CHAPTER 7
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How a Hen Takes TemTHE days passed, and Mr Tulliver showed, at least to the eyes of the medical man, stronger and stronger symptoms of<cite></cite> a gradual return to his normal dition: the paralytic obstru was, little by little, losing its tenacity, and the mind was rising from u with fitful struggles, like a living creature making its way from under a great snowdrift that slides and slides again, and shuts up the newly made opening. Time would have seemed to creep to the watchers by the bed, if it had only been measured by the doubtful distant hope which kept t of the moments within the chamber: but it was measured for them by a fast-approag dread which made the nights e too quickly. While Mr Tulliver was slowly being himself again, his lot was hastening towards its moment of most palpable ge. The taxing-masters had doheir work like any respectable gunsmith stiously preparing the musket that, duly pointed by a brave arm, will spoil a life or two. Allocaturs, filing of bills in cery, decrees of sale, are legal -shot or bomb-shells that ever hit a solitary mark but must fall with widespread shattering. So deeply i is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each others sins, so iably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we ceive ribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of ued pain.
By the beginning of the sed week in January the bills were out advertising the sale, under a decree of cery, of Mr Tullivers farming and other stock to be followed by a sale of the mill and land held in the proper after-dinner hour at the Golden Lion. The miller himself, unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in that first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought of; and often in his scious hours talked in a feeble, disjointed manner, of plans he would carry out when he `got well. The wife and children were not without hope of an issue that would at least save Mr Tulliver from leaving the old spot and seeking airely strange life. For uncle Deane had been io i himself in this stage of the business. It would not, he aowledged, be a bad speculation fuest and Co. to buy Dorlill and carry on the business, which was a good one, and might be inc<kbd>九九藏书</kbd>reased by the addition of steam power: in which case Tulliver might be retained as manager. Still Mr Deane would say nothing decided about the matter: the fact that Wakem held the me on the land might put in into his head to bid for the whole estate, and further, to outbid the cautious firm of Guest and Co. who did not carry on business oimental grounds. Mr Deane was obliged to tell Mrs Tulliver something to that effect, when he rode over to the mill to ihe books in pany with Mrs Glegg: for she had observed that `if Guest and Co. would only think about it, Mr Tullivers father and grandfather had been carrying on Dorlill long before the oil-mill of that firm had been so much as thought of. Mr Deane, in reply, doubted whether that recisely the relatioweewo mills which would determiheir value as iments. As for uncle Glegg, the thing lay quite beyond his imagination: the goodnatured ma siy for the Tulliver family, but his money was all locked up in excellent mes and he could run no risk: that would be unfair to his owives: but he had made up his mind that Tulliver should have some new flannel waistcoats which he had himself renounced in favour of a more elastiodity, and that he would buy Mrs Tulliver a pound of tea now and then: it would be a journey which his benevolence delighted in beforehand, to carry the tea and see her pleasure on being assured it was the best black.
Still, it was clear that Mr Deane was kindly disposed towards the Tullivers. One day he had brought Lucy, who was e home for the Christmas holidays, and the little blond angel-head had pressed itself against Maggies darker cheek with many kisses and some tears. These fair slim daughters keep up a tender spot in the heart of many a respectable partner in a respectable firm, and perhaps Lucys anxious pitying questions about her poor cousins helped to make uncle Deane more prompt in finding Tom a temporary pla the warehouse, and in putting him in the way of getting evening lessons in book-keeping and calculation.
That might have cheered the lad and fed his hopes a little, if there had not e at the same time the much-dreaded blow of finding that his father must be a bankrupt, after all: - at least, the creditors must be asked to take less than their due, whis unteical mind was the same thing as bankruptcy. His father must not only be said to have `lost his property, but to have `failed - the word that carried the worst obloquy to Toms mind. For when the defendants claim for costs had been satisfied, there would remain the friendly bill ore, and the deficy at the bank as well as the other debts, which would make the assets shrink into unequivocal disproportion: `not more than ten or twelve shillings in the pound, predicted Mr Deane, in a decided toightening his lips; and the words fell on Tom like a scalding liquid, leaving a tinual smart.
