Books: The Mill on the Floss

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"Some day next month, I believe," said Lucy. "But your sisters are
doing more for it than I am; they are to have the largest stall."

"Ah yes; but they carry on their manufactures in their own
sitting-room, where I don't intrude on them. I see you are not
addicted to the fashionable vice of fancy-work, Miss Tulliver," said
Stephen, looking at Maggie's plain hemming.

"No," said Maggie, "I can do nothing more difficult or more elegant
than shirt-making."

"And your plain sewing is so beautiful, Maggie," said Lucy, "that I
think I shall beg a few specimens of you to show as fancy-work. Your
exquisite sewing is quite a mystery to me, you used to dislike that
sort of work so much in old days."

"It is a mystery easily explained, dear," said Maggie, looking up
quietly. "Plain sewing was the only thing I could get money by, so I
was obliged to try and do it well."

Lucy, good and simple as she was, could not help blushing a little.
She did not quite like that Stephen should know that; Maggie need not
have mentioned it. Perhaps there was some pride in the confession,--
the pride of poverty that will not be ashamed of itself. But if Maggie
had been the queen of coquettes she could hardly have invented a means
of giving greater piquancy to her beauty in Stephen's eyes; I am not
sure that the quiet admission of plain sewing and poverty would have
done alone, but assisted by the beauty, they made Maggie more unlike
other women even than she had seemed at first.

"But I can knit, Lucy," Maggie went on, "if that will be of any use
for your bazaar."

"Oh yes, of infinite use. I shall set you to work with scarlet wool
to-morrow. But your sister is the most enviable person," continued
Lucy, turning to Stephen, "to have the talent of modelling. She is
doing a wonderful bust of Dr. Kenn entirely from memory."

"Why, if she can remember to put the eyes very near together, and the
corners of the mouth very far apart, the likeness can hardly fail to
be striking in St. Ogg's."

"Now that is very wicked of you," said Lucy, looking rather hurt. "I
didn't think you would speak disrespectfully of Dr. Kenn."

"I say anything disrespectful of Dr. Kenn? Heaven forbid! But I am not
bound to respect a libellous bust of him. I think Kenn one of the
finest fellows in the world. I don't care much about the tall
candlesticks he has put on the communion-table, and I shouldn't like
to spoil my temper by getting up to early prayers every morning. But
he's the only man I ever knew personally who seems to me to have
anything of the real apostle in him,--a man who has eight hundred
a-year and is contented with deal furniture and boiled beef because he
gives away two-thirds of his income. That was a very fine thing of
him,--taking into his house that poor lad Grattan, who shot his mother
by accident. He sacrifices more time than a less busy man could spare,
to save the poor fellow from getting into a morbid state of mind about
it. He takes the lad out with him constantly, I see."

"That is beautiful," said Maggie, who had let her work fall, and was
listening with keen interest. "I never knew any one who did such things."

"And one admires that sort of action in Kenn all the more," said
Stephen, "because his manners in general are rather cold and severe.
There's nothing sugary and maudlin about him."

"Oh, I think he's a perfect character!" said Lucy, with pretty
enthusiasm.

"No; there I can't agree with you," said Stephen, shaking his head
with sarcastic gravity.

"Now, what fault can you point out in him?"

"He's an Anglican."

"Well, those are the right views, I think," said Lucy, gravely.

"That settles the question in the abstract," said Stephen, "but not
from a parliamentary point of view. He has set the Dissenters and the
Church people by the ears; and a rising senator like myself, of whose
services the country is very much in need, will find it inconvenient
when he puts up for the honor of representing St. Ogg's in
Parliament."

"Do you really think of that?" said Lucy, her eyes brightening with a
proud pleasure that made her neglect the argumentative interests of
Anglicanism.

"Decidedly, whenever old Mr. Leyburn's public spirit and gout induce
him to give way. My father's heart is set on it; and gifts like mine,
you know"--here Stephen drew himself up, and rubbed his large white
hands over his hair with playful self-admiration--"gifts like mine
involve great responsibilities. Don't you think so, Miss Tulliver?"

"Yes," said Maggie, smiling, but not looking up; "so much fluency and
self-possession should not be wasted entirely on private occasions."

"Ah, I see how much penetration you have," said Stephen. "You have
discovered already that I am talkative and impudent. Now superficial
people never discern that, owing to my manner, I suppose."

