CHAPTER 8
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Mr Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side`SUPPOSE sister Glegg should call her money in - it ud be very awkward for you to have to raise five hundred pounds now, said Mrs Tulliver to her husband that evening, as she took a plaintive review of the day. Mrs Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married life a facility of saying things which drove him in the opposite dire to the one she desired. Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal gold-fish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it swim in a straight line beyond the encirg glass. Mrs Tulliver was an amiable fish of this kind, and after running her head against the same resisting medium for thirteen years would go at it again to-day with undulled alacrity.
This observation of hers tended directly to vince Mr Tulliver that it would not be at all awkward for him to raise five hundred pounds, and when Mrs Tulliver became rather pressing to know how he would raise it without ming the mill and the house which he had said he never would me, sinoeople were none so ready to lend money without security, Mr Tulliver, getting warm, declared that Mrs Glegg might do as she liked about calling in her money - he should pay it in, whether or not. He was not going to be beholding to his wifes sisters. When a man had married into a family where there was a whole litter of women, he might have plenty to put up with if he choose. But Mr Tulliver did not choose.
Mrs Tulliver cried a little in a trig quiet way as she put on her nightcap; but presently sank into a fortable sleep, lulled by the thought that she would talk everything over with her sister Pullet tomorrow when she was to take the children to Garum Firs to tea. Not that she looked forward to any distinct issue from that talk, but it seemed impossible that past events should be so obstinate as to remain unmodified when they were plained against.
Her husband lay awake rather longer, for he too was thinking of a visit he would pay on the morrow, and his ideas on the subject were not of so vague and soothing a kind as those of his amiable partner.
Mr Tulliver, when uhe influence of a strong feeling, had a promptitude in a that may seem insistent with that painful sense of the plicated puzzling nature of human affairs under which his more dispassionate deliberations were ducted; but it is really not improbable that there was a direct relatioween these apparently tradictory phenomena, since I have observed that fetting a strong impression that a skein is tahere is nothing like snatg hastily at a sihread. It was owing to this promptitude that Mr Tulliver was on horse-back soon after dihe day - (he was not dyspeptic) - on his way to Basset to see his sister Moss and her husband. For having made up his mind irrevocably that he would pay Mrs Glegg her loan of five hundred pounds, it naturally occurred to him that he had a promissory note for three hundred pounds lent to his brother-in-law Moss, and if said brother-in-law could mao pay in the money within a given time, it would go far to lessen the fallacious air of invenience which Mr Tullivers spirited step might have worn in the eyes of eople who require to know precisely how a thing is to be done before they are strongly fident that it will be easy.
For Mr Tulliver was in a positioher new nor striking but, like other everyday things, sure to have a cumulative effect that will be felt in the long run: he was held to be a much more substantial man than he really was. And as we are all apt to believe what the world believes about us, it was his habit to think of failure and ruin with the same sort of remote pity with which a spare long-necked man hears that his plethoric short-necked neighbour is stri with apoplexy. He had been always used to hear pleasant jokes about his advantages as a man who worked his own mill and owned a pretty bit of land; and these jokes naturally kept up his sehat<bdi>?99ｌib?</bdi> he was a man of siderable substahey gave a pleasant flavour to his glass on a market-day, and if it had not been for the recurrence of half-yearly payments Mr Tulliver would really have fotten that there was a me of two thousand pounds on his mill and homestead. That was not altogether his own fault, sine of the thousand pounds was his sisters fortune, which he had had to pay on her marriage, and a man who has neighbours that will go to law with him is not likely to pay off his mes, especially if he enjoys the good opinion of acquaintances who want to borrow a hundred pounds on security too lofty to be represented by part. Our friend Mr Tulliver had a good-natured fibre in him, and did not like to give harsh refusals even to a sister, who had not only e into the world in that superfluous way characteristic of sisters, creating a y for mes, but had quite thrown herself away in marriage and had ed her mistakes by having ah baby. On this point Mr Tulliver was scious of being a little weak, but he apologised to himself by saying that pritty had been a good-looking wench before she married Moss - he would sometimes say this even with a slight tremulousness in his voice. But this m he was in a mood more being a man a business, and in the course of his ride along the Basset lanes, with their deep ruts, lying so far away from a market-town that the labour of drawing produd manure was enough to take