The Complete Novels of George Eliot. George Eliot

things as Maggie, having a wonderful instinctive discernment of what would turn to his advantage or disadvantage; and so it happened, that though he was much more wilful and inflexible than Maggie, his mother hardly ever called him naughty. But if Tom did make a mistake of that sort, he espoused it, and stood by it: he “didn’t mind.” If he broke the lash of his father’s gigwhip by lashing the gate, he couldn’t help it,—the whip shouldn’t have got caught in the hinge. If Tom Tulliver whipped a gate, he was convinced, not that the whipping of gates by all boys was a justifiable act, but that he, Tom Tulliver, was justifiable in whipping that particular gate, and he wasn’t going to be sorry. But Maggie, as she stood crying before the glass, felt it impossible that she should go down to dinner and endure the severe eyes and severe words of her aunts, while Tom and Lucy, and Martha, who waited at table, and perhaps her father and her uncles, would laugh at her; for if Tom had laughed at her, of course every one else would; and if she had only let her hair alone, she could have sat with Tom and Lucy, and had the apricot pudding and the custard! What could she do but sob? She sat as helpless and despairing among her black locks as Ajax among the slaughtered sheep. Very trivial, perhaps, this anguish seems to weather-worn mortals who have to think of Christmas bills, dead loves, and broken friendships; but it was not less bitter to Maggie—perhaps it was even more bitter—than what we are fond of calling antithetically the real troubles of mature life. “Ah, my child, you will have real troubles to fret about by and by,” is the consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in our childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have been grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place; but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment and weep over it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments has left its trace, and lives in us still, but such traces have blent themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture of our youth and manhood; and so it comes that we can look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory of what he did and what happened to him, of what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and trousers, but with an intimate penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then, when it was so long from one Midsummer to another; what he felt when his school fellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day in the holidays, when he didn’t know how to amuse himself, and fell from idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to let him have a tailed coat that “half,” although every other boy of his age had gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless conception of life, that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children.

      “Miss Maggie, you’re to come down this minute,” said Kezia, entering the room hurriedly. “Lawks! what have you been a-doing? I never see such a fright!”

      “Don’t, Kezia,” said Maggie, angrily. “Go away!”

      “But I tell you you’re to come down, Miss, this minute; your mother says so,” said Kezia, going up to Maggie and taking her by the hand to raise her from the floor.

      “Get away, Kezia; I don’t want any dinner,” said Maggie, resisting Kezia’s arm. “I sha’n’t come.”

      “Oh, well, I can’t stay. I’ve got to wait at dinner,” said Kezia, going out again.

      “Maggie, you little silly,” said Tom, peeping into the room ten minutes after, “why don’t you come and have your dinner? There’s lots o’ goodies, and mother says you’re to come. What are you crying for, you little spooney?”

      Oh, it was dreadful! Tom was so hard and unconcerned; if he had been crying on the floor, Maggie would have cried too. And there was the dinner, so nice; and she was so hungry. It was very bitter.

      But Tom was not altogether hard. He was not inclined to cry, and did not feel that Maggie’s grief spoiled his prospect of the sweets; but he went and put his head near her, and said in a lower, comforting tone,—

      “Won’t you come, then, Magsie? Shall I bring you a bit o’ pudding when I’ve had mine, and a custard and things?”

      “Ye-e-es,” said Maggie, beginning to feel life a little more tolerable.

      “Very well,” said Tom, going away. But he turned again at the door and said, “But you’d better come, you know. There’s the dessert,—nuts, you know, and cowslip wine.”

      Maggie’s tears had ceased, and she looked reflective as Tom left her. His good nature had taken off the keenest edge of her suffering, and nuts with cowslip wine began to assert their legitimate influence.

      Slowly she rose from amongst her scattered locks, and slowly she made her way downstairs. Then she stood leaning with one shoulder against the frame of the dining-parlour door, peeping in when it was ajar. She saw Tom and Lucy with an empty chair between them, and there were the custards on a side-table; it was too much. She slipped in and went toward the empty chair. But she had no sooner sat down than she repented and wished herself back again.

      Mrs. Tulliver gave a little scream as she saw her, and felt such a “turn” that she dropped the large gravy-spoon into the dish, with the most serious results to the table-cloth. For Kezia had not betrayed the reason of Maggie’s refusal to come down, not liking to give her mistress a shock in the moment of carving, and Mrs. Tulliver thought there was nothing worse in question than a fit of perverseness, which was inflicting its own punishment by depriving Maggie of half her dinner.

      Mrs. Tulliver’s scream made all eyes turn towards the same point as her own, and Maggie’s cheeks and ears began to burn, while uncle Glegg, a kind-looking, white-haired old gentleman, said,—

      “Heyday! what little gell’s this? Why, I don’t know her. Is it some little gell you’ve picked up in the road, Kezia?”

      “Why, she’s gone and cut her hair herself,” said Mr. Tulliver in an undertone to Mr. Deane, laughing with much enjoyment. Did you ever know such a little hussy as it is?”

      “Why, little miss, you’ve made yourself look very funny,” said Uncle Pullet, and perhaps he never in his life made an observation which was felt to be so lacerating.

      “Fie, for shame!” said aunt Glegg, in her loudest, severest tone of reproof. “Little gells as cut their own hair should be whipped and fed on bread and water,—not come and sit down with their aunts and uncles.”

      “Ay, ay,” said uncle Glegg, meaning to give a playful turn to this denunciation, “she must be sent to jail, I think, and they’ll cut the rest of her hair off there, and make it all even.”

      “She’s more like a gypsy nor ever,” said aunt Pullet, in a pitying tone; “it’s very bad luck, sister, as the gell should be so brown; the boy’s fair enough. I doubt it’ll stand in her way i’ life to be so brown.”

      “She’s a naughty child, as’ll break her mother’s heart,” said Mrs. Tulliver, with the tears in her eyes.

      Maggie seemed to be listening to a chorus of reproach and derision. Her first flush came from anger, which gave her a transient power of defiance, and Tom thought she was braving it out, supported by the recent appearance of the pudding and custard. Under this impression, he whispered, “Oh, my! Maggie, I told you you’d catch it.” He meant to be friendly, but Maggie felt convinced that Tom was rejoicing in her ignominy. Her feeble power of defiance left her in an instant, her heart swelled, and getting up from her chair, she ran to her father, hid her face on his shoulder, and burst out into loud sobbing.

      “Come, come, my wench,” said her father, soothingly, putting his arm round her, “never mind; you was i’ the right to cut it off if it plagued you; give over crying; father’ll take your part.”

      Delicious words of tenderness! Maggie never forgot any of these moments when her father “took her part”;