The Mill on the Floss · Book II · Chapter 2 2 (2/2)

Much rumination had Mr. Tulliver on these puzzling subjects during his rides on the gray horse; much turning of the head from side to side, as the scales dipped alternately; but the probable result was still out of sight, only to be reached through much hot argument and iteration in domestic and social life. That initial stage of the dispute which consisted in the narration of the case and the enforcement of Mr. Tulliver’s views concerning it throughout the entire circle of his connections would necessarily take time; and at the beginning of February, when Tom was going to school again, there were scarcely any new items to be detected in his father’s statement of the case against Pivart, or any more specific indication of the measures he was bent on taking against that rash contravener of the principle that water was water. Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress, and Mr. Tulliver’s heat was certainly more and more palpable. If there had been no new evidence on any other point, there had been new evidence that Pivart was as “thick as mud” with Wakem.

“Father,” said Tom, one evening near the end of the holidays, “uncle Glegg says Lawyer Wakem is going to send his son to Mr. Stelling. It isn’t true, what they said about his going to be sent to France. You won’t like me to go to school with Wakem’s son, shall you?”

“It’s no matter for that, my boy,” said Mr. Tulliver; “don’t you learn anything bad of him, that’s all. The lad’s a poor deformed creatur, and takes after his mother in the face; I think there isn’t much of his father in him. It’s a sign Wakem thinks high o’ Mr. Sterling, as he sends his son to him, and Wakem knows meal from bran.”

Mr. Tulliver in his heart was rather proud of the fact that his son was to have the same advantages as Wakem’s; but Tom was not at all easy on the point. It would have been much clearer if the lawyer’s son had not been deformed, for then Tom would have had the prospect of pitching into him with all that freedom which is derived from a high moral sanction.