Book 3 - Chapter 8

Daylight on the Wreck

It was a clear frosty January day on which Mr. Tulliver first came
downstairs. The bright sun on the chestnut boughs and the roofs
opposite his window had made him impatiently declare that he would be
caged up no longer; he thought everywhere would be more cheery under
this sunshine than his bedroom; for he knew nothing of the bareness
below, which made the flood of sunshine importunate, as if it had an
unfeeling pleasure in showing the empty places, and the marks where
well-known objects once had been. The impression on his mind that it
was but yesterday when he received the letter from Mr. Gore was so
continually implied in his talk, and the attempts to convey to him the
idea that many weeks had passed and much had happened since then had
been so soon swept away by recurrent forgetfulness, that even Mr.
Turnbull had begun to despair of preparing him to meet the facts by
previous knowledge. The full sense of the present could only be
imparted gradually by new experience,--not by mere words, which must
remain weaker than the impressions left by the _old_ experience. This
resolution to come downstairs was heard with trembling by the wife and
children. Mrs. Tulliver said Tom must not go to St. Ogg's at the usual
hour, he must wait and see his father downstairs; and Tom complied,
though with an intense inward shrinking from the painful scene. The
hearts of all three had been more deeply dejected than ever during the
last few days. For Guest & Co. had not bought the mill; both mill and
land had been knocked down to Wakem, who had been over the premises,
and had laid before Mr. Deane and Mr. Glegg, in Mrs. Tulliver's
presence, his willingness to employ Mr. Tulliver, in case of his
recovery, as a manager of the business. This proposition had
occasioned much family debating. Uncles and aunts were almost
unanimously of opinion that such an offer ought not to be rejected
when there was nothing in the way but a feeling in Mr. Tulliver's
mind, which, as neither aunts nor uncles shared it, was regarded as
entirely unreasonable and childish,--indeed, as a transferring toward
Wakem of that indignation and hatred which Mr. Tulliver ought properly
to have directed against himself for his general quarrelsomeness, and
his special exhibition of it in going to law. Here was an opportunity
for Mr. Tulliver to provide for his wife and daughter without any
assistance from his wife's relations, and without that too evident
descent into pauperism which makes it annoying to respectable people
to meet the degraded member of the family by the wayside. Mr.
Tulliver, Mrs. Glegg considered, must be made to feel, when he came to
his right mind, that he could never humble himself enough; for _that_
had