’s settled, then?” said his father, angrily.

“Don’t you take on too much bout it, sir,” said Luke. “You’d ha’ paid iverybody if you could⁠—that’s what I said to Master Tom⁠—I said you’d ha’ paid iverybody if you could.”

Good Luke felt, after the manner of contented hardworking men whose lives have been spent in servitude, that sense of natural fitness in rank which made his master’s downfall a tragedy to him. He was urged, in his slow way, to say something that would express his share in the family sorrow; and these words, which he had used over and over again to Tom when he wanted to decline the full payment of his fifty pounds out of the children’s money, were the most ready to his tongue. They were just the words to lay the most painful hold on his master’s bewildered mind.

“Paid everybody?” he said, with vehement agitation, his face flushing, and his eye lighting up. “Why⁠—what⁠—have they made me a bankrupt?”

“Oh, father, dear father!” said Maggie, who thought that terrible word really represented the fact; “bear it well, because we love you; your children will always love you. Tom will pay them all; he says he will, when he’s