Books: The Mill on the Floss

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"Then, dear one, in spite of all, you have been the blessing of my
life. Let no self-reproach weigh on you because of me. It is I who
should rather reproach myself for having urged my feelings upon
you, and hurried you into words that you have felt as fetters. You
meant to be true to those words; you _have_ been true. I can
measure your sacrifice by what I have known in only one half-hour
of your presence with me, when I dreamed that you might love me
best. But, Maggie, I have no just claim on you for more than
affectionate remembrance.

"For some time I have shrunk from writing to you, because I have
shrunk even from the appearance of wishing to thrust myself before
you, and so repeating my original error. But you will not
misconstrue me. I know that we must keep apart for a long while;
cruel tongues would force us apart, if nothing else did. But I
shall not go away. The place where you are is the one where my mind
must live, wherever I might travel. And remember that I am
unchangeably yours,--yours not with selfish wishes, but with a
devotion that excludes such wishes.

"God comfort you, my loving, large-souled Maggie. If every one else
has misconceived you, remember that you have never been doubted by
him whose heart recognized you ten years ago.

"Do not believe any one who says I am ill, because I am not seen
out of doors. I have only had nervous headaches,--no worse than I
have sometimes had them before. But the overpowering heat inclines
me to be perfectly quiescent in the daytime. I am strong enough to
obey any word which shall tell me that I can serve you by word or
deed.

"Yours to the last,
"_Philip Wakem_."

As Maggie knelt by the bed sobbing, with that letter pressed under
her, her feelings again and again gathered themselves in a whispered
cry, always in the same words,--

"O God, is there any happiness in love that could make me forget
_their_ pain?"

Chapter IV

Maggie and Lucy

By the end of the week Dr. Kenn had made up his mind that there was
only one way in which he could secure to Maggie a suitable living at
St. Ogg's. Even with his twenty years' experience as a parish priest,
he was aghast at the obstinate continuance of imputations against her
in the face of evidence. Hitherto he had been rather more adored and
appealed to than was quite agreeable to him; but now, in attempting to
open the ears of women to reason, and their consciences to justice, on
behalf of Maggie Tulliver, he suddenly found himself as powerless as
he was aware he would have been if he had attempted to influence the
shape of bonnets. Dr. Kenn could not be contradicted; he was listened
to in silence; but when he left the room, a comparison of opinions
among his hearers yielded much the same result as before. Miss
Tulliver had undeniably acted in a blamable manner, even Dr. Kenn did
not deny that; how, then, could he think so lightly of her as to put
that favorable interpretation on everything she had done? Even on the
supposition that required the utmost stretch of belief,--namely, that
none of the things said about Miss Tulliver were true,--still, since
they _had_ been said about her, they had cast an odor round her which
must cause her to be shrunk from by every woman who had to take care
of her own reputation--and of Society. To have taken Maggie by the
hand and said, "I will not believe unproved evil of you; my lips shall
not utter it; my ears shall be closed against it; I, too, am an erring
mortal, liable to stumble, apt to come short of my most earnest
efforts; your lot has been harder than mine, your temptation greater;
let us help each other to stand and walk without more falling,"--to
have done this would have demanded courage, deep pity, self-knowledge,
generous trust; would have demanded a mind that tasted no piquancy in
evil-speaking, that felt no self-exaltation in condemning, that
cheated itself with no large words into the belief that life can have
any moral end, any high religion, which excludes the striving after
perfect truth, justice, and love toward the individual men and women
who come across our own path. The ladies of St. Ogg's were not
beguiled by any wide speculative conceptions; but they had their
favorite abstraction, called Society, which served to make their
consciences perfectly easy in doing what satisfied their own
egoism,--thinking and speaking the worst of Maggie Tulliver, and
turning their backs upon her. It was naturally disappointing to Dr.
Kenn, after two years of superfluous incense from his feminine
parishioners, to find them suddenly maintaining their views in
opposition to his; but then they maintained them in opposition to a
higher Authority, which they had venerated longer. That Authority had
furnished a very explicit answer to persons who might inquire where
their social duties began, and might be inclined to take wide views as
to the starting-point. The answer had not turned on the ultimate good
of Society, but on "a certain man" who was found in trouble by the
wayside.

