Books: The Mill on the Floss

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Meanwhile, Maggie sat at her stall cold and trembling, with that
painful sensation in the eyes which comes from resolutely repressed
tears. Was her life to be always like this,--always bringing some new
source of inward strife? She heard confusedly the busy, indifferent
voices around her, and wished her mind could flow into that easy
babbling current. It was at this moment that Dr. Kenn, who had quite
lately come into the hall, and was now walking down the middle with
his hands behind him, taking a general view, fixed his eyes on Maggie
for the first time, and was struck with the expression of pain on her
beautiful face. She was sitting quite still, for the stream of
customers had lessened at this late hour in the afternoon; the
gentlemen had chiefly chosen the middle of the day, and Maggie's stall
was looking rather bare. This, with her absent, pained expression,
finished the contrast between her and her companions, who were all
bright, eager, and busy. He was strongly arrested. Her face had
naturally drawn his attention as a new and striking one at church, and
he had been introduced to her during a short call on business at Mr.
Deane's, but he had never spoken more than three words to her. He
walked toward her now, and Maggie, perceiving some one approaching,
roused herself to look up and be prepared to speak. She felt a
childlike, instinctive relief from the sense of uneasiness in this
exertion, when she saw it was Dr. Kenn's face that was looking at her;
that plain, middle-aged face, with a grave, penetrating kindness in
it, seeming to tell of a human being who had reached a firm, safe
strand, but was looking with helpful pity toward the strugglers still
tossed by the waves, had an effect on Maggie at this moment which was
afterward remembered by her as if it had been a promise. The
middle-aged, who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are
yet in the time when memory is still half passionate and not merely
contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood, whom
life has disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of
early stumblers and victims of self-despair. Most of us, at some
moment in our young lives, would have welcomed a priest of that
natural order in any sort of canonicals or uncanonicals, but had to
scramble upward into all the difficulties of nineteen entirely without
such aid, as Maggie did.

"You find your office rather a fatiguing one, I fear, Miss Tulliver,"
said Dr. Kenn.

"It is, rather," said Maggie, simply, not being accustomed to simpler
amiable denials of obvious facts.

"But I can tell Mrs. Kenn that you have disposed of her goods very
quickly," he added; "she will be very much obliged to you."

"Oh, I have done nothing; the gentlemen came very fast to buy the
dressing-gowns and embroidered waistcoats, but I think any of the
other ladies would have sold more; I didn't know what to say about
them."

Dr. Kenn smiled. "I hope I'm going to have you as a permanent
parishioner now, Miss Tulliver; am I? You have been at a distance from
us hitherto."

"I have been a teacher in a school, and I'm going into another
situation of the same kind very soon."

"Ah? I was hoping you would remain among your friends, who are all in
this neighborhood, I believe."

"Oh, _I must go_," said Maggie, earnestly, looking at Dr. Kenn with an
expression of reliance, as if she had told him her history in those
three words. It was one of those moments of implicit revelation which
will sometimes happen even between people who meet quite
transiently,--on a mile's journey, perhaps, or when resting by the
wayside. There is always this possibility of a word or look from a
stranger to keep alive the sense of human brotherhood.

Dr. Kenn's ear and eye took in all the signs that this brief
confidence of Maggie's was charged with meaning.

"I understand," he said; "you feel it right to go. But that will not
prevent our meeting again, I hope; it will not prevent my knowing you
better, if I can be of any service to you."

He put out his hand and pressed hers kindly before he turned away.

"She has some trouble or other at heart," he thought. "Poor child! she
looks as if she might turn out to be one of

'The souls by nature pitched too high,
By suffering plunged too low.'

"There's something wonderfully honest in those beautiful eyes."

It may be surprising that Maggie, among whose many imperfections an
excessive delight in admiration and acknowledged supremacy were not
absent now, any more than when she was instructing the gypsies with a
view toward achieving a royal position among them, was not more elated
on a day when she had had the tribute of so many looks and smiles,
together with that satisfactory consciousness which had necessarily
come from being taken before Lucy's chevalglass, and made to look at
the full length of her tall beauty, crowned by the night of her massy
hair. Maggie had smiled at herself then, and for the moment had
forgotten everything in the sense of her own beauty. If that state of
mind could have lasted, her choice would have been to have Stephen
Guest at her feet, offering her a life filled with all luxuries, with
daily incense of adoration near and distant, and with all
possibilities of culture at her command. But there were things in her
stronger than vanity,--passion and affection, and long, deep memories
of early discipline and effort, of early claims on her love and pity;
and the stream of vanity was soon swept along and mingled
imperceptibly with that wider current which was at its highest force
today, under the double urgency of the events and inward impulses
brought by the last week.