He was sadly in want of something to keep up his spirits a little in the unpleasant newness of his position - suddenly transported from the easy carpeted ennui of study-hours at Mr Stellings, and the busy idleness of castle-building in a `last half at school, to the panionship of sacks and hides, and bawlihundering down heavy weights at his elbow. The first step tetting on in the world was a chill, dusty, noisy affair, and implied going without oea in order to stay in St Oggs and have an evening lesson from a one-armed elderly clerk, in a room smelling strongly of bad tobacco. Toms young pink and white face had its colours very much deadened by the time he took off his hat at home and sat down with keen huo his supper. No wonder he was a little cross if his mother gie spoke to him.
But all this while, Mrs Tulliver was brooding over a scheme by which she and no one else, would avert the result most to be dreaded, and prevent Wakem from eaining the purpose of bidding for the mill. Imagiruly respectable and amiable hen, by some portentous anomaly, taking to refle and iing binations by which she might prevail on Hodge not t her neck or send her and her chicks to market: the result could hardly be other than much cag and fluttering. Mrs Tulliver, seeing that everything had gone wrong, had begun to think that she had been too passive in life, and that, if she had applied her mind to business, and taken a strong resolution now and then, it would have been all the better for her and her family. Nobody, it appeared, had thought of going to speak to Wakem on this business of the mill, a, Mrs Tulliver reflected, it would have been quite the shortest method of seg the right end. It would have been of no use, to be sure, for Mr Tulliver to go - even if he had been able and willing - for he had been `going to law against Wakem and abusing him for the last ten years; Wakem was always likely to have a spite against him. And now that Mrs Tulliver had e to the clusion that her husband was very mu the wrong t her into this trouble, she was ined to think that his opinion of Wakem was wrong too. To be sure, Wakem had `put the bailies in the house and sold them up, but she supposed he did that to please the man that lent Mr Tulliver the money, for a lawyer had more folks to please than one, and he wasnt likely to put Mr Tulliver who had goo law with him above everybody else in the world. The attorney might be a very reasonable man - why not? - He had married a Miss t, and at the time Mrs Tulliver had heard of that marriage, the summer when she wore her blue satin spencer, and had not yet any thoughts of Mr Tulliver, she knew no harm of Wakem. Aainly towards herself - whom he ko have been a Miss Dodson - it was out of all possibility that he could eain anything but good will, when it was once brought home to his observation that she, for her part, had never wao go to law, and indeed<bdi>藏书网</bdi> resent disposed to take Mr Wakems view of all subjects rather than her husbands. In fact, if that attorney saw a respectable matron like herself disposed `to give him good words why shouldnt he listen to her representations? For she would put the matter clearly before him which had never been do. And he would never go and bid for the mill on purpose to spite her, an i woman, who thought it likely enough that she had danced with him in their youth at Squire Darleighs, for at those big dances she had often and often danced with young men whose names she had fotten.
Mrs Tulliver hid these reasonings in her own bosom; for when she had thrown out a hint to Mr Deane and Mr Glegg, that she wouldnt mind going to speak to Wakem herself, they had said, `No, no, no, and `Pooh, pooh, and `Let Wakem alone, ione of men who were not likely to give a did attention to a more definite exposition of her project. Still less dared she mention the plan to Tom and Maggie, for `the children were always so against everything their mother said, and Tom, she observed, was almost as much set against Wakem as his father was. But this unusual tration of thought naturally gave Mrs Tulliver an unusual power of devid determination, and a day or two before the sale to be held at the Golden Lion, when there was no longer any time to be lost she carried out her plan by a stratagem. There were pickles iion - a large stock of pickles achup which Mrs Tulliver possessed and which Mr Hyndmarsh the grocer would certainly purchase if she could transact the business in a personal interview, so she would walk with Tom to St Oggs that m: and when Ted that she might let the pickles be, at present - he didnt like her to go about just yet - she appeared so hurt at this du her son, tradig her about pickles which she had made after the family receipts ied from his own grandmother who had died when his mother was a little girl, that he gave way, and they walked together until she turowards Danish Street, where Mr Hyndmarsh retailed his grocery, not far from the offir Wakem.
That gentleman was not yet e to his office: would Mrs Tulliver sit down by the fire in his private room and wait for him? She had not long to wait before the punctual attorered, knitting his brow with an examining gla the stout blond woman who rose, curtsying deferentially: - a tallish man, with an aquiline nose and abundant iron-grey hair. You have never seen Mr Wakem before, and are possibly w whether he was really as emi a rascal and as crafty, bitter an enemy of ho humanity in general and of Mr Tulliver in particular, as he is represeo be in that eidolon or portrait of him which we have seen to exist in the millers mind.
