Part 19

"The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs. Glegg was not the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs. Tulliver's arm-chair, no impartial observer could have denied, for a woman of fifty, she had a very comely face and figure, though Tom and Maggie considered their aunt Glegg as the type of ugliness. It is true she despised the advantages of costume; for though, as she often observed, no woman had better clothes, it was not her way to wear her new things out before her old ones. Other women, if they liked, might have their best thread lace in every wash, but when Mrs. Glegg did it would be found that she had better lace laid by in the right-hand drawer of her wardrobe, in the Spotted Chamber, than ever Mrs. Wool of St. Ogg's had bought in her life, although Mrs. Wool wore her lace before it was paid for. So of her curled fronts. Mrs. Glegg had doubtless the glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in various degrees of fuzzy laxness; but to look out on the week-day world from under a crisp and glossy front would be to introduce a most dream-like and unpleasant confusion between the sacred and the secular.

So, if Mrs. Glegg's front to-day was more fuzzy and lax than usual, she had a design under it: she intended the most pointed and cutting allusion to Mrs. Tulliver's bunches of blonde curls, separated from each other by a due wave of smoothness on each side of the parting. Mrs. Tulliver had shed tears several times at sister Glegg's unkindness on the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the consciousness of looking the handsomer for them naturally administered support. Mrs. Glegg chose to wear her bonnet in the house to-day--untied and tilted slightly, of course--a frequent practice of hers when she was on a visit, and happened to be in a severe humor; she didn't know what draughts there might be in strange houses. For the same reason she wore a small sable tippet, which reached just to her shoulders, and was very far from meeting across her well-formed chest, while her long neck was protected by a _chevaux-de-frise_ of miscellaneous frilling. One would need to be learned in the fashions of those times to know how far in the rear of them Mrs. Glegg's slate-colored silk gown must have been; but, from certain constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odor about it suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that it belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come recently into wear.

"Mrs. Glegg held her large gold watch in her hand, with the many-doubled chain round her fingers, and observed to Mrs. Tulliver, who had just returned from a visit to the kitchen, that whatever it might be by other people's clocks and watches, it was gone half-past twelve by hers.

'I don't know what ails sister Pullet,' she continued. 'It used to be the way in our family for one to be as early as another--I'm sure it was so in my poor father's time--and not for one sister to sit half an hour before the others came. But if the ways o' the family are altered, it shan't be _my_ fault; I'll never be the one to come into a house when all the rest are going away. I wonder at sister Deane--she used to be more like me. But if you'll take my advice, Bessy, you'll put the dinner forward a bit, sooner than put it back, because folks are late as ought to ha' known better.'

The sound of wheels while Mrs. Glegg was speaking was an interruption highly welcome to Mrs. Tulliver, who hastened out to receive sister Pullet--it must be sister Pullet, because the sound was that of a four-wheel.

Mrs. Glegg tossed her head and looked rather sour about the mouth at the thought of the "four-wheel." She had a strong opinion on that subject.

Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped before Mrs. Tulliver's door, and it was apparently requisite that she should shed a few more before getting out; for, though her husband and Mrs. Tulliver stood ready to support her, she sat still and shook her head sadly as she looked through her tears at the vague distance.

'Why, whatever is the matter, sister?' said Mrs. Tulliver. She was not an imaginative woman, but it occurred to her that the large toilet-glass in sister Pullet's best bedroom was possibly broken for the second time.

There was no reply but a further shake of the head as Mrs. Pullet slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without casting a glance at Mr. Pullet to see that he was guarding her handsome silk dress from injury. Mr. Pullet was a small man with a high nose, small twinkling eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black, and a white cravat, that seemed to have been tied very tight on some higher principle than that of mere personal ease. He bore about the same relation to his tall, good-looking wife, with her balloon sleeves, abundant mantle, and large be-feathered and be-ribboned bonnet, as a small fishing-smack bears to a brig with all its sails spread.

Mrs. Pullet brushed each door-post with great nicety about the latitude of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly ridiculous to an instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and a half across the shoulders), and having done that, sent the muscles of her face in quest of fresh tears as she advanced into the parlor where Mrs. Glegg was seated.

'Well, sister, you're late; what's the matter?' said Mrs. Glegg, rather sharply, as they shook hands.

Mrs. Pullet sat down, lifting up her mantle carefully behind before she answered.

'She's gone,' unconsciously using an impressive figure of rhetoric.

'It isn't the glass this time, then,' thought Mrs. Tulliver.

'Died the day before yesterday,' continued Mrs. Pullet; 'an' her legs was as thick as my body,' she added with deep sadness, after a pause. 'They'd tapped her no end o' times, and the water--they say you might ha' swum in it, if you'd liked.'