Philip had not spoken to her himself about the removal of obstacles
between them on his father's side,--he shrank from that; but he had
told everything to Lucy, with the hope that Maggie, being informed
through her, might give him some encouraging sign that their being
brought thus much nearer to each other was a happiness to her. The
rush of conflicting feelings was too great for Maggie to say much when
Lucy, with a face breathing playful joy, like one of Correggio's
cherubs, poured forth her triumphant revelation; and Lucy could hardly
be surprised that she could do little more than cry with gladness at
the thought of her father's wish being fulfilled, and of Tom's getting
the Mill again in reward for all his hard striving. The details of
preparation for the bazaar had then come to usurp Lucy's attention for
the next few days, and nothing had been said by the cousins on
subjects that were likely to rouse deeper feelings. Philip had been to
the house more than once, but Maggie had had no private conversation
with him, and thus she had been left to fight her inward battle
without interference.

But when the bazaar was fairly ended, and the cousins were alone
again, resting together at home, Lucy said,--

"You must give up going to stay with your aunt Moss the day after
to-morrow, Maggie; write a note to her, and tell her you have put it
off at my request, and I'll send the man with it. She won't be
displeased; you'll have plenty of time to go by-and-by; and I don't
want you to go out of the way just now."

"Yes, indeed I must go, dear; I can't put it off. I wouldn't leave
aunt Gritty out for the world. And I shall have very little time, for
I'm going away to a new situation on the 25th of June."

"Maggie!" said Lucy, almost white with astonishment.

"I didn't tell you, dear," said Maggie, making a great effort to
command herself, "because you've been so busy. But some time ago I
wrote to our old governess, Miss Firniss, to ask her to let me know if
she met with any situation that I could fill, and the other day I had
a letter from her telling me that I could take three orphan pupils of
hers to the coast during the holidays, and then make trial of a
situation with her as teacher. I wrote yesterday to accept the offer."

Lucy felt so hurt that for some moments she was unable to speak.

"Maggie," she said at last, "how could you be so unkind to me--not to
tell me--to take _such_ a step--and now!" She hesitated a little, and
then added, "And Philip? I thought everything was going to be so
happy. Oh, Maggie, what is the reason? Give it up; let me write. There
is nothing now to keep you and Philip apart."

"Yes," said Maggie, faintly. "There is Tom's feeling. He said I must
give him up if I married Philip. And I know he will not change--at
least not for a long while--unless something happened to soften him."

"But I will talk to him; he's coming back this week. And this good
news about the Mill will soften him. And I'll talk to him about
Philip. Tom's always very compliant to me; I don't think he's so
obstinate."

"But I must go," said Maggie, in a distressed voice. "I must leave
some time to pack. Don't press me to stay, dear Lucy."

Lucy was silent for two or three minutes, looking away and ruminating.
At length she knelt down by her cousin, and looking up in her face
with anxious seriousness, said,--

"Maggie, is it that you don't love Philip well enough to marry him?
Tell me--trust me."

Maggie held Lucy's hands tightly in silence a little while. Her own
hands were quite cold. But when she spoke, her voice was quite clear
and distinct.

"Yes, Lucy, I would choose to marry him. I think it would be the best
and highest lot for me,--to make his life happy. He loved me first. No
one else could be quite what he is to me. But I can't divide myself
from my brother for life. I must go away, and wait. Pray don't speak
to me again about it."

Lucy obeyed in pain and wonder. The next word she said was,--

"Well, dear Maggie, at least you will go to the dance at Park House
to-morrow, and have some music and brightness, before you go to pay
these dull dutiful visits. Ah! here come aunty and the tea."

