The Mill on the Floss

Chapter IV

”The Young Idea”

The alterations of feeling in that first dialogue between Tom andPhilip continued to make their intercourse even after many weeks ofschoolboy intimacy. Tom never quite lost the feeling that Philip,being the son of a ”rascal,” was his natural enemy; never thoroughlyovercame his repulsion to Philip's deformity. He was a boy who adheredtenaciously to impressions once received; as with all minds in whichmere perception predominates over thought and emotion, the externalremained to him rigidly what it was in the first instance. But then itwas impossible not to like Philip's company when he was in a goodhumor; he could help one so well in one's Latin exercises, which Tomregarded as a kind of puzzle that could only be found out by a luckychance; and he could tell such wonderful fighting stories about Hal ofthe Wynd, for example, and other heroes who were especial favoriteswith Tom, because they laid about them with heavy strokes. He hadsmall opinion of Saladin, whose cimeter could cut a cushion in two inan instant; who wanted to cut cushions? That was a stupid story, andhe didn't care to hear it again. But when Robert Bruce, on the blackpony, rose in his stirrups, and lifting his good battle-axe, crackedat once the helmet and the skull of the too hasty knight atBannockburn, then Tom felt all the exaltation of sympathy, and if hehad had a cocoanut at hand, he would have cracked it at once with thepoker. Philip in his happier moods indulged Tom to the top of hisbent, heightening the crash and bang and fury of every fight with allthe artillery of epithets and similes at his command. But he was notalways in a good humor or happy mood. The slight spurt of peevishsusceptibility which had escaped him in their first interview was asymptom of a perpetually recurring mental ailment, half of it nervousirritability, half of it the heart-bitterness produced by the sense ofhis deformity. In these fits of susceptibility every glance seemed tohim to be charged either with offensive pity or with ill-represseddisgust; at the very least it was an indifferent glance, and Philipfelt indifference as a child of the south feels the chill air of anorthern spring. Poor Tom's blundering patronage when they were out ofdoors together would sometimes make him turn upon the well-meaning ladquite savagely; and his eyes, usually sad and quiet, would flash withanything but playful lightning. No wonder Tom retained his suspicionsof the humpback.

But Philip's self-taught skill in drawing was another link betweenthem; for Tom found, to his disgust, that his new drawing-master gavehim no dogs and donkeys to draw, but brooks and rustic bridges andruins, all with a general softness of black-lead surface, indicatingthat nature, if anything, was rather satiny; and as Tom's feeling forthe picturesque in landscape was at present quite latent, it is notsurprising that Mr. Goodrich's productions seemed to him anuninteresting form of art. Mr. Tulliver, having a vague intention thatTom should be put to some business which included the drawing out ofplans and maps, had complained to Mr. Riley, when he saw him atMudport, that Tom seemed to be learning nothing of that sort;whereupon that obliging adviser had suggested that Tom should havedrawing-lessons. Mr. Tulliver must not mind paying extra for drawing;let Tom be made a good draughtsman, and he would be able to turn hispencil to any purpose. So it was ordered that Tom should havedrawing-lessons; and whom should Mr. Stelling have selected as amaster if not Mr. Goodrich, who was considered quite at the head ofhis profession within a circuit of twelve miles round King's Lorton?By which means Tom learned to make an extremely fine point to hispencil, and to represent landscape with a ”broad generality,” which,doubtless from a narrow tendency in his mind to details, he thoughtextremely dull.

