Books: The Mill on the Floss

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"My little lady, where are you going to?" the gypsy said, in a tone of
coaxing deference.

It was delightful, and just what Maggie expected; the gypsies saw at
once that she was a little lady, and were prepared to treat her
accordingly.

"Not any farther," said Maggie, feeling as if she were saying what she
had rehearsed in a dream. "I'm come to stay with _you_, please."

"That's pretty; come, then. Why, what a nice little lady you are, to
be sure!" said the gypsy, taking her by the hand. Maggie thought her
very agreeable, but wished she had not been so dirty.

There was quite a group round the fire when she reached it. An old
gypsy woman was seated on the ground nursing her knees, and
occasionally poking a skewer into the round kettle that sent forth an
odorous steam; two small shock-headed children were lying prone and
resting on their elbows something like small sphinxes; and a placid
donkey was bending his head over a tall girl, who, lying on her back,
was scratching his nose and indulging him with a bite of excellent
stolen hay. The slanting sunlight fell kindly upon them, and the scene
was really very pretty and comfortable, Maggie thought, only she hoped
they would soon set out the tea-cups. Everything would be quite
charming when she had taught the gypsies to use a washing-basin, and
to feel an interest in books. It was a little confusing, though, that
the young woman began to speak to the old one in a language which
Maggie did not understand, while the tall girl, who was feeding the
donkey, sat up and stared at her without offering any salutation. At
last the old woman said,--

"What! my pretty lady, are you come to stay with us? Sit ye down and
tell us where you come from."

It was just like a story; Maggie liked to be called pretty lady and
treated in this way. She sat down and said,--

"I'm come from home because I'm unhappy, and I mean to be a gypsy.
I'll live with you if you like, and I can teach you a great many
things."

"Such a clever little lady," said the woman with the baby sitting down
by Maggie, and allowing baby to crawl; "and such a pretty bonnet and
frock," she added, taking off Maggie's bonnet and looking at it while
she made an observation to the old woman, in the unknown language. The
tall girl snatched the bonnet and put it on her own head hind-foremost
with a grin; but Maggie was determined not to show any weakness on
this subject, as if she were susceptible about her bonnet.

"I don't want to wear a bonnet," she said; "I'd rather wear a red
handkerchief, like yours" (looking at her friend by her side). "My
hair was quite long till yesterday, when I cut it off; but I dare say
it will grow again very soon," she added apologetically, thinking it
probable the gypsies had a strong prejudice in favor of long hair. And
Maggie had forgotten even her hunger at that moment in the desire to
conciliate gypsy opinion.

"Oh, what a nice little lady!--and rich, I'm sure," said the old
woman. "Didn't you live in a beautiful house at home?"

"Yes, my home is pretty, and I'm very fond of the river, where we go
fishing, but I'm often very unhappy. I should have liked to bring my
books with me, but I came away in a hurry, you know. But I can tell
you almost everything there is in my books, I've read them so many
times, and that will amuse you. And I can tell you something about
Geography too,--that's about the world we live in,--very useful and
interesting. Did you ever hear about Columbus?"

Maggie's eyes had begun to sparkle and her cheeks to flush,--she was
really beginning to instruct the gypsies, and gaining great influence
over them. The gypsies themselves were not without amazement at this
talk, though their attention was divided by the contents of Maggie's
pocket, which the friend at her right hand had by this time emptied
without attracting her notice.

"Is that where you live, my little lady?" said the old woman, at the
mention of Columbus.

"Oh, no!" said Maggie, with some pity; "Columbus was a very wonderful
man, who found out half the world, and they put chains on him and
treated him very badly, you know; it's in my Catechism of Geography,
but perhaps it's rather too long to tell before tea--_I want my tea
so_."

The last words burst from Maggie, in spite of herself, with a sudden
drop from patronizing instruction to simple peevishness.

"Why, she's hungry, poor little lady," said the younger woman. "Give
her some o' the cold victual. You've been walking a good way, I'll be
bound, my dear. Where's your home?"

"It's Dorlcote Mill, a good way off," said Maggie. "My father is Mr.
Tulliver, but we mustn't let him know where I am, else he'll fetch me
home again. Where does the queen of the gypsies live?"

"What! do you want to go to her, my little lady?" said the younger
woman. The tall girl meanwhile was constantly staring at Maggie and
grinning. Her manners were certainly not agreeable.

"No," said Maggie, "I'm only thinking that if she isn't a very good
queen you might be glad when she died, and you could choose another.
If I was a queen, I'd be a very good queen, and kind to everybody."