Chapter X

The Spell Seems Broken

The suite of rooms opening into each other at Park House looked duly
brilliant with lights and flowers and the personal splendors of
sixteen couples, with attendant parents and guardians. The focus of
brilliancy was the long drawing-room, where the dancing went forward,
under the inspiration of the grand piano; the library, into which it
opened at one end, had the more sober illumination of maturity, with
caps and cards; and at the other end the pretty sitting-room, with a
conservatory attached, was left as an occasional cool retreat. Lucy,
who had laid aside her black for the first time, and had her pretty
slimness set off by an abundant dress of white crape, was the
acknowledged queen of the occasion; for this was one of the Miss
Guests' thoroughly condescending parties, including no member of any
aristocracy higher than that of St. Ogg's, and stretching to the
extreme limits of commercial and professional gentility.

Maggie at first refused to dance, saying that she had forgotten all
the figures--it was so many years since she had danced at school; and
she was glad to have that excuse, for it is ill dancing with a heavy
heart. But at length the music wrought in her young limbs, and the
longing came; even though it was the horrible young Torry, who walked
up a second time to try and persuade her. She warned him that she
could not dance anything but a country-dance; but he, of course, was
willing to wait for that high felicity, meaning only to be
complimentary when he assured her at several intervals that it was a
"great bore" that she couldn't waltz, he would have liked so much to
waltz with her. But at last it was the turn of the good old-fashioned
dance which has the least of vanity and the most of merriment in it,
and Maggie quite forgot her troublous life in a childlike enjoyment of
that half-rustic rhythm which seems to banish pretentious etiquette.
She felt quite charitably toward young Torry, as his hand bore her
along and held her up in the dance; her eyes and cheeks had that fire
of young joy in them which will flame out if it can find the least
breath to fan it; and her simple black dress, with its bit of black
lace, seemed like the dim setting of a jewel.

Stephen had not yet asked her to dance; had not yet paid her more than
a passing civility. Since yesterday, that inward vision of her which
perpetually made part of his consciousness, had been half screened by
the image of Philip Wakem, which came across it like a blot; there was
some attachment between her and Philip; at least there was an
attachment on his side, which made her feel in some bondage. Here,
then, Stephen told himself, was another claim of honor which called on
him to resist the attraction that was continually threatening to
overpower him. He told himself so; and yet he had once or twice felt a
certain savage resistance, and at another moment a shuddering
repugnance, to this intrusion of Philip's image, which almost made it
a new incitement to rush toward Maggie and claim her for himself.
Nevertheless, he had done what he meant to do this evening,--he had
kept aloof from her; he had hardly looked at her; and he had been
gayly assiduous to Lucy. But now his eyes were devouring Maggie; he
felt inclined to kick young Torry out of the dance, and take his
place. Then he wanted the dance to end that he might get rid of his
partner. The possibility that he too should dance with Maggie, and
have her hand in his so long, was beginning to possess him like a
thirst. But even now their hands were meeting in the dance,--were
meeting still to the very end of it, though they were far off each
other.

Stephen hardly knew what happened, or in what automatic way he got
through the duties of politeness in the interval, until he was free
and saw Maggie seated alone again, at the farther end of the room. He
made his way toward her round the couples that were forming for the
waltz; and when Maggie became conscious that she was the person he
sought, she felt, in spite of all the thoughts that had gone before, a
glowing gladness at heart. Her eyes and cheeks were still brightened
with her childlike enthusiasm in the dance; her whole frame was set to
joy and tenderness; even the coming pain could not seem bitter,--she
was ready to welcome it as a part of life, for life at this moment
seemed a keen, vibrating consciousness poised above pleasure or pain.
This one, this last night, she might expand unrestrainedly in the
warmth of the present, without those chill, eating thoughts of the
past and the future.

"They're going to waltz again," said Stephen, bending to speak to her,
with that glance and tone of subdued tenderness which young dreams
create to themselves in the summer woods when low, cooing voices fill
the air. Such glances and tones bring the breath of poetry with them
into a room that is half stifling with glaring gas and hard
flirtation.

"They are going to waltz again. It is rather dizzy work to look on,
and the room is very warm; shall we walk about a little?"

He took her hand and placed it within his arm, and they walked on into
the sitting-room, where the tables were strewn with engravings for the
accommodation of visitors who would not want to look at them. But no
visitors were here at this moment. They passed on into the
conservatory.