Not that St. Ogg's was empty of women with some tenderness of heart
and conscience; probably it had as fair a proportion of human goodness
in it as any other small trading town of that day. But until every
good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid,--too
timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings,
when these would place them in a minority. And the men at St. Ogg's
were not all brave, by any means; some of them were even fond of
scandal, and to an extent that might have given their conversation an
effeminate character, if it had not been distinguished by masculine
jokes, and by an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual
hatred of women. It was the general feeling of the masculine mind at
St. Ogg's that women were not to be interfered with in their treatment
of each other.

And thus every direction in which Dr. Kenn had turned, in the hope of
procuring some kind recognition and some employment for Maggie, proved
a disappointment to him. Mrs. James Torry could not think of taking
Maggie as a nursery governess, even temporarily,--a young woman about
whom "such things had been said," and about whom "gentlemen joked";
and Miss Kirke, who had a spinal complaint, and wanted a reader and
companion, felt quite sure that Maggie's mind must be of a quality
with which she, for her part, could not risk _any_ contact. Why did
not Miss Tulliver accept the shelter offered her by her aunt Glegg? It
did not become a girl like her to refuse it. Or else, why did she not
go out of the neighborhood, and get a situation where she was not
known? (It was not, apparently, of so much importance that she should
carry her dangerous tendencies into strange families unknown at St.
Ogg's.) She must be very bold and hardened to wish to stay in a parish
where she was so much stared at and whispered about.

Dr. Kenn, having great natural firmness, began, in the presence of
this opposition, as every firm man would have done, to contract a
certain strength of determination over and above what would have been
called forth by the end in view. He himself wanted a daily governess
for his younger children; and though he had hesitated in the first
instance to offer this position to Maggie, the resolution to protest
with the utmost force of his personal and priestly character against
her being crushed and driven away by slander, was now decisive. Maggie
gratefully accepted an employment that gave her duties as well as a
support; her days would be filled now, and solitary evenings would be
a welcome rest. She no longer needed the sacrifice her mother made in
staying with her, and Mrs. Tulliver was persuaded to go back to the
Mill.

But now it began to be discovered that Dr. Kenn, exemplary as he had
hitherto appeared, had his crotchets, possibly his weaknesses. The
masculine mind of St. Ogg's smiled pleasantly, and did not wonder that
Kenn liked to see a fine pair of eyes daily, or that he was inclined
to take so lenient a view of the past; the feminine mind, regarded at
that period as less powerful, took a more melancholy view of the case.
If Dr. Kenn should be beguiled into marrying that Miss Tulliver! It
was not safe to be too confident, even about the best of men; an
apostle had fallen, and wept bitterly afterwards; and though Peter's
denial was not a close precedent, his repentance was likely to be.

Maggie had not taken her daily walks to the Rectory for many weeks,
before the dreadful possibility of her some time or other becoming the
Rector's wife had been talked of so often in confidence, that ladies
were beginning to discuss how they should behave to her in that
position. For Dr. Kenn, it had been understood, had sat in the
schoolroom half an hour one morning, when Miss Tulliver was giving her
lessons,--nay, he had sat there every morning; he had once walked home
with her,--he almost _always_ walked home with her,--and if not, he
went to see her in the evening. What an artful creature she was! What
a _mother_ for those children! It was enough to make poor Mrs. Kenn
turn in her grave, that they should be put under the care of this girl
only a few weeks after her death. Would he be so lost to propriety as
to marry her before the year was out? The masculine mind was
sarcastic, and thought _not_.

The Miss Guests saw an alleviation to the sorrow of witnessing a folly
in their Rector; at least their brother would be safe; and their
knowledge of Stephen's tenacity was a constant ground of alarm to
them, lest he should come back and marry Maggie. They were not among
those who disbelieved their brother's letter; but they had no
confidence in Maggie's adherence to her renunciation of him; they
suspected that she had shrunk rather from the elopement than from the
marriage, and that she lingered in St. Ogg's, relying on his return to
her. They had always thought her disagreeable; they now thought her
artful and proud; having quite as good grounds for that judgment as
you and I probably have for many strong opinions of the same kind.
Formerly they had not altogether delighted in the contemplated match
with Lucy, but now their dread of a marriage between Stephen and
Maggie added its momentum to their genuine pity and indignation on
behalf of the gentle forsaken girl, in making them desire that he
should return to her. As soon as Lucy was able to leave home, she was
to seek relief from the oppressive heat of this August by going to the
coast with the Miss Guests; and it was in their plans that Stephen
should be induced to join them. On the very first hint of gossip
concerning Maggie and Dr. Kenn, the report was conveyed in Miss
Guest's letter to her brother.

