Books: The Mill on the Floss

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"Good God, Maggie!" said Stephen, rising too and grasping her arm,
"you rave. How can you go back without marrying me? You don't know
what will be said, dearest. You see nothing as it really is."

"Yes, I do. But they will believe me. I will confess everything. Lucy
will believe me--she will forgive you, and--and--oh, _some_ good will
come by clinging to the right. Dear, dear Stephen, let me go!--don't
drag me into deeper remorse. My whole soul has never consented; it
does not consent now."

Stephen let go her arm, and sank back on his chair, half-stunned by
despairing rage. He was silent a few moments, not looking at her;
while her eyes were turned toward him yearningly, in alarm at this
sudden change. At last he said, still without looking at her,--

"Go, then,--leave me; don't torture me any longer,--I can't bear it."

Involuntarily she leaned toward him and put out her hand to touch his.
But he shrank from it as if it had been burning iron, and said
again,--

"Leave me."

Maggie was not conscious of a decision as she turned away from that
gloomy averted face, and walked out of the room; it was like an
automatic action that fulfils a forgotten intention. What came after?
A sense of stairs descended as if in a dream, of flagstones, of a
chaise and horses standing, then a street, and a turning into another
street where a stage-coach was standing, taking in passengers, and the
darting thought that that coach would take her away, perhaps toward
home. But she could ask nothing yet; she only got into the coach.

Home--where her mother and brother were, Philip, Lucy, the scene of
her very cares and trials--was the haven toward which her mind tended;
the sanctuary where sacred relics lay, where she would be rescued from
more falling. The thought of Stephen was like a horrible throbbing
pain, which yet, as such pains do, seemed to urge all other thoughts
into activity. But among her thoughts, what others would say and think
of her conduct was hardly present. Love and deep pity and remorseful
anguish left no room for that.

The coach was taking her to York, farther away from home; but she did
not learn that until she was set down in the old city at midnight. It
was no matter; she could sleep there, and start home the next day. She
had her purse in her pocket, with all her money in it,--a bank-note
and a sovereign; she had kept it in her pocket from forgetfulness,
after going out to make purchases the day before yesterday.

Did she lie down in the gloomy bedroom of the old inn that night with
her will bent unwaveringly on the path of penitent sacrifice? The
great struggles of life are not so easy as that; the great problems of
life are not so clear. In the darkness of that night she saw Stephen's
face turned toward her in passionate, reproachful misery; she lived
through again all the tremulous delights of his presence with her that
made existence an easy floating in a stream of joy, instead of a quiet
resolved endurance and effort. The love she had renounced came back
upon her with a cruel charm; she felt herself opening her arms to
receive it once more; and then it seemed to slip away and fade and
vanish, leaving only the dying sound of a deep, thrilling voice that
said, "Gone, forever gone."

Book VII

_The Final Rescue_

Chapter I

The Return to the Mill

Between four and five o'clock on the afternoon of the fifth day from
that on which Stephen and Maggie had left St. Ogg's, Tom Tulliver was
standing on the gravel walk outside the old house at Dorlcote Mill. He
was master there now; he had half fulfilled his father's dying wish,
and by years of steady self-government and energetic work he had
brought himself near to the attainment of more than the old
respectability which had been the proud inheritance of the Dodsons and
Tullivers.

But Tom's face, as he stood in the hot, still sunshine of that summer
afternoon, had no gladness, no triumph in it. His mouth wore its
bitterest expression, his severe brow its hardest and deepest fold, as
he drew down his hat farther over his eyes to shelter them from the
sun, and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, began to walk up
and down the gravel. No news of his sister had been heard since Bob
Jakin had come back in the steamer from Mudport, and put an end to all
improbable suppositions of an accident on the water by stating that he
had seen her land from a vessel with Mr. Stephen Guest. Would the next
news be that she was married,--or what? Probably that she was not
married; Tom's mind was set to the expectation of the worst that could
happen,--not death, but disgrace.

As he was walking with his back toward the entrance gate, and his face
toward the rushing mill-stream, a tall, dark-eyed figure, that we know
well, approached the gate, and paused to look at him with a
fast-beating heart. Her brother was the human being of whom she had
been most afraid from her childhood upward; afraid with that fear
which springs in us when we love one who is inexorable, unbending,
unmodifiable, with a mind that we can never mould ourselves upon, and
yet that we cannot endure to alienate from us.