"She doesn't look at me when I talk of myself," he thought, while his
listeners were laughing. "I must try other subjects."

Did Lucy intend to be present at the meeting of the Book Club next
week? was the next question. Then followed the recommendation to
choose Southey's "Life of Cowper," unless she were inclined to be
philosophical, and startle the ladies of St. Ogg's by voting for one
of the Bridgewater Treatises. Of course Lucy wished to know what these
alarmingly learned books were; and as it is always pleasant to improve
the minds of ladies by talking to them at ease on subjects of which
they know nothing, Stephen became quite brilliant in an account of
Buckland's Treatise, which he had just been reading. He was rewarded
by seeing Maggie let her work fall, and gradually get so absorbed in
his wonderful geological story that she sat looking at him, leaning
forward with crossed arms, and with an entire absence of
self-consciousness, as if he had been the snuffiest of old professors,
and she a downy-lipped alumna. He was so fascinated by the clear,
large gaze that at last he forgot to look away from it occasionally
toward Lucy; but she, sweet child, was only rejoicing that Stephen was
proving to Maggie how clever he was, and that they would certainly be
good friends after all.

"I will bring you the book, shall I, Miss Tulliver?" said Stephen,
when he found the stream of his recollections running rather shallow.
"There are many illustrations in it that you will like to see."

"Oh, thank you," said Maggie, blushing with returning
self-consciousness at this direct address, and taking up her work
again.

"No, no," Lucy interposed. "I must forbid your plunging Maggie in
books. I shall never get her away from them; and I want her to have
delicious do-nothing days, filled with boating and chatting and riding
and driving; that is the holiday she needs."

"Apropos!" said Stephen, looking at his watch. "Shall we go out for a
row on the river now? The tide will suit for us to the Tofton way, and
we can walk back."

That was a delightful proposition to Maggie, for it was years since
she had been on the river. When she was gone to put on her bonnet,
Lucy lingered to give an order to the servant, and took the
opportunity of telling Stephen that Maggie had no objection to seeing
Philip, so that it was a pity she had sent that note the day before
yesterday. But she would write another to-morrow and invite him.

"I'll call and beat him up to-morrow," said Stephen, "and bring him
with me in the evening, shall I? My sisters will want to call on you
when I tell them your cousin is with you. I must leave the field clear
for them in the morning."

"Oh yes, pray bring him," said Lucy. "And you _will_ like Maggie,
sha'n't you?" she added, in a beseeching tone. "Isn't she a dear,
noble-looking creature?"

"Too tall," said Stephen, smiling down upon her, "and a little too
fiery. She is not my type of woman, you know."

Gentlemen, you are aware, are apt to impart these imprudent
confidences to ladies concerning their unfavorable opinion of sister
fair ones. That is why so many women have the advantage of knowing
that they are secretly repulsive to men who have self-denyingly made
ardent love to them. And hardly anything could be more distinctively
characteristic of Lucy than that she both implicitly believed what
Stephen said, and was determined that Maggie should not know it. But
you, who have a higher logic than the verbal to guide you, have
already foreseen, as the direct sequence to that unfavorable opinion
of Stephen's, that he walked down to the boathouse calculating, by the
aid of a vivid imagination, that Maggie must give him her hand at
least twice in consequence of this pleasant boating plan, and that a
gentleman who wishes ladies to look at him is advantageously situated
when he is rowing them in a boat. What then? Had he fallen in love
with this surprising daughter of Mrs. Tulliver at first sight?
Certainly not. Such passions are never heard of in real life. Besides,
he was in love already, and half-engaged to the dearest little
creature in the world; and he was not a man to make a fool of himself
in any way. But when one is five-and-twenty, one has not chalk-stones
at one's finger-ends that the touch of a handsome girl should be
entirely indifferent. It was perfectly natural and safe to admire
beauty and enjoy looking at it,--at least under such circumstances as
the present. And there was really something very interesting about
this girl, with her poverty and troubles; it was gratifying to see the
friendship between the two cousins. Generally, Stephen admitted, he
was not fond of women who had any peculiarity of character, but here
the peculiarity seemed really of a superior kind, and provided one is
not obliged to marry such women, why, they certainly make a variety in
social intercourse.

