The same sort of traditional belief ran in the Tulliver
veins, but it was carried in richer blood, having
elements of generous imprudence, warm affection, and
hot-tempered rashness. Mr. Tulliver’s grandfather
had been heard to say that he was descended from one
Ralph Tulliver, a wonderfully clever fellow, who had
ruined himself. It is likely enough that the
clever Ralph was a high liver, rode spirited horses,
and was very decidedly of his own opinion. On
the other hand, nobody had ever heard of a Dodson
who had ruined himself; it was not the way of that
family.
If such were the views of life on which the Dodsons
and Tullivers had been reared in the praiseworthy
past of Pitt and high prices, you will infer from
what you already know concerning the state of society
in St. Ogg’s, that there had been no highly
modifying influence to act on them in their maturer
life. It was still possible, even in that later
time of anti-Catholic preaching, for people to hold
many pagan ideas, and believe themselves good church-people,
notwithstanding; so we need hardly feel any surprise
at the fact that Mr. Tulliver, though a regular church-goer,
recorded his vindictiveness on the fly-leaf of his
Bible. It was not that any harm could be said
concerning the vicar of that charming rural parish
to which Dorlcote Mill belonged; he was a man of excellent
family, an irreproachable bachelor, of elegant pursuits,—had
taken honors, and held a fellowship. Mr. Tulliver
regarded him with dutiful respect, as he did everything
else belonging to the church-service; but he considered
that church was one thing and common-sense another,
and he wanted nobody to tell him what commonsense
was. Certain seeds which are required to find
a nidus for themselves under unfavorable circumstances
have been supplied by nature with an apparatus of
hooks, so that they will get a hold on very unreceptive
surfaces. The spiritual seed which had been scattered
over Mr. Tulliver had apparently been destitute of
any corresponding provision, and had slipped off to
the winds again, from a total absence of hooks.
Chapter II
The Torn Nest Is Pierced by the Thorns
There is something sustaining in the very agitation
that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just
as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces
an excitement which is transient strength. It
is in the slow, changed life that follows; in the time
when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an
emotive intensity that counteracts its pain; in the
time when day follows day in dull, unexpectant sameness,
and trial is a dreary routine,—it is then
that despair threatens; it is then that the peremptory
hunger of the soul is felt, and eye and ear are strained
after some unlearned secret of our existence, which
shall give to endurance the nature of satisfaction.