That deep-rooted fear was shaking Maggie now; but her mind was
unswervingly bent on returning to her brother, as the natural refuge
that had been given her. In her deep humiliation under the retrospect
of her own weakness,--in her anguish at the injury she had
inflicted,--she almost desired to endure the severity of Tom's
reproof, to submit in patient silence to that harsh, disapproving
judgment against which she had so often rebelled; it seemed no more
than just to her now,--who was weaker than she was? She craved that
outward help to her better purpose which would come from complete,
submissive confession; from being in the presence of those whose looks
and words would be a reflection of her own conscience.

Maggie had been kept on her bed at York for a day with that
prostrating headache which was likely to follow on the terrible strain
of the previous day and night. There was an expression of physical
pain still about her brow and eyes, and her whole appearance, with her
dress so long unchanged, was worn and distressed. She lifted the latch
of the gate and walked in slowly. Tom did not hear the gate; he was
just then close upon the roaring dam; but he presently turned, and
lifting up his eyes, saw the figure whose worn look and loneliness
seemed to him a confirmation of his worst conjectures. He paused,
trembling and white with disgust and indignation.

Maggie paused too, three yards before him. She felt the hatred in his
face, felt it rushing through her fibres; but she must speak.

"Tom," she began faintly, "I am come back to you,--I am come back
home--for refuge--to tell you everything."

"You will find no home with me," he answered, with tremulous rage.
"You have disgraced us all. You have disgraced my father's name. You
have been a curse to your best friends. You have been base, deceitful;
no motives are strong enough to restrain you. I wash my hands of you
forever. You don't belong to me."

Their mother had come to the door now. She stood paralyzed by the
double shock of seeing Maggie and hearing Tom's words.

"Tom," said Maggie, with more courage, "I am perhaps not so guilty as
you believe me to be. I never meant to give way to my feelings. I
struggled against them. I was carried too far in the boat to come back
on Tuesday. I came back as soon as I could."

"I can't believe in you any more," said Tom, gradually passing from
the tremulous excitement of the first moment to cold inflexibility.
"You have been carrying on a clandestine relation with Stephen
Guest,--as you did before with another. He went to see you at my aunt
Moss's; you walked alone with him in the lanes; you must have behaved
as no modest girl would have done to her cousin's lover, else that
could never have happened. The people at Luckreth saw you pass; you
passed all the other places; you knew what you were doing. You have
been using Philip Wakem as a screen to deceive Lucy,--the kindest
friend you ever had. Go and see the return you have made her. She's
ill; unable to speak. My mother can't go near her, lest she should
remind her of you."

Maggie was half stunned,--too heavily pressed upon by her anguish even
to discern any difference between her actual guilt and her brother's
accusations, still less to vindicate herself.

"Tom," she said, crushing her hands together under her cloak, in the
effort to speak again, "whatever I have done, I repent it bitterly. I
want to make amends. I will endure anything. I want to be kept from
doing wrong again."

"What _will_ keep you?" said Tom, with cruel bitterness. "Not
religion; not your natural feelings of gratitude and honor. And he--he
would deserve to be shot, if it were not----But you are ten times
worse than he is. I loathe your character and your conduct. You
struggled with your feelings, you say. Yes! _I_ have had feelings to
struggle with; but I conquered them. I have had a harder life than you
have had; but I have found _my_ comfort in doing my duty. But I will
sanction no such character as yours; the world shall know that _I_
feel the difference between right and wrong. If you are in want, I
will provide for you; let my mother know. But you shall not come under
my roof. It is enough that I have to bear the thought of your
disgrace; the sight of you is hateful to me."

Slowly Maggie was turning away with despair in her heart. But the poor
frightened mother's love leaped out now, stronger than all dread.

"My child! I'll go with you. You've got a mother."

Oh, the sweet rest of that embrace to the heart-stricken Maggie! More
helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will
not forsake us.

Tom turned and walked into the house.

"Come in, my child," Mrs. Tulliver whispered. "He'll let you stay and
sleep in my bed. He won't deny that if I ask him."

"No, mother," said Maggie, in a low tone, like a moan. "I will never
go in."

"Then wait for me outside. I'll get ready and come with you."

When his mother appeared with her bonnet on, Tom came out to her in
the passage, and put money into her hands.

"My house is yours, mother, always," he said. "You will come and let
me know everything you want; you will come back to me."

Poor Mrs. Tulliver took the money, too frightened to say anything. The
only thing clear to her was the mother's instinct that she would go
with her unhappy child.