Maggie did not fulfil Stephen's hope by looking at him during the
first quarter of an hour; her eyes were too full of the old banks that
she knew so well. She felt lonely, cut off from Philip,--the only
person who had ever seemed to love her devotedly, as she had always
longed to be loved. But presently the rhythmic movement of the oars
attracted her, and she thought she should like to learn how to row.
This roused her from her reverie, and she asked if she might take an
oar. It appeared that she required much teaching, and she became
ambitious. The exercise brought the warm blood into her cheeks, and
made her inclined to take her lesson merrily.

"I shall not be satisfied until I can manage both oars, and row you
and Lucy," she said, looking very bright as she stepped out of the
boat. Maggie, we know, was apt to forget the thing she was doing, and
she had chosen an inopportune moment for her remark; her foot slipped,
but happily Mr. Stephen Guest held her hand, and kept her up with a
firm grasp.

"You have not hurt yourself at all, I hope?" he said, bending to look
in her face with anxiety. It was very charming to be taken care of in
that kind, graceful manner by some one taller and stronger than one's
self. Maggie had never felt just in the same way before.

When they reached home again, they found uncle and aunt Pullet seated
with Mrs. Tulliver in the drawing-room, and Stephen hurried away,
asking leave to come again in the evening.

"And pray bring with you the volume of Purcell that you took away,"
said Lucy. "I want Maggie to hear your best songs."

Aunt Pullet, under the certainty that Maggie would be invited to go
out with Lucy, probably to Park House, was much shocked at the
shabbiness of her clothes, which when witnessed by the higher society
of St. Ogg's, would be a discredit to the family, that demanded a
strong and prompt remedy; and the consultation as to what would be
most suitable to this end from among the superfluities of Mrs.
Pullet's wardrobe was one that Lucy as well as Mrs. Tulliver entered
into with some zeal. Maggie must really have an evening dress as soon
as possible, and she was about the same height as aunt Pullet.

"But she's so much broader across the shoulders than I am, it's very
ill-convenient," said Mrs. Pullet, "else she might wear that beautiful
black brocade o' mine without any alteration; and her arms are beyond
everything," added Mrs. Pullet, sorrowfully, as she lifted Maggie's
large round arm, "She'd never get my sleeves on."

"Oh, never mind that, aunt; send us the dress," said Lucy. "I don't
mean Maggie to have long sleeves, and I have abundance of black lace
for trimming. Her arms will look beautiful."

"Maggie's arms _are_ a pretty shape," said Mrs. Tulliver. "They're
like mine used to be, only mine was never brown; I wish she'd had
_our_ family skin."

"Nonsense, aunty!" said Lucy, patting her aunt Tulliver's shoulder,
"you don't understand those things. A painter would think Maggie's
complexion beautiful."

"Maybe, my dear," said Mrs. Tulliver, submissively. "You know better
than I do. Only when I was young a brown skin wasn't thought well on
among respectable folks."

"No," said uncle Pullet, who took intense interest in the ladies'
conversation as he sucked his lozenges. "Though there was a song about
the 'Nut-brown Maid' too; I think she was crazy,--crazy Kate,--but I
can't justly remember."

"Oh dear, dear!" said Maggie, laughing, but impatient; "I think that
will be the end of _my_ brown skin, if it is always to be talked about
so much."

Chapter III

Confidential Moments

When Maggie went up to her bedroom that night, it appeared that she
was not at all inclined to undress. She set down her candle on the
first table that presented itself, and began to walk up and down her
room, which was a large one, with a firm, regular, and rather rapid
step, which showed that the exercise was the instinctive vent of
strong excitement. Her eyes and cheeks had an almost feverish
brilliancy; her head was thrown backward, and her hands were clasped
with the palms outward, and with that tension of the arms which is apt
to accompany mental absorption.

Had anything remarkable happened?

Nothing that you are not likely to consider in the highest degree
unimportant. She had been hearing some fine music sung by a fine bass
voice,--but then it was sung in a provincial, amateur fashion, such as
would have left a critical ear much to desire. And she was conscious
of having been looked at a great deal, in rather a furtive manner,
from beneath a pair of well-marked horizontal eyebrows, with a glance
that seemed somehow to have caught the vibratory influence of the
voice. Such things could have had no perceptible effect on a
thoroughly well-educated young lady, with a perfectly balanced mind,
who had had all the advantages of fortune, training, and refined
society. But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably
have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few
vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the happiest
women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