It is clear that the irascible miller was a man to interpret any ce shot that grazed him as an attempt on his own life, and was liable to entas in this puzzling world which, due sideration had to his own infallibility, require<strike>.9９liｂ?</strike>d the hypothesis of a very active diabolical agency to explain them. It is still possible to believe that the attorney was not muilty towards him, than an ingenious mae which performs its work with much regularity is guilty towards the rash man who, venturing too near it, is caught up by some fly-wheel or other, and suddenly verted into ued sausages.
But it is really impossible to decide this question by a gla his person: the lines and lights of the human tenance are like other symbols - not always easy to read without a key. On an a priori view of Wakems aquiline nose which offended Mr Tulliver there was not more rascality than in the shape of his stiff shirt collar, though this too, along with his nose, might have bee fraught with damnatory meaning when ohe rascality was ascertained.
`Mrs Tulliver, I think? said Mr Wakem.
`Yes, sir, Miss Elizabeth Dodson as was.
`Pray be seated. You have some business with me?
`Well, sir, yes, said Mrs Tulliver, beginning to feel alarmed at her own ce now she was really in presence of the formidable man, and refleg that she had not settled with herself how she should begin. Mr Wakem felt in his waistcoat pockets and looked at her in silence.
`I hope, sir, she began at last, `I hope, sir, youre not a-thinking as I bear you any ill-will because o my husbands losing his lawsuit, and the bailies being put in, and the linen being sold - O dear!... for I wasnt brought up in that way. Im sure you remember my father, sir, for he was close friends with Squire Darleigh, and we allays went to the dahere - the Miss Dodsons - nobody could be more looked on - and justly, for there was four of us, and youre quite aware as Mrs Glegg and Mrs Deane are my sisters. And as foing to law and losing money and having sales before youre dead, I never saw anything o that before I was married nor for a long while after. And Im not to be answerable for my bad luck i marrying out o my own family into one where the goings-on was different. And as for being drawn in t abuse you as other folks abuse you, sir, that I niver was, and nobody say it of me.
Mrs Tulliver shook her head a little and looked at the hem of her pocket handkerchief.
`Ive no doubt of what you say, Mrs Tulliver, said Mr Wakem, with cold politeness. `But you have some question to ask me?
`Well, sir, yes. But thats what Ive said to myself - Ive said youd have some natral feeling; and as for my husband as hasnt been himself for this two months, Im not a-defending him, in no way, for being so hot about th erigation - not but what theres worse men, for he never wronged nobody of a shilling nor a penny, not willingly - and as for his fieriness and lawing, what could I do? And him struck as if it was with death whe the letter as said youd the hold upo the land. But I t believe but what youll behave as a gentleman.
`What does all this mean, Mrs Tulliver? said Mr Wakem, rather sharply. `What do you want to ask me?
`Why, sir, if youll be so good, said Mrs Tulliver, starting a little, and speaking more hurriedly, `if youll be so good not to buy the mill an the land - the land wouldnt so much matter, only my husband ull be like mad at your having it.
Something like a hought flashed ar Wakems face as he said, `Who told you I meant to buy it?
`Why, sir, its none o my iing and I should never ha thought of it, for my husband, as ought to know about the law, he allays used to say as lawyers had never no call to buy anything - either lands or houses - for they allays got em into their hands other ways. An I should think that ud be the way with you, sir and I niver said as youd be the man to do trairy to that.
`Ah, well, who was it that did say so? <cite>藏书网</cite>said Wakem, opening his desk, and moving things about, with the apa of an almost inaudible whistle.
`Why, sir, it was Mr Glegg and Mr Deane, as have all the ma: and Mr Deahinks as Guest and Co. ud buy the mill a Mr Tulliver work it for em, if you didnt bid for it and raise the price. And it ud be such a thing for my husband to stay where he is, if he could get his living: for it was his fathers before him, the mill was, and his grandfather built it, though I wasnt fond o the noise of it, when first I was married, for there was no mills in our family - not the Dodsons - and if Id known as the mills had so much to do with the law, it wouldnt have been me as ud have been the first Dodson to marry one; but I went into it blindfold, that I did, erigation and everything.
