How a Hen Takes To Stratagem THE days passed, and Mr Tulliver showed, at least to the eyes of the medical man, stronger and stronger symptoms of a gradual return to his normal condition: the paralytic obstruction was, little by little, losing its tenacity, and the mind was rising from under it with fitful struggles, like a living creature making its way from under a great snowdrift that slides and slides again, and shuts up the newly made opening.Time would have seemed to creep to the watchers by the bed, if it had only been measured by the doubtful distant hope which kept count of the moments within the chamber: but it was measured for them by a fast-approaching dread which made the nights come too quickly.While Mr Tulliver was slowly becoming himself again, his lot was hastening towards its moment of most palpable change.The taxing-masters had done their work like any respectable gunsmith conscientiously preparing the musket that, duly pointed by a brave arm, will spoil a life or two.Allocaturs, filing of bills in Chancery, decrees of sale, are legal chain-shot or bomb-shells that can never hit a solitary mark but must fall with widespread shattering.So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.
By the beginning of the second week in January the bills were out advertising the sale, under a decree of Chancery, of Mr Tulliver's farming and other stock to be followed by a sale of the mill and land held in the proper after-dinner hour at the Golden Lion.The miller himself, unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in that first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought of; and often in his conscious hours talked in a feeble, disjointed manner, of plans he would carry out when he `got well.' The wife and children were not without hope of an issue that would at least save Mr Tulliver from leaving the old spot and seeking an entirely strange life.For uncle Deane had been induced to interest himself in this stage of the business.It would not, he acknowledged, be a bad speculation for Guest and Co.to buy Dorlcote Mill and carry on the business, which was a good one, and might be increased by the addition of steam power:
in which case Tulliver might be retained as manager.Still Mr Deane would say nothing decided about the matter: the fact that Wakem held the mortgage on the land might put in into his head to bid for the whole estate, and further, to outbid the cautious firm of Guest and Co.who did not carry on business on sentimental grounds.Mr Deane was obliged to tell Mrs Tulliver something to that effect, when he rode over to the mill to inspect the books in company with Mrs Glegg: for she had observed that `if Guest and Co.would only think about it, Mr Tulliver's father and grandfather had been carrying on Dorlcote Mill long before the oil-mill of that firm had been so much as thought of.' Mr Deane, in reply, doubted whether that was precisely the relation between the two mills which would determine their value as investments.As for uncle Glegg, the thing lay quite beyond his imagination: the goodnatured man felt sincere pity for the Tulliver family, but his money was all locked up in excellent mortgages and he could run no risk: that would be unfair to his own relatives: but he had made up his mind that Tulliver should have some new flannel waistcoats which he had himself renounced in favour of a more elastic commodity, and that he would buy Mrs Tulliver a pound of tea now and then: it would be a journey which his benevolence delighted in beforehand, to carry the tea and see her pleasure on being assured it was the best black.
Still, it was clear that Mr Deane was kindly disposed towards the Tullivers.
One day he had brought Lucy, who was come home for the Christmas holidays, and the little blond angel-head had pressed itself against Maggie's darker cheek with many kisses and some tears.These fair slim daughters keep up a tender spot in the heart of many a respectable partner in a respectable firm, and perhaps Lucy's anxious pitying questions about her poor cousins helped to make uncle Deane more prompt in finding Tom a temporary place in the warehouse, and in putting him in the way of getting evening lessons in book-keeping and calculation.
That might have cheered the lad and fed his hopes a little, if there had not come at the same time the much-dreaded blow of finding that his father must be a bankrupt, after all: - at least, the creditors must be asked to take less than their due, which to Tom's untechnical mind was the same thing as bankruptcy.His father must not only be said to have `lost his property,' but to have `failed' - the word that carried the worst obloquy to Tom's mind.For when the defendant's claim for costs had been satisfied, there would remain the friendly bill of Mr Gore, and the deficiency at the bank as well as the other debts, which would make the assets shrink into unequivocal disproportion: `not more than ten or twelve shillings in the pound,' predicted Mr Deane, in a decided tone, tightening his lips;and the words fell on Tom like a scalding liquid, leaving a continual smart.
He was sadly in want of something to keep up his spirits a little in the unpleasant newness of his position - suddenly transported from the easy carpeted ennui of study-hours at Mr Stelling's, and the busy idleness of castle-building in a `last half' at school, to the companionship of sacks and hides, and bawling men thundering down heavy weights at his elbow.