'Well, Sophy, it's a mercy she's gone, then, whoiver she may be,' said Mrs. Glegg, with the promptitude and emphasis of a mind naturally clear and decided; 'but I can't think who you're talking of, for my part.'

'But _I_ know,' said Mrs. Pullet, sighing and shaking her head; 'and there isn't another such a dropsy in the parish. _I_ know as it's old Mrs. Sutton o' the Twentylands.'

'Well, she's no kin o' yours, nor much acquaintance, as I've ever heard of,' said Mrs. Glegg, who always cried just as much as was proper when anything happened to her own "kin," but not on other occasions.

'She's so much acquaintance as I've seen her legs when they were like bladders.... And an old lady as had doubled her money over and over again, and kept it all in her own management to the last, and had her pocket with her keys in under her pillow constant. There isn't many old _parish's_ like her, I doubt.'

'And they say she'd took as much physic as 'ud fill a wagon,' observed Mr. Pullet.

'Ah!' sighed Mrs. Pullet, 'she'd another complaint ever so many years before she had the dropsy, and the doctors couldn't make out what it was. And she said to me, when I went to see her last Christmas, she said, 'Mrs. Pullet, if iver you have the dropsy, you'll think o' me.' 'She _did_ say so,' added Mrs. Pullet, beginning to cry bitterly again; 'those were her very words. And she's to be buried o' Saturday, and Pullet's bid to the funeral.'

'Sophy,' said Mrs. Glegg, unable any longer to contain her spirit of rational remonstrance, 'Sophy, I wonder _at_ you, fretting and injuring your health about people as don't belong to you. Your poor father never did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any o' the family, as I ever heard of. You couldn't fret no more than this if we'd heard as our cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his will.'

Mrs. Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much. It was not every body who could afford to cry so much about their neighbors who had left them nothing; but Mrs. Pullet had married a gentleman farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her crying and every thing else to the highest pitch of respectability.

'Mrs. Sutton didn't die without making her will, though,' said Mr. Pullet, with a confused sense that he was saying something to sanction his wife's tears; 'ours is a rich parish, but they say there's nobody else to leave as many thousands behind 'em as Mrs. Sutton. And she's left no leggicies, to speak on--left it all in lump to her husband's nevvy.'

'There wasn't much good i' being so rich, then,' said Mrs. Glegg, 'if she'd got none but husband's kin to leave it to. It's poor work when that's all you're got to pinch yourself for--not as I'm one o' those as 'ud like to die without leaving more money out at interest than other folks had reckoned. But it's a poor tale when it must go out o' your own family.'

'I'm sure, sister,' said Mrs. Pullet, who had recovered sufficiently to take off her veil and fold it carefully, 'it's a nice sort o' man as Mrs. Sutton has left her money to, for he's troubled with the asthmy, and goes to bed every night at eight o'clock. He told me about it himself--as free as could be--one Sunday when he came to our church. He wears a hareskin on his chest, and has a trembling in his talk--quite a gentlemanly sort o' man. I told him there wasn't many months in the year as I wan't under the doctor's hands. And he said, 'Mrs. Pullet, I can feel for you.' That was what he said--the very words. 'Ah!' sighed Mrs. Pullet, shaking her head at the idea that there were but few who could enter fully into her experiences in pink mixture and white mixture, strong stuff in small bottles, and weak stuff in large bottles, damp boluses at a shilling, and draughts at eighteen pence. 'Sister, I may as well go and take my bonnet off now. Did you see as the capbox was put out?' she added, turning to her husband.

Mr. Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten it, and hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the omission."

Next day Mrs. Tulliver and the children visit Aunt Pallet: and we have some further affecting details of that sensitive lady weeping at home instead of abroad.

"Aunt Pullet, too, appeared at the doorway, and as soon as her sister was within hearing, said, 'Stop the children, for God's sake, Bessy; don't let 'em come up the doorsteps; Sally's bringing the old mat and the duster to rub their shoes.'

Mrs. Pullet's front door mats were by no means intended to wipe shoes on: the very scraper had a deputy to do its dirty work. Tom rebelled particularly against this shoe-wiping, which he always considered in the light of an indignity to his sex. He felt it as the beginning of the disagreeable incident to a visit at aunt Pullet's where he had once been compelled to sit with towels wrapped around his boots--a fact which may serve to correct the too hasty conclusion that a visit to Garum Firs must have been a great treat to a young gentleman fond of animals--fond, that is, of throwing stones at them.

The next disagreeable was confined to his feminine companions; it was the mounting of the polished oak stairs, which had very handsome carpets rolled up and laid by in a spare bedroom, so that the ascent of these glossy steps might have served, in barbarous times, as a trial by ordeal from which none but the most spotless virtue could have come off with unbroken limbs. Sophy's weakness about these polished stairs was always a subject of bitter remonstrance on Mrs. Glegg's part; but Mrs. Tulliver ventured on no comment, only thinking to herself it was a mercy when she and the children were safe on the landing.