"Here's a bit o' nice victual, then," said the old woman, handing to
Maggie a lump of dry bread, which she had taken from a bag of scraps,
and a piece of cold bacon.

"Thank you," said Maggie, looking at the food without taking it; "but
will you give me some bread-and-butter and tea instead? I don't like
bacon."

"We've got no tea nor butter," said the old woman, with something like
a scowl, as if she were getting tired of coaxing.

"Oh, a little bread and treacle would do," said Maggie.

"We han't got no treacle," said the old woman, crossly, whereupon
there followed a sharp dialogue between the two women in their unknown
tongue, and one of the small sphinxes snatched at the bread-and-bacon,
and began to eat it. At this moment the tall girl, who had gone a few
yards off, came back, and said something which produced a strong
effect. The old woman, seeming to forget Maggie's hunger, poked the
skewer into the pot with new vigor, and the younger crept under the
tent and reached out some platters and spoons. Maggie trembled a
little, and was afraid the tears would come into her eyes. Meanwhile
the tall girl gave a shrill cry, and presently came running up the boy
whom Maggie had passed as he was sleeping,--a rough urchin about the
age of Tom. He stared at Maggie, and there ensued much incomprehensible
chattering. She felt very lonely, and was quite sure she should begin to
cry before long; the gypsies didn't seem to mind her at all, and she felt
quite weak among them. But the springing tears were checked by new
terror, when two men came up, whose approach had been the cause
of the sudden excitement. The elder of the two carried a bag, which
he flung down, addressing the women in a loud and scolding tone,
which they answered by a shower of treble sauciness; while a black
cur ran barking up to Maggie, and threw her into a tremor that only
found a new cause in the curses with which the younger man called
the dog off, and gave him a rap with a great stick he held in his hand.

Maggie felt that it was impossible she should ever be queen of these
people, or ever communicate to them amusing and useful knowledge.

Both the men now seemed to be inquiring about Maggie, for they looked
at her, and the tone of the conversation became of that pacific kind
which implies curiosity on one side and the power of satisfying it on
the other. At last the younger woman said in her previous deferential,
coaxing tone,--

"This nice little lady's come to live with us; aren't you glad?"

"Ay, very glad," said the younger man, who was looking at Maggie's
silver thimble and other small matters that had been taken from her
pocket. He returned them all except the thimble to the younger woman,
with some observation, and she immediately restored them to Maggie's
pocket, while the men seated themselves, and began to attack the
contents of the kettle,--a stew of meat and potatoes,--which had been
taken off the fire and turned out into a yellow platter.

Maggie began to think that Tom must be right about the gypsies; they
must certainly be thieves, unless the man meant to return her thimble
by and by. She would willingly have given it to him, for she was not
at all attached to her thimble; but the idea that she was among
thieves prevented her from feeling any comfort in the revival of
deference and attention toward her; all thieves, except Robin Hood,
were wicked people. The women saw she was frightened.

"We've got nothing nice for a lady to eat," said the old woman, in her
coaxing tone. "And she's so hungry, sweet little lady."

"Here, my dear, try if you can eat a bit o' this," said the younger
woman, handing some of the stew on a brown dish with an iron spoon to
Maggie, who, remembering that the old woman had seemed angry with her
for not liking the bread-and-bacon, dared not refuse the stew, though
fear had chased away her appetite. If her father would but come by in
the gig and take her up! Or even if Jack the Giantkiller, or Mr.
Greatheart, or St. George who slew the dragon on the half-pennies,
would happen to pass that way! But Maggie thought with a sinking heart
that these heroes were never seen in the neighborhood of St. Ogg's;
nothing very wonderful ever came there.

Maggie Tulliver, you perceive, was by no means that well trained,
well-informed young person that a small female of eight or nine
necessarily is in these days; she had only been to school a year at
St. Ogg's, and had so few books that she sometimes read the
dictionary; so that in travelling over her small mind you would have
found the most unexpected ignorance as well as unexpected knowledge.
She could have informed you that there was such a word as "polygamy,"
and being also acquainted with "polysyllable," she had deduced the
conclusion that "poly" mean "many"; but she had had no idea that
gypsies were not well supplied with groceries, and her thoughts
generally were the oddest mixture of clear-eyed acumen and blind
dreams.

