Chapter VII

The Golden Gates Are Passed


So Tom went on even to the fifth half-year--till he was turned
sixteen--at King's Lorton, while Maggie was growing with a rapidity
which her aunts considered highly reprehensible, at Miss Firniss's
boarding-school in the ancient town of Laceham on the Floss, with
cousin Lucy for her companion. In her early letters to Tom she had
always sent her love to Philip, and asked many questions about him,
which were answered by brief sentences about Tom's toothache, and a
turf-house which he was helping to build in the garden, with other
items of that kind. She was pained to hear Tom say in the holidays
that Philip was as queer as ever again, and often cross. They were no
longer very good friends, she perceived; and when she reminded Tom
that he ought always to love Philip for being so good to him when his
foot was bad, he answered: "Well, it isn't my fault; _I_ don't do
anything to him." She hardly ever saw Philip during the remainder of
their school-life; in the Midsummer holidays he was always away at the
seaside, and at Christmas she could only meet him at long intervals in
the street of St. Ogg's. When they did meet, she remembered her
promise to kiss him, but, as a young lady who had been at a
boarding-school, she knew now that such a greeting was out of the
question, and Philip would not expect it. The promise was void, like
so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as
promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and when the
starry blossoms grew side by side with the ripening peach,--impossible
to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed.

But when their father was actually engaged in the long-threatened
lawsuit, and Wakem, as the agent at once of Pivart and Old Harry, was
acting against him, even Maggie felt, with some sadness, that they
were not likely ever to have any intimacy with Philip again; the very
name of Wakem made her father angry, and she had once heard him say
that if that crook-backed son lived to inherit his father's ill-gotten
gains, there would be a curse upon him. "Have as little to do with him
at school as you can, my lad," he said to Tom; and the command was
obeyed the more easily because Mr. Sterling by this time had two
additional pupils; for though this gentleman's rise in the world was
not of that meteor-like rapidity which the admirers of his
extemporaneous eloquence had expected for a preacher whose voice
demanded so wide a sphere, he had yet enough of growing prosperity to
enable him to increase his expenditure in continued disproportion to
his income.

As for Tom's school course, it went on with mill-like monotony, his
mind continuing to move with a slow, half-stifled pulse in a medium
uninteresting or unintelligible ideas. But each vacation he brought
home larger and larger drawings with the satiny rendering of
landscape, and water-colors in vivid greens, together with manuscript
books full of exercises and problems, in which the handwriting was all
the finer because he gave his whole mind to it. Each vacation he
brought home a new book or two, indicating his progress through
different stages of history, Christian doctrine, and Latin literature;
and that passage was not entirely without results, besides the
possession of the books. Tom's ear and tongue had become accustomed to
a great many words and phrases which are understood to be signs of an
educated condition; and though he had never really applied his mind to
any one of his lessons, the lessons had left a deposit of vague,
fragmentary, ineffectual notions. Mr. Tulliver, seeing signs of
acquirement beyond the reach of his own criticism, thought it was
probably all right with Tom's education; he observed, indeed, that
there were no maps, and not enough "summing"; but he made no formal
complaint to Mr. Stelling. It was a puzzling business, this schooling;
and if he took Tom away, where could he send him with better effect?

By the time Tom had reached his last quarter at King's Lorton, the
years had made striking changes in him since the day we saw him
returning from Mr. Jacobs's academy. He was a tall youth now, carrying
himself without the least awkwardness, and speaking without more
shyness than was a becoming symptom of blended diffidence and pride;
he wore his tail-coat and his stand-up collars, and watched the down
on his lip with eager impatience, looking every day at his virgin
razor, with which he had provided himself in the last holidays. Philip
had already left,--at the autumn quarter,--that he might go to the
south for the winter, for the sake of his health; and this change
helped to give Tom the unsettled, exultant feeling that usually
belongs to the last months before leaving school. This quarter, too,
there was some hope of his father's lawsuit being decided; _that_ made
the prospect of home more entirely pleasurable. For Tom, who had
gathered his view of the case from his father's conversation, had no
doubt that Pivart would be beaten.