away the best part of the profits on such poor land as that parish was made of, he got up a due amount of irritation against Moss as a man without capital, who if murrain and blight were abroad was sure to have his share of them, and who, the more you tried to help him out of the mud, would sink the further in. It would do him good rather than harm, now, if he were obliged to raise this three hundred pounds: it would make him look about him better, and not act so foolishly about his wool this year as he did the last: in fact, Mr Tulliver had been too easy with his brother-in-law, and because he had let the i run on for two years, Moss was likely enough to think that he should never be troubled about the principal. But Mr Tulliver was determined not to ence such shuffling people any longer, and a ride along the Basset lanes was not likely to ee a mans resolution by softening his temper. The deep-trodden hoof-marks made in the muddiest days of winter gave him a shake now and then which suggested a rash but stimulating snarl at the father of lawyers who, whether by means of his hoof or otherwise, had doubtless something to do with this state of the roads; and the abundance of foul land and ed fehat met his eye, though they made no part of his brother Mosss farm, strongly tributed to his dissatisfa with that unlucky agriculturist. If this wasnt Mosss fallow, it might have been: Basset was all alike; it was a beggarly parish in Mr Tullivers opinion, and his opinion was certainly not groundless. Basset had a poor soil, poor roads, a poor non-resident landlord, a poor non-resident vicar, and rather less than half a curate, also poor. If any orongly impressed with the power of the human mind to triumph over circumstances, will tend that the parishioners of Basset might heless have been a very superior class of people, I have nothing te against that abstract proposition: I only know that in point of fact the Basset mind was in strict keeping with its circumstahe muddy lanes, green or clayey, that seemed to the unaced eye <tt>藏书网</tt>to lead nowhere but into each other, did really lead, with patieo a distant high-road, but there were ma in Basset which they led more frequently to a tre of dissipation spoken of formally as the `Markis o Granby but among intimates as `Dickisons. A large low room with a sanded floor, a cold st of tobaodified by ued beer-dregs, Mr Dickison leaning against the doorpost with a melancholy pimpled face looking as irrelevant to the daylight as a last nights guttered dle - all this may not seem a very seductive form of temptation; but the majority of men in Basset found it fatally alluring when entered on their road towards four oclo a wintry afternoon; and if any wife in Basset wished to indicate that her husband was not a pleasure-seeking man, she could hardly do it more emphatically than by saying that he didnt spend a shilling at Dickisons from one Whitsuo another. Mrs Moss had said so of her husband more than once, when her brother was in a mood to find fault with him, as he certainly was to-day. And nothing could be less pacifying to Mr Tulliver than the behaviour of the farmyard gate, which he no sootempted to push open with his riding stick than it acted as gates without the upper hinge are known to do, to the peril of shins, whether equine or human. He was about to get down and lead his horse through the damp dirt of the hollow farmyard, shadowed drearily by the large half-tim-bered buildings, up to the long line of tumble-down dwelling-house standing on a raised causeway, but the timely appearance of a cowboy saved him that frustration of a plan he had determined on, namely not to get down from his horse during this visit. If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the and of a distant horizon. Mrs Moss heard the sound of the horses feet and when her brother rode up, was already outside the kit door with a half-weary smile on her face, and a black-eyed baby in her arms. Mrs Mosss face bore a faded resemblao her brothers: babys little fat hand pressed against her cheek seemed to show more strikingly that the cheek was faded.
`Brother, Im glad to see you, she said, in an affeate tone. `I didnt look for you today. How do you do?
`Oh... pretty well, Mrs Moss... pretty well, answered the brother, with cool deliberateness, as if it were rather too forward of her to ask that question. She k ohat her brother was not in a good humour: he never called her Mrs Moss expect when he was angry and when they were in pany. But she thought it was in the order of nature that people who were poorly off should be snubbed. Mrs Moss did not take her stand on the equality of the human race: she atient, loosely-hung, child-produg woman.
`Your husband isnt in the house, I suppose? added Mr Tulliver, after a grave pause, during which four children had run out, like chis whose mother has been suddenly in eclipse behind the hen-coop.
`No, said Mrs Moss, `but hes only iato-field yey, run to the Far Close in a minute and tell father your uncles e. Youll get down, brother, wont you, and take something?
`No, no; I t get down - I must be going home again directly, said Mr Tulliver, looking at the distance.
`And hows Mrs Tulliver and the children? said Mrs Moss humbly, not daring to press her invitation.
`Oh... pretty well. Toms going to a new school at Midsummer - a deal of<dfn>.99lib.</dfn> expeo me. Its bad work for me lying out o my money.