Maggie was waiting outside the gate; she took her mother's hand and
they walked a little way in silence.

"Mother," said Maggie, at last, "we will go to Luke's cottage. Luke
will take me in. He was very good to me when I was a little girl."

"He's got no room for us, my dear, now; his wife's got so many
children. I don't know where to go, if it isn't to one o' your aunts;
and I hardly durst," said poor Mrs. Tulliver, quite destitute of
mental resources in this extremity.

Maggie was silent a little while, and then said,--

"Let us go to Bob Jakin's, mother; his wife will have room for us, if
they have no other lodger."

So they went on their way to St. Ogg's, to the old house by the
river-side.

Bob himself was at home, with a heaviness at heart which resisted even
the new joy and pride of possessing a two-months'-old baby, quite the
liveliest of its age that had ever been born to prince or packman. He
would perhaps not so thoroughly have understood all the dubiousness of
Maggie's appearance with Mr. Stephen Guest on the quay at Mudport if
he had not witnessed the effect it produced on Tom when he went to
report it; and since then, the circumstances which in any case gave a
disastrous character to her elopement had passed beyond the more
polite circles of St. Ogg's, and had become matter of common talk,
accessible to the grooms and errand-boys. So that when he opened the
door and saw Maggie standing before him in her sorrow and weariness,
he had no questions to ask except one which he dared only ask
himself,--where was Mr. Stephen Guest? Bob, for his part, hoped he
might be in the warmest department of an asylum understood to exist in
the other world for gentlemen who are likely to be in fallen
circumstances there.

The lodgings were vacant, and both Mrs. Jakin the larger and Mrs.
Jakin the less were commanded to make all things comfortable for "the
old Missis and the young Miss"; alas that she was still "Miss!" The
ingenious Bob was sorely perplexed as to how this result could have
come about; how Mr. Stephen Guest could have gone away from her, or
could have let her go away from him, when he had the chance of keeping
her with him. But he was silent, and would not allow his wife to ask
him a question; would not present himself in the room, lest it should
appear like intrusion and a wish to pry; having the same chivalry
toward dark-eyed Maggie as in the days when he had bought her the
memorable present of books.

But after a day or two Mrs. Tulliver was gone to the Mill again for a
few hours to see to Tom's household matters. Maggie had wished this;
after the first violent outburst of feeling which came as soon as she
had no longer any active purpose to fulfil, she was less in need of
her mother's presence; she even desired to be alone with her grief.
But she had been solitary only a little while in the old sitting-room
that looked on the river, when there came a tap at the door, and
turning round her sad face as she said "Come in," she saw Bob enter,
with the baby in his arms and Mumps at his heels.

"We'll go back, if it disturbs you, Miss," said Bob.

"No," said Maggie, in a low voice, wishing she could smile.

Bob, closing the door behind him, came and stood before her.

"You see, we've got a little un, Miss, and I want'd you to look at it,
and take it in your arms, if you'd be so good. For we made free to
name it after you, and it 'ud be better for your takin' a bit o'
notice on it."

Maggie could not speak, but she put out her arms to receive the tiny
baby, while Mumps snuffed at it anxiously, to ascertain that this
transference was all right. Maggie's heart had swelled at this action
and speech of Bob's; she knew well enough that it was a way he had
chosen to show his sympathy and respect.

"Sit down, Bob," she said presently, and he sat down in silence,
finding his tongue unmanageable in quite a new fashion, refusing to
say what he wanted it to say.

"Bob," she said, after a few moments, looking down at the baby, and
holding it anxiously, as if she feared it might slip from her mind and
her fingers, "I have a favor to ask of you."

"Don't you speak so, Miss," said Bob, grasping the skin of Mumps's
neck; "if there's anything I can do for you, I should look upon it as
a day's earnings."

"I want you to go to Dr. Kenn's, and ask to speak to him, and tell him
that I am here, and should be very grateful if he would come to me
while my mother is away. She will not come back till evening."

"Eh, Miss, I'd do it in a minute,--it is but a step,--but Dr. Kenn's
wife lies dead; she's to be buried to-morrow; died the day I come from
Mudport. It's all the more pity she should ha' died just now, if you
want him. I hardly like to go a-nigh him yet."

"Oh no, Bob," said Maggie, "we must let it be,--till after a few days,
perhaps, when you hear that he is going about again. But perhaps he
may be going out of town--to a distance," she added, with a new sense
of despondency at this idea.