Maggie had frequent tidings through her mother, or aunt Glegg, or Dr.
Kenn, of Lucy's gradual progress toward recovery, and her thoughts
tended continually toward her uncle Deane's house; she hungered for an
interview with Lucy, if it were only for five minutes, to utter a word
of penitence, to be assured by Lucy's own eyes and lips that she did
not believe in the willing treachery of those whom she had loved and
trusted. But she knew that even if her uncle's indignation had not
closed his house against her, the agitation of such an interview would
have been forbidden to Lucy. Only to have seen her without speaking
would have been some relief; for Maggie was haunted by a face cruel in
its very gentleness; a face that had been turned on hers with glad,
sweet looks of trust and love from the twilight time of memory;
changed now to a sad and weary face by a first heart-stroke. And as
the days passed on, that pale image became more and more distinct; the
picture grew and grew into more speaking definiteness under the
avenging hand of remorse; the soft hazel eyes, in their look of pain,
were bent forever on Maggie, and pierced her the more because she
could see no anger in them. But Lucy was not yet able to go to church,
or any place where Maggie could see her; and even the hope of that
departed, when the news was told her by aunt Glegg, that Lucy was
really going away in a few days to Scarborough with the Miss Guests,
who had been heard to say that they expected their brother to meet
them there.

Only those who have known what hardest inward conflict is, can know
what Maggie felt as she sat in her loneliness the evening after
hearing that news from Mrs. Glegg,--only those who have known what it
is to dread their own selfish desires as the watching mother would
dread the sleeping-potion that was to still her own pain.

She sat without candle in the twilight, with the window wide open
toward the river; the sense of oppressive heat adding itself
undistinguishably to the burthen of her lot. Seated on a chair against
the window, with her arm on the windowsill she was looking blankly at
the flowing river, swift with the backward-rushing tide, struggling to
see still the sweet face in its unreproaching sadness, that seemed now
from moment to moment to sink away and be hidden behind a form that
thrust itself between, and made darkness. Hearing the door open, she
thought Mrs. Jakin was coming in with her supper, as usual; and with
that repugnance to trivial speech which comes with languor and
wretchedness, she shrank from turning round and saying she wanted
nothing; good little Mrs. Jakin would be sure to make some well-meant
remarks. But the next moment, without her having discerned the sound
of a footstep, she felt a light hand on her shoulder, and heard a
voice close to her saying, "Maggie!"

The face was there,--changed, but all the sweeter; the hazel eyes were
there, with their heart-piercing tenderness.

"Maggie!" the soft voice said. "Lucy!" answered a voice with a sharp
ring of anguish in it; and Lucy threw her arms round Maggie's neck,
and leaned her pale cheek against the burning brow.

"I stole out," said Lucy, almost in a whisper, while she sat down
close to Maggie and held her hand, "when papa and the rest were away.
Alice is come with me. I asked her to help me. But I must only stay a
little while, because it is so late."

It was easier to say that at first than to say anything else. They sat
looking at each other. It seemed as if the interview must end without
more speech, for speech was very difficult. Each felt that there would
be something scorching in the words that would recall the
irretrievable wrong. But soon, as Maggie looked, every distinct
thought began to be overflowed by a wave of loving penitence, and
words burst forth with a sob.

"God bless you for coming, Lucy."

The sobs came thick on each other after that.

"Maggie, dear, be comforted," said Lucy now, putting her cheek against
Maggie's again. "Don't grieve." And she sat still, hoping to soothe
Maggie with that gentle caress.

"I didn't mean to deceive you, Lucy," said Maggie, as soon as she
could speak. "It always made me wretched that I felt what I didn't
like you to know. It was because I thought it would all be conquered,
and you might never see anything to wound you."

