The Mill on the Floss George Eliot (ereader android .txt) 📖

that the Duke of Wellington had (in strict privacy, lest jealousies should be awakened) expressed his esteem for that fine fellow Poulter. The very surgeon who attended him in the hospital after he had received his gunshot-wound had been profoundly impressed with the superiority of Mr. Poulter’s flesh⁠—no other flesh would have healed in anything like the same time. On less personal matters connected with the important warfare in which he had been engaged, Mr. Poulter was more reticent, only taking care not to give the weight of his authority to any loose notions concerning military history. Anyone who pretended to a knowledge of what occurred at the siege of Badajos was especially an object of silent pity to Mr. Poulter; he wished that prating person had been run down, and had the breath trampled out of him at the first go-off, as he himself had⁠—he might talk about the siege of Badajos then! Tom did not escape irritating his drilling-master occasionally, by his curiosity concerning other military matters than Mr. Poulter’s personal experience.

“And General Wolfe, Mr. Poulter⁠—wasn’t he a wonderful fighter?” said Tom, who held the notion that all the martial heroes commemorated on the public-house signs were engaged in the war with Bony.

“Not at all!” said Mr. Poulter, contemptuously. “Nothing o’ the sort! Heads up!” he added, in a tone of stern command, which delighted Tom, and made him feel as if he were a regiment in his own person.

“No, no!” Mr. Poulter would continue, on coming to a pause in his discipline; “they’d better not talk to me about General Wolfe. He did nothing but die of his wound; that’s a poor haction, I consider. Any other man ’ud have died o’ the wounds I’ve had. One of my sword-cuts ’ud ha’ killed a fellow like General Wolfe.”

“Mr. Poulter,” Tom would say, at any allusion to the sword, “I wish you’d bring your sword and do the sword-exercise!”

For a long while Mr. Poulter only shook his head in a significant manner at this request, and smiled patronizingly, as Jupiter may have done when Semele urged her too ambitious request. But one afternoon, when a sudden shower of heavy rain had detained Mr. Poulter twenty minutes longer than usual at the Black Swan, the sword was brought⁠—just for Tom to look at.

“And this is the real sword you fought with in all the battles, Mr. Poulter?” said Tom, handling the hilt. “Has it ever cut a Frenchman’s head off?”

“Head off? Ah! and would, if he’d had three heads.”

“But you had a gun and bayonet besides?” said Tom. “I should like the gun and bayonet best, because you could shoot ’em first and spear ’em after. Bang! Ps-s-s-s!” Tom gave the requisite pantomime to indicate the double enjoyment of pulling the trigger and thrusting the spear.

“Ah, but the sword’s the thing when you come to close fighting,” said Mr. Poulter, involuntarily falling in with Tom’s enthusiasm, and drawing the sword so suddenly that Tom leaped back with much agility.

“Oh, but, Mr. Poulter, if you’re going to do the exercise,” said Tom, a little conscious that he had not stood his ground as became an Englishman, “let me go and call Philip. He’ll like to see you, you know.”

“What! the humpbacked lad?” said Mr. Poulter, contemptuously; “what’s the use of his looking on?”

“Oh, but he knows a great deal about fighting,” said Tom, “and how they used to fight with bows and arrows, and battle-axes.”

“Let him come, then. I’ll show him something different from his bows and arrows,” said Mr. Poulter, coughing and drawing himself up, while he gave a little preliminary play to his wrist.

Tom ran in to Philip, who was enjoying his afternoon’s holiday at the piano, in the drawing-room, picking out tunes for himself and singing them. He was supremely happy, perched like an amorphous bundle on the high stool, with his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on the opposite cornice, and his lips wide open, sending forth, with all his might, impromptu syllables to a tune of Arne’s which had hit his fancy.

“Come, Philip,” said Tom, bursting in; “don’t stay roaring ‘la la’ there; come and see old Poulter do his sword-exercise in the carriage-house!”

The jar of this interruption, the discord of Tom’s tones coming across the notes to which Philip was vibrating in soul and body, would have been enough to unhinge his temper, even if there had been no question of Poulter the drilling-master; and Tom, in the hurry of seizing something to say to prevent Mr. Poulter from thinking he was afraid of the sword when he sprang away from it, had alighted on this proposition to fetch Philip, though he knew well enough that Philip hated to hear him mention his drilling-lessons. Tom would never have done so inconsiderate a thing except under the severe stress of his personal pride.

Philip shuddered visibly as he paused from his music. Then turning red, he said, with violent passion⁠—

“Get away, you lumbering idiot! Don’t come bellowing at me; you’re not fit to speak to anything but a carthorse!”

It was not the first time Philip had been made angry by him, but Tom had never before been assailed with verbal missiles that he understood so well.

“I’m fit to speak to something better than you, you poor-spirited imp!” said Tom, lighting up immediately at Philip’s fire. “You know I won’t hit you, because you’re no better than a girl. But I’m an honest man’s son, and your father’s a rogue; everybody says so!”

Tom flung out of the room, and slammed the door after him, made strangely heedless by his anger; for to slam doors within the hearing of Mrs. Stelling, who was probably not far off, was an offence only to be wiped out by twenty lines of Virgil. In fact, that lady did presently descend from her room, in double wonder at the noise and the subsequent cessation of Philip’s music. She found him sitting in a heap on the hassock, and crying bitterly.

“What’s the matter, Wakem? what was that noise about? Who slammed the door?”

Philip looked up, and hastily dried his