"Not he, Miss," said Bob. "_He'll_ none go away. He isn't one o' them
gentlefolks as go to cry at waterin'-places when their wives die; he's
got summat else to do. He looks fine and sharp after the parish, he
does. He christened the little un; an' he was _at_ me to know what I
did of a Sunday, as I didn't come to church. But I told him I was upo'
the travel three parts o' the Sundays,--an' then I'm so used to bein'
on my legs, I can't sit so long on end,--'an' lors, sir,' says I, 'a
packman can do wi' a small 'lowance o' church; it tastes strong,' says
I; 'there's no call to lay it on thick.' Eh, Miss, how good the little
un is wi' you! It's like as if it knowed you; it partly does, I'll be
bound,--like the birds know the mornin'."

Bob's tongue was now evidently loosed from its unwonted bondage, and
might even be in danger of doing more work than was required of it.
But the subjects on which he longed to be informed were so steep and
difficult of approach, that his tongue was likely to run on along the
level rather than to carry him on that unbeaten road. He felt this,
and was silent again for a little while, ruminating much on the
possible forms in which he might put a question. At last he said, in a
more timid voice than usual,--

"Will you give me leave to ask you only one thing, Miss?"

Maggie was rather startled, but she answered, "Yes, Bob, if it is
about myself--not about any one else."

"Well, Miss, it's this. _Do_ you owe anybody a grudge?"

"No, not any one," said Maggie, looking up at him inquiringly. "Why?"

"Oh, lors, Miss," said Bob, pinching Mumps's neck harder than ever. "I
wish you did, an' tell me; I'd leather him till I couldn't see--I
would--an' the Justice might do what he liked to me arter."

"Oh, Bob," said Maggie, smiling faintly, "you're a very good friend to
me. But I shouldn't like to punish any one, even if they'd done me
wrong; I've done wrong myself too often."

This view of things was puzzling to Bob, and threw more obscurity than
ever over what could possibly have happened between Stephen and
Maggie. But further questions would have been too intrusive, even if
he could have framed them suitably, and he was obliged to carry baby
away again to an expectant mother.

"Happen you'd like Mumps for company, Miss," he said when he had taken
the baby again. "He's rare company, Mumps is; he knows iverything, an'
makes no bother about it. If I tell him, he'll lie before you an'
watch you, as still,--just as he watches my pack. You'd better let me
leave him a bit; he'll get fond on you. Lors, it's a fine thing to hev
a dumb brute fond on you; it'll stick to you, an' make no jaw."

"Yes, do leave him, please," said Maggie. "I think I should like to
have Mumps for a friend."

"Mumps, lie down there," said Bob, pointing to a place in front of
Maggie, "and niver do you stir till you're spoke to."

Mumps lay down at once, and made no sign of restlessness when his
master left the room.

Chapter II

St. Ogg's Passes Judgment

It was soon known throughout St. Ogg's that Miss Tulliver was come
back; she had not, then, eloped in order to be married to Mr. Stephen
Guest,--at all events, Mr. Stephen Guest had not married her; which
came to the same thing, so far as her culpability was concerned. We
judge others according to results; how else?--not knowing the process
by which results are arrived at. If Miss Tulliver, after a few months
of well-chosen travel, had returned as Mrs. Stephen Guest, with a
post-marital _trousseau_, and all the advantages possessed even by the
most unwelcome wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St.
Ogg's, as else where, always knew what to think, would have judged in
strict consistency with those results. Public opinion, in these cases,
is always of the feminine gender,--not the world, but the world's
wife; and she would have seen that two handsome young people--the
gentleman of quite the first family in St. Ogg's--having found
themselves in a false position, had been led into a course which, to
say the least of it, was highly injudicious, and productive of sad
pain and disappointment, especially to that sweet young thing, Miss
Deane. Mr. Stephen Guest had certainly not behaved well; but then,
young men were liable to those sudden infatuated attachments; and bad
as it might seem in Mrs. Stephen Guest to admit the faintest advances
from her cousin's lover (indeed it _had_ been said that she was
actually engaged to young Wakem,--old Wakem himself had mentioned it),
still, she was very young,--"and a deformed young man, you know!--and
young Guest so very fascinating; and, they say, he positively worships
her (to be sure, that can't last!), and he ran away with her in the
boat quite against her will, and what could she do? She couldn't come
back then; no one would have spoken to her; and how very well that
maize-colored satinette becomes her complexion! It seems as if the
folds in front were quite come in; several of her dresses are made
so,--they say he thinks nothing too handsome to buy for her. Poor Miss
Deane! She is very pitiable; but then there was no positive
engagement; and the air at the coast will do her good. After all, if
young Guest felt no more for her than _that_ it was better for her not
to marry him. What a wonderful marriage for a girl like Miss
Tulliver,--quite romantic? Why, young Guest will put up for the
borough at the next election. Nothing like commerce nowadays! That
young Wakem nearly went out of his mind; he always _was_ rather queer;
but he's gone abroad again to be out of the way,--quite the best thing
for a deformed young man. Miss Unit declares she will never visit Mr.
and Mrs. Stephen Guest,--such nonsense! pretending to be better than
other people. Society couldn't be carried on if we inquired into
private conduct in that way,--and Christianity tells us to think no
evil,--and my belief is, that Miss Unit had no cards sent her."