All this, you remember, happened in those dark ages when there were noschools of design; before schoolmasters were invariably men ofscrupulous integrity, and before the clergy were all men of enlargedminds and varied culture. In those less favored days, it is no fablethat there were other clergymen besides Mr. Stelling who had narrowintellects and large wants, and whose income, by a logical confusionto which Fortune, being a female as well as blindfold, is peculiarlyliable, was proportioned not to their wants but to their intellect,with which income has clearly no inherent relation. The problem thesegentlemen had to solve was to readjust the proportion between theirwants and their income; and since wants are not easily starved todeath, the simpler method appeared to be to raise their income. Therewas but one way of doing this; any of those low callings in which menare obliged to do good work at a low price were forbidden toclergymen; was it their fault if their only resource was to turn outvery poor work at a high price? Besides, how should Mr. Stelling beexpected to know that education was a delicate and difficult business,any more than an animal endowed with a power of boring a hole througha rock should be expected to have wide views of excavation? Mr.Stelling's faculties had been early trained to boring in a straightline, and he had no faculty to spare. But among Tom's contemporaries,whose fathers cast their sons on clerical instruction to find themignorant after many days, there were many far less lucky than TomTulliver. Education was almost entirely a matter of luck--usually ofill-luck--in those distant days. The state of mind in which you take abilliard-cue or a dice-box in your hand is one of sober certaintycompared with that of old-fashioned fathers, like Mr. Tulliver, whenthey selected a school or a tutor for their sons. Excellent men, whohad been forced all their lives to spell on an impromptu-phoneticsystem, and having carried on a successful business in spite of thisdisadvantage, had acquired money enough to give their sons a betterstart in life than they had had themselves, must necessarily taketheir chance as to the conscience and the competence of theschoolmaster whose circular fell in their way, and appeared to promiseso much more than they would ever have thought of asking for,including the return of linen, fork, and spoon. It was happy for themif some ambitious draper of their acquaintance had not brought up hisson to the Church, and if that young gentleman, at the age offour-and-twenty, had not closed his college dissipations by animprudent marriage; otherwise, these innocent fathers, desirous ofdoing the best for their offspring, could only escape the draper's sonby happening to be on the foundation of a grammar-school as yetunvisited by commissioners, where two or three boys could have, all tothemselves, the advantages of a large and lofty building, togetherwith a head-master, toothless, dim-eyed and deaf, whose eruditeindistinctness and inattention were engrossed by them at the rate ofthree hundred pounds a-head,--a ripe scholar, doubtless, when firstappointed; but all ripeness beneath the sun has a further stage lessesteemed in the market.

Tom Tulliver, then, compared with many other British youths of histime who have since had to scramble through life with some fragmentsof more or less relevant knowledge, and a great deal of strictlyrelevant ignorance, was not so very unlucky. Mr. Stelling was abroad-chested, healthy man, with the bearing of a gentleman, aconviction that a growing boy required a sufficiency of beef, and acertain hearty kindness in him that made him like to see Tom lookingwell and enjoying his dinner; not a man of refined conscience, or withany deep sense of the infinite issues belonging to every-day duties,not quite competent to his high offices; but incompetent gentlemenmust live, and without private fortune it is difficult to see how theycould all live genteelly if they had nothing to do with education orgovernment. Besides, it was the fault of Tom's mental constitutionthat his faculties could not be nourished on the sort of knowledge Mr.Stelling had to communicate. A boy born with a deficient power ofapprehending signs and abstractions must suffer the penalty of hiscongenital deficiency, just as if he had been born with one legshorter than the other. A method of education sanctioned by the longpractice of our venerable ancestors was not to give way before theexceptional dulness of a boy who was merely living at the time thenpresent. And Mr. Stelling was convinced that a boy so stupid at signsand abstractions must be stupid at everything else, even if thatreverend gentleman could have taught him everything else. It was thepractice of our venerable ancestors to apply that ingenious instrumentthe thumb-screw, and to tighten and tighten it in order to elicitnon-existent facts; they had a fixed opinion to begin with, that thefacts were existent, and what had they to do but to tighten thethumb-screw? In like manner, Mr. Stelling had a fixed opinion that allboys with any capacity could learn what it was the only regular thingto teach; if they were slow, the thumb-screw must be tightened,--theexercises must be insisted on with increased severity, and a page ofVirgil be awarded as a penalty, to encourage and stimulate a toolanguid inclination to Latin verse.