`What - Guest and Co. would keep the mill in their own hands, I suppose, and pay your husband wages?
`O dear, sir, its hard to think of, said poor Mrs Tulliver, a little tear making its way, `as my husband should take wage. But it ud look more like what used to be, to stay at the mill, than to go anywhere else. And if youll only think - if you was to bid for the mill and buy it, my husband might be struck worse than he was before, and niver get better again as hes getting now.
`Well, but if I bought the mill, and allowed your husband to act as my manager in the same way - how then? said Mr Wakem.
`O sir, I doubt he could niver he got to do it, not if the very mill stood still to beg and pray of him. For your names like poison to him, its so as never was, and he looks upon it as youve been the ruin of him all along, ever since you set the law on him about the road through the meadow - thats eight year ago, and hes been going on ever since - as Ive allays told him he was wrong...
`Hes a pig-headed, foul-mouthed fool! burst out Mr Wakem, fetting himself.
`O dear, sir! said Mrs Tulliver, frighte a result so different from the one she had fixed her mind on, `I wouldnt wish to tradict you, but its like enough hes ged his mind with this illness - hes fot a many things he used to talk about. And you wouldnt like to have a corpse on your mind, if he was to die; and they do say as its allays unlucky when Dorlill ges hands, and the water might all run away and then... not as Im wishing you any ill-luck, sir, for I fot to tell you as I remember your wedding as if it was yesterday - Mrs Wakem was a Miss t, I know that - and my boy, as there isnt nicer, handsomer, straiter boy nowhere, went to school with your son...
Mr Wakem rose, opehe door and called to one of his clerks.
`You must excuse me for interrupting you, Mrs Tulliver, I have busihat must be atteo; and I think there is nothing more, necessary to be said.
`But if you would bear it in mind, sir, said Mrs Tulliver, rising, `and not run against me and my children - and Im not denying Mr Tullivers been in the wrong, but hes been punished enough, and theres worse men, for its been giving to other folks has been his fault - hes done nobody any harm but himself and his family - the mores the pity - and I go and look at the bare shelves every day and think where all my things used to stand.
`Yes, yes, Ill bear it in mind, said Mr Wakem hastily, looking towards the open door.
`And if youd please not to say as Ive been to speak to you, for my son ud be very angry with me for demeaning myself, I know he would, and Ive trouble enough without being scolded by my children.
Poor Mrs Tullivers voice trembled a little, and she could make no ao the attorneys `good m, but curtsied and walked out in silence.
`Which day is it that Dorlill is to be sold? Wheres the bill? said Mr Wakem to his clerk when they were alone.
` Friday is the day: Friday, at six oclock.
`Oh; just run to Winships, the aueer - and see if hes at home. I have some business for him: ask him to e up.
Although when Mr Wakem entered his office that m, he had had no iion of purchasing Dorlill, his mind was already made up: Mrs Tulliver had suggested to him several determining motives, and his mental glance was very rapid: he was one of those men who be prompt without being rash, because their motives run in fixed tracks, and they have o recile flig aims.
To suppose that Wakem had the same sort of ie hatred towards Tulliver, that Tulliver had towards him, would be like supposing that a pike and a roach look at each other from a similar point of view. The roaecessarily abhors the mode in which the pike gets his living, and the pike is likely to think nothing further even of the most indignant roach than that he is excellent good eating: it could only be when the roach choked him that the pike could eain a strong personal animosity. If Mr Tulliver had ever seriously injured or thwarted the attorney, Wakem would not have refused him the distin of being a special object of vindictiveness. But when Mr Tulliver called Wakem a rascal at the market diable, the attorneys ts were not a whit ined to withdraw their business from him, and if when Wakem himself happeo be present, some jocose cattle-feeder, stimulated by opportunity and brandy, made a thrust at him by alluding to old ladies wills, he maintained perfect sang-froid, and knew quite well that the majority of substantial men the were perfectly tented with the fact that `Wakem was Wakem, that is to say, a man who always khe step-ping-stohat would carry him through very muddy bits of practice. A man who had made a large fortune, had a handsome house among the trees at Tofton, and decidedly the fi stock of port wine in the neighbourhood of St Oggs, was likely to feel himself on a level with public opinion. And I am not sure that even ho Mr Tulliver himself, with his general view of law as a cock-pit, might not, under opposite circumstances, have seen a fine appropriateness iruth that `Wakem was Wakem; since I have uood from persons versed in history, that mankind is not disposed to look narrowly into the duct of great victors when their victory is on the right side. Tulliver, then, could be no obstru to Wakem: on the trary he oor devil whom the lawyer had defeated several times - a hot-tempered felloould always give you a handle against him. Wakems sce was not uneasy because he had used a few tricks against the miller: why should he hate that unsuccessful plaintiff - that pitiable, furious bull entangled in the meshes of a ?