`I wish youd be so good as let the children e aheir cousins some day. My little uns want to see their cousin Maggie, so as never was. And me her god-mother and so fond of her - theres nobody ud make a bigger fuss with her acc to what theyve got. And I know she likes to e - for shes a loving child, and how quid clever she is, to be sure!
If Mrs Moss had been one of the most astute women in the world instead of being one of the simplest, she could have thought of nothing more likely to propitiate her brother than this praise of Maggie. He seldom found any one volunteering praise of `the little wench: it was usually left eo himself to insist on her merits. But Maggie always appeared in the most amiable light at her aunt Mosss: it was her Alsatia, where she was out of the reach of law - if she upset anything, dirtied her shoes, or tore her frock, these things were matters of course at her aunt Mosss. In spite of himself, Mr Tullivers eyes got milder, and he did not look away from his sister as he said,
`Ay: shes fonder o you than o the other aunts, I think. She takes after our family: not a bit of her mothers in her.
`Moss says, shes just like what I used to be, said Mrs Moss, `though I was never so quid fond o the books. But I think my Lizzys like her - shes sharp. e here, Lizzy my dear, a your uncle see you: he hardly knows you, you grow so fast.
Lizzy, a black-eyed child of seven, looked very shy when her mother drew her forward, for the small Mosses were mu awe of their uncle from Dorlill. She was inferior enough to Maggie in fire and strength of expression to make the resemblaweewo entirely flattering to Mr Tullivers fatherly love.
`Ay, theyre a bit alike, he said, looking kindly at the little figure in the soiled pinafore. `They both take after our mother. Youve got enough o gells, Gritty, he added in a tone half passionate, half reproachful.
`Four of em, bless em, said Mrs Moss, with a sigh, stroking Lizzys hair on each side of her forehead, `as many as theres boys. Theyve got a brother apiece.
`Ah, but they must turn out and fend for themselves, said Mr Tulliver, feeling that his severity was relaxing and trying to brace it by throwing out a wholesome hint. `They mustnt look to hanging on their brothers.
`No: but I hope their brothers ull love the poor things and remember they came o oher and mother: the lads ull never be the poorer for that, said Mrs Moss, flashing out with hurried timidity, like a half-smothered fire.
Mr Tulliver gave his horse a little stroke on the flank, then checked it and said angrily, `Stand still with you! much to the astonishment of that i animal.
`And the more there is of em, the more they must love one another, Mrs Moss went on, looking at her children with a didactic purpose. But she turowards her brain to say, `Not but what I hope your boy ull allays be good to his sister, though theres but two of em, like you and me, brother.
That arrow went straight to Mr Tullivers heart. He had not a rapid imagination, but the thought of Maggie was very o him, and he was not long in seeing his relation to his own sister side by side with Toms relation to Maggie. Would the little wench ever be poorly off, and Tom rather hard upon her?
`Ay, ay, Gritty, said the miller, with a new softness in his tone. `But Ive allays done what I could for you, he added, as if vindig himself from a reproach.
`Im not denying that, brother, and Im noways ungrateful, said poor Mrs Moss, too fagged by toil and children to have strength left for any pride. `But heres the father. What a while youve been, Moss.
`While, do you call it? said Mr Moss, feeling out of breath and injured. `Ive been running all the way. Wont you light, Mr Tulliver?
`Well, Ill just get down and have a bit o talk with you in the garden, said Mr Tulliver, feeling that he should be more likely to show a due spirit of resolve if his sister were not present.
He got doassed with Mr Moss into the garden towards an old yew-tree arbour, while his sister stood tapping her baby on the bad looking wistfully after them.
Their entrao the yew-tree arbour surprised several fowls, that were recreating themselves by scratg deep holes in the dusty ground, and at oook flight with much pother and cag. Mr Tulliver sat down on the bench, and tapping the ground curiously here and there with his stick, as if he suspected some hollowness, opehe versation by , with something like a snarl in his tone,
`Why, youve got wheat again in that er Close, I see? and never a bit o dressing on it. Youll do no good with it this year.
Mr Moss, who when he married Miss Tulliver had been regarded as the buck of Basset, now wore a beard nearly a week old and had the depressed, uant air of a mae horse. He answered in a patient-grumbling tone, `Why, poor farmers like me must do as they : they must leave it to them as have got moo play with to put half as muto the ground as they mean to get out of it.
`I dont know who should have moo play with, if it isnt them as borrow money without paying i, said Mr Tulliver, who wished to get into a slight quarrel: it was the most natural and easy introdu to calling in money.