The thumb-screw was a little relaxed, however, during this secondhalf-year. Philip was so advanced in his studies, and so apt, that Mr.Stelling could obtain credit by his facility, which required littlehelp, much more easily than by the troublesome process of overcomingTom's dulness. Gentlemen with broad chests and ambitious intentions dosometimes disappoint their friends by failing to carry the worldbefore them. Perhaps it is that high achievements demand some otherunusual qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes;perhaps it is that these stalwart gentlemen are rather indolent, their_divinae particulum aurae_ being obstructed from soaring by a too heartyappetite. Some reason or other there was why Mr. Stelling deferred theexecution of many spirited projects,--why he did not begin the editingof his Greek play, or any other work of scholarship, in his leisurehours, but, after turning the key of his private study with muchresolution, sat down to one of Theodore Hook's novels. Tom wasgradually allowed to shuffle through his lessons with less rigor, andhaving Philip to help him, he was able to make some show of havingapplied his mind in a confused and blundering way, without beingcross-examined into a betrayal that his mind had been entirely neutralin the matter. He thought school much more bearable under thismodification of circumstances; and he went on contentedly enough,picking up a promiscuous education chiefly from things that were notintended as education at all. What was understood to be his educationwas simply the practice of reading, writing, and spelling, carried onby an elaborate appliance of unintelligible ideas, and by much failurein the effort to learn by rote.

Nevertheless, there was a visible improvement in Tom under thistraining; perhaps because he was not a boy in the abstract, existingsolely to illustrate the evils of a mistaken education, but a boy madeof flesh and blood, with dispositions not entirely at the mercy ofcircumstances.

There was a great improvement in his bearing, for example; and somecredit on this score was due to Mr. Poulter, the village schoolmaster,who, being an old Peninsular soldier, was employed to drill Tom,--asource of high mutual pleasure. Mr. Poulter, who was understood by thecompany at the Black Swan to have once struck terror into the heartsof the French, was no longer personally formidable. He had rather ashrunken appearance, and was tremulous in the mornings, not from age,but from the extreme perversity of the King's Lorton boys, whichnothing but gin could enable him to sustain with any firmness. Still,he carried himself with martial erectness, had his clothesscrupulously brushed, and his trousers tightly strapped; and on theWednesday and Saturday afternoons, when he came to Tom, he was alwaysinspired with gin and old memories, which gave him an exceptionallyspirited air, as of a superannuated charger who hears the drum. Thedrilling-lessons were always protracted by episodes of warlikenarrative, much more interesting to Tom than Philip's stories out ofthe Iliad; for there were no cannon in the Iliad, and besides, Tom hadfelt some disgust on learning that Hector and Achilles might possiblynever have existed. But the Duke of Wellington was really alive, andBony had not been long dead; therefore Mr. Poulter's reminiscences ofthe Peninsular War were removed from all suspicion of being mythical.Mr. Poulter, it appeared, had been a conspicuous figure at Talavera,and had contributed not a little to the peculiar terror with which hisregiment of infantry was regarded by the enemy. On afternoons when hismemory was more stimulated than usual, he remembered that the Duke ofWellington had (in strict privacy, lest jealousies should be awakened)expressed his esteem for that fine fellow Poulter. The very surgeonwho attended him in the hospital after he had received hisgunshot-wound had been profoundly impressed with the superiority ofMr. Poulter's flesh,--no other flesh would have healed in anythinglike the same time. On less personal matters connected with theimportant warfare in which he had been engaged, Mr. Poulter was morereticent, only taking care not to give the weight of his authority toany loose notions concerning military history. Any one who pretendedto a knowledge of what occurred at the siege of Badajos was especiallyan object of silent pity to Mr. Poulter; he wished that prating personhad been run down, and had the breath trampled out of him at the firstgo-off, as he himself had,--he might talk about the siege of Badajosthen! Tom did not escape irritating his drilling-master occasionally,by his curiosity concerning other military matters than Mr. Poulter'spersonal experience.

”And General Wolfe, Mr. Poulter,--wasn't he a wonderful fighter?” saidTom, who held the notion that all the martial heroes commemorated onthe public-house signs were engaged in the war with Bony.

”Not at all!” said Mr. Poulter, contemptuously. ”Nothing o' the sort!Heads up!” he added, in a tone of stern command, which delighted Tom,and made him feel as if he were a regiment in his own person.

”No, no!” Mr. Poulter would continue, on coming to a pause in hisdiscipline; ”they'd better not talk to me about General Wolfe. He didnothing but die of his wound; that's a poor haction, I consider. Anyother man 'ud have died o' the wounds I've had. One of my sword-cuts'ud ha' killed a fellow like General Wolfe.”

”Mr. Poulter,” Tom would say, at any allusion to the sword, ”I wishyou'd bring your sword and do the sword-exercise!”

