“It’s just as if it was yesterday, now,” Mr Tulliver went on, “when my father began the malting. I remember, the day they finished the malt-house, I thought summat great was to come of it; for we’d a plum-pudding that day and a bit of a feast, and I said to my mother,—she was a fine dark-eyed woman, my mother was,—the little wench ’ull be as like her as two peas.” Here Mr Tulliver put his stick between his legs, and took out his snuff-box, for the greater enjoyment of this anecdote, which dropped from him in fragments, as if he every other moment lost narration in vision. “I was a little chap no higher much than my mother’s knee,—she was sore fond of us children, Gritty and me,—and so I said to her, ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘shall we have plum-pudding every day because o’ the malt-house? She used to tell me o’ that till her dying day. She was but a young woman when she died, my mother was. But it’s forty good year since they finished the malt-house, and it isn’t many days out of ’em all as I haven’t looked out into the yard there, the first thing in the morning,—all weathers, from year’s end to year’s end. I should go off my head in a new place. I should be like as if I’d lost my way. It’s all hard, whichever way I look at it,—the harness ’ull gall me, but it ’ud be summat to draw along the old road, instead of a new un.”
“Ay, sir,” said Luke, “you’d be a deal better here nor in some new place. I can’t abide new places mysen: things is allays awk’ard,—narrow-wheeled waggins, belike, and the stiles all another sort, an’ oat-cake i’ some places, tow’rt th’ head o’ the Floss, there. It’s poor work, changing your country-side.”
“But I doubt, Luke, they’ll be for getting rid o’ Ben, and making you do with a lad; and I must help a bit wi’ the mill. You’ll have a worse place.”
“Ne’er mind, sir,” said Luke, “I sha’n’t plague mysen. I’n been wi’ you twenty year, an’ you can’t get twenty year wi’ whistlin’ for ’em, no more nor you can make the trees grow: you mun wait till God A’mighty sends ’em. I can’t abide new victual nor new faces, I can’t,—you niver know but what they’ll gripe you.”
The walk was finished in silence after this, for Luke had disburthened himself of thoughts to an extent that left his conversational resources quite barren, and Mr Tulliver had relapsed from his recollections into a painful meditation on the choice of hardships before him. Maggie noticed that he was unusually absent that evening at tea; and afterward he sat leaning forward in his chair, looking at the ground, moving his lips, and shaking his head from time to time. Then he looked hard at Mrs Tulliver, who was knitting opposite him, then at Maggie, who, as she bent over her sewing, was intensely conscious of some drama going forward in her father’s mind. Suddenly he took up the poker and broke the large coal fiercely.
“Dear heart, Mr Tulliver, what can you be thinking of?” said his wife, looking up in alarm; “it’s very wasteful, breaking the coal, and we’ve got hardly any large coal left, and I don’t know where the rest is to come from.”
“I don’t think you’re quite so well to-night, are you, father?” said Maggie; “you seem uneasy.”
“Why, how is it Tom doesn’t come?” said Mr Tulliver, impatiently.
“Dear heart! is it time? I must go and get his supper,” said Mrs Tulliver, laying down her knitting, and leaving the room.
“It’s nigh upon half-past eight,” said Mr Tulliver. “He’ll be here soon. Go, go and get the big Bible, and open it at the beginning, where everything’s set down. And get the pen and ink.”