"How strange and unreal the trees and flowers look with the lights
among them!" said Maggie, in a low voice. "They look as if they
belonged to an enchanted land, and would never fade away; I could
fancy they were all made of jewels."

She was looking at the tier of geraniums as she spoke, and Stephen
made no answer; but he was looking at her; and does not a supreme poet
blend light and sound into one, calling darkness mute, and light
eloquent? Something strangely powerful there was in the light of
Stephen's long gaze, for it made Maggie's face turn toward it and look
upward at it, slowly, like a flower at the ascending brightness. And
they walked unsteadily on, without feeling that they were walking;
without feeling anything but that long, grave, mutual gaze which has
the solemnity belonging to all deep human passion. The hovering
thought that they must and would renounce each other made this moment
of mute confession more intense in its rapture.

But they had reached the end of the conservatory, and were obliged to
pause and turn. The change of movement brought a new consciousness to
Maggie; she blushed deeply, turned away her head, and drew her arm
from Stephen's, going up to some flowers to smell them. Stephen stood
motionless, and still pale.

"Oh, may I get this rose?" said Maggie, making a great effort to say
something, and dissipate the burning sense of irretrievable
confession. "I think I am quite wicked with roses; I like to gather
them and smell them till they have no scent left."

Stephen was mute; he was incapable of putting a sentence together, and
Maggie bent her arm a little upward toward the large half-opened rose
that had attracted her. Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm?
The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled
elbow, and all the varied gently lessening curves, down to the
delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the
firm softness. A woman's arm touched the soul of a great sculptor two
thousand years ago, so that he wrought an image of it for the
Parthenon which moves us still as it clasps lovingly the timeworn
marble of a headless trunk. Maggie's was such an arm as that, and it
had the warm tints of life.

A mad impulse seized on Stephen; he darted toward the arm, and
showered kisses on it, clasping the wrist.

But the next moment Maggie snatched it from him, and glared at him
like a wounded war-goddess, quivering with rage and humiliation.

"How dare you?" She spoke in a deeply shaken, half-smothered voice.
"What right have I given you to insult me?"

She darted from him into the adjoining room, and threw herself on the
sofa, panting and trembling.

A horrible punishment was come upon her for the sin of allowing a
moment's happiness that was treachery to Lucy, to Philip, to her own
better soul. That momentary happiness had been smitten with a blight,
a leprosy; Stephen thought more lightly of _her_ than he did of Lucy.

As for Stephen, he leaned back against the framework of the
conservatory, dizzy with the conflict of passions,--love, rage, and
confused despair; despair at his want of self-mastery, and despair
that he had offended Maggie.

The last feeling surmounted every other; to be by her side again and
entreat forgiveness was the only thing that had the force of a motive
for him, and she had not been seated more than a few minutes when he
came and stood humbly before her. But Maggie's bitter rage was
unspent.

"Leave me to myself, if you please," she said, with impetuous
haughtiness, "and for the future avoid me."

Stephen turned away, and walked backward and forward at the other end
of the room. There was the dire necessity of going back into the
dancing-room again, and he was beginning to be conscious of that. They
had been absent so short a time, that when he went in again the waltz
was not ended.

Maggie, too, was not long before she re-entered. All the pride of her
nature was stung into activity; the hateful weakness which had dragged
her within reach of this wound to her self-respect had at least
wrought its own cure. The thoughts and temptations of the last month
should all be flung away into an unvisited chamber of memory. There
was nothing to allure her now; duty would be easy, and all the old
calm purposes would reign peacefully once more. She re-entered the
drawing-room still with some excited brightness in her face, but with
a sense of proud self-command that defied anything to agitate her. She
refused to dance again, but she talked quite readily and calmly with
every one who addressed her. And when they got home that night, she
kissed Lucy with a free heart, almost exulting in this scorching
moment, which had delivered her from the possibility of another word
or look that would have the stamp of treachery toward that gentle,
unsuspicious sister.

The next morning Maggie did not set off to Basset quite so soon as she
had expected. Her mother was to accompany her in the carriage, and
household business could not be dispatched hastily by Mrs. Tulliver.
So Maggie, who had been in a hurry to prepare herself, had to sit
waiting, equipped for the drive, in the garden. Lucy was busy in the
house wrapping up some bazaar presents for the younger ones at Basset,
and when there was a loud ring at the door-bell, Maggie felt some
alarm lest Lucy should bring out Stephen to her; it was sure to be
Stephen.