'Mrs. Gray has sent home my new bonnet, Bessy,' said Mrs. Pullet, in a pathetic tone, as Mrs. Tulliver adjusted her cap.

'Has she, sister?' said Mrs. Tulliver with an air of much interest. 'And how do you like it?'

'It's apt to make a mess with clothes, taking 'em out and putting 'em in again,' said Mrs. Pullet, drawing a bunch of keys from her pocket and looking at them earnestly, 'but it' ud be a pity for you to go away without seeing it. There's no knowing what may happen.'

Mrs. Pullet shook her head slowly at this last serious consideration, which determined her to single out a particular key.

'I'm afraid it'll be troublesome to you getting it out, sister,' said Mrs. Tulliver, 'but I _should_ like to see what sort of a crown she's made you.'

Mrs. Pullet rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one wing of a very bright wardrobe, where you may have hastily supposed she would find the new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition could only have arisen from a too superficial acquaintance with the habits of the Dodson family. In this wardrobe Mrs. Pullet was seeking something small enough to be hidden among layers of linen--it was a door key.

'You must come with me into the best room,' said Mrs. Pullet.

'May the children too, sister?' inquired Mrs. Tulliver, who saw that Maggie and Lucy were looking rather eager.

'Well,' said aunt Pullet, reflectively, 'it'll perhaps be safer for 'em to come--they'll be touching something if we leave 'em behind.'

So they went in procession along the bright and slippery corridor, dimly lighted by the semilunar top of the window which rose above the closed shutter: it was really quite solemn. Aunt Pullet paused and unlocked a door which opened on something still more solemn than the passage--a darkened room, in which the outer light, entering feebly, showed what looked like the corpses of furniture in white shrouds. Everything that was not shrouded stood with its legs upward. Lucy laid hold of Maggie's frock, and Maggie's heart beat rapidly.

Aunt Pullet half opened the shutter, and then unlocked the wardrobe with a melancholy deliberateness which was quite in keeping with the funereal solemnity of the scene. The delicious scent of rose leaves that issued from the wardrobe made the process of taking out sheet after sheet of silver paper quite pleasant to assist at, though the sight of the bonnet at last was an anticlimax to Maggie, who would have preferred something more preternatural. But few things could have been more impressive to Mrs. Tulliver. She looked all round it in silence for some moments, and then said emphatically, 'Well, sister, I'll never speak against the full crowns again!'

It was a great concession, and Mrs. Pullet felt it; she felt something was due to it.

'You'd like to see it on, sister?' she said, sadly. 'I'll open the shutter a bit farther.'

'Well, if you don't mind taking off your cap, sister,' said Mrs. Tulliver.

Mrs. Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown silk scalp with a jutting promontory of curls which was common to the mature and judicious women of those times, and, placing the bonnet on her head, turned slowly round, like a draper's lay-figure, that Mrs. Tulliver might miss no point of view.

'I've sometimes thought there's a loop too much o' ribbon on this left side, sister; what do you think?' said Mrs. Pullet.

Mrs. Tulliver looked earnestly at the point indicated, and turned her head on one side. 'Well, I think it's best as it is; if you meddled with it, sister, you might repent.'

'That's true,' said aunt Pullet, taking off the bonnet and looking at it contemplatively.

'How much might she charge you for that bonnet, sister?' said Mrs. Tulliver, whose mind was actively engaged on the possibility of getting a humble imitation of this _chef-d-oeuvre_ made from a piece of silk she had at home.

Mrs. Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her head, and then whispered, 'Pullet pays for it; he said I was to have the best bonnet at Garum church, let the next best be whose it would.'

She began slowly to adjust the trimmings in preparation for returning it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts seemed to have taken a melancholy turn, for she shook her head.

'Ah!' she said at last, 'I may never wear it twice, sister: who knows?'

'Don't talk o' that, sister,' answered Mrs. Tulliver. 'I hope you'll have your health this summer.'

'Ah! but there may come a death in the family, as there did soon after I had my green satin bonnet. Cousin Abbott may go, and we can't think o' wearing crape less than half a year for him.'

'That _would_ be unlucky,' said Mrs. Tulliver, entering thoroughly into the possibility of an inopportune decease. 'There's never so much pleasure i' wearing a bonnet the second year, especially when the crowns are so chancy--never two summers alike.'

'Ah! it's the way i' this world,' said Mrs. Pullet, returning the bonnet to the wardrobe and locking it up. She maintained a silence characterized by head-shaking until they had all issued from the solemn chamber and were in her own room again. Then, beginning to cry, she said: 'Sister, if you should never see that bonnet again till I'm dead and gone, you'll remember I showed it you this day.'

