Books: The Mill on the Floss

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He had a half-jaded, half-irritated look, such as a man gets when he
has been dogged by some care or annoyance that makes his bed and his
dinner of little use to him. He spoke almost abruptly, as if his
errand were too pressing for him to trouble himself about what would
be thought by Mrs. Moss of his visit and request. Good Mrs. Moss,
rather nervous in the presence of this apparently haughty gentleman,
was inwardly wondering whether she would be doing right or wrong to
invite him again to leave his horse and walk in, when Maggie, feeling
all the embarrassment of the situation, and unable to say anything,
put on her bonnet, and turned to walk toward the gate.

Stephen turned too, and walked by her side, leading his horse.

Not a word was spoken till they were out in the lane, and had walked
four or five yards, when Maggie, who had been looking straight before
her all the while, turned again to walk back, saying, with haughty
resentment,--

"There is no need for me to go any farther. I don't know whether you
consider it gentlemanly and delicate conduct to place me in a position
that forced me to come out with you, or whether you wished to insult
me still further by thrusting an interview upon me in this way."

"Of course you are angry with me for coming," said Stephen, bitterly.
"Of course it is of no consequence what a man has to suffer; it is
only your woman's dignity that you care about."

Maggie gave a slight start, such as might have come from the slightest
possible electric shock.

"As if it were not enough that I'm entangled in this way; that I'm mad
with love for you; that I resist the strongest passion a man can feel,
because I try to be true to other claims; but you must treat me as if
I were a coarse brute, who would willingly offend you. And when, if I
had my own choice, I should ask you to take my hand and my fortune and
my whole life, and do what you liked with them! I know I forgot
myself. I took an unwarrantable liberty. I hate myself for having done
it. But I repented immediately; I've been repenting ever since. You
ought not to think it unpardonable; a man who loves with his whole
soul, as I do you, is liable to be mastered by his feelings for a
moment; but you know--you must believe--that the worst pain I could
have is to have pained you; that I would give the world to recall the
error."

Maggie dared not speak, dared not turn her head. The strength that had
come from resentment was all gone, and her lips were quivering
visibly. She could not trust herself to utter the full forgiveness
that rose in answer to that confession.

They were come nearly in front of the gate again, and she paused,
trembling.

"You must not say these things; I must not hear them," she said,
looking down in misery, as Stephen came in front of her, to prevent
her from going farther toward the gate. "I'm very sorry for any pain
you have to go through; but it is of no use to speak."

"Yes, it _is_ of use," said Stephen, impetuously. "It would be of use
if you would treat me with some sort of pity and consideration,
instead of doing me vile injustice in your mind. I could bear
everything more quietly if I knew you didn't hate me for an insolent
coxcomb. Look at me; see what a hunted devil I am; I've been riding
thirty miles every day to get away from the thought of you."

Maggie did not--dared not--look. She had already seen the harassed
face. But she said gently,--

"I don't think any evil of you."

"Then, dearest, look at me," said Stephen, in deepest, tenderest tones
of entreaty. "Don't go away from me yet. Give me a moment's happiness;
make me feel you've forgiven me."

"Yes, I do forgive you," said Maggie, shaken by those tones, and all
the more frightened at herself. "But pray let me go in again. Pray go
away."

A great tear fell from under her lowered eyelids.

"I can't go away from you; I can't leave you," said Stephen, with
still more passionate pleading. "I shall come back again if you send
me away with this coldness; I can't answer for myself. But if you will
go with me only a little way I can live on that. You see plainly
enough that your anger has only made me ten times more unreasonable."

Maggie turned. But Tancred, the bay horse, began to make such spirited
remonstrances against this frequent change of direction, that Stephen,
catching sight of Willy Moss peeping through the gate, called out,
"Here! just come and hold my horse for five minutes."

"Oh, no," said Maggie, hurriedly, "my aunt will think it so strange."

"Never mind," Stephen answered impatiently; "they don't know the
people at St. Ogg's. Lead him up and down just here for five minutes,"
he added to Willy, who was now close to them; and then he turned to
Maggie's side, and they walked on. It was clear that she _must_ go on
now.

"Take my arm," said Stephen, entreatingly; and she took it, feeling
all the while as if she were sliding downward in a nightmare.

"There is no end to this misery," she began, struggling to repel the
influence by speech. "It is wicked--base--ever allowing a word or look
that Lucy--that others might not have seen. Think of Lucy."

"I do think of her--bless her. If I didn't----" Stephen had laid his
hand on Maggie's that rested on his arm, and they both felt it
difficult to speak.