But presently the visitor came out into the garden alone, and seated
himself by her on the garden-chair. It was not Stephen.

"We can just catch the tips of the Scotch firs, Maggie, from this
seat," said Philip.

They had taken each other's hands in silence, but Maggie had looked at
him with a more complete revival of the old childlike affectionate
smile than he had seen before, and he felt encouraged.

"Yes," she said, "I often look at them, and wish I could see the low
sunlight on the stems again. But I have never been that way but
once,--to the churchyard with my mother."

"I have been there, I go there, continually," said Philip. "I have
nothing but the past to live upon."

A keen remembrance and keen pity impelled Maggie to put her hand in
Philip's. They had so often walked hand in hand!

"I remember all the spots," she said,--"just where you told me of
particular things, beautiful stories that I had never heard of
before."

"You will go there again soon, won't you, Maggie?" said Philip,
getting timid. "The Mill will soon be your brother's home again."

"Yes; but I shall not be there," said Maggie. "I shall only hear of
that happiness. I am going away again; Lucy has not told you,
perhaps?"

"Then the future will never join on to the past again, Maggie? That
book is quite closed?"

The gray eyes that had so often looked up at her with entreating
worship, looked up at her now, with a last struggling ray of hope in
them, and Maggie met them with her large sincere gaze.

"That book never will be closed, Philip," she said, with grave
sadness; "I desire no future that will break the ties of the past. But
the tie to my brother is one of the strongest. I can do nothing
willingly that will divide me always from him."

"Is that the only reason that would keep us apart forever, Maggie?"
said Philip, with a desperate determination to have a definite answer.

"The only reason," said Maggie, with calm decision. And she believed
it. At that moment she felt as if the enchanted cup had been dashed to
the ground. The reactionary excitement that gave her a proud
self-mastery had not subsided, and she looked at the future with a
sense of calm choice.

They sat hand in hand without looking at each other or speaking for a
few minutes; in Maggie's mind the first scenes of love and parting
were more present than the actual moment, and she was looking at
Philip in the Red Deeps.

Philip felt that he ought to have been thoroughly happy in that answer
of hers; she was as open and transparent as a rock-pool. Why was he
not thoroughly happy? Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short
of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

Chapter XI

In the Lane

Maggie had been four days at her aunt Moss's giving the early June
sunshine quite a new brightness in the care-dimmed eyes of that
affectionate woman, and making an epoch for her cousins great and
small, who were learning her words and actions by heart, as if she had
been a transient avatar of perfect wisdom and beauty.

She was standing on the causeway with her aunt and a group of cousins
feeding the chickens, at that quiet moment in the life of the
farmyards before the afternoon milking-time. The great buildings round
the hollow yard were as dreary and tumbledown as ever, but over the
old garden-wall the straggling rose-bushes were beginning to toss
their summer weight, and the gray wood and old bricks of the house, on
its higher level, had a look of sleepy age in the broad afternoon
sunlight, that suited the quiescent time. Maggie, with her bonnet over
her arm, was smiling down at the hatch of small fluffy chickens, when
her aunt exclaimed,--

"Goodness me! who is that gentleman coming in at the gate?"

It was a gentleman on a tall bay horse; and the flanks and neck of the
horse were streaked black with fast riding. Maggie felt a beating at
head and heart, horrible as the sudden leaping to life of a savage
enemy who had feigned death.

"Who is it, my dear?" said Mrs. Moss, seeing in Maggie's face the
evidence that she knew.

"It is Mr. Stephen Guest," said Maggie, rather faintly. "My cousin
Lucy's--a gentleman who is very intimate at my cousin's."

Stephen was already close to them, had jumped off his horse, and now
raised his hat as he advanced.

"Hold the horse, Willy," said Mrs. Moss to the twelve-year-old boy.

"No, thank you," said Stephen, pulling at the horse's impatiently
tossing head. "I must be going again immediately. I have a message to
deliver to you, Miss Tulliver, on private business. May I take the
liberty of asking you to walk a few yards with me?"