The Mill on the Floss
left a lasting terror in Maggie’s mind. The thought had risen, that
some time or other he might beat her mother if she happened to speak in
her feeble way at the wrong moment. The keenest of all dread with her
was lest her father should add to his present misfortune the
wretchedness of doing something irretrievably disgraceful. The battered
school-book of Tom’s which she held on her knees could give her no
fortitude under the pressure of that dread; and again and again her
eyes had filled with tears, as they wandered vaguely, seeing neither
the chestnut-trees, nor the distant horizon, but only future scenes of
home-sorrow.
Suddenly she was roused by the sound of the opening gate and of
footsteps on the gravel. It was not Tom who was entering, but a man in
a sealskin cap and a blue plush waistcoat, carrying a pack on his back,
and followed closely by a bullterrier of brindled coat and defiant
aspect.
“Oh, Bob, it’s you!” said Maggie, starting up with a smile of pleased
recognition, for there had been no abundance of kind acts to efface the
recollection of Bob’s generosity; “I’m so glad to see you.”
“Thank you, Miss,” said Bob, lifting his cap and showing a delighted
face, but immediately relieving himself of some accompanying
embarrassment by looking down at his dog, and saying in a tone of
disgust, “Get out wi’ you, you thunderin’ sawney!”
“My brother is not at home yet, Bob,” said Maggie; “he is always at St
Ogg’s in the daytime.”
“Well, Miss,” said Bob, “I should be glad to see Mr Tom, but that isn’t
just what I’m come for,—look here!”
Bob was in the act of depositing his pack on the door-step, and with it
a row of small books fastened together with string.
Apparently, however, they were not the object to which he wished to
call Maggie’s attention, but rather something which he had carried
under his arm, wrapped in a red handkerchief.
“See here!” he said again, laying the red parcel on the others and
unfolding it; “you won’t think I’m a-makin’ too free, Miss, I hope, but
I lighted on these books, and I thought they might make up to you a bit
for them as you’ve lost; for I heared you speak o’ picturs,—an’ as for
picturs, _look_ here!”
The opening of the red handkerchief had disclosed a superannuated
“Keepsake” and six or seven numbers of a “Portrait Gallery,” in royal
octavo; and the emphatic request to look referred to a portrait of
George the Fourth in all the majesty of his depressed cranium and
voluminous neckcloth.
“There’s all sorts o’ genelmen here,” Bob went on, turning over the
leaves with some excitement, “wi’ all sorts o’ noses,—an’ some bald an’
some wi’ wigs,—Parlament genelmen, I reckon. An’ here,” he added,
opening the “Keepsake,”—“_here’s_ ladies for you, some wi’ curly hair
and some wi’ smooth, an’ some a-smiling wi’ their heads o’ one side,
an’ some as if they were goin’ to cry,—look here,—a-sittin’ on the
ground out o’ door, dressed like the ladies I’n seen get out o’ the
carriages at the balls in th’ Old Hall there. My eyes! I wonder what
the chaps wear as go a-courtin’ ’em! I sot up till the clock was gone
twelve last night, a-lookin’ at ’em,—I did,—till they stared at me out
o’ the picturs as if they’d know when I spoke to ’em. But, lors! I
shouldn’t know what to say to ’em. They’ll be more fittin’ company for
you, Miss; and the man at the book-stall, he said they banged
iverything for picturs; he said they was a fust-rate article.”
“And you’ve bought them for me, Bob?” said Maggie, deeply touched by
this simple kindness. “How very, very good of you! But I’m afraid you
gave a great deal of money for them.”
“Not me!” said Bob. “I’d ha’ gev three times the money if they’ll make
up to you a bit for them as was sold away from you, Miss. For I’n niver
forgot how you looked when you fretted about the books bein’ gone; it’s
stuck by me as if it was a pictur hingin’ before me. An’ when I see’d
the book open upo’ the stall, wi’ the lady lookin’ out of it wi’ eyes a
bit like your’n when you was frettin’,—you’ll excuse my takin’ the
liberty, Miss,—I thought I’d make free to buy it for you, an’ then I
bought the books full o’ genelmen to match; an’ then”—here Bob took up
the small stringed packet of books—“I thought you might like a bit more
print as well as the picturs, an’ I got these for a sayso,—they’re
cram-full o’ print, an’ I thought they’d do no harm comin’ along wi’
these bettermost books. An’ I hope you won’t say me nay, an’ tell me as
you won’t have ’em, like Mr Tom did wi’ the suvreigns.”
“No, indeed, Bob,” said Maggie, “I’m very thankful to you for thinking
of me, and being so good to me and Tom. I don’t think any one ever did
such a kind thing for me before. I haven’t many friends who care for
me.”
“Hev a dog, Miss!—they’re better friends nor any Christian,” said Bob,
laying down his pack again, which he had taken up with the intention of
hurrying away; for he felt considerable shyness in talking to a young
lass like Maggie, though, as he usually said of himself, “his tongue
overrun him” when he began to speak. “I can’t give you Mumps, ’cause
he’d break his heart to go away from me—eh, Mumps, what do you say, you
riff-raff?” (Mumps declined to express himself more diffusely than by a
single affirmative movement of his tail.) “But I’d get you a pup, Miss,
an’ welcome.”
“No, thank you, Bob. We have a yard dog, and I mayn’t keep a dog of my
own.”
“Eh, that’s a pity; else there’s a pup,—if you didn’t mind about it not
being thoroughbred; its mother acts in the Punch show,—an uncommon
sensible bitch; she means more sense wi’ her bark nor half the chaps
can put into their talk from breakfast to sundown. There’s one chap
carries pots,—a poor, low trade as any on the road,—he says, ‘Why
Toby’s nought but a mongrel; there’s nought to look at in her.’ But I
says to him