For a long while Mr. Poulter only shook his head in a significantmanner at this request, and smiled patronizingly, as Jupiter may havedone when Semele urged her too ambitious request. But one afternoon,when a sudden shower of heavy rain had detained Mr. Poulter twentyminutes longer than usual at the Black Swan, the sword wasbrought,--just for Tom to look at.

”And this is the real sword you fought with in all the battles, Mr.Poulter?” said Tom, handling the hilt. ”Has it ever cut a Frenchman'shead off?”

”Head off? Ah! and would, if he'd had three heads.”

”But you had a gun and bayonet besides?” said Tom. ”_I_ should likethe gun and bayonet best, because you could shoot 'em first and spear'em after. Bang! Ps-s-s-s!” Tom gave the requisite pantomime toindicate the double enjoyment of pulling the trigger and thrusting thespear.

”Ah, but the sword's the thing when you come to close fighting,” saidMr. Poulter, involuntarily falling in with Tom's enthusiasm, anddrawing the sword so suddenly that Tom leaped back with much agility.

”Oh, but, Mr. Poulter, if you're going to do the exercise,” said Tom,a little conscious that he had not stood his ground as became anEnglishman, ”let me go and call Philip. He'll like to see you, youknow.”

”What! the humpbacked lad?” said Mr. Poulter, contemptuously; ”what'sthe use of _his_ looking on?”

”Oh, but he knows a great deal about fighting,” said Tom, ”and howthey used to fight with bows and arrows, and battle-axes.”

”Let him come, then. I'll show him something different from his bowsand arrows,” said Mr. Poulter, coughing and drawing himself up, whilehe gave a little preliminary play to his wrist.

Tom ran in to Philip, who was enjoying his afternoon's holiday at thepiano, in the drawing-room, picking out tunes for himself and singingthem. He was supremely happy, perched like an amorphous bundle on thehigh stool, with his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on the oppositecornice, and his lips wide open, sending forth, with all his might,impromptu syllables to a tune of Arne's which had hit his fancy.

”Come, Philip,” said Tom, bursting in; ”don't stay roaring 'la la'there; come and see old Poulter do his sword-exercise in thecarriage-house!”

The jar of this interruption, the discord of Tom's tones coming acrossthe notes to which Philip was vibrating in soul and body, would havebeen enough to unhinge his temper, even if there had been no questionof Poulter the drilling-master; and Tom, in the hurry of seizingsomething to say to prevent Mr. Poulter from thinking he was afraid ofthe sword when he sprang away from it, had alighted on thisproposition to fetch Philip, though he knew well enough that Philiphated to hear him mention his drilling-lessons. Tom would never havedone so inconsiderate a thing except under the severe stress of hispersonal pride.

Philip shuddered visibly as he paused from his music. Then turningred, he said, with violent passion,--

”Get away, you lumbering idiot! Don't come bellowing at me; you're notfit to speak to anything but a cart-horse!”

It was not the first time Philip had been made angry by him, but Tomhad never before been assailed with verbal missiles that he understoodso well.

”I'm fit to speak to something better than you, you poor-spiritedimp!” said Tom, lighting up immediately at Philip's fire. ”You know Iwon't hit you, because you're no better than a girl. But I'm an honestman's son, and _your_ father's a rogue; everybody says so!”

Tom flung out of the room, and slammed the door after him, madestrangely heedless by his anger; for to slam doors within the hearingof Mrs. Stelling, who was probably not far off, was an offence only tobe wiped out by twenty lines of Virgil. In fact, that lady didpresently descend from her room, in double wonder at the noise and thesubsequent cessation of Philip's music. She found him sitting in aheap on the hassock, and crying bitterly.

”What's the matter, Wakem? what was that noise about? Who slammed thedoor?”

Philip looked up, and hastily dried his eyes. ”It was Tulliver whocame in--to ask me to go out with him.”

”And what are you in trouble about?” said Mrs. Stelling.