But the results, we know, were not of a kind to warrant this
extenuation of the past. Maggie had returned without a _trousseau_,
without a husband,--in that degraded and outcast condition to which
error is well known to lead; and the world's wife, with that fine
instinct which is given her for the preservation of Society, saw at
once that Miss Tulliver's conduct had been of the most aggravated
kind. Could anything be more detestable? A girl so much indebted to
her friends--whose mother as well as herself had received so much
kindness from the Deanes--to lay the design of winning a young man's
affections away from her own cousin, who had behaved like a sister to
her! Winning his affections? That was not the phrase for such a girl
as Miss Tulliver; it would have been more correct to say that she had
been actuated by mere unwomanly boldness and unbridled passion. There
was always something questionable about her. That connection with
young Wakem, which, they said, had been carried on for years, looked
very ill,--disgusting, in fact! But with a girl of that disposition!
To the world's wife there had always been something in Miss Tulliver's
very _physique_ that a refined instinct felt to be prophetic of harm.
As for poor Mr. Stephen Guest, he was rather pitiable than otherwise;
a young man of five-and-twenty is not to be too severely judged in
these cases,--he is really very much at the mercy of a designing, bold
girl. And it was clear that he had given way in spite of himself: he
had shaken her off as soon as he could; indeed, their having parted so
soon looked very black indeed--_for her_. To be sure, he had written a
letter, laying all the blame on himself, and telling the story in a
romantic fashion so as to try and make her appear quite innocent; of
course he would do that! But the refined instinct of the world's wife
was not to be deceived; providentially!--else what would become of
Society? Why, her own brother had turned her from his door; he had
seen enough, you might be sure, before he would do that. A truly
respectable young man, Mr. Tom Tulliver; quite likely to rise in the
world! His sister's disgrace was naturally a heavy blow to him. It was
to be hoped that she would go out of the neighborhood,--to America, or
anywhere,--so as to purify the air of St. Ogg's from the stain of her
presence, extremely dangerous to daughters there! No good could happen
to her; it was only to be hoped she would repent, and that God would
have mercy on her: He had not the care of society on His hands, as the
world's wife had.

It required nearly a fortnight for fine instinct to assure itself of
these inspirations; indeed, it was a whole week before Stephen's
letter came, telling his father the facts, and adding that he was gone
across to Holland,--had drawn upon the agent at Mudport for
money,--was incapable of any resolution at present.

Maggie, all this while, was too entirely filled with a more agonizing
anxiety to spend any thought on the view that was being taken of her
conduct by the world of St. Ogg's; anxiety about Stephen, Lucy,
Philip, beat on her poor heart in a hard, driving, ceaseless storm of
mingled love, remorse, and pity. If she had thought of rejection and
injustice at all, it would have seemed to her that they had done their
worst; that she could hardly feel any stroke from them intolerable
since the words she had heard from her brother's lips. Across all her
anxiety for the loved and the injured, those words shot again and
again, like a horrible pang that would have brought misery and dread
even into a heaven of delights. The idea of ever recovering happiness
never glimmered in her mind for a moment; it seemed as if every
sensitive fibre in her were too entirely preoccupied by pain ever to
vibrate again to another influence. Life stretched before her as one
act of penitence; and all she craved, as she dwelt on her future lot,
was something to guarantee her from more falling; her own weakness
haunted her like a vision of hideous possibilities, that made no peace
conceivable except such as lay in the sense of a sure refuge.