Chapter: Mrs. Tulliver's Teraphim, or Household Gods


When the coach set down Tom and Maggie, it was five hours since she
had started from home, and she was thinking with some trembling that
her father had perhaps missed her, and asked for "the little wench" in
vain. She thought of no other change that might have happened.

She hurried along the gravel-walk and entered the house before Tom;
but in the entrance she was startled by a strong smell of tobacco. The
parlor door was ajar; that was where the smell came from. It was very
strange; could any visitor be smoking at a time like this? Was her
mother there? If so, she must be told that Tom was come. Maggie, after
this pause of surprise, was only in the act of opening the door when
Tom came up, and they both looked into the parlor together.

There was a coarse, dingy man, of whose face Tom had some vague
recollection, sitting in his father's chair, smoking, with a jug and
glass beside him.

The truth flashed on Tom's mind in an instant. To "have the bailiff in
the house," and "to be sold up," were phrases which he had been used
to, even as a little boy; they were part of the disgrace and misery of
"failing," of losing all one's money, and being ruined,--sinking into
the condition of poor working people. It seemed only natural this
should happen, since his father had lost all his property, and he
thought of no more special cause for this particular form of
misfortune than the loss of the lawsuit. But the immediate presence of
this disgrace was so much keener an experience to Tom than the worst
form of apprehension, that he felt at this moment as if his real
trouble had only just begin; it was a touch on the irritated nerve
compared with its spontaneous dull aching.

"How do you do, sir?" said the man, taking the pipe out of his mouth,
with rough, embarrassed civility. The two young startled faces made
him a little uncomfortable.

But Tom turned away hastily without speaking; the sight was too
hateful. Maggie had not understood the appearance of this stranger, as
Tom had. She followed him, whispering: "Who can it be, Tom? What is
the matter?" Then, with a sudden undefined dread lest this stranger
might have something to do with a change in her father, she rushed
upstairs, checking herself at the bedroom door to throw off her
bonnet, and enter on tiptoe. All was silent there; her father was
lying, heedless of everything around him, with his eyes closed as when
she had left him. A servant was there, but not her mother.

"Where's my mother?" she whispered. The servant did not know.

Maggie hastened out, and said to Tom; "Father is lying quiet; let us
go and look for my mother. I wonder where she is."

Mrs. Tulliver was not downstairs, not in any of the bedrooms. There
was but one room below the attic which Maggie had left unsearched; it
was the storeroom, where her mother kept all her linen and all the
precious "best things" that were only unwrapped and brought out on
special occasions.

Tom, preceding Maggie, as they returned along the passage, opened the
door of this room, and immediately said, "Mother!"

Mrs. Tulliver was seated there with all her laid-up treasures. One of
the linen chests was open; the silver teapot was unwrapped from its
many folds of paper, and the best china was laid out on the top of the
closed linen-chest; spoons and skewers and ladles were spread in rows
on the shelves; and the poor woman was shaking her head and weeping,
with a bitter tension of the mouth, over the mark, "Elizabeth Dodson,"
on the corner of some tablecloths she held in her lap.

She dropped them, and started up as Tom spoke.

"Oh, my boy, my boy!" she said, clasping him round the neck. "To think
as I should live to see this day! We're ruined--everything's going to
be sold up--to think as your father should ha' married me to bring me
to this! We've got nothing--we shall be beggars--we must go to the
workhouse----"

She kissed him, then seated herself again, and took another tablecloth
on her lap, unfolding it a little way to look at the pattern, while
the children stood by in mute wretchedness, their minds quite filled
for the moment with the words "beggars" and "workhouse."

"To think o' these cloths as I spun myself," she went on, lifting
things out and turning them over with an excitement all the more
strange and piteous because the stout blond woman was usually so
passive,--if she had been ruffled before, it was at the surface
merely,--"and Job Haxey wove 'em, and brought the piece home on his
back, as I remember standing at the door and seeing him come, before I
ever thought o' marrying your father! And the pattern as I chose
myself, and bleached so beautiful, and I marked 'em so as nobody ever
saw such marking,--they must cut the cloth to get it out, for it's a
particular stitch. And they're all to be sold, and go into strange
people's houses, and perhaps be cut with the knives, and wore out
before I'm dead. You'll never have one of 'em, my boy," she said,
looking up at Tom with her eyes full of tears, "and I meant 'em for
you. I wanted you to have all o' this pattern. Maggie could have had
the large check--it never shows so well when the dishes are on it."

Tom was touched to the quick, but there was an angry reaction
immediately. His face flushed as he said:

"But will my aunts let them be sold, mother? Do they know about it?
They'll never let your linen go, will they? Haven't you sent to them?"

