The natural strength and firmness of his nature was
beginning to assert itself, urged by the double stimulus
of resentment against his aunts, and the sense that
he must behave like a man and take care of his mother.
“Don’t fret, mother,” he said tenderly.
“I shall soon be able to get money; I’ll
get a situation of some sort.”
“Bless you, my boy!” said Mrs. Tulliver,
a little soothed. Then, looking round sadly,
“But I shouldn’t ha’ minded so much
if we could ha’ kept the things wi’ my
name on ’em.”
Maggie had witnessed this scene with gathering anger.
The implied reproaches against her father—her
father, who was lying there in a sort of living death—neutralized
all her pity for griefs about tablecloths and china;
and her anger on her father’s account was heightened
by some egoistic resentment at Tom’s silent concurrence
with her mother in shutting her out from the common
calamity. She had become almost indifferent to
her mother’s habitual depreciation of her, but
she was keenly alive to any sanction of it, however
passive, that she might suspect in Tom. Poor
Maggie was by no means made up of unalloyed devotedness,
but put forth large claims for herself where she loved
strongly. She burst out at last in an agitated,
almost violent tone: “Mother, how can you
talk so; as if you cared only for things with your
name on, and not for what has my father’s name
too; and to care about anything but dear father himself!—when
he’s lying there, and may never speak to us
again. Tom, you ought to say so too; you ought
not to let any one find fault with my father.”
Maggie, almost choked with mingled grief and anger,
left the room, and took her old place on her father’s
bed. Her heart went out to him with a stronger
movement than ever, at the thought that people would
blame him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed
all her life, and nothing had come of it but evil
tempers.
Her father had always defended and excused her, and
her loving remembrance of his tenderness was a force
within her that would enable her to do or bear anything
for his sake.
Tom was a little shocked at Maggie’s outburst,—telling
him as well as his mother what it was right
to do! She ought to have learned better than
have those hectoring, assuming manners, by this time.
But he presently went into his father’s room,
and the sight there touched him in a way that effaced
the slighter impressions of the previous hour.
When Maggie saw how he was moved, she went to him and
put her arm round his neck as he sat by the bed, and
the two children forgot everything else in the sense
that they had one father and one sorrow.
The Family Council
It was at eleven o’clock the next morning that
the aunts and uncles came to hold their consultation.
The fire was lighted in the large parlor, and poor
Mrs. Tulliver, with a confused impression that it was
a great occasion, like a funeral, unbagged the bell-rope
tassels, and unpinned the curtains, adjusting them
in proper folds, looking round and shaking her head
sadly at the polished tops and legs of the tables,
which sister Pullet herself could not accuse of insufficient
brightness.