"I know, dear," said Lucy. "I know you never meant to make me unhappy.
It is a trouble that has come on us all; you have more to bear than I
have--and you gave him up, when--you did what it must have been very
hard to do."

They were silent again a little while, sitting with clasped hands, and
cheeks leaned together.

"Lucy," Maggie began again, "_he_ struggled too. He wanted to be true
to you. He will come back to you. Forgive him--he will be happy
then----"

These words were wrung forth from Maggie's deepest soul, with an
effort like the convulsed clutch of a drowning man. Lucy trembled and
was silent.

A gentle knock came at the door. It was Alice, the maid, who entered
and said,--

"I daren't stay any longer, Miss Deane. They'll find it out, and
there'll be such anger at your coming out so late."

Lucy rose and said, "Very well, Alice,--in a minute."

"I'm to go away on Friday, Maggie," she added, when Alice had closed
the door again. "When I come back, and am strong, they will let me do
as I like. I shall come to you when I please then."

"Lucy," said Maggie, with another great effort, "I pray to God
continually that I may never be the cause of sorrow to you any more."

She pressed the little hand that she held between hers, and looked up
into the face that was bent over hers. Lucy never forgot that look.

"Maggie," she said, in a low voice, that had the solemnity of
confession in it, "you are better than I am. I can't----"

She broke off there, and said no more. But they clasped each other
again in a last embrace.

Chapter V

The Last Conflict

In the second week of September, Maggie was again sitting in her
lonely room, battling with the old shadowy enemies that were forever
slain and rising again. It was past midnight, and the rain was beating
heavily against the window, driven with fitful force by the rushing,
loud-moaning wind. For the day after Lucy's visit there had been a
sudden change in the weather; the heat and drought had given way to
cold variable winds, and heavy falls of rain at intervals; and she had
been forbidden to risk the contemplated journey until the weather
should become more settled. In the counties higher up the Floss the
rains had been continuous, and the completion of the harvest had been
arrested. And now, for the last two days, the rains on this lower
course of the river had been incessant, so that the old men had shaken
their heads and talked of sixty years ago, when the same sort of
weather, happening about the equinox, brought on the great floods,
which swept the bridge away, and reduced the town to great misery. But
the younger generation, who had seen several small floods, thought
lightly of these sombre recollections and forebodings; and Bob Jakin,
naturally prone to take a hopeful view of his own luck, laughed at his
mother when she regretted their having taken a house by the riverside,
observing that but for that they would have had no boats, which were
the most lucky of possessions in case of a flood that obliged them to
go to a distance for food.

But the careless and the fearful were alike sleeping in their beds
now. There was hope that the rain would abate by the morrow;
threatenings of a worse kind, from sudden thaws after falls of snow,
had often passed off, in the experience of the younger ones; and at
the very worst, the banks would be sure to break lower down the river
when the tide came in with violence, and so the waters would be
carried off, without causing more than temporary inconvenience, and
losses that would be felt only by the poorer sort, whom charity would
relieve.

All were in their beds now, for it was past midnight; all except some
solitary watchers such as Maggie. She was seated in her little parlor
toward the river, with one candle, that left everything dim in the
room except a letter which lay before her on the table. That letter,
which had come to her to-day, was one of the causes that had kept her
up far on into the night, unconscious how the hours were going,
careless of seeking rest, with no image of rest coming across her
mind, except of that far, far off rest from which there would be no
more waking for her into this struggling earthly life.

