Chapter II
The Christmas Holidays
Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done hisduty that year in the noblest fashion, and had set off his rich giftsof warmth and color with all the heightening contrast of frost andsnow.
Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undulations softer than thelimbs of infancy; it lay with the neatliest finished border on everysloping roof, making the dark-red gables stand out with a new depth ofcolor; it weighed heavily on the laurels and fir-trees, till it fellfrom them with a shuddering sound; it clothed the rough turnip-fieldwith whiteness, and made the sheep look like dark blotches; the gateswere all blocked up with the sloping drifts, and here and there adisregarded four-footed beast stood as if petrified ”in unrecumbentsadness”; there was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, wereone still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the darkriver that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow. But oldChristmas smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on the outdoorworld, for he meant to light up home with new brightness, to deepenall the richness of indoor color, and give a keener edge of delight tothe warm fragrance of food; he meant to prepare a sweet imprisonmentthat would strengthen the primitive fellowship of kindred, and makethe sunshine of familiar human faces as welcome as the hiddenday-star. His kindness fell but hardly on the homeless,--fell buthardly on the homes where the hearth was not very warm, and where thefood had little fragrance; where the human faces had had no sunshinein them, but rather the leaden, blank-eyed gaze of unexpectant want.But the fine old season meant well; and if he has not learned thesecret how to bless men impartially, it is because his father Time,with ever-unrelenting unrelenting purpose, still hides that secret inhis own mighty, slow-beating heart.
And yet this Christmas day, in spite of Tom's fresh delight in home,was not, he thought, somehow or other, quite so happy as it had alwaysbeen before. The red berries were just as abundant on the holly, andhe and Maggie had dressed all the windows and mantlepieces andpicture-frames on Christmas eve with as much taste as ever, weddingthe thick-set scarlet clusters with branches of the black-berried ivy.There had been singing under the windows after midnight,--supernaturalsinging, Maggie always felt, in spite of Tom's contemptuous insistencethat the singers were old Patch, the parish clerk, and the rest of thechurch choir; she trembled with awe when their carolling broke in uponher dreams, and the image of men in fustian clothes was always thrustaway by the vision of angels resting on the parted cloud. The midnightchant had helped as usual to lift the morning above the level ofcommon days; and then there were the smell of hot toast and ale fromthe kitchen, at the breakfast hour; the favorite anthem, the greenboughs, and the short sermon gave the appropriate festal character tothe church-going; and aunt and uncle Moss, with all their sevenchildren, were looking like so many reflectors of the brightparlor-fire, when the church-goers came back, stamping the snow fromtheir feet. The plum-pudding was of the same handsome roundness asever, and came in with the symbolic blue flames around it, as if ithad been heroically snatched from the nether fires, into which it hadbeen thrown by dyspeptic Puritans; the dessert was as splendid asever, with its golden oranges, brown nuts, and the crystalline lightand dark of apple-jelly and damson cheese; in all these thingsChristmas was as it had always been since Tom could remember; it wasonly distinguished, if by anything, by superior sliding and snowballs.
Christmas was cheery, but not so Mr. Tulliver. He was irate anddefiant; and Tom, though he espoused his father's quarrels and sharedhis father's sense of injury, was not without some of the feeling thatoppressed Maggie when Mr. Tulliver got louder and more angry innarration and assertion with the increased leisure of dessert. Theattention that Tom might have concentrated on his nuts and wine wasdistracted by a sense that there were rascally enemies in the world,and that the business of grown-up life could hardly be conductedwithout a good deal of quarrelling. Now, Tom was not fond ofquarrelling, unless it could soon be put an end to by a fair stand-upfight with an adversary whom he had every chance of thrashing; and hisfather's irritable talk made him uncomfortable, though he neveraccounted to himself for the feeling, or conceived the notion that hisfather was faulty in this respect.
The particular embodiment of the evil principle now exciting Mr.Tulliver's determined resistance was Mr. Pivart, who, having landshigher up the Ripple, was taking measures for their irrigation, whicheither were, or would be, or were bound to be (on the principle thatwater was water), an infringement on Mr. Tulliver's legitimate shareof water-power. Dix, who had a mill on the stream, was a feebleauxiliary of Old Harry compared with Pivart. Dix had been brought tohis senses by arbitration, and Wakem's advice had not carried _him_far. No; Dix, Mr. Tulliver considered, had been as good as nowhere inpoint of law; and in the intensity of his indignation against Pivart,his contempt for a baffled adversary like Dix began to wear the air ofa friendly attachment. He had no male audience to-day except Mr. Moss,who knew nothing, as he said, of the ”natur' o' mills,” and could onlyassent to Mr. Tulliver's arguments on the _a priori_ ground of familyrelationship and monetary obligation but Mr. Tulliver did not talkwith the futile intention of convincing his audience, he talked torelieve himself; while good Mr. Moss made strong efforts to keep hiseyes wide open, in spite of the sleepiness which an unusually gooddinner produced in his hard-worked frame. Mrs. Moss, more alive to thesubject, and interested in everything that affected her brother,listened and put in a word as often as maternal preoccupationsallowed.