Tom had not heard anything from home for some weeks,--a fact which did
not surprise him, for his father and mother were not apt to manifest
their affection in unnecessary letters,--when, to his great surprise,
on the morning of a dark, cold day near the end of November, he was
told, soon after entering the study at nine o'clock, that his sister
was in the drawing-room. It was Mrs. Stelling who had come into the
study to tell him, and she left him to enter the drawing-room alone.

Maggie, too, was tall now, with braided and coiled hair; she was
almost as tall as Tom, though she was only thirteen; and she really
looked older than he did at that moment. She had thrown off her
bonnet, her heavy braids were pushed back from her forehead, as if it
would not bear that extra load, and her young face had a strangely
worn look, as her eyes turned anxiously toward the door. When Tom
entered she did not speak, but only went up to him, put her arms round
his neck, and kissed him earnestly. He was used to various moods of
hers, and felt no alarm at the unusual seriousness of her greeting.

"Why, how is it you're come so early this cold morning, Maggie? Did
you come in the gig?" said Tom, as she backed toward the sofa, and
drew him to her side.

"No, I came by the coach. I've walked from the turnpike."

"But how is it you're not at school? The holidays have not begun yet?"

"Father wanted me at home," said Maggie, with a slight trembling of
the lip. "I came home three or four days ago."

"Isn't my father well?" said Tom, rather anxiously.

"Not quite," said Maggie. "He's very unhappy, Tom. The lawsuit is
ended, and I came to tell you because I thought it would be better for
you to know it before you came home, and I didn't like only to send
you a letter."

"My father hasn't lost?" said Tom, hastily, springing from the sofa,
and standing before Maggie with his hands suddenly thrust into his
pockets.

"Yes, dear Tom," said Maggie, looking up at him with trembling.

Tom was silent a minute or two, with his eyes fixed on the floor. Then
he said:

"My father will have to pay a good deal of money, then?"

"Yes," said Maggie, rather faintly.

"Well, it can't be helped," said Tom, bravely, not translating the
loss of a large sum of money into any tangible results. "But my
father's very much vexed, I dare say?" he added, looking at Maggie,
and thinking that her agitated face was only part of her girlish way
of taking things.

"Yes," said Maggie, again faintly. Then, urged to fuller speech by
Tom's freedom from apprehension, she said loudly and rapidly, as if
the words _would_ burst from her: "Oh, Tom, he will lose the mill and
the land and everything; he will have nothing left."

Tom's eyes flashed out one look of surprise at her, before he turned
pale, and trembled visibly. He said nothing, but sat down on the sofa
again, looking vaguely out of the opposite window.

Anxiety about the future had never entered Tom's mind. His father had
always ridden a good horse, kept a good house, and had the cheerful,
confident air of a man who has plenty of property to fall back upon.
Tom had never dreamed that his father would "fail"; _that_ was a form
of misfortune which he had always heard spoken of as a deep disgrace,
and disgrace was an idea that he could not associate with any of his
relations, least of all with his father. A proud sense of family
respectability was part of the very air Tom had been born and brought
up in. He knew there were people in St. Ogg's who made a show without
money to support it, and he had always heard such people spoken of by
his own friends with contempt and reprobation. He had a strong belief,
which was a lifelong habit, and required no definite evidence to rest
on, that his father could spend a great deal of money if he chose; and
since his education at Mr. Stelling's had given him a more expensive
view of life, he had often thought that when he got older he would
make a figure in the world, with his horse and dogs and saddle, and
other accoutrements of a fine young man, and show himself equal to any
of his contemporaries at St. Ogg's, who might consider themselves a
grade above him in society because their fathers were professional
men, or had large oil-mills. As to the prognostics and headshaking of
his aunts and uncles, they had never produced the least effect on him,
except to make him think that aunts and uncles were disagreeable
society; he had heard them find fault in much the same way as long as
he could remember. His father knew better than they did.

The down had come on Tom's lip, yet his thoughts and expectations had
been hitherto only the reproduction, in changed forms, of the boyish
dreams in which he had lived three years ago. He was awakened now with
a violent shock.