"And I have other ties," Maggie went on, at last, with a desperate
effort, "even if Lucy did not exist."

"You are engaged to Philip Wakem?" said Stephen, hastily. "Is it so?"

"I consider myself engaged to him; I don't mean to marry any one
else."

Stephen was silent again until they had turned out of the sun into a
side lane, all grassy and sheltered. Then he burst out impetuously,--

"It is unnatural, it is horrible. Maggie, if you loved me as I love
you, we should throw everything else to the winds for the sake of
belonging to each other. We should break all these mistaken ties that
were made in blindness, and determine to marry each other."

"I would rather die than fall into that temptation," said Maggie, with
deep, slow distinctness, all the gathered spiritual force of painful
years coming to her aid in this extremity. She drew her arm from his
as she spoke.

"Tell me, then, that you don't care for me," he said, almost
violently. "Tell me that you love some one else better."

It darted through Maggie's mind that here was a mode of releasing
herself from outward struggle,--to tell Stephen that her whole heart
was Philip's. But her lips would not utter that, and she was silent.

"If you do love me, dearest," said Stephen, gently, taking her hand
again and laying it within his arm, "it is better--it is right that we
should marry each other. We can't help the pain it will give. It is
come upon us without our seeking; it is natural; it has taken hold of
me in spite of every effort I have made to resist it. God knows, I've
been trying to be faithful to tacit engagements, and I've only made
things worse; I'd better have given way at first."

Maggie was silent. If it were _not_ wrong--if she were once convinced
of that, and need no longer beat and struggle against this current,
soft and yet strong as the summer stream!

"Say've s' dearest," said Stephen, leaning to look entreatingly in
her face. "What could we care about in the whole world beside, if we
belonged to each other?"

Her breath was on his face, his lips were very near hers, but there
was a great dread dwelling in his love for her.

Her lips and eyelids quivered; she opened her eyes full on his for an
instant, like a lovely wild animal timid and struggling under
caresses, and then turned sharp round toward home again.

"And after all," he went on, in an impatient tone, trying to defeat
his own scruples as well as hers, "I am breaking no positive
engagement; if Lucy's affections had been withdrawn from me and given
to some one else, I should have felt no right to assert a claim on
her. If you are not absolutely pledged to Philip, we are neither of us
bound."

"You don't believe that; it is not your real feeling," said Maggie,
earnestly. "You feel, as I do, that the real tie lies in the feelings
and expectations we have raised in other minds. Else all pledges might
be broken, when there was no outward penalty. There would be no such
thing as faithfulness."

Stephen was silent; he could not pursue that argument; the opposite
conviction had wrought in him too strongly through his previous time
of struggle. But it soon presented itself in a new form.

"The pledge _can't_ be fulfilled," he said, with impetuous insistence.
"It is unnatural; we can only pretend to give ourselves to any one
else. There is wrong in that too; there may be misery in it for _them_
as well as for us. Maggie, you must see that; you do see that."

He was looking eagerly at her face for the least sign of compliance;
his large, firm, gentle grasp was on her hand. She was silent for a
few moments, with her eyes fixed on the ground; then she drew a deep
breath, and said, looking up at him with solemn sadness,--

"Oh, it is difficult,--life is very difficult! It seems right to me
sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but then, such
feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has
made for us,--the ties that have made others dependent on us,--and
would cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might
have been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first
toward whom--I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love
comes, love would be a sign that two people ought to belong to each
other. But I see--I feel it is not so now; there are things we must
renounce in life; some of us must resign love. Many things are
difficult and dark to me; but I see one thing quite clearly,--that I
must not, cannot, seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is
natural; but surely pity and faithfulness and memory are natural too.
And they would live in me still, and punish me if I did not obey them.
I should be haunted by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be
poisoned. Don't urge me; help me,--help me, _because_ I love you."

Maggie had become more and more earnest as she went on; her face had
become flushed, and her eyes fuller and fuller of appealing love.
Stephen had the fibre of nobleness in him that vibrated to her appeal;
but in the same moment--how could it be otherwise?--that pleading
beauty gained new power over him.

"Dearest," he said, in scarcely more than a whisper, while his arm
stole round her, "I'll do, I'll bear anything you wish. But--one
kiss--one--the last--before we part."

One kiss, and then a long look, until Maggie said tremulously, "Let me
go,--let me make haste back."