Her ideas about the gypsies had undergone a rapid modification in the
last five minutes. From having considered them very respectful
companions, amenable to instruction, she had begun to think that they
meant perhaps to kill her as soon as it was dark, and cut up her body
for gradual cooking; the suspicion crossed her that the fierce-eyed
old man was in fact the Devil, who might drop that transparent
disguise at any moment, and turn either into the grinning blacksmith,
or else a fiery-eyed monster with dragon's wings. It was no use trying
to eat the stew, and yet the thing she most dreaded was to offend the
gypsies, by betraying her extremely unfavorable opinion of them; and
she wondered, with a keenness of interest that no theologian could
have exceeded, whether, if the Devil were really present, he would
know her thoughts.

"What! you don't like the smell of it, my dear," said the young woman,
observing that Maggie did not even take a spoonful of the stew. "Try a
bit, come."

"No, thank you," said Maggie, summoning all her force for a desperate
effort, and trying to smile in a friendly way. "I haven't time, I
think; it seems getting darker. I think I must go home now, and come
again another day, and then I can bring you a basket with some
jam-tarts and things."

Maggie rose from her seat as she threw out this illusory prospect,
devoutly hoping that Apollyon was gullible; but her hope sank when the
old gypsy-woman said, "Stop a bit, stop a bit, little lady; we'll take
you home, all safe, when we've done supper; you shall ride home, like
a lady."

Maggie sat down again, with little faith in this promise, though she
presently saw the tall girl putting a bridle on the donkey, and
throwing a couple of bags on his back.

"Now, then, little missis," said the younger man, rising, and leading
the donkey forward, "tell us where you live; what's the name o' the
place?"

"Dorlcote Mill is my home," said Maggie, eagerly. "My father is Mr.
Tulliver; he lives there."

"What! a big mill a little way this side o' St. Ogg's?"

"Yes," said Maggie. "Is it far off? I think I should like to walk
there, if you please."

"No, no, it'll be getting dark, we must make haste. And the donkey'll
carry you as nice as can be; you'll see."

He lifted Maggie as he spoke, and set her on the donkey. She felt
relieved that it was not the old man who seemed to be going with her,
but she had only a trembling hope that she was really going home.

"Here's your pretty bonnet," said the younger woman, putting that
recently despised but now welcome article of costume on Maggie's head;
"and you'll say we've been very good to you, won't you? and what a
nice little lady we said you was."

"Oh yes, thank you," said Maggie, "I'm very much obliged to you. But I
wish you'd go with me too." She thought anything was better than going
with one of the dreadful men alone; it would be more cheerful to be
murdered by a larger party.

"Ah, you're fondest o' _me_, aren't you?" said the woman. "But I can't
go; you'll go too fast for me."

It now appeared that the man also was to be seated on the donkey,
holding Maggie before him, and she was as incapable of remonstrating
against this arrangement as the donkey himself, though no nightmare
had ever seemed to her more horrible. When the woman had patted her on
the back, and said "Good-by," the donkey, at a strong hint from the
man's stick, set off at a rapid walk along the lane toward the point
Maggie had come from an hour ago, while the tall girl and the rough
urchin, also furnished with sticks, obligingly escorted them for the
first hundred yards, with much screaming and thwacking.

Not Leonore, in that preternatural midnight excursion with her phantom
lover, was more terrified than poor Maggie in this entirely natural
ride on a short-paced donkey, with a gypsy behind her, who considered
that he was earning half a crown. The red light of the setting sun
seemed to have a portentous meaning, with which the alarming bray of
the second donkey with the log on its foot must surely have some
connection. Two low thatched cottages--the only houses they passed in
this lane--seemed to add to its dreariness; they had no windows to
speak of, and the doors were closed; it was probable that they were
inhabitated by witches, and it was a relief to find that the donkey
did not stop there.

At last--oh, sight of joy!--this lane, the longest in the world, was
coming to an end, was opening on a broad highroad, where there was
actually a coach passing! And there was a finger-post at the
corner,--she had surely seen that finger-post before,--"To St. Ogg's,
2 miles." The gypsy really meant to take her home, then; he was
probably a good man, after all, and might have been rather hurt at the
thought that she didn't like coming with him alone. This idea became
stronger as she felt more and more certain that she knew the road
quite well, and she was considering how she might open a conversation
with the injured gypsy, and not only gratify his feelings but efface
the impression of her cowardice, when, as they reached a cross-road.
Maggie caught sight of some one coming on a white-faced horse.

"Oh, stop, stop!" she cried out. "There's my father! Oh, father,
father!"

The sudden joy was almost painful, and before her father reached her,
she was sobbing. Great was Mr. Tulliver's wonder, for he had made a
round from Basset, and had not yet been home.

