The World's Greatest Books - Volume 4 Part 12

"Eppie, my dear," said G.o.dfrey, looking at his daughter not without some embarra.s.sment, "it'll always be our wish that you should show your love and grat.i.tude to one who's been a father to you so many years; but we hope you'll come to love us as well, and though I haven't been what a father should ha' been to you all these years, I wish to do the utmost in my power for you now, and provide for you as my only child. And you'll have the best of mothers in my wife."

Eppie did not come forward and curtsy as she had done before, but she held Silas's hand in hers and grasped it firmly.

"Thank you, ma'am--thank you, sir, for your offers--they're very great and far above my wish. For I should have no delight in life any more if I was forced to go away from my father."

In vain Nancy expostulated mildly.

"I can't feel as I've got any father but one," said Eppie. "I've always thought of a little home where he'd sit i' the corner, and I should fend and do everything for him. I can't think o' no other home. I wasn't brought up to be a lady, and," she ended pa.s.sionately, "I'm promised to marry a working man, as'll live with father and help me to take care of him."

G.o.dfrey Ca.s.s and his wife went out.

A year later Eppie was married, and Mrs. G.o.dfrey Ca.s.s provided the wedding dress, and Mr. Ca.s.s made some necessary alterations to suit Silas's larger family.

"Oh, father," said Eppie, when the bridal party returned from the church, "what a pretty home ours is! I think n.o.body could be happier than we are!"

The Mill on the Floss

In "The Mill on the Floss," published in 1860, George Eliot went to her own early life for the chief characters in the story, and in the relations of Tom and Maggie Tulliver we get a picture of the youth of Mary Ann Evans and her brother Isaac. Lord Lytton objected that Maggie was too pa.s.sive in the scene at Red Deeps, and that the tragedy of the flood was not adequately prepared. To this criticism George Eliot answered, "Now that the defect is suggested to me, if the book were still in ma.n.u.script I should alter, or rather expand, that scene at Red Deeps." She also admitted that there was "a want of proportionate fulness" in the conclusion. But, with all its faults, "The Mill on the Floss" deserves the reputation it has won. The reception of the story at first was disappointing, and we find the auth.o.r.ess telling her publisher that "she does not want to see any newspaper articles." But the book made its way, and prepared an ever-growing public for "Silas Marner."

_I.--The Tullivers of Dorlcote Mill_

"What I want, you know," said Mr. Tulliver, "what I want is to give Tom a good eddication--an eddication as'll be a bread to him. I mean to put him to a downright good school at midsummer. The two years at th'

academy 'ud ha' done well enough if I'd meant to make a miller and farmer of him, but I should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard. It 'ud be a help to me wi' these lawsuits, and arbitrations, and things. I wouldn't make a downright lawyer o' the lad--I should be sorry for him to be a raskill--but a sort of engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Riley, or one o' them smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big watch-chain and a high stool.

They're pretty nigh all one, and they're not far off being even wi' the law, I believe; for Riley looks Lawyer Wakem i' the face as hard as one cat looks another. _He's_ none frightened at him."

Mr. Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blonde, comely woman, nearly forty years old.

"Well, Mr. Tulliver, you know best. _I've_ no objections. But if Tom's to go to a new school, I should like him to go where I can wash him and mend him, else he might as well have calico as linen. And then, when the box is goin' backwards and forwards, I could send the lad a cake, or a pork-pie, or an apple."

"Well, well, we won't send him out o' reach o' the carrier's cart, if other things fit in," said Mr. Tulliver. "Riley's as likely a man as any to know o' some school; he's had schooling himself, an' goes about to all sorts o' places--arbitratin' and vallyin', and that."

So a day or two later Mr. Riley, the auctioneer, came to Dorlcote Mill, and stayed the night, the better that Mr. Tulliver, who was slow at coming to a point, might consult him on the all-important subject of his boy.

"You see, I want to put him to a new school at midsummer," said Mr.

Tulliver, when the topic had been reached. "I want to send him to a downright good school, where they'll make a scholard of him. I don't mean Tom to be a miller an' farmer. I see no fun i' that. I shall give Tom an eddication and put him to a business as he may make a nest for himself, an' not want to push me out o' mine."