She hurried along, and not another word was spoken. Stephen stood
still and beckoned when they came within sight of Willy and the horse,
and Maggie went on through the gate. Mrs. Moss was standing alone at
the door of the old porch; she had sent all the cousins in, with kind
thoughtfulness. It might be a joyful thing that Maggie had a rich and
handsome lover, but she would naturally feel embarrassed at coming in
again; and it might _not_ be joyful. In either case Mrs. Moss waited
anxiously to receive Maggie by herself. The speaking face told plainly
enough that, if there was joy, it was of a very agitating, dubious
sort.

"Sit down here a bit, my dear." She drew Maggie into the porch, and
sat down on the bench by her; there was no privacy in the house.

"Oh, aunt Gritty, I'm very wretched! I wish I could have died when I
was fifteen. It seemed so easy to give things up then; it is so hard
now."

The poor child threw her arms round her aunt's neck, and fell into
long, deep sobs.

Chapter XII

A Family Party

Maggie left her good aunt Gritty at the end of the week, and went to
Garum Firs to pay her visit to aunt Pullet according to agreement. In
the mean time very unexpected things had happened, and there was to be
a family party at Garum to discuss and celebrate a change in the
fortunes of the Tullivers, which was likely finally to carry away the
shadow of their demerits like the last limb of an eclipse, and cause
their hitherto obscured virtues to shine forth in full-rounded
splendor. It is pleasant to know that a new ministry just come into
office are not the only fellow-men who enjoy a period of high
appreciation and full-blown eulogy; in many respectable families
throughout this realm, relatives becoming creditable meet with a
similar cordiality of recognition, which in its fine freedom from the
coercion of any antecedents, suggests the hopeful possibility that we
may some day without any notice find ourselves in full millennium,
with cockatrices who have ceased to bite, and wolves that no longer
show their teeth with any but the blandest intentions.

Lucy came so early as to have the start even of aunt Glegg; for she
longed to have some undisturbed talk with Maggie about the wonderful
news. It seemed, did it not? said Lucy, with her prettiest air of
wisdom, as if everything, even other people's misfortunes (poor
creatures!) were conspiring now to make poor dear aunt Tulliver, and
cousin Tom, and naughty Maggie too, if she were not obstinately bent
on the contrary, as happy as they deserved to be after all their
troubles. To think that the very day--the _very day_--after Tom had
come back from Newcastle, that unfortunate young Jetsome, whom Mr.
Wakem had placed at the Mill, had been pitched off his horse in a
drunken fit, and was lying at St. Ogg's in a dangerous state, so that
Wakem had signified his wish that the new purchasers should enter on
the premises at once!

It was very dreadful for that unhappy young man, but it did seem as if
the misfortune had happened then, rather than at any other time, in
order that cousin Tom might all the sooner have the fit reward of his
exemplary conduct,--papa thought so very highly of him. Aunt Tulliver
must certainly go to the Mill now, and keep house for Tom; that was
rather a loss to Lucy in the matter of household comfort; but then, to
think of poor aunty being in her old place again, and gradually
getting comforts about her there!

On this last point Lucy had her cunning projects, and when she and
Maggie had made their dangerous way down the bright stairs into the
handsome parlor, where the very sunbeams seemed cleaner than
elsewhere, she directed her manoeuvres, as any other great tactician
would have done, against the weaker side of the enemy.

"Aunt Pullet," she said, seating herself on the sofa, and caressingly
adjusting that lady's floating cap-string, "I want you to make up your
mind what linen and things you will give Tom toward housekeeping;
because you are always so generous,--you give such nice things, you
know; and if you set the example, aunt Glegg will follow."

"That she never can, my dear," said Mrs. Pullet, with unusual vigor,
"for she hasn't got the linen to follow suit wi' mine, I can tell you.
She'd niver the taste, not if she'd spend the money. Big checks and
live things, like stags and foxes, all her table-linen is,--not a spot
nor a diamond among 'em. But it's poor work dividing one's linen
before one dies,--I niver thought to ha' done that, Bessy," Mrs.
Pullet continued, shaking her head and looking at her sister Tulliver,
"when you and me chose the double diamont, the first flax iver we'd
spun, and the Lord knows where yours is gone."

"I'd no choice, I'm sure, sister," said poor Mrs. Tulliver, accustomed
to consider herself in the light of an accused person. "I'm sure it
was no wish o' mine, iver, as I should lie awake o' nights thinking o'
my best bleached linen all over the country."

"Take a peppermint, Mrs. Tulliver," said uncle Pullet, feeling that he
was offering a cheap and wholesome form of comfort, which he was
recommending by example.

