for the moment with the words “beggars” and “workhouse.”
“To think o’ these cloths as I spun myself,” she went on, lifting things out and turning them over with an excitement all the more strange and piteous because the stout blond woman was usually so passive,—if she had been ruffled before, it was at the surface merely,—“and Job Haxey wove ’em, and brought the piece home on his back, as I remember standing at the door and seeing him come, before I ever thought o’ marrying your father! And the pattern as I chose myself, and bleached so beautiful, and I marked ’em so as nobody ever saw such marking,—they must cut the cloth to get it out, for it’s a particular stitch. And they’re all to be sold, and go into strange people’s houses, and perhaps be cut with the knives, and wore out before I’m dead. You’ll never have one of ’em, my boy,” she said, looking up at Tom with her eyes full of tears, “and I meant ’em for you. I wanted you to have all o’ this pattern. Maggie could have had the large check—it never shows so well when the dishes are on it.”
Tom was touched to the quick, but there was an angry reaction immediately. His face flushed as he said:
“But will my aunts let them be sold, mother? Do they know about it? They’ll never let your linen go, will they? Haven’t you sent to them?”
“Yes, I sent Luke directly they’d put the bailies in, and your aunt Pullet’s been—and, oh dear, oh dear, she cries so and says your father’s disgraced my family and made it the talk o’ the country; and she’ll buy the spotted cloths for herself, because she’s never had so many as she wanted o’ that pattern, and they sha’n’t go to strangers, but she’s got more checks a’ready nor she can do with.” (Here Mrs. Tulliver began to lay back the tablecloths in the chest, folding and stroking them automatically.) “And your uncle Glegg’s been too, and he says things must be bought in for us to lie down on, but he must talk to your aunt; and they’re all coming to consult. But I know they’ll none of ’em take my chany,” she added, turning toward the cups and saucers, “for they all found fault with ’em when I bought ’em, ’cause o’ the small gold sprig all over ’em, between the flowers. But there’s none of ’em got better chany, not even your aunt Pullet herself; and I bought it wi’ my own money as I’d saved ever since I was turned fifteen; and the silver teapot, too,—your father never paid for ’em. And to think as he should ha’ married me, and brought me to this.”
Mrs. Tulliver burst out crying afresh, and she sobbed with her handkerchief at her eyes a few moments, but then removing it, she said in a deprecating way, still half sobbing, as if she were called upon to speak before she could command her voice,—
“And I did say to him times and times, ‘Whativer you do, don’t go to law,’ and what more could I do? I’ve had to sit by while my own fortin’s been spent, and what should ha’ been my children’s, too. You’ll have niver a penny, my boy—but it isn’t your poor mother’s fault.”
She put out one arm toward Tom, looking up at him piteously with her helpless, childish blue eyes. The poor lad went to her and kissed her, and she clung to him. For the first time Tom thought of his father with some reproach. His natural inclination to blame, hitherto kept entirely in abeyance toward his father by the predisposition to think him always right, simply on the ground that he was Tom Tulliver’s father, was turned into this new channel by his mother’s plaints; and with his indignation against Wakem there began to mingle some indignation of another sort. Perhaps his father might have helped bringing them all down in the world, and making people talk of them with contempt, but no one should talk long of Tom Tulliver with contempt.
The natural strength and firmness of his nature was beginning to assert itself, urged by the double stimulus of resentment against his aunts, and the sense that he must behave like a man and take care of his mother.
“Don’t fret, mother,” he said tenderly. “I shall soon be able to get money; I’ll get a situation of some sort.”
“Bless you, my boy!” said Mrs. Tulliver, a little soothed. Then, looking round sadly, “But I shouldn’t ha’ minded so much if we could ha’ kept the things wi’ my name on ’em.”
Maggie had witnessed this scene with gathering anger. The implied reproaches against her father—her father, who was lying there in a sort of living death—neutralized all her pity for griefs about tablecloths and china; and her anger on her father’s account was heightened by some egoistic resentment at Tom’s silent concurrence with her mother in shutting her out from the common calamity. She had become almost indifferent to her mother’s habitual depreciation of her, but she was keenly alive to any sanction of it, however passive, that she might suspect in Tom. Poor Maggie was by no means made up of unalloyed devotedness, but put forth large claims for herself where she loved strongly. She burst out at last in an agitated, almost violent tone: “Mother, how can you talk so; as if you cared only for things with your name on, and not for what has my father’s name too; and to care about anything but dear father himself!—when he’s lying there, and may never speak to us again. Tom, you ought to say so too; you ought not to let any one find fault with my father.”
Maggie, almost choked with mingled grief and anger, left the room, and took her old place on her father’s bed. Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed all her life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.
Her father had always defended and excused her, and her loving remembrance of his tenderness was a force within her that would enable her to do or bear anything for his sake.
Tom was a little shocked at Maggie’s outburst,—telling him as well as his mother what it was right to do! She ought to have learned better than have those hectoring, assuming manners, by this time. But he presently went into his father’s room, and the sight there touched him in a way that effaced the slighter impressions of the previous hour. When Maggie saw how he was moved, she went to him and put her arm round his neck as he sat by the bed, and the two children forgot everything else in the sense that they had one father and one sorrow.
Chapter III.
The Family Council
It was at eleven o’clock the next morning that the aunts and uncles came to hold their consultation. The fire was lighted in the large parlor, and poor Mrs. Tulliver, with a confused impression that it was a great occasion, like a funeral, unbagged the bell-rope tassels, and unpinned the curtains, adjusting them in proper folds, looking round and shaking her head sadly at the polished tops and legs of the tables, which sister Pullet herself could not accuse of insufficient brightness.
Mr. Deane was not coming, he was away on business; but Mrs. Deane appeared punctually in that handsome new gig with the head to it, and the livery-servant driving it, which had thrown so clear a light on several traits in her character to some of her female friends in St. Ogg’s. Mr. Deane had been advancing in the world as rapidly as Mr. Tulliver had been going down in it; and in Mrs. Deane’s house the Dodson linen and plate were beginning to hold quite a subordinate position, as a mere supplement to the handsomer articles of the same kind, purchased in recent years,—a change which had caused an occasional coolness in the sisterly intercourse between her and Mrs. Glegg, who felt that Susan was getting “like the rest,” and there would soon be little of the true Dodson spirit surviving except in herself, and, it might be hoped, in those nephews who supported the Dodson name on the family land, far away in the Wolds.
People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes; and it seems superfluous, when we consider the remote geographical position of the Ethiopians, and how very little the Greeks had to do with them, to inquire further why Homer calls them “blameless.”
Mrs. Deane was the first to arrive; and when she had taken her seat in the large parlor, Mrs. Tulliver came down to her with her comely face a little distorted, nearly as it would have been if she had been crying. She was not a woman who could shed abundant tears, except in moments when the prospect of losing her furniture became unusually vivid, but she felt how unfitting it was to be quite calm under present circumstances.
“Oh, sister, what a world this is!”