the mill in their own hands, I suppose, and pay your husband wages?”
“Oh dear, sir, it’s 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 you’ll 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 he’s 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.
“Oh, sir, I doubt he could niver be got to do it, not if the very mill stood still to beg and pray of him. For your name’s like poison to him, it’s so as never was; and he looks upon it as you’ve been the ruin of him all along, ever since you set the law on him about the road through the meadow,—that’s eight year ago, and he’s been going on ever since—as I’ve allays told him he was wrong——”
“He’s a pig-headed, foul-mouthed fool!” burst out Mr. Wakem, forgetting himself.
“Oh dear, sir!” said Mrs. Tulliver, frightened at a result so different from the one she had fixed her mind on; “I wouldn’t wish to contradict you, but it’s like enough he’s changed his mind with this illness,—he’s forgot a many things he used to talk about. And you wouldn’t like to have a corpse on your mind, if he was to die; and they do say as it’s allays unlucky when Dorlcote Mill changes hands, and the water might all run away, and then—not as I’m wishing you any ill-luck, sir, for I forgot to tell you as I remember your wedding as if it was yesterday; Mrs. Wakem was a Miss Clint, I know that; and my boy, as there isn’t a nicer, handsomer, straighter boy nowhere, went to school with your son——”
Mr. Wakem rose, opened the door, and called to one of his clerks.
“You must excuse me for interrupting you, Mrs. Tulliver; I have business that must be attended to; 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 I’m not denying Mr. Tulliver’s been in the wrong, but he’s been punished enough, and there’s worse men, for it’s been giving to other folks has been his fault. He’s done nobody any harm but himself and his family,—the more’s the pity,—and I go and look at the bare shelves every day, and think where all my things used to stand.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll bear it in mind,” said Mr. Wakem, hastily, looking toward the open door.
“And if you’d please not to say as I’ve been to speak to you, for my son ’ud be very angry with me for demeaning myself, I know he would, and I’ve trouble enough without being scolded by my children.”
Poor Mrs. Tulliver’s voice trembled a little, and she could make no answer to the attorney’s “good morning,” but curtsied and walked out in silence.
“Which day is it that Dorlcote Mill is to be sold? Where’s the bill?” said Mr. Wakem to his clerk when they were alone.
“Next Friday is the day,—Friday at six o’clock.”
“Oh, just run to Winship’s the auctioneer, and see if he’s at home. I have some business for him; ask him to come up.”
Although, when Mr. Wakem entered his office that morning, he had had no intention of purchasing Dorlcote Mill, 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 can be prompt without being rash, because their motives run in fixed tracks, and they have no need to reconcile conflicting aims.
To suppose that Wakem had the same sort of inveterate hatred toward Tulliver that Tulliver had toward him would be like supposing that a pike and a roach can look at each other from a similar point of view. The roach necessarily 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 entertain a strong personal animosity. If Mr. Tulliver had ever seriously injured or thwarted the attorney, Wakem would not have refused him the distinction of being a special object of his vindictiveness. But when Mr. Tulliver called Wakem a rascal at the market dinner-table, the attorneys’ clients were not a whit inclined to withdraw their business from him; and if, when Wakem himself happened to 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 then present were perfectly contented with the fact that “Wakem was Wakem”; that is to say, a man who always knew the stepping-stones that 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 finest stock of port-wine in the neighborhood of St. Ogg’s, was likely to feel himself on a level with public opinion. And I am not sure that even honest Mr. Tulliver himself, with his general view of law as a cockpit, might not, under opposite circumstances, have seen a fine appropriateness in the truth that “Wakem was Wakem”; since I have understood from persons versed in history, that mankind is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors when their victory is on the right side. Tulliver, then, could be no obstruction to Wakem; on the contrary, he was a poor devil whom the lawyer had defeated several times; a hot-tempered fellow, who would always give you a handle against him. Wakem’s conscience 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 net?
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 candidate for the borough of Old Topping, perhaps, feels no pursuant meditative hatred toward the Blue editor who consoles his subscribers with vituperative rhetoric against Yellow men who sell their country, and are the demons of private life; but he might not be sorry, if law and opportunity favored, to kick that Blue editor to a deeper shade of his favorite color. Prosperous men take a little vengeance now and then, as they take a diversion, when it comes easily in their way, and is no hindrance to business; and such small unimpassioned revenges have an enormous effect in life, running through all degrees of pleasant infliction, blocking the fit men out of places, and blackening characters in unpremeditated talk. Still more, to see people who have been only insignificantly offensive to us reduced in life and humiliated, without any special effort of ours, is apt to have a soothing, flattering influence. Providence or some other prince of this world, it appears, has undertaken the task of retribution for us; and really, by an agreeable constitution of things, our enemies somehow don’t prosper.
Wakem was not without this parenthetic vindictiveness toward the uncomplimentary miller; and now Mrs. Tulliver had put the notion into his head, it presented itself to him as a pleasure to do the very thing that would cause Mr. Tulliver the most deadly mortification,—and a pleasure of a complex kind, not made up of crude malice, but mingling with it the relish of self-approbation. To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent action or concession on his behalf. That is a sort of revenge which falls into the scale of virtue, and Wakem was not without an intention of keeping that scale respectably filled. He had once had the pleasure of putting an old enemy of his into one of the St. Ogg’s alms-houses, to the rebuilding of which he had given a large subscription; and here was an opportunity of providing for another by making him his own servant. Such things give a completeness to prosperity, and contribute elements of agreeable consciousness that are not dreamed of by that short-sighted, overheated vindictiveness which goes out its way to wreak itself in direct injury. And Tulliver, with his rough tongue filed by a sense of obligation, would make a better servant than any chance-fellow who was cap-in-hand for a situation. Tulliver was known to be a man of proud honesty, and Wakem was too acute not to believe in the existence of honesty. He was given too observing individuals, not to judging of them according to maxims, and no one knew better than he that all