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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot #6 in our series by George Eliot

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Title: The Mill on the Floss

Author: George Eliot

Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6688] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on January 13, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MILL ON THE FLOSS ***

 

Produced by Curtis Weyant and David Maddock

 

The Mill on the Floss

George Eliot

 

Table of Contents

 

Book I: Boy and Girl

1. Outside Dorlcote Mill 2. Mr. Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Tom 3. Mr. Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom 4. Tom Is Expected 5. Tom Comes Home 6. The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming 7. Enter the Aunts and Uncles 8. Mr. Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side 9. To Garum Firs 10. Maggie Behaves Worse Than She Expected 11. Maggie Tries to Run away from Her Shadow 12. Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at Home 13. Mr. Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life

 

Book II: School-Time

1. Tom’s “First Half” 2. The Christmas Holidays 3. The New Schoolfellow 4. “The Young Idea” 5. Maggie’s Second Visit 6. A Love-Scene 7. The Golden Gates Are Passed

 

Book III: The Downfall

1. What Had Happened at Home 2. Mrs. Tulliver’s Teraphim, or Household Gods 3. The Family Council 4. A Vanishing Gleam 5. Tom Applies His Knife to the Oyster 6. Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-Knife 7. How a Hen Takes to Stratagem 8. Daylight on the Wreck 9. An Item Added to the Family Register

 

Book IV: The Valley of Humiliation

1. A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet 2. The Torn Nest Is Pierced by the Thorns 3. A Voice from the Past

 

Book V: Wheat and Tares

1. In the Red Deeps 2. Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob’s Thumb 3. The Wavering Balance 4. Another Love-Scene 5. The Cloven Tree 6. The Hard-Won Triumph 7. A Day of Reckoning

 

Book VI: The Great Temptation

1. A Duet in Paradise 2. First Impressions 3. Confidential Moments 4. Brother and Sister 5. Showing That Tom Had Opened the Oyster 6. Illustrating the Laws of Attraction 7. Philip Re-enters 8. Wakem in a New Light 9. Charity in Full-Dress 10. The Spell Seems Broken 11. In the Lane 12. A Family Party 13. Borne Along by the Tide 14. Waking

 

Book VII: The Final Rescue

1. The Return to the Mill 2. St. Ogg’s Passes Judgment 3. Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us 4. Maggie and Lucy 5. The Last Conflict

Boy and Girl“>Book I Boy and Girl
Chapter I Outside Dorlcote Mill

A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships—laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal—are borne along to the town of St. Ogg’s, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river-brink, tingeing the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures, and the patches of dark earth made ready for the seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn. There is a remnant still of last year’s golden clusters of beehive-ricks rising at intervals beyond the hedgerows; and everywhere the hedgerows are studded with trees; the distant ships seem to be lifting their masts and stretching their red-brown sails close among the branches of the spreading ash. Just by the red-roofed town the tributary Ripple flows with a lively current into the Floss. How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice, as to the voice of one who is deaf and loving. I remember those large dipping willows. I remember the stone bridge.

And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two here on the bridge and look at it, though the clouds are threatening, and it is far on in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of departing February it is pleasant to look at,—perhaps the chill, damp season adds a charm to the trimly kept, comfortable dwelling-house, as old as the elms and chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast. The stream is brimful now, and lies high in this little withy plantation, and half drowns the grassy fringe of the croft in front of the house. As I look at the full stream, the vivid grass, the delicate bright-green powder softening the outline of the great trunks and branches that gleam from under the bare purple boughs, I am in love with moistness, and envy the white ducks that are dipping their heads far into the water here among the withes, unmindful of the awkward appearance they make in the drier world above.

The rush of the water and the booming of the mill bring a dreamy deafness, which seems to heighten the peacefulness of the scene. They are like a great curtain of sound, shutting one out from the world beyond. And now there is the thunder of the huge covered wagon coming home with sacks of grain. That honest wagoner is thinking of his dinner, getting sadly dry in the oven at this late hour; but he will not touch it till he has fed his horses,—the strong, submissive, meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at him from between their blinkers, that he should crack his whip at them in that awful manner as if they needed that hint! See how they stretch their shoulders up the slope toward the bridge, with all the more energy because they are so near home. Look at their grand shaggy feet that seem to grasp the firm earth, at the patient strength of their necks, bowed under the heavy collar, at the mighty muscles of their struggling haunches! I should like well to hear them neigh over their hardly earned feed of corn, and see them, with their moist necks freed from the harness, dipping their eager nostrils into the muddy pond. Now they are on the bridge, and down they go again at a swifter pace, and the arch of the covered wagon disappears at the turning behind the trees.

Now I can turn my eyes toward the mill again, and watch the unresting wheel sending out its diamond jets of water. That little girl is watching it too; she has been standing on just the same spot at the edge of the water ever since I paused on the bridge. And that queer white cur with the brown ear seems to be leaping and barking in ineffectual remonstrance with the wheel; perhaps he is jealous because his playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so rapt in its movement. It is time the little playfellow went in, I think; and there is a very bright fire to tempt her: the red light shines out under the deepening gray of the sky. It is time, too, for me to leave off resting my arms on the cold stone of this bridge….

Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been pressing my elbows on the arms of my chair, and dreaming that I was standing on the bridge in front of Dorlcote Mill, as it looked one February afternoon many years ago. Before I dozed off, I was going to tell you what Mr. and Mrs. Tulliver were talking about, as they sat by the bright fire in the left-hand parlor, on that very afternoon I have been dreaming of.

Chapter II Mr. Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Tom

“What I want, you know,” said Mr. Tulliver,—“what I want is to give Tom a good eddication; an eddication as’ll be a bread to him. That was what I was thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave the academy at Ladyday. I mean to put him to a downright good school at Midsummer. The two years at th’ academy ‘ud ha’ done well enough, if I’d meant to make a miller and farmer of him, for he’s had a fine sight more schoolin’ nor I ever got. All the learnin’ my father ever paid for was a bit o’ birch at one end and the alphabet at th’ other. But I should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard, so as he might be up to the tricks o’ these fellows as talk fine and write with a flourish. It ‘ud be a help to me wi’ these lawsuits, and arbitrations, and things. I wouldn’t make a downright lawyer o’ the lad,—I should be sorry for him to be a raskill,—but a sort o’ engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Riley, or one o’ them smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big watch-chain and a high stool. They’re pretty nigh all one, and they’re not far off being even wi’ the law, I believe; for Riley looks Lawyer Wakem i’ the face as hard as one cat looks another. He’s none frightened at him.”

Mr. Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blond comely woman in a fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to think how long it is since fan-shaped caps were worn, they must be so near coming in again. At that time, when Mrs. Tulliver was nearly forty, they were new at St. Ogg’s, and considered sweet things).

“Well, Mr. Tulliver, you know best: I’ve no objections. But hadn’t I better kill a couple o’ fowl, and have th’ aunts and uncles to dinner next week, so as you may hear what sister Glegg and sister Pullet have got to say about it? There’s a couple o’ fowl wants killing!”

“You may kill every fowl i’ the yard if you like, Bessy; but I shall ask neither aunt nor uncle what I’m to do wi’ my own lad,” said Mr. Tulliver, defiantly.

“Dear heart!”

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