In poor Maggie's highly-strung, hungry nature,--just come away from a
third-rate schoolroom, with all its jarring sounds and petty round of
tasks,--these apparently trivial causes had the effect of rousing and
exalting her imagination in a way that was mysterious to herself. It
was not that she thought distinctly of Mr. Stephen Guest, or dwelt on
the indications that he looked at her with admiration; it was rather
that she felt the half-remote presence of a world of love and beauty
and delight, made up of vague, mingled images from all the poetry and
romance she had ever read, or had ever woven in her dreamy reveries.
Her mind glanced back once or twice to the time when she had courted
privation, when she had thought all longing, all impatience was
subdued; but that condition seemed irrecoverably gone, and she
recoiled from the remembrance of it. No prayer, no striving now, would
bring back that negative peace; the battle of her life, it seemed, was
not to be decided in that short and easy way,--by perfect renunciation
at the very threshold of her youth.

The music was vibrating in her still,--Purcell's music, with its wild
passion and fancy,--and she could not stay in the recollection of that
bare, lonely past. She was in her brighter aerial world again, when a
little tap came at the door; of course it was her cousin, who entered
in ample white dressing-gown.

"Why, Maggie, you naughty child, haven't you begun to undress?" said
Lucy, in astonishment. "I promised not to come and talk to you,
because I thought you must be tired. But here you are, looking as if
you were ready to dress for a ball. Come, come, get on your
dressing-gown and unplait your hair."

"Well, _you_ are not very forward," retorted Maggie, hastily reaching
her own pink cotton gown, and looking at Lucy's light-brown hair
brushed back in curly disorder.

"Oh, I have not much to do. I shall sit down and talk to you till I
see you are really on the way to bed."

While Maggie stood and unplaited her long black hair over her pink
drapery, Lucy sat down near the toilette-table, watching her with
affectionate eyes, and head a little aside, like a pretty spaniel. If
it appears to you at all incredible that young ladies should be led on
to talk confidentially in a situation of this kind, I will beg you to
remember that human life furnishes many exceptional cases.

"You really _have_ enjoyed the music to-night, haven't you Maggie?"

"Oh yes, that is what prevented me from feeling sleepy. I think I
should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of
music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my
brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with
music. At other times one is conscious of carrying a weight."

"And Stephen has a splendid voice, hasn't he?"

"Well, perhaps we are neither of us judges of that," said Maggie,
laughing, as she seated herself and tossed her long hair back. "You
are not impartial, and _I_ think any barrel-organ splendid."

"But tell me what you think of him, now. Tell me exactly; good and bad
too."

"Oh, I think you should humiliate him a little. A lover should not be
so much at ease, and so self-confident. He ought to tremble more."

"Nonsense, Maggie! As if any one could tremble at me! You think he is
conceited, I see that. But you don't dislike him, do you?"

"Dislike him! No. Am I in the habit of seeing such charming people,
that I should be very difficult to please? Besides, how could I
dislike any one that promised to make you happy, my dear thing!"
Maggie pinched Lucy's dimpled chin.

"We shall have more music to-morrow evening," said Lucy, looking happy
already, "for Stephen will bring Philip Wakem with him."

"Oh, Lucy, I can't see him," said Maggie, turning pale. "At least, I
could not see him without Tom's leave."

"Is Tom such a tyrant as that?" said Lucy, surprised. "I'll take the
responsibility, then,--tell him it was my fault."

"But, dear," said Maggie, falteringly, "I promised Tom very solemnly,
before my father's death,--I promised him I would not speak to Philip
without his knowledge and consent. And I have a great dread of opening
the subject with Tom,--of getting into a quarrel with him again."

"But I never heard of anything so strange and unreasonable. What harm
can poor Philip have done? May I speak to Tom about it?"

"Oh no, pray don't, dear," said Maggie. "I'll go to him myself
to-morrow, and tell him that you wish Philip to come. I've thought
before of asking him to absolve me from my promise, but I've not had
the courage to determine on it."

They were both silent for some moments, and then Lucy said,--

"Maggie, you have secrets from me, and I have none from you."

Maggie looked meditatively away from Lucy. Then she turned to her and
said, "I _should_ like to tell you about Philip. But, Lucy, you must
not betray that you know it to any one--least of all to Philip
himself, or to Mr. Stephen Guest."

