The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot (rom com books to read .txt) 📗

of Mr. Poulter’s flesh,—no other flesh would have healed in anything like the same time. On less personal matters connected with the important warfare in which he had been engaged, Mr. Poulter was more reticent, only taking care not to give the weight of his authority to any loose notions concerning military history. Any one who pretended to a knowledge of what occurred at the siege of Badajos was especially an object of silent pity to Mr. Poulter; he wished that prating person had been run down, and had the breath trampled out of him at the first go-off, as he himself had,—he might talk about the siege of Badajos then! Tom did not escape irritating his drilling-master occasionally, by his curiosity concerning other military matters than Mr. Poulter’s personal experience.

“And General Wolfe, Mr. Poulter,—wasn’t he a wonderful fighter?” said Tom, who held the notion that all the martial heroes commemorated on the 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 his discipline; “they’d better not talk to me about General Wolfe. He did nothing but die of his wound; that’s a poor haction, I consider. Any other 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 wish you’d bring your sword and do the sword-exercise!”

For a long while Mr. Poulter only shook his head in a significant manner at this request, and smiled patronizingly, as Jupiter may have done when Semele urged her too ambitious request. But one afternoon, when a sudden shower of heavy rain had detained Mr. Poulter twenty minutes longer than usual at the Black Swan, the sword was brought,—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’s head off?”

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

“But you had a gun and bayonet besides?” said Tom. “I should like the gun and bayonet best, because you could shoot ‘em first and spear ‘em after. Bang! Ps-s-s-s!” Tom gave the requisite pantomime to indicate the double enjoyment of pulling the trigger and thrusting the spear.

“Ah, but the sword’s the thing when you come to close fighting,” said Mr. Poulter, involuntarily falling in with Tom’s enthusiasm, and drawing 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 an Englishman, “let me go and call Philip. He’ll like to see you, you know.”

“What! the humpbacked lad?” said Mr. Poulter, contemptuously; “what’s the use of his looking on?”

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

“Let him come, then. I’ll show him something different from his bows and arrows,” said Mr. Poulter, coughing and drawing himself up, while he gave a little preliminary play to his wrist.

Tom ran in to Philip, who was enjoying his afternoon’s holiday at the piano, in the drawingroom, picking out tunes for himself and singing them. He was supremely happy, perched like an amorphous bundle on the high stool, with his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on the opposite cornice, 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 the carriage-house!”

The jar of this interruption, the discord of Tom’s tones coming across the notes to which Philip was vibrating in soul and body, would have been enough to unhinge his temper, even if there had been no question of Poulter the drilling-master; and Tom, in the hurry of seizing something to say to prevent Mr. Poulter from thinking he was afraid of the sword when he sprang away from it, had alighted on this proposition to fetch Philip, though he knew well enough that Philip hated to hear him mention his drilling-lessons. Tom would never have done so inconsiderate a thing except under the severe stress of his personal pride.

Philip shuddered visibly as he paused from his music. Then turning red, he said, with violent passion,—

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

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

“I’m fit to speak to something better than you, you poor-spirited imp!” said Tom, lighting up immediately at Philip’s fire. “You know I won’t hit you, because you’re no better than a girl. But I’m an honest man’s son, and your father’s a rogue; everybody says so!”

Tom flung out of the room, and slammed the door after him, made strangely heedless by his anger; for to slam doors within the hearing of Mrs. Stelling, who was probably not far off, was an offence only to be wiped out by twenty lines of Virgil. In fact, that lady did presently descend from her room, in double wonder at the noise and the subsequent cessation of Philip’s music. She found him sitting in a heap on the hassock, and crying bitterly.

“What’s the matter, Wakem? what was that noise about? Who slammed the door?”

Philip looked up, and hastily dried his eyes. “It was Tulliver who came 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 obliging than Tom, who was made useful in many ways. Still, his father paid more than Mr. Tulliver did, and she meant him to feel that she behaved exceedingly well to him. Philip, however, met her advances toward a good understanding very much as a caressed mollusk meets an invitation to show himself out of his shell. Mrs. Stelling was not a loving, tender-hearted woman; she was a woman whose skirt sat well, who adjusted her waist and patted her curls with a preoccupied air when she inquired after your welfare. These things, doubtless, represent a great social power, but it is not the power of love; and no other power could win Philip from his personal reserve.

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

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

Meanwhile Tom, who had for the first time sent a poisoned arrow into Philip’s heart, had returned to the carriage-house, where he found Mr. Poulter, with a fixed and earnest eye, wasting the perfections of his sword-exercise on probably observant but inappreciative rats. But Mr. Poulter was a host in himself; that is to say, he admired himself more than a whole army of spectators could have admired him. He took no notice of Tom’s return, being too entirely absorbed in the cut and thrust,—the solemn one, two, three, four; and Tom, not without a slight feeling of alarm at Mr. Poulter’s fixed eye and hungry-looking sword, which seemed impatient for something else to cut besides the air, admired the performance from as great a distance as possible. It was not until Mr. Poulter paused and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, that Tom felt the full charm of the sword-exercise, and wished it to be repeated.

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

“No no, young gentleman,” said Mr. Poulter, shaking his head decidedly; “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 arms with 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 if you’d let me keep the sword a week. Look here!” said Tom, reaching out the attractively large round of silver. The young dog calculated the effect as well as if he had been a philosopher.

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

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

“And let me see, now, whether you can draw it out of the sheath without hurting yourself.” That process having been gone through more than once, Mr. Poulter felt that he had acted with scrupulous conscientiousness, and said, “Well, now, Master Tulliver, if I take the crown-piece, it is to make sure as you’ll do no mischief with the sword.”

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

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

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

If you think a lad of thirteen would have been so childish, you must be an exceptionally wise man, who, although you are devoted to a civil calling, requiring you to look bland rather than formidable, yet never, since you had a beard, threw yourself into a martial attitude, and frowned before the looking-glass. It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a “public.”