I sincerely wish it were in my power to develop, alongside of the types of Maggie Tulliver and Aurora Leigh, a number of other female figures which belong to the same period of life and literature. I please myself with calling these the Victorian women. They would include the name-giving queen, herself, the Eve in Mrs. Browning's _Drama of Exile_, Princess Ida in Tennyson's _Princess_, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, (one of these figures, you observe, is just as real to us as the other; and I have lost all sense of difference between actual and literary existence), Mrs. Browning, Dinah Morris, Milly Barton, Janet Dempster, Florence Nightingale and Sister Dora, Romola, Dorothea Brooke, Myra, Charlotte Cushman, Mary Somerville and some others. If we are grateful to our sweet master Tennyson for his _Dream of Fair Women_, how grateful should we be to an age which has given us this realization of ideal women, of women who are so strong and so beautiful, that they have subtly brought about--that I can find no adjective so satisfactory for them as--"womanly" women. They have redeemed the whole time. When I hear certain mournful people crying out that this is a gross and material age, I reply that gross and material are words that have no meaning as of the epoch of the Victorian women. When the pessimists accuse the time of small aims and over-selfishness, I plead the Victorian women. When the pre-Raphaelites clamor that railroad and telegraph have fatally scarred the whole face of the picturesque and the ideal among us, I reply that on the other hand the Victorian women are more beautiful than any product of times that they call picturesque and ideal.

And it is curiously fine that in some particulars the best expression of the corresponding attitude which man has assumed toward the Victorian women in the growth of the times has been poetically formulated by a woman. In Mrs. Browning's _Drama of Exile_, during those first insane moments when Eve is begging Adam to banish her for her transgression, or to do some act of retributive justice upon her, Adam continually comforts her and finally speaks these words:

... I am deepest in the guilt, If last in the transgression.... If God Who gave the right and joyance of the world Both unto thee and me--gave thee to me, The best gift last, the last sin was the worst, Which sinned against more complement of gifts And grace of giving. God! I render back Strong benediction and perpetual praise From mortal feeble lips (as incense smoke Out of a little censer, may fill heaven), That Thou, in striking my benumbed hands And forcing them to drop all other boons Of beauty and dominion and delight,-- Hast left this well-beloved Eve, this life Within life, this best gift, between their palms, In gracious compensation.

O my God! I, standing here between the glory and dark,-- The glory of thy wrath projected forth From Eden's wall, the dark of our distress Which settles a step off in that drear world,-- Lift up to Thee the hands from whence hath fallen Only creation's sceptre,--thanking Thee That rather Thou hast cast me out with _her_ Than left me lorn of her in Paradise, With angel looks and angel songs around To show the absence of her eyes and voice, And make society full desertness Without her use in comfort!

Because with _her_, I stand Upright, as far as can be in this fall, And look away from earth which doth convict, Into her face, and crown my discrowned brow Out of her love, and put the thought of her Around me, for an Eden full of birds, And with my lips upon her lips,--thus, thus,-- Do quicken and sublimate my mortal breath Which cannot climb against the grave's steep sides But overtops this grief!"

XI.

The fullness of George Eliot's mind at this time may be gathered from the rapidity with which one work followed another. A book from her pen had been appearing regularly each year. The _Scenes from Clerical Life_ had appeared in book form in 1858, _Adam Bede_ was printed in 1859, _The Mill on the Floss_ came out in 1860, and now, in 1861, followed _Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe_. It is with the greatest reluctance that I find myself obliged to pass this book without comment. In some particulars _Silas Marner_ is the most remarkable novel in our language. On the one hand, when I read the immortal scene at the Rainbow Inn where the village functionaries, the butcher, the farrier, the parish clerk and so on are discussing ghosts, bullocks and other matters over their evening ale, my mind runs to Dogberry and Verges and the air feels as if Shakspeare were sitting somewhere not far off. On the other hand, the downright ghastliness of the young Squire's punishment for stealing the long-hoarded gold of Silas Marner the weaver, always carries me straight to that pitiless _Pardoner's Tale_ of Chaucer in which gold is so cunningly identified with death. I am sure you will pardon me if I spend a single moment in recalling the plots of these two stories so far as concerns this point of contact. In Chaucer's _Pardoner's Tale_ three riotous young men of Flanders are drinking one day at a tavern. In the midst of their merriment they hear the clink of a bell before a dead body which is borne past the door on its way to burial. They learn that it is an old companion who is dead; all three become suddenly inflamed with mortal anger against Death; and they rush forth resolved to slay him wherever they may find him. Presently they meet an old man. "Why do you live so long?" they mockingly inquire of him. "Because," says he,

"Deth, alas, ne will not han my lif; Thus walke I like a resteles caitif, And on the ground, which is my modres gate, I knocke with my staf erlich and late And say to hire 'Leve moder, let me in.'"