Philip was not her favorite of the two pupils; he was less obligingthan Tom, who was made useful in many ways. Still, his father paidmore than Mr. Tulliver did, and she meant him to feel that she behavedexceedingly well to him. Philip, however, met her advances toward agood understanding very much as a caressed mollusk meets an invitationto show himself out of his shell. Mrs. Stelling was not a loving,tender-hearted woman; she was a woman whose skirt sat well, whoadjusted her waist and patted her curls with a preoccupied air whenshe inquired after your welfare. These things, doubtless, represent agreat social power, but it is not the power of love; and no otherpower could win Philip from his personal reserve.

He said, in answer to her question, ”My toothache came on, and made mehysterical again.”

This had been the fact once, and Philip was glad of the recollectionit was like an inspiration to enable him to excuse his crying. He hadto accept eau-de-Cologne and to refuse creosote in consequence; butthat was easy.

Meanwhile Tom, who had for the first time sent a poisoned arrow intoPhilip's heart, had returned to the carriage-house, where he found Mr.Poulter, with a fixed and earnest eye, wasting the perfections of hissword-exercise on probably observant but inappreciative rats. But Mr.Poulter was a host in himself; that is to say, he admired himself morethan a whole army of spectators could have admired him. He took nonotice of Tom's return, being too entirely absorbed in the cut andthrust,--the solemn one, two, three, four; and Tom, not without aslight feeling of alarm at Mr. Poulter's fixed eye and hungry-lookingsword, which seemed impatient for something else to cut besides theair, admired the performance from as great a distance as possible. Itwas not until Mr. Poulter paused and wiped the perspiration from hisforehead, that Tom felt the full charm of the sword-exercise, andwished it to be repeated.

”Mr. Poulter,” said Tom, when the sword was being finally sheathed, ”Iwish you'd lend me your sword a little while to keep.”

”No no, young gentleman,” said Mr. Poulter, shaking his headdecidedly; ”you might do yourself some mischief with it.”

”No, I'm sure I wouldn't; I'm sure I'd take care and not hurt myself.I shouldn't take it out of the sheath much, but I could ground armswith it, and all that.”

”No, no, it won't do, I tell you; it won't do,” said Mr. Poulter,preparing to depart. ”What 'ud Mr. Stelling say to me?”

”Oh, I say, do, Mr. Poulter! I'd give you my five-shilling piece ifyou'd let me keep the sword a week. Look here!” said Tom, reaching outthe attractively large round of silver. The young dog calculated theeffect as well as if he had been a philosopher.

”Well,” said Mr. Poulter, with still deeper gravity, ”you must keep itout of sight, you know.”

”Oh yes, I'll keep it under the bed,” said Tom, eagerly, ”or else atthe bottom of my large box.”

”And let me see, now, whether you can draw it out of the sheathwithout hurting yourself.” That process having been gone through morethan once, Mr. Poulter felt that he had acted with scrupulousconscientiousness, and said, ”Well, now, Master Tulliver, if I takethe crown-piece, it is to make sure as you'll do no mischief with thesword.”

”Oh no, indeed, Mr. Poulter,” said Tom, delightedly handing him thecrown-piece, and grasping the sword, which, he thought, might havebeen lighter with advantage.

”But if Mr. Stelling catches you carrying it in?” said Mr. Poulter,pocketing the crown-piece provisionally while he raised this newdoubt.

”Oh, he always keeps in his upstairs study on Saturday afternoon,”said Tom, who disliked anything sneaking, but was not disinclined to alittle stratagem in a worthy cause. So he carried off the sword intriumph mixed with dread--dread that he might encounter Mr. or Mrs.Stelling--to his bedroom, where, after some consideration, he hid itin the closet behind some hanging clothes. That night he fell asleepin the thought that he would astonish Maggie with it when shecame,--tie it round his waist with his red comforter, and make herbelieve that the sword was his own, and that he was going to be asoldier. There was nobody but Maggie who would be silly enough tobelieve him, or whom he dared allow to know he had a sword; and Maggiewas really coming next week to see Tom, before she went to aboarding-school with Lucy.

If you think a lad of thirteen would have been so childish, you mustbe an exceptionally wise man, who, although you are devoted to a civilcalling, requiring you to look bland rather than formidable, yetnever, since you had a beard, threw yourself into a martial attitude,and frowned before the looking-glass. It is doubtful whether oursoldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at homewho like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramaticspectacles, might possibly cease for want of a ”public.”