CHAPTER 2

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    The Tor Is Pierced by the Thorns

    THERE is something sustaining in the very agitation that apahe first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces aement which is tra strength. It is in the slow, ged life that follows - iime when sorrow has bee stale and has no longer aive iy that teracts its pain, iime when day follows day in dull uant sameness and trial is a dreary routine - it is then that despair threatens: it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt, and eye and ear are strained after some unlearned secret of our existence which shall give to endurahe nature of satisfa. This time of utmost need was e to Maggie, with her short span of thirteen years. To the usual precocity of the girl, she added that early experience of struggle, of flict between the inward impulse and outward fact which is the lot of every imaginative and passioure; and the years since she hammered the nails into her<details>.99lｉb.</details> woodeish among the worm-eaten shelves of the attic, had been filled with so eager a life iriple world of reality, books and waking dreams, that Maggie was strangely old for her years ihing except in her entire want of that prudend self-and which were the qualities that made Tom manly in the midst of his intellectual boyishness. And now her lot was beginning to have a still, sad monotony, which threw her more than ever on her inward self. Her father was able to attend to business again, his affairs were settled, and he was ag as Wakems manager on the old spot. Tom went to and fro every m and evening and became more and more silent in the short intervals at home: what was there to say? One day was like another, and Toms i in life, driven bad crushed on every other side, was trating itself into the one el of ambitious resistao misfortuhe peculiarities of his father and mother were very irksome to him now they were laid bare of all the softening apas of an easy prosperous home, for Tom had very clear prosaic eyes not apt to be dimmed by mists of feeling or imagination. Poor Mrs Tulliver, it seemed, would never recover her old self - her placid household activity: how could she? The objects among which her mind had moved platly were all gone: all the little hopes, and schemes, and speculations, all the pleasant little cares about her treasures which had made this world quite prehensible to her for a quarter of a tury, since she had made her first purchase of the sugar-tongs, had been suddenly snatched away from her, and she remained bewildered in this empty life. Why that would have happeo her which had not happeo other women, remained an insoluble question by which she expressed her perpetual ruminating parison of the past with the present. It iteous to see the ely blond stout womaing thinner and more worn under a bodily as well as mental restlessness which made her often wander about the empty house<q>9９ｌiｂ.</q> after her work was done, until Maggie, being alarmed about her, would seek her and bring her down by telling her how it vexed Tom that she was injuring her health by never sitting down aing herself. Yet amidst this helpless imbecility, there was a toug trait of humble self-devoting maternity, which made Maggie feel tenderly towards her poor mother amidst all the little wearing griefs caused by her mental feebleness. She would let Maggie do none of the work that was heaviest and most soiling to the hands, and was quite peevish when Maggie attempted to relieve her from her grate-brushing and sc: `Let it alone, my dear, your hands ull get as hard as hard, she would say: `its your mothers place to do that - I t do the sewing - my eyes fail me. And she would still brush and carefully tend Maggies hair, which she had bee reciled to, in spite of its refusal to curl, now it was so long and massy. Maggie was not her pet child - and, in general, would have been much better if she had been quite different; yet the womanly heart, so bruised in its small personal desires, found a future to rest on in the life of this young thing, and the mother pleased herself with wearing out her own hands to save the hands that had so much more life in them.

    But the stant presence of her mothers regretful bewilderment was less painful to Maggie than that of her fathers sullen inunicative depression. As long as the paralysis on him and it seemed as if he might always be in a childlike dition of dependence - as long as he was still only half-awakeo his trouble, Maggie had felt the strong tide of pitying love almost as an i<samp>.99lib.</samp>nspiration, a new power, that would make the most difficult life easy for his sake; but now, instead of childlike dependehere had e a taciturn hard tration of purpose in strange trast with his old vehement unicativeness and high spirit, and this lasted from day to day and from week to week, the dull eye never brightening with any eagerness or any joy. It is something cruelly inprehensible to youthful natures - this sombre sameness in middle-aged and elderly people whose life has resulted in disappoi and distent, to whose faces a smile bees se that the sad lines all about the lips and brow seem to take no notice of it, and it hurries away again for want of a wele. `Why will they not kindle up and be glad sometimes? thinks youicity. `It would be so easy, if they only liked to do it. And these leaden clouds that never part are apt to create impatience even in the filial affe that streams forth in nothing but tenderness and pity iime of more obvious affli.