Maggie was frightened at Tom's pale, trembling silence. There was
something else to tell him,--something worse. She threw her arms round
him at last, and said, with a half sob:

"Oh, Tom--dear, dear Tom, don't fret too much; try and bear it well."

Tom turned his cheek passively to meet her entreating kisses, and
there gathered a moisture in his eyes, which he just rubbed away with
his hand. The action seemed to rouse him, for he shook himself and
said: "I shall go home, with you, Maggie. Didn't my father say I was
to go?"

"No, Tom, father didn't wish it," said Maggie, her anxiety about _his_
feeling helping her to master her agitation. What _would_ he do when
she told him all? "But mother wants you to come,--poor mother!--she
cries so. Oh, Tom, it's very dreadful at home."

Maggie's lips grew whiter, and she began to tremble almost as Tom had
done. The two poor things clung closer to each other, both
trembling,--the one at an unshapen fear, the other at the image of a
terrible certainty. When Maggie spoke, it was hardly above a whisper.

"And--and--poor father----"

Maggie could not utter it. But the suspense was intolerable to Tom. A
vague idea of going to prison, as a consequence of debt, was the shape
his fears had begun to take.

"Where's my father?" he said impatiently. "_Tell_ me, Maggie."

"He's at home," said Maggie, finding it easier to reply to that
question. "But," she added, after a pause, "not himself--he fell off
his horse. He has known nobody but me ever since--he seems to have
lost his senses. O father, father----"

With these last words, Maggie's sobs burst forth with the more
violence for the previous struggle against them. Tom felt that
pressure of the heart which forbids tears; he had no distinct vision
of their troubles as Maggie had, who had been at home; he only felt
the crushing weight of what seemed unmitigated misfortune. He
tightened his arm almost convulsively round Maggie as she sobbed, but
his face looked rigid and tearless, his eyes blank,--as if a black
curtain of cloud had suddenly fallen on his path.

But Maggie soon checked herself abruptly; a single thought had acted
on her like a startling sound.

"We must set out, Tom, we must not stay. Father will miss me; we must
be at the turnpike at ten to meet the coach." She said this with hasty
decision, rubbing her eyes, and rising to seize her bonnet.

Tom at once felt the same impulse, and rose too. "Wait a minute,
Maggie," he said. "I must speak to Mr. Stelling, and then we'll go."

He thought he must go to the study where the pupils were; but on his
way he met Mr. Stelling, who had heard from his wife that Maggie
appeared to be in trouble when she asked for her brother, and now that
he thought the brother and sister had been alone long enough, was
coming to inquire and offer his sympathy.

"Please, sir, I must go home," Tom said abruptly, as he met Mr.
Stelling in the passage. "I must go back with my sister directly. My
father's lost his lawsuit--he's lost all his property--and he's very
ill."

Mr. Stelling felt like a kind-hearted man; he foresaw a probable money
loss for himself, but this had no appreciable share in his feeling,
while he looked with grave pity at the brother and sister for whom
youth and sorrow had begun together. When he knew how Maggie had come,
and how eager she was to get home again, he hurried their departure,
only whispering something to Mrs. Stelling, who had followed him, and
who immediately left the room.

Tom and Maggie were standing on the door-step, ready to set out, when
Mrs. Stelling came with a little basket, which she hung on Maggie's
arm, saying: "Do remember to eat something on the way, dear." Maggie's
heart went out toward this woman whom she had never liked, and she
kissed her silently. It was the first sign within the poor child of
that new sense which is the gift of sorrow,--that susceptibility to
the bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving
fellowship, as to haggard men among the ice-bergs the mere presence of
an ordinary comrade stirs the deep fountains of affection.

Mr. Stelling put his hand on Tom's shoulder and said: "God bless you,
my boy; let me know how you get on." Then he pressed Maggie's hand;
but there were no audible good-byes. Tom had so often thought how
joyful he should be the day he left school "for good"! And now his
school years seemed like a holiday that had come to an end.

The two slight youthful figures soon grew indistinct on the distant
road,--were soon lost behind the projecting hedgerow.

They had gone forth together into their life of sorrow, and they would
never more see the sunshine undimmed by remembered cares. They had
entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood
had forever closed behind them.