"Oh, but, aunt Pullet," said Lucy, "you've so much beautiful linen.
And suppose you had had daughters! Then you must have divided it when
they were married."

"Well, I don't say as I won't do it," said Mrs. Pullet, "for now Tom's
so lucky, it's nothing but right his friends should look on him and
help him. There's the tablecloths I bought at your sale, Bessy; it was
nothing but good natur' o' me to buy 'em, for they've been lying in
the chest ever since. But I'm not going to give Maggie any more o' my
Indy muslin and things, if she's to go into service again, when she
might stay and keep me company, and do my sewing for me, if she wasn't
wanted at her brother's."

"Going into service" was the expression by which the Dodson mind
represented to itself the position of teacher or governess; and
Maggie's return to that menial condition, now circumstances offered
her more eligible prospects, was likely to be a sore point with all
her relatives, besides Lucy. Maggie in her crude form, with her hair
down her back, and altogether in a state of dubious promise, was a
most undesirable niece; but now she was capable of being at once
ornamental and useful. The subject was revived in aunt and uncle
Glegg's presence, over the tea and muffins.

"Hegh, hegh!" said Mr. Glegg, good-naturedly patting Maggie on the
back, "nonsense, nonsense! Don't let us hear of you taking a place
again, Maggie. Why, you must ha' picked up half-a-dozen sweethearts at
the bazaar; isn't there one of'em the right sort of article? Come,
now?"

"Mr. Glegg," said his wife, with that shade of increased politeness in
her severity which she always put on with her crisper fronts, "you'll
excuse me, but you're far too light for a man of your years. It's
respect and duty to her aunts, and the rest of her kin as are so good
to her, should have kept my niece from fixing about going away again
without consulting us; not sweethearts, if I'm to use such a word,
though it was never heared in _my_ family."

"Why, what did they call us, when we went to see 'em, then, eh,
neighbor Pullet? They thought us sweet enough then," said Mr. Glegg,
winking pleasantly; while Mr. Pullet, at the suggestion of sweetness,
took a little more sugar.

"Mr. Glegg," said Mrs. G., "if you're going to be undelicate, let me
know."

"La, Jane, your husband's only joking," said Mrs. Pullet; "let him
joke while he's got health and strength. There's poor Mr. Tilt got his
mouth drawn all o' one side, and couldn't laugh if he was to try."

"I'll trouble you for the muffineer, then, Mr. Glegg," said Mrs. G.,
"if I may be so bold to interrupt your joking. Though it's other
people must see the joke in a niece's putting a slight on her mother's
eldest sister, as is the head o' the family; and only coming in and
out on short visits, all the time she's been in the town, and then
settling to go away without my knowledge,--as I'd laid caps out on
purpose for her to make 'em up for me,--and me as have divided my
money so equal----"

"Sister," Mrs. Tulliver broke in anxiously, "I'm sure Maggie never
thought o' going away without staying at your house as well as the
others. Not as it's my wish she should go away at all, but quite
contrairy. I'm sure I'm innocent. I've said over and over again, 'My
dear, you've no call to go away.' But there's ten days or a fortnight
Maggie'll have before she's fixed to go; she can stay at your house
just as well, and I'll step in when I can, and so will Lucy."

"Bessy," said Mrs. Glegg, "if you'd exercise a little more thought,
you might know I should hardly think it was worth while to unpin a
bed, and go to all that trouble now, just at the end o' the time, when
our house isn't above a quarter of an hour's walk from Mr. Deane's.
She can come the first thing in the morning, and go back the last at
night, and be thankful she's got a good aunt so close to her to come
and sit with. I know _I_ should, when I was her age."

"La, Jane," said Mrs. Pullet, "it 'ud do your beds good to have
somebody to sleep in 'em. There's that striped room smells dreadful
mouldy, and the glass mildewed like anything. I'm sure I thought I
should be struck with death when you took me in."

"Oh, there is Tom!" exclaimed Lucy, clapping her hands. "He's come on
Sindbad, as I told him. I was afraid he was not going to keep his
promise."

Maggie jumped up to kiss Tom as he entered, with strong feeling, at
this first meeting since the prospect of returning to the Mill had
been opened to him; and she kept his hand, leading him to the chair by
her side. To have no cloud between herself and Tom was still a
perpetual yearning in her, that had its root deeper than all change.
He smiled at her very kindly this evening, and said, "Well, Magsie,
how's aunt Moss?"