    Mr Tulliver lingered nowhere away from home: he hurried away from market, he refused all invitations to stay and chat, as in old times, in the houses where he called on business. He could not be reciled with his lot: there was no attitude in which his pride did not feel its bruises; and in all behaviour towards him, whether kind or cold, he detected an allusion to the ge in his circumstances. Even the days on which Wakem came to ride round the land and inquire into the business, were not so bla as those market days on which he had met several creditors who had accepted a position from him. To save something towards the repayment of those creditors was the object towards which he was now bending all his thoughts and efforts; and uhe influence of this all-pelling demand of his nature, the somerofuse man who hated to be stinted or to stint any one else in his own house, was gradually metamorphosed into the keen-eyed grudger of morsels. Mrs Tulliver could not eise enough to satisfy him, in their food and firing, and he would eat nothing himself but what was of the coarsest quality. Tom, though depressed and strongly repelled by his fathers sullennness and the dreariness of home, ehhly into his fathers feelings about paying the creditors and the poor lad brought his first quarters money, with a delicious sense of achievement, and gave it to his father to put into the tin box which held the savings. The little store of sns iin box seemed to be the only sight that brought a faint beam of pleasure into the millers eyes - faint and tra, for it was soon dispelled by the thought that the time would be long - perhaps lohan his life - before the narrow savings could remove the hateful incubus of debt. A deficit<dfn></dfn> of more than five hundred pounds with the accumulating i seemed a deep pit to fill with the savings from thirty shillings a week, eveoms probable savings were to be added. On this one point there was entire unity of feeling in the four widely differing beings who sat round the dying fire of sticks which made a cheap warmth for them on the verge of bed time. Mrs Tulliver carried the proud iy of the Dodsons in her blood, and had been brought up to think that t people of their money, which was another phrase for debt, was a sort of moral pillory: it would have been wiess, to her mind, to have run ter to her husbands desire to `do the right thing arieve his name. She had a fused dreamy notion that if the creditors were all paid, her plate and linen ought to e back to her, but she had an inbred perception that while people owed mohey were uo pay, they couldnt rightly call anything their own. She murmured a little that Mr Tulliver so peremptorily refused to receive anything in repayment from Mr and Mrs Moss: but to all his requirements of household ey she was submissive to the point of denying herself the cheapest indulgenere flavour: her only rebellion was to smuggle into the kit something that would make rather a better supper than usual for Tom.

    These narrow notions about debt, held by the old-fashioullivers, may perhaps excite a smile on the faany readers in these days of wide ercial views and wide philosophy, acc to which everything rights itself without any trouble of ours - the fact that my tradesman is out of pocket by me is to be looked at through the sereainty that somebody elses tradesman is in pocket by somebody else, and sihere must be bad debts in the world, why, it is mere egoism not to like that we in particular should make them instead of our fellow-citizens. I am telling the history of very simple people, who had never had any illuminating doubts as to personal iy and honour.

    Under all this grim melancholy and narrowing tration of desire, Mr Tulliver retaihe feeling towards his `little wench which made her presence a o him though it would not suffice to cheer him. She was still the desire of his eyes, but the sweet spring of fatherly love was now mingled with bitterness, like everything else. When Maggie laid down her work at night, it was her habit to get a low stool and sit by her fathers knee, leaning her cheek against it. How she wished he would stroke her head, ive her some sign that he was soothed by the sehat he had a daughter who loved him! But now she got no ao her little caresses, either from her father or from Tom - the two idols of her life. Tom was weary and abstracted in the short intervals when he was at home, and her father was bitterly preoccupied with the thought that the girl was growing up - was shooting up into a woman; and how was she to do well in life? She had a poor arrying, down in the world as they were. Aed the thought of her marrying poorly, as her aunt Gritty had dohat would be a thing to make him turn in his grave - the little wench so pulled down by children and toil as her aunt Moss was. When uncultured minds, fio a narre of personal experience, are uhe pressure of tinued misfortuheir inward life is apt to bee a perpetually repeated round of sad and bitter thoughts: the same words, the same ses are revolved over and ain, the same mood apahem - the end of the year finds them as much what they were at the beginning as if they were maes set to a recurrent series of movements.

    The sameness of the days was broken by few visitors. Uncles and aunts paid only short visits now: of course they could not stay to meals, and the straint caused by Mr Tullivers savage silence, which seemed to add to the hollow resonance of the bare uncarpeted room when the aunts were talking, heightehe unpleasantness of these family visits on all sides, and teo make them rare. As for other acquaintances - there is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room: human beings, mere men and women, without furniture, without anything to offer you, who have ceased to t as anybody, present an embarrassiion of reasons for wishing to see them, or of subjects on which to verse with them. At<strike>99lib?</strike> that distant day, there was a dreary isolation in the civilised Christian society of these realms for families that had dropped below their inal level, uhey beloo a sectarian church, which gets some warmth of brotherhood by walling in the sacred fire.

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