`I know Im behind with the i, said Mr Moss, `but I was so unlucky wi the wool last year, and what with the Missis being laid up so, things have gone awkarder nor usual.
`Ay, snarled Mr Tulliver, `theres folks as things ull allays go awkard with: empty sacks ull and upright.
`Well, I dont know what fault youve got to find wi me, Mr Tulliver, said Mr Moss depregly, `I know there isnt a day-labourer works harder.
`Whats the use o that, said Mr Tulliver, sharply, `when a man marries ands got no capital to work his farm, but his wifes bit o fortin? I was against it from the first; but youd her of you listen to me. And I t lie out o My money any longer; for Ive got to pay five hundred leggs, and there ull be Tom an expeo me, as I should find myself short, even saying Id got back all as is my own. You must look about and see how you pay me the three hundred pounds.
`Well, if thats what you mean, said Mr Moss, looking blankly before him, `wed better be sold up and ha doh it; I must part wi every head o sto got, to pay you and the landlord too.
Poor relations are undeniably irritating: their existence is so entirely uncalled for on our part, and they are almost always very faulty people. Mr Tulliver had succeeded iing quite as much irritated with Mr Moss as he had desired and he was able to say angrily, rising from his seat,
`Well, you must do as you . I t find money for everybody else as well as myself. I must look to my own business and my own family. I t lie out o my money any longer. You must raise it as quick as you .
Mr Tulliver walked abruptly out of the arbour as he uttered the last sentend without looking round at Mr Moss went on to the kit door where the eldest boy was holding his horse, and his sister was waiting in a state of w alarm, which was not without its alleviations, for baby was making pleasant gurgling sounds and perf a great deal of finger practi the faded face. Mrs Moss had eight children, but could never overe her regret that the twins had not lived: Mr Moss thought their removal was not without its solations. `Wont you e in, brother? she said, looking anxiously at her husband, alking slowly up, while Mr Tulliver had his foot already iirrup.
`No, no; good-by, said he, turning his horses head and riding away.
No man could feel more resolute till he got outside the yard-gate and a little way along the deep-rutted lane; but before he reached the urning, which would take him out of sight of the dilapidated farm-buildings, he appeared to be smitten by some sudden thought, for he checked his horse and made it stand still in the same spot for two or three minutes, during which he turned his head from side to side in a melancholy way, as if he were looking at some painful objeore sides than one. Evidently, after his fit of promptitude, Mr Tulliver was relapsing into the sehat this is a puzzling world. He turned his horse and rode slowly back, givio the climax of feeling which had determihis movement by saying aloud, as he struck his horse,
`Poor little wench! shell have nobody but Tom, belike, when Im gone.
Mr Tullivers return into the yard was descried by several young Mosses, who immediately ran in with the exg o their mother, so that Mrs Moss was again on the door-step when her brother rode up. She had been g, but was rog baby to sleep in her arms now, and made no ostentatious show of sorrow as her brother looked at her, but merely said,
`The fathers goo the field again, if you want him, brother.
`No, Gritty, no, said Mr Tulliver, in a geone. `Dont you fret - thats all - Ill make a shift without the money a bit - only you must be as cliver and triving as you .
Mrs Mosss tears came again at this ued kindness, and she could say nothing.
`e, e! - the little wench sha<dfn></dfn>ll e and see you. Ill bring her and Tom some day before he goes to school. You mustnt fret... Ill allays be a good brother to you.
`Thank you for that word, brother, said Mrs Moss, dryiears; then turning to Lizzy, she said, `Run now, ach the coloured egg for cousin Maggie. Lizzy ran in, and quickly reappeared with a small paper parcel.
`Its boiled hard, brother, and coloured with thrums - very pretty: it was done o purpose fgie. Will you please to carry it in your pocket?
`Ay, ay, said Mr Tulliver, putting it carefully in his side-pocket. `Good-by.
And so the respectable miller returned along the Basset lanes rather more puzzled than before as to ways and means, but still with the sense of a danger escaped. It had e across his mind that if he were hard upon his sister, it might somehow tend to make Tom hard upon Maggie, at some dista<details></details>nt day, when her father was no lohere to take her part; for simple people, like our friend Mr Tulliver, are apt to clothe unimpeachable feelings in erroneous ideas, and this was his fused way of explaining to himself that his love and ay for `the little wench had given him a new sensibility towards his sister.
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