"Why, what's the meaning o' this?" he said, checking his horse, while
Maggie slipped from the donkey and ran to her father's stirrup.

"The little miss lost herself, I reckon," said the gypsy. "She'd come
to our tent at the far end o' Dunlow Lane, and I was bringing her
where she said her home was. It's a good way to come after being on
the tramp all day."

"Oh yes, father, he's been very good to bring me home," said
Maggie,--"a very kind, good man!"

"Here, then, my man," said Mr. Tulliver, taking out five shillings.
"It's the best day's work _you_ ever did. I couldn't afford to lose
the little wench; here, lift her up before me."

"Why, Maggie, how's this, how's this?" he said, as they rode along,
while she laid her head against her father and sobbed. "How came you
to be rambling about and lose yourself?"

"Oh, father," sobbed Maggie, "I ran away because I was so unhappy; Tom
was so angry with me. I couldn't bear it."

"Pooh, pooh," said Mr. Tulliver, soothingly, "you mustn't think o'
running away from father. What 'ud father do without his little
wench?"

"Oh no, I never will again, father--never."

Mr. Tulliver spoke his mind very strongly when he reached home that
evening; and the effect was seen in the remarkable fact that Maggie
never heard one reproach from her mother, or one taunt from Tom, about
this foolish business of her running away to the gypsies. Maggie was
rather awe-stricken by this unusual treatment, and sometimes thought
that her conduct had been too wicked to be alluded to.

Chapter XII

Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at Home

In order to see Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at home, we must enter the town of
St. Ogg's,--that venerable town with the red fluted roofs and the
broad warehouse gables, where the black ships unlade themselves of
their burthens from the far north, and carry away, in exchange, the
precious inland products, the well-crushed cheese and the soft fleeces
which my refined readers have doubtless become acquainted with through
the medium of the best classic pastorals.

It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation
and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or
the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the
traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has
sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low
hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it
from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up
the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the
land. It is a town "familiar with forgotten years." The shadow of the
Saxon hero-king still walks there fitfully, reviewing the scenes of
his youth and love-time, and is met by the gloomier shadow of the
dreadful heathen Dane, who was stabbed in the midst of his warriors by
the sword of an invisible avenger, and who rises on autumn evenings
like a white mist from his tumulus on the hill, and hovers in the
court of the old hall by the river-side, the spot where he was thus
miraculously slain in the days before the old hall was built. It was
the Normans who began to build that fine old hall, which is, like the
town, telling of the thoughts and hands of widely sundered
generations; but it is all so old that we look with loving pardon at
its inconsistencies, and are well content that they who built the
stone oriel, and they who built the Gothic facade and towers of finest
small brickwork with the trefoil ornament, and the windows and
battlements defined with stone, did not sacreligiously pull down the
ancient half-timbered body with its oak-roofed banqueting-hall.

But older even than this old hall is perhaps the bit of wall now built
into the belfry of the parish church, and said to be a remnant of the
original chapel dedicated to St. Ogg, the patron saint of this ancient
town, of whose history I possess several manuscript versions. I
incline to the briefest, since, if it should not be wholly true, it is
at least likely to contain the least falsehood. "Ogg the son of
Beorl," says my private hagiographer, "was a boatman who gained a
scanty living by ferrying passengers across the river Floss. And it
came to pass, one evening when the winds were high, that there sat
moaning by the brink of the river a woman with a child in her arms;
and she was clad in rags, and had a worn and withered look, and she
craved to be rowed across the river. And the men thereabout questioned
her, and said, 'Wherefore dost thou desire to cross the river? Tarry
till the morning, and take shelter here for the night; so shalt thou
be wise and not foolish.' Still she went on to mourn and crave. But
Ogg the son of Beorl came up and said, 'I will ferry thee across; it
is enough that thy heart needs it.' And he ferried her across. And it
came to pass, when she stepped ashore, that her rags were turned into
robes of flowing white, and her face became bright with exceeding
beauty, and there was a glory around it, so that she shed a light on
the water like the moon in its brightness. And she said, 'Ogg, the son
of Beorl, thou art blessed in that thou didst not question and wrangle
with the heart's need, but wast smitten with pity, and didst
straightway relieve the same. And from henceforth whoso steps into thy
boat shall be in no peril from the storm; and whenever it puts forth
to the rescue, it shall save the lives both of men and beasts.' And
when the floods came, many were saved by reason of that blessing on
the boat. But when Ogg the son of Beorl died, behold, in the parting
of his soul, the boat loosed itself from its moorings, and was floated
with the ebbing tide in great swiftness to the ocean, and was seen no
more. Yet it was witnessed in the floods of aftertime, that at the
coming on of eventide, Ogg the son of Beorl was always seen with his
boat upon the wide-spreading waters, and the Blessed Virgin sat in the
prow, shedding a light around as of the moon in its brightness, so
that the rowers in the gathering darkness took heart and pulled anew."