At the sound of her brother's name, Maggie, the second and only other child of the Tullivers, who was seated on a low stool close by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, looked up eagerly. Tom, it appeared, was supposed capable of turning his father out of doors. This was not to be borne, and Maggie jumped up from her stool, and going up between her father's knees, said, in a half-crying, half-indignant voice, "Father, Tom wouldn't be naughty to you ever; I know he wouldn't."

Mr. Tulliver's heart was touched.

"What! They mustn't say any harm o' Tom, eh?" he said, looking at Maggie with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr. Riley, "She understands what one's talking about so as never was. And you should hear her read--straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. But it's bad--it's bad. A woman's no business wi' being so clever; it'll turn to trouble, I doubt. It's a pity, but what she'd been the lad--she'd ha' been a match for the lawyers, she would."

Mr. Riley took a pinch of snuff before he said, "But your lad's not stupid, is he? I saw him, when I was here last, busy making fis.h.i.+ng-tackle; he seemed quite up to it."

"Well, he isn't not to say stupid; he's got a notion o' things out o'

door, an' a sort o' commonsense, as he'd lay hold o' things by the right handle. But he's slow with his tongue, you see, and reads but poorly, and can't abide the books, and spells all wrong, they tell me, an' as shy as can be wi' strangers. Now, what I want is to send him to a school where they'll make him a bit nimble with his tongue and his pen, to make a smart chap of him. I want my son to be even wi' these fellows as have got the start o' me with schooling."

The talk ended in Mr. Riley recommending a country parson named Stelling as a suitable tutor for Tom, and Mr. Tulliver decided that his son should go to Mr. Stelling at King's Lorton, fifteen miles from Dorlcote Mill.

_II.--School-Time_

Tom Tulliver's sufferings during the first quarter he was at King's Lorton, under the distinguished care of the Rev. Walter Stelling, were rather severe. 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 riding about, giving orders, and going to market.

Mr. Stelling was not a harsh-tempered or unkind man--quite the contrary, but he thought Tom a stupid boy, and determined to develop his powers through Latin grammar and Euclid to the best of his ability.

As for Tom, he had no distinct idea how there came to be such a thing as Latin on this earth. It would have taken a long while to make it 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, or why he should be called upon to learn it, when its connection with those affairs had become entirely latent. He was of a very firm, not to say obstinate disposition, but there was no brute-like rebellion or recklessness in his nature; the human sensibilities predominated, and he was anxious to acquire Mr. Stelling's approbation by showing some quickness at his lessons, if he had known how to accomplish it.

In his secret heart Tom yearned to have Maggie with him, and, before the first dreary half-year was ended, Maggie actually came. Mrs. Stelling 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 Lorton late in October, Maggie came too, with the sense that she was taking a great journey, and beginning to see the world.

"Well, my lad," Mr. Tulliver said, "you look rarely! School agrees with you!"

"I don't think I _am_ well, father," said Tom; "I wish you'd ask Mr.

Stelling not to let me do Euclid--it brings on the toothache, I think."

"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."

In the second term Mr. Stelling had a second pupil--Philip, the son of Lawyer Wakem, Mr. Tulliver's standing enemy.

Philip was a very old-looking boy, Tom thought. His spine had been deformed through an accident in infancy, and to Tom he was simply a humpback. He had a vague notion that the deformity of Wakem's son had some relation to the lawyer's rascality, of which he had so often heard his father talk with hot emphasis.

There was a natural antipathy of temperament between the two boys; for Tom was an excellent bovine lad, and Philip was sensitive, and suffered acute pain when the other blurted out offensive things.

Maggie, on her second visit to King's Lorton, p.r.o.nounced Philip to be "a nice boy."

"He couldn't choose his father, you know," she said to Tom. "And I've read of very bad men who had good sons, as well as good parents who had bad children."

"Oh, he's a queer fellow," said Tom curtly, "and he's as sulky as can be with me because I told him his father was a rogue. And I'd a right to tell him so, for it was true--and he began it with calling me names."

An accident to Tom's foot brought the two boys nearer again, and also threw Philip and Maggie together.

"Maggie," said Philip one day, "if you had had a brother like me, do you think you should have loved him as well as Tom?"

"Oh, yes, better," she answered immediately. "No, not better; because I don't think I could love you better than Tom. But I should be so sorry--so sorry for you."