”Why, Pivart's a new name hereabout, brother, isn't it?” she said; ”hedidn't own the land in father's time, nor yours either, before I wasmarried.”
”New name? Yes, I should think it _is_ a new name,” said Mr. Tulliver,with angry emphasis. ”Dorlcote Mill's been in our family a hundredyear and better, and nobody ever heard of a Pivart meddling with theriver, till this fellow came and bought Bincome's farm out of hand,before anybody else could so much as say 'snap.' But I'll _Pivart_him!” added Mr. Tulliver, lifting his glass with a sense that he haddefined his resolution in an unmistakable manner.
”You won't be forced to go to law with him, I hope, brother?” saidMrs. Moss, with some anxiety.
”I don't know what I shall be forced to; but I know what I shall force_him_ to, with his dikes and erigations, if there's any law to bebrought to bear o' the right side. I know well enough who's at thebottom of it; he's got Wakem to back him and egg him on. I know Wakemtells him the law can't touch him for it, but there's folks can handlethe law besides Wakem. It takes a big raskil to beat him; but there'sbigger to be found, as know more o' th' ins and outs o' the law, elsehow came Wakem to lose Brumley's suit for him?”
Mr. Tulliver was a strictly honest man, and proud of being honest, buthe considered that in law the ends of justice could only be achievedby employing a stronger knave to frustrate a weaker. Law was a sort ofcock-fight, in which it was the business of injured honesty to get agame bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs.
”Gore's no fool; you needn't tell me that,” he observed presently, ina pugnacious tone, as if poor Gritty had been urging that lawyer'scapabilities; ”but, you see, he isn't up to the law as Wakem is. Andwater's a very particular thing; you can't pick it up with apitchfork. That's why it's been nuts to Old Harry and the lawyers.It's plain enough what's the rights and the wrongs of water, if youlook at it straight-forrard; for a river's a river, and if you've gota mill, you must have water to turn it; and it's no use telling mePivart's erigation and nonsense won't stop my wheel; I know whatbelongs to water better than that. Talk to me o' what th' engineerssay! I say it's common sense, as Pivart's dikes must do me an injury.But if that's their engineering, I'll put Tom to it by-and-by, and heshall see if he can't find a bit more sense in th' engineeringbusiness than what _that_ comes to.”
Tom, looking round with some anxiety at this announcement of hisprospects, unthinkingly withdrew a small rattle he was amusing babyMoss with, whereupon she, being a baby that knew her own mind withremarkable clearness, instantaneously expressed her sentiments in apiercing yell, and was not to be appeased even by the restoration ofthe rattle, feeling apparently that the original wrong of having ittaken from her remained in all its force. Mrs. Moss hurried away withher into another room, and expressed to Mrs. Tulliver, who accompaniedher, the conviction that the dear child had good reasons for crying;implying that if it was supposed to be the rattle that baby clamoredfor, she was a misunderstood baby. The thoroughly justifiable yellbeing quieted, Mrs. Moss looked at her sister-in-law and said,--
”I'm sorry to see brother so put out about this water work.”
”It's your brother's way, Mrs. Moss; I'd never anything o' that sortbefore I was married,” said Mrs. Tulliver, with a half-impliedreproach. She always spoke of her husband as ”your brother” to Mrs.Moss in any case when his line of conduct was not matter of pureadmiration. Amiable Mrs. Tulliver, who was never angry in her life,had yet her mild share of that spirit without which she could hardlyhave been at once a Dodson and a woman. Being always on the defensivetoward her own sisters, it was natural that she should be keenlyconscious of her superiority, even as the weakest Dodson, over ahusband's sister, who, besides being poorly off, and inclined to ”hangon” her brother, had the good-natured submissiveness of a large,easy-tempered, untidy, prolific woman, with affection enough in hernot only for her own husband and abundant children, but for any numberof collateral relations.
”I hope and pray he won't go to law,” said Mrs. Moss, ”for there'snever any knowing where that'll end. And the right doesn't allays win.This Mr. Pivart's a rich man, by what I can make out, and the richmostly get things their own way.”
”As to that,” said Mrs. Tulliver, stroking her dress down, ”I've seenwhat riches are in my own family; for my sisters have got husbands ascan afford to do pretty much what they like. But I think sometimes Ishall be drove off my head with the talk about this law and erigationand my sisters lay all the fault to me, for they don't know what it isto marry a man like your brother; how should they? Sister Pullet hasher own way from morning till night.”
”Well,” said Mrs. Moss, ”I don't think I should like my husband if hehadn't got any wits of his own, and I had to find head-piece for him.It's a deal easier to do what pleases one's husband, than to bepuzzling what else one should do.”