Still, among the various excesses to which human nature is subject, moralists have never numbered that of being too fond of the people who openly revile us. The successful Yellow didate for the bh of Old Topping perhaps fells no pursuaative hatred toward the Blue tor who soles his subscribers with vituperative rhetoric against Yellow men who sell their try and are the demons of private life: but he might not be sorry, if law and opportunity favoured, to kick that Blue editor to a deeper shade of his favourite colour. Prosperous men take a little vengeanow and then, as they take a diversion, when it es easily in their way and is no hindrao business; and such small unimpassioned revenges have an enormous effe life, running through all degrees of pleasant infli, blog the fit men out of places, and blaing characters in unpremeditated talk. Still more, to see people who have been only insignifitly offeo us, reduced in life and humiliated without any special efforts of ours is apt to have a soothing, flattering influence: Providence, or some other prince of this world, it appears, has uakeask of retribution for us; and really, by an agreeable stitution of things, our enemies, somehow, dont prosper.
Wakem was not without this pareidictiveowards the unplimentary miller, and now Mrs Tulliver had put the notion into his head it preseself to him as a pleasure to do the very thing that would cause Mr Tulliver the most deadly mortification, and a pleasure of a plex kind, not made up of crude malice but mingling with it the relish of self-approbation. To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain te, but this is jejune pared with the highly blent satisfa of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent a of cession on his behalf. That is a sort of revenge which falls into the scale of virtue, and Wakem was not without an iion of keeping that scale respectably filled. He had once had the pleasure of putting an old enemy of his into one of the St Oggs almshouses, to the rebuilding of which he had given a large subscription; and here portunity of providing for another by making him his own servant. Such things give a pleteo prosperity, and tribute elements of agreeable scioushat are not dreamed of by that short-sighted overheated vindictiveness, which goes out of its way to wreak itself in direjury. And Tulliver with his rough tongue field by a sense of obligation, would make a better servant than any ce felloas cap-in-hand for a situation. Tulliver was known to be a man of proud hoy, and Wakem was too acute not to believe in the existence of hoy. He was given to individuals, not to judging of them acc to maxims, and no one knew better thahat all men were not like himself. Besides he inteo overlook the whole business of land and mill pretty closely: he was fond of these practical rural matters. But there were good reasons for purchasing Dorlill, quite apart form any benevolent vengean the miller. It was really a capital iment; besides, Guest & Co. were going to bid for it. Mr Guest and Mr Wakem were on friendly dining terms, and the attorney liked to predominate over a ship-owner and mill-owner who was a little too loud iown affairs as well as in his table talk. For Wakem was not a mere man of business: he was sidered a pleasant fellow in the upper circles at Oggs, chatted amusingly over his port wine, did a little amateur farming, and had certainly been an excellent husband and father: at church, when he went there, he sat uhe handsomest of mural mos erected to the memory of his wife. Most men would have married again under his circumstances but he was said to be more teo his deformed son than most meo their best shapen offspring. Not that Mr Wakem had not other sons besides Philip, but towards them he held only a chiaroscuro parentage, and provided for them in a grade of life duly beh his own. In this fact, ihere lay the g motive to the purchase of Dorlill. While Mrs Tulliver was talking, it had occurred to the rapid-minded lawyer, among all the other circumstances of the case, that this purchase would in a few years to e furnish a highly suitable position for a certain favourite lad whom he meant t on in the world.
These were the mental ditions on which Mrs Tulliver had uaken to act persuasively, and had failed: a fact which may receive some illustration from the remark of a great philosopher, that fly-fishers fail in preparing their bait so as to make it alluring in the right quarter for want of a due acquaintah the subjectivity of fishes.
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