"Come, come, sir," said Mr. Glegg putting out his hand. "Why, you're
such a big man, you carry all before you, it, seems. You're come into
your luck a good deal earlier than us old folks did; but I wish you
joy, I wish you joy. You'll get the Mill all for your own again some
day, I'll be bound. You won't stop half-way up the hill."

"But I hope he'll bear in mind as it's his mother's family as he owes
it to," said Mrs. Glegg. "If he hadn't had them to take after, he'd
ha' been poorly off. There was never any failures, nor lawing, nor
wastefulness in our family, nor dying without wills----"

"No, nor sudden deaths," said aunt Pullet; "allays the doctor called
in. But Tom had the Dodson skin; I said that from the first. And I
don't know what _you_ mean to do, sister Glegg, but I mean to give him
a tablecloth of all my three biggest sizes but one, besides sheets. I
don't say what more I shall do; but _that_ I shall do, and if I should
die to-morrow, Mr. Pullet, you'll bear it in mind,--though you'll be
blundering with the keys, and never remember as that on the third
shelf o' the left-hand wardrobe, behind the night-caps with the broad
ties,--not the narrow-frilled uns,--is the key of the drawer in the
Blue Room, where the key o' the Blue Closet is. You'll make a mistake,
and I shall niver be worthy to know it. You've a memory for my pills
and draughts, wonderful,--I'll allays say that of you,--but you're
lost among the keys." This gloomy prospect of the confusion that would
ensue on her decease was very affecting to Mrs. Pullet.

"You carry it too far, Sophy,--that locking in and out," said Mrs.
Glegg, in a tone of some disgust at this folly. "You go beyond your
own family. There's nobody can say I don't lock up; but I do what's
reasonable, and no more. And as for the linen, I shall look out what's
serviceable, to make a present of to my nephey; I've got cloth as has
never been whitened, better worth having than other people's fine
holland; and I hope he'll lie down in it and think of his aunt."

Tom thanked Mrs. Glegg, but evaded any promise to meditate nightly on
her virtues; and Mrs. Glegg effected a diversion for him by asking
about Mr. Deane's intentions concerning steam.

Lucy had had her far-sighted views in begging Tom to come on Sindbad.
It appeared, when it was time to go home, that the man-servant was to
ride the horse, and cousin Tom was to drive home his mother and Lucy.
"You must sit by yourself, aunty," said that contriving young lady,
"because I must sit by Tom; I've a great deal to say to him."

In the eagerness of her affectionate anxiety for Maggie, Lucy could
not persuade herself to defer a conversation about her with Tom, who,
she thought, with such a cup of joy before him as this rapid
fulfilment of his wish about the Mill, must become pliant and
flexible. Her nature supplied her with no key to Tom's; and she was
puzzled as well as pained to notice the unpleasant change on his
countenance when she gave him the history of the way in which Philip
had used his influence with his father. She had counted on this
revelation as a great stroke of policy, which was to turn Tom's heart
toward Philip at once, and, besides that, prove that the elder Wakem
was ready to receive Maggie with all the honors of a daughter-in-law.
Nothing was wanted, then, but for dear Tom, who always had that
pleasant smile when he looked at cousin Lucy, to turn completely
round, say the opposite of what he had always said before, and declare
that he, for his part, was delighted that all the old grievances
should be healed, and that Maggie should have Philip with all suitable
despatch; in cousin Lucy's opinion nothing could be easier.

But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities
that create severity,--strength of will, conscious rectitude of
purpose, narrowness of imagination and intellect, great power of
self-control, and a disposition to exert control over others,--prejudices
come as the natural food of tendencies which can get no sustenance
out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking knowledge which
we call truth. Let a prejudice be bequeathed, carried in the air,
adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye,--however it may come,
these minds will give it a habitation; it is something to assert
strongly and bravely, something to fill up the void of spontaneous
ideas, something to impose on others with the authority of conscious
right; it is at once a staff and a baton. Every prejudice that will
answer these purposes is self-evident. Our good, upright Tom Tulliver's
mind was of this class; his inward criticism of his father's faults
did not prevent him from adopting his father's prejudice; it was a
prejudice against a man of lax principle and lax life, and it was a
meeting-point for all the disappointed feelings of family and personal
pride. Other feelings added their force to produce Tom's bitter
repugnance to Philip, and to Maggie's union with him; and
notwithstanding Lucy's power over her strong-willed cousin, she got
nothing but a cold refusal ever to sanction such a marriage; "but of
course Maggie could do as she liked,--she had declared her
determination to be independent. For Tom's part, he held himself bound
by his duty to his father's memory, and by every manly feeling, never
to consent to any relation with the Wakems."