”If people come to talk o' doing what pleases their husbands,” saidMrs. Tulliver, with a faint imitation of her sister Glegg, ”I'm sureyour brother might have waited a long while before he'd have found awife that 'ud have let him have his say in everything, as I do. It'snothing but law and erigation now, from when we first get up in themorning till we go to bed at night; and I never contradict him; I onlysay, 'Well, Mr. Tulliver, do as you like; but whativer you do, don'tgo to law.”
Mrs. Tulliver, as we have seen, was not without influence over herhusband. No woman is; she can always incline him to do either what shewishes, or the reverse; and on the composite impulses that werethreatening to hurry Mr. Tulliver into ”law,” Mrs. Tulliver'smonotonous pleading had doubtless its share of force; it might even becomparable to that proverbial feather which has the credit ordiscredit of breaking the camel's back; though, on a strictlyimpartial view, the blame ought rather to lie with the previous weightof feathers which had already placed the back in such imminent perilthat an otherwise innocent feather could not settle on it withoutmischief. Not that Mrs. Tulliver's feeble beseeching could have hadthis feather's weight in virtue of her single personality; butwhenever she departed from entire assent to her husband, he saw in herthe representative of the Dodson family; and it was a guidingprinciple with Mr. Tulliver to let the Dodsons know that they were notto domineer over _him_, or--more specifically--that a male Tulliverwas far more than equal to four female Dodsons, even though one ofthem was Mrs. Glegg.
But not even a direct argument from that typical Dodson female herselfagainst his going to law could have heightened his disposition towardit so much as the mere thought of Wakem, continually freshened by thesight of the too able attorney on market-days. Wakem, to his certainknowledge, was (metaphorically speaking) at the bottom of Pivart'sirrigation Wakem had tried to make Dix stand out, and go to law aboutthe dam; it was unquestionably Wakem who had caused Mr. Tulliver tolose the suit about the right of road and the bridge that made athoroughfare of his land for every vagabond who preferred anopportunity of damaging private property to walking like an honest manalong the highroad; all lawyers were more or less rascals, but Wakem'srascality was of that peculiarly aggravated kind which placed itselfin opposition to that form of right embodied in Mr. Tulliver'sinterests and opinions. And as an extra touch of bitterness, theinjured miller had recently, in borrowing the five hundred pounds,been obliged to carry a little business to Wakem's office on his ownaccount. A hook-nosed glib fellow! as cool as a cucumber,--alwayslooking so sure of his game! And it was vexatious that Lawyer Gore wasnot more like him, but was a bald, round-featured man, with blandmanners and fat hands; a game-cock that you would be rash to bet uponagainst Wakem. Gore was a sly fellow. His weakness did not lie on theside of scrupulosity; but the largest amount of winking, howeversignificant, is not equivalent to seeing through a stone wall; andconfident as Mr. Tulliver was in his principle that water was water,and in the direct inference that Pivart had not a leg to stand on inthis affair of irrigation, he had an uncomfortable suspicion thatWakem had more law to show against this (rationally) irrefragableinference than Gore could show for it. But then, if they went to law,there was a chance for Mr. Tulliver to employ Counsellor Wylde on hisside, instead of having that admirable bully against him; and theprospect of seeing a witness of Wakem's made to perspire and becomeconfounded, as Mr. Tulliver's witness had once been, was alluring tothe love of retributive justice.
Much rumination had Mr. Tulliver on these puzzling subjects during hisrides on the gray horse; much turning of the head from side to side,as the scales dipped alternately; but the probable result was stillout of sight, only to be reached through much hot argument anditeration in domestic and social life. That initial stage of thedispute which consisted in the narration of the case and theenforcement of Mr. Tulliver's views concerning it throughout theentire circle of his connections would necessarily take time; and atthe beginning of February, when Tom was going to school again, therewere scarcely any new items to be detected in his father's statementof the case against Pivart, or any more specific indication of themeasures he was bent on taking against that rash contravener of theprinciple that water was water. Iteration, like friction, is likely togenerate heat instead of progress, and Mr. Tulliver's heat wascertainly more and more palpable. If there had been no new evidence onany other point, there had been new evidence that Pivart was as ”thickas mud” with Wakem.
”Father,” said Tom, one evening near the end of the holidays, ”uncleGlegg says Lawyer Wakem _is_ going to send his son to Mr. Stelling. Itisn't true, what they said about his going to be sent to France. Youwon't like me to go to school with Wakem's son, shall you?”
”It's no matter for that, my boy,” said Mr. Tulliver; ”don't you learnanything bad of him, that's all. The lad's a poor deformed creatur,and takes after his mother in the face; I think there isn't much ofhis father in him. It's a sign Wakem thinks high o' Mr. Sterling, ashe sends his son to him, and Wakem knows meal from bran.”
Mr. Tulliver in his heart was rather proud of the fact that his sonwas to have the same advantages as Wakem's; but Tom was not at alleasy on the point. It would have been much clearer if the lawyer's sonhad not been deformed, for then Tom would have had the prospect ofpitching into him with all that freedom which is derived from a highmoral sanction.