"Yes, I sent Luke directly they'd put the bailies in, and your aunt
Pullet's been--and, oh dear, oh dear, she cries so and says your
father's disgraced my family and made it the talk o' the country; and
she'll buy the spotted cloths for herself, because she's never had so
many as she wanted o' that pattern, and they sha'n't go to strangers,
but she's got more checks a'ready nor she can do with." (Here Mrs.
Tulliver began to lay back the tablecloths in the chest, folding and
stroking them automatically.) "And your uncle Glegg's been too, and he
says things must be bought in for us to lie down on, but he must talk
to your aunt; and they're all coming to consult. But I know they'll
none of 'em take my chany," she added, turning toward the cups and
saucers, "for they all found fault with 'em when I bought 'em, 'cause
o' the small gold sprig all over 'em, between the flowers. But there's
none of 'em got better chany, not even your aunt Pullet herself; and I
bought it wi' my own money as I'd saved ever since I was turned
fifteen; and the silver teapot, too,--your father never paid for 'em.
And to think as he should ha' married me, and brought me to this."

Mrs. Tulliver burst out crying afresh, and she sobbed with her
handkerchief at her eyes a few moments, but then removing it, she said
in a deprecating way, still half sobbing, as if she were called upon
to speak before she could command her voice,--

"And I _did_ say to him times and times, 'Whativer you do, don't go to
law,' and what more could I do? I've had to sit by while my own
fortin's been spent, and what should ha' been my children's, too.
You'll have niver a penny, my boy--but it isn't your poor mother's
fault."

She put out one arm toward Tom, looking up at him piteously with her
helpless, childish blue eyes. The poor lad went to her and kissed her,
and she clung to him. For the first time Tom thought of his father
with some reproach. His natural inclination to blame, hitherto kept
entirely in abeyance toward his father by the predisposition to think
him always right, simply on the ground that he was Tom Tulliver's
father, was turned into this new channel by his mother's plaints; and
with his indignation against Wakem there began to mingle some
indignation of another sort. Perhaps his father might have helped
bringing them all down in the world, and making people talk of them
with contempt, but no one should talk long of Tom Tulliver with
contempt.

The natural strength and firmness of his nature was beginning to
assert itself, urged by the double stimulus of resentment against his
aunts, and the sense that he must behave like a man and take care of
his mother.

"Don't fret, mother," he said tenderly. "I shall soon be able to get
money; I'll get a situation of some sort."

"Bless you, my boy!" said Mrs. Tulliver, a little soothed. Then,
looking round sadly, "But I shouldn't ha' minded so much if we could
ha' kept the things wi' my name on 'em."

Maggie had witnessed this scene with gathering anger. The implied
reproaches against her father--her father, who was lying there in a
sort of living death--neutralized all her pity for griefs about
tablecloths and china; and her anger on her father's account was
heightened by some egoistic resentment at Tom's silent concurrence
with her mother in shutting her out from the common calamity. She had
become almost indifferent to her mother's habitual depreciation of
her, but she was keenly alive to any sanction of it, however passive,
that she might suspect in Tom. Poor Maggie was by no means made up of
unalloyed devotedness, but put forth large claims for herself where
she loved strongly. She burst out at last in an agitated, almost
violent tone: "Mother, how can you talk so; as if you cared only for
things with _your_ name on, and not for what has my father's name too;
and to care about anything but dear father himself!--when he's lying
there, and may never speak to us again. Tom, you ought to say so too;
you ought not to let any one find fault with my father."

Maggie, almost choked with mingled grief and anger, left the room, and
took her old place on her father's bed. Her heart went out to him with
a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame
him. Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed all her life, and nothing
had come of it but evil tempers.

Her father had always defended and excused her, and her loving
remembrance of his tenderness was a force within her that would enable
her to do or bear anything for his sake.

Tom was a little shocked at Maggie's outburst,--telling _him_ as well
as his mother what it was right to do! She ought to have learned
better than have those hectoring, assuming manners, by this time. But
he presently went into his father's room, and the sight there touched
him in a way that effaced the slighter impressions of the previous
hour. When Maggie saw how he was moved, she went to him and put her
arm round his neck as he sat by the bed, and the two children forgot
everything else in the sense that they had one father and one sorrow.

 Tom and Maggie arrive home to find a bailiff in their house. A bailiff is basically a court officer who collects unpaid fines or, in the case of the Tullivers, comes to repossess their belongings. The kids find Mrs. Tulliver in the storeroom, crying over all her nice belongings. She reminisces about all her stuff and is very upset. She tells the kids that she sent for her sisters and their husbands, and hopes that they'll help the family out with some money. Mrs. Tulliver then starts complaining about how this is all Mr. Tulliver's fault and cries. Tom begins to realize that his dad probably is to blame for all this and decides that no one will ever talk about him with contempt when he is an adult. Maggie starts getting angry at how they are talking about her dad. She scolds her mother about worrying over possessions instead of their dad. Maggie gets very agitated - she hates blame since it never does any good. Tom is shocked at Maggie's outburst and the two siblings go to sit with their dad.

