and father; at church, when he went there, he sat under
the handsomest of mural monuments erected to the memory
of his wife. Most men would have married again
under his circumstances, but he was said to be more
tender to his deformed son than most men were to their
best-shapen offspring. Not that Mr. Wakem had
not other sons beside Philip; but toward them he held
only a chiaroscuro parentage, and provided for them
in a grade of life duly beneath his own. In this
fact, indeed, there lay the clenching motive to the
purchase of Dorlcote Mill. While Mrs. Tulliver
was talking, it had occurred to the rapid-minded lawyer,
among all the other circumstances of the case, that
this purchase would, in a few years to come, furnish
a highly suitable position for a certain favorite
lad whom he meant to bring on in the world.
These were the mental conditions on which Mrs. Tulliver
had undertaken to act persuasively, and had failed;
a fact which may receive some illustration from the
remark of a great philosopher, that fly-fishers fail
in preparing their bait so as to make it alluring in
the right quarter, for want of a due acquaintance
with the subjectivity of fishes.
Daylight on the Wreck
It was a clear frosty January day on which Mr. Tulliver
first came downstairs. The bright sun on the
chestnut boughs and the roofs opposite his window
had made him impatiently declare that he would be
caged up no longer; he thought everywhere would be
more cheery under this sunshine than his bedroom;
for he knew nothing of the bareness below, which made
the flood of sunshine importunate, as if it had an
unfeeling pleasure in showing the empty places, and
the marks where well-known objects once had been.
The impression on his mind that it was but yesterday
when he received the letter from Mr. Gore was so continually
implied in his talk, and the attempts to convey to
him the idea that many weeks had passed and much had
happened since then had been so soon swept away by
recurrent forgetfulness, that even Mr. Turnbull had
begun to despair of preparing him to meet the facts
by previous knowledge. The full sense of the
present could only be imparted gradually by new experience,—not
by mere words, which must remain weaker than the impressions
left by the old experience. This resolution
to come downstairs was heard with trembling by the
wife and children. Mrs. Tulliver said Tom must
not go to St. Ogg’s at the usual hour, he must
wait and see his father downstairs; and Tom complied,
though with an intense inward shrinking from the painful
scene. The hearts of all three had been more
deeply dejected than ever during the last few days.
For Guest & Co. had not bought the mill; both mill
and land had been knocked down to Wakem, who had been
over the premises, and had laid before Mr. Deane and
Mr. Glegg, in Mrs. Tulliver’s presence, his
willingness to employ Mr. Tulliver, in case of his