The narrative lasted long, for Maggie had never before known the
relief of such an outpouring; she had never before told Lucy anything
of her inmost life; and the sweet face bent toward her with
sympathetic interest, and the little hand pressing hers, encouraged
her to speak on. On two points only she was not expansive. She did not
betray fully what still rankled in her mind as Tom's great
offence,--the insults he had heaped on Philip. Angry as the
remembrance still made her, she could not bear that any one else
should know it at all, both for Tom's sake and Philip's. And she could
not bear to tell Lucy of the last scene between her father and Wakem,
though it was this scene which she had ever since felt to be a new
barrier between herself and Philip. She merely said, she saw now that
Tom was, no the whole, right in regarding any prospect of love and
marriage between her and Philip as put out of the question by the
relation of the two families. Of course Philip's father would never
consent.

"There, Lucy, you have had my story," said Maggie, smiling, with the
tears in her eyes. "You see I am like Sir Andrew Aguecheek. _I_ was
adored once."

"Ah, now I see how it is you know Shakespeare and everything, and have
learned so much since you left school; which always seemed to me
witchcraft before,--part of your general uncanniness," said Lucy.

She mused a little with her eyes downward, and then added, looking at
Maggie, "It is very beautiful that you should love Philip; I never
thought such a happiness would befall him. And in my opinion, you
ought not to give him up. There are obstacles now; but they may be
done away with in time."

Maggie shook her head.

"Yes, yes," persisted Lucy; "I can't help being hopeful about it.
There is something romantic in it,--out of the common way,--just what
everything that happens to you ought to be. And Philip will adore you
like a husband in a fairy tale. Oh, I shall puzzle my small brain to
contrive some plot that will bring everybody into the right mind, so
that you may marry Philip when I marry--somebody else. Wouldn't that
be a pretty ending to all my poor, poor Maggie's troubles?"

Maggie tried to smile, but shivered, as if she felt a sudden chill.

"Ah, dear, you are cold," said Lucy. "You must go to bed; and so must
I. I dare not think what time it is."

They kissed each other, and Lucy went away, possessed of a confidence
which had a strong influence over her subsequent impressions. Maggie
had been thoroughly sincere; her nature had never found it easy to be
otherwise. But confidences are sometimes blinding, even when they are
sincere.

Chapter IV

Brother and Sister

Maggie was obliged to go to Tom's lodgings in the middle of the day,
when he would be coming in to dinner, else she would not have found
him at home. He was not lodging with entire strangers. Our friend Bob
Jakin had, with Mumps's tacit consent, taken not only a wife about
eight months ago, but also one of those queer old houses, pierced with
surprising passages, by the water-side, where, as he observed, his
wife and mother could keep themselves out of mischief by letting out
two "pleasure-boats," in which he had invested some of his savings,
and by taking in a lodger for the parlor and spare bedroom. Under
these circumstances, what could be better for the interests of all
parties, sanitary considerations apart, than that the lodger should be
Mr. Tom?

It was Bob's wife who opened the door to Maggie. She was a tiny woman,
with the general physiognomy of a Dutch doll, looking, in comparison
with Bob's mother, who filled up the passage in the rear, very much
like one of those human figures which the artist finds conveniently
standing near a colossal statue to show the proportions. The tiny
woman curtsied and looked up at Maggie with some awe as soon as she
had opened the door; but the words, "Is my brother at home?" which
Maggie uttered smilingly, made her turn round with sudden excitement,
and say,--

"Eh, mother, mother--tell Bob!--it's Miss Maggie! Come in, Miss, for
goodness do," she went on, opening a side door, and endeavoring to
flatten her person against the wall to make the utmost space for the
visitor.

Sad recollections crowded on Maggie as she entered the small parlor,
which was now all that poor Tom had to call by the name of
"home,"--that name which had once, so many years ago, meant for both
of them the same sum of dear familiar objects. But everything was not
strange to her in this new room; the first thing her eyes dwelt on was
the large old Bible, and the sight was not likely to disperse the old
memories. She stood without speaking.

"If you please to take the privilege o' sitting down, Miss," said Mrs.
Jakin, rubbing her apron over a perfectly clean chair, and then
lifting up the corner of that garment and holding it to her face with
an air of embarrassment, as she looked wonderingly at Maggie.

"Bob is at home, then?" said Maggie, recovering herself, and smiling
at the bashful Dutch doll.

"Yes, Miss; but I think he must be washing and dressing himself; I'll
go and see," said Mrs. Jakin, disappearing.

But she presently came back walking with new courage a little way
behind her husband, who showed the brilliancy of his blue eyes and
regular white teeth in the doorway, bowing respectfully.