This legend, one sees, reflects from a far-off time the visitation of
the floods, which, even when they left human life untouched, were
widely fatal to the helpless cattle, and swept as sudden death over
all smaller living things. But the town knew worse troubles even than
the floods,--troubles of the civil wars, when it was a continual
fighting-place, where first Puritans thanked God for the blood of the
Loyalists, and then Loyalists thanked God for the blood of the
Puritans. Many honest citizens lost all their possessions for
conscience' sake in those times, and went forth beggared from their
native town. Doubtless there are many houses standing now on which
those honest citizens turned their backs in sorrow,--quaint-gabled
houses looking on the river, jammed between newer warehouses, and
penetrated by surprising passages, which turn and turn at sharp angles
till they lead you out on a muddy strand overflowed continually by the
rushing tide. Everywhere the brick houses have a mellow look, and in
Mrs. Glegg's day there was no incongruous new-fashioned smartness, no
plate-glass in shop-windows, no fresh stucco-facing or other
fallacious attempt to make fine old red St. Ogg's wear the air of a
town that sprang up yesterday. The shop-windows were small and
unpretending; for the farmers' wives and daughters who came to do
their shopping on market-days were not to be withdrawn from their
regular well-known shops; and the tradesmen had no wares intended for
customers who would go on their way and be seen no more. Ah! even Mrs.
Glegg's day seems far back in the past now, separated from us by
changes that widen the years. War and the rumor of war had then died
out from the minds of men, and if they were ever thought of by the
farmers in drab greatcoats, who shook the grain out of their
sample-bags and buzzed over it in the full market-place, it was as a
state of things that belonged to a past golden age when prices were
high. Surely the time was gone forever when the broad river could
bring up unwelcome ships; Russia was only the place where the linseed
came from,--the more the better,--making grist for the great vertical
millstones with their scythe-like arms, roaring and grinding and
carefully sweeping as if an informing soul were in them. The
Catholics, bad harvests, and the mysterious fluctuations of trade were
the three evils mankind had to fear; even the floods had not been
great of late years. The mind of St. Ogg's did not look extensively
before or after. It inherited a long past without thinking of it, and
had no eyes for the spirits that walk the streets. Since the centuries
when St. Ogg with his boat and the Virgin Mother at the prow had been
seen on the wide water, so many memories had been left behind, and had
gradually vanished like the receding hilltops! And the present time
was like the level plain where men lose their belief in volcanoes and
earthquakes, thinking to-morrow will be as yesterday, and the giant
forces that used to shake the earth are forever laid to sleep. The
days were gone when people could be greatly wrought upon by their
faith, still less change it; the Catholics were formidable because
they would lay hold of government and property, and burn men alive;
not because any sane and honest parishioner of St. Ogg's could be
brought to believe in the Pope. One aged person remembered how a rude
multitude had been swayed when John Wesley preached in the
cattle-market; but for a long while it had not been expected of
preachers that they should shake the souls of men. An occasional burst
of fervor in Dissenting pulpits on the subject of infant baptism was
the only symptom of a zeal unsuited to sober times when men had done
with change. Protestantism sat at ease, unmindful of schisms, careless
of proselytism: Dissent was an inheritance along with a superior pew
and a business connection; and Churchmanship only wondered
contemptuously at Dissent as a foolish habit that clung greatly to
families in the grocery and chandlering lines, though not incompatible
with prosperous wholesale dealing. But with the Catholic Question had
come a slight wind of controversy to break the calm: the elderly
rector had become occasionally historical and argumentative; and Mr.
Spray, the Independent minister, had begun to preach political
sermons, in which he distinguished with much subtlety between his
fervent belief in the right of the Catholics to the franchise and his
fervent belief in their eternal perdition. Most of Mr. Spray's
hearers, however, were incapable of following his subtleties, and many
old-fashioned Dissenters were much pained by his "siding with the
Catholics"; while others thought he had better let politics alone.
Public spirit was not held in high esteem at St. Ogg's, and men who
busied themselves with political questions were regarded with some
suspicion, as dangerous characters; they were usually persons who had
little or no business of their own to manage, or, if they had, were
likely enough to become insolvent.