Two days before Maggie received that letter, she had been to the
Rectory for the last time. The heavy rain would have prevented her
from going since; but there was another reason. Dr. Kenn, at first
enlightened only by a few hints as to the new turn which gossip and
slander had taken in relation to Maggie, had recently been made more
fully aware of it by an earnest remonstrance from one of his male
parishioners against the indiscretion of persisting in the attempt to
overcome the prevalent feeling in the parish by a course of
resistance. Dr. Kenn, having a conscience void of offence in the
matter, was still inclined to persevere,--was still averse to give way
before a public sentiment that was odious and contemptible; but he was
finally wrought upon by the consideration of the peculiar
responsibility attached to his office, of avoiding the appearance of
evil,--an "appearance" that is always dependent on the average quality
of surrounding minds. Where these minds are low and gross, the area of
that "appearance" is proportionately widened. Perhaps he was in danger
of acting from obstinacy; perhaps it was his duty to succumb.
Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the
most painful course; and to recede was always painful to Dr. Kenn. He
made up his mind that he must advise Maggie to go away from St. Ogg's
for a time; and he performed that difficult task with as much delicacy
as he could, only stating in vague terms that he found his attempt to
countenance her stay was a source of discord between himself and his
parishioners, that was likely to obstruct his usefulness as a
clergyman. He begged her to allow him to write to a clerical friend of
his, who might possibly take her into his own family as governess;
and, if not, would probably know of some other available position for
a young woman in whose welfare Dr. Kenn felt a strong interest.

Poor Maggie listened with a trembling lip; she could say nothing but a
faint "Thank you, I shall be grateful"; and she walked back to her
lodgings, through the driving rain, with a new sense of desolation.
She must be a lonely wanderer; she must go out among fresh faces, that
would look at her wonderingly, because the days did not seem joyful to
her; she must begin a new life, in which she would have to rouse
herself to receive new impressions; and she was so unspeakably,
sickeningly weary! There was no home, no help for the erring; even
those who pitied were constrained to hardness. But ought she to
complain? Ought she to shrink in this way from the long penance of
life, which was all the possibility she had of lightening the load to
some other sufferers, and so changing that passionate error into a new
force of unselfish human love? All the next day she sat in her lonely
room, with a window darkened by the cloud and the driving rain,
thinking of that future, and wrestling for patience; for what repose
could poor Maggie ever win except by wrestling?

And on the third day--this day of which she had just sat out the
close--the letter had come which was lying on the table before her.

The letter was from Stephen. He was come back from Holland; he was at
Mudport again, unknown to any of his friends, and had written to her
from that place, enclosing the letter to a person whom he trusted in
St. Ogg's. From beginning to end it was a passionate cry of reproach;
an appeal against her useless sacrifice of him, of herself, against
that perverted notion of right which led her to crush all his hopes,
for the sake of a mere idea, and not any substantial good,--_his_
hopes, whom she loved, and who loved her with that single overpowering
passion, that worship, which a man never gives to a woman more than
once in his life.

"They have written to me that you are to marry Kenn. As if I should
believe that! Perhaps they have told you some such fables about me.
Perhaps they tell you I've been 'travelling.' My body has been dragged
about somewhere; but _I_ have never travelled from the hideous place
where you left me; where I started up from the stupor of helpless rage
to find you gone.

"Maggie! whose pain can have been like mine? Whose injury is like
mine? Who besides me has met that long look of love that has burnt
itself into my soul, so that no other image can come there? Maggie,
call me back to you! Call me back to life and goodness! I am banished
from both now. I have no motives; I am indifferent to everything. Two
months have only deepened the certainty that I can never care for life
without you. Write me one word; say 'Come!' In two days I should be
with you. Maggie, have you forgotten what it was to be together,--to
be within reach of a look, to be within hearing of each other's
voice?"

When Maggie first read this letter she felt as if her real temptation
had only just begun. At the entrance of the chill dark cavern, we turn
with unworn courage from the warm light; but how, when we have trodden
far in the damp darkness, and have begun to be faint and weary; how,
if there is a sudden opening above us, and we are invited back again
to the life-nourishing day? The leap of natural longing from under the
pressure of pain is so strong, that all less immediate motives are
likely to be forgotten--till the pain has been escaped from.

For hours Maggie felt as if her struggle had been in vain. For hours
every other thought that she strove to summon was thrust aside by the
image of Stephen waiting for the single word that would bring him to
her. She did not _read_ the letter: she heard him uttering it, and the
voice shook her with its old strange power. All the day before she had
been filled with the vision of a lonely future through which she must
carry the burthen of regret, upheld only by clinging faith. And here,
close within her reach, urging itself upon her even as a claim, was
another future, in which hard endurance and effort were to be
exchanged for easy, delicious leaning on another's loving strength!
And yet that promise of joy in the place of sadness did not make the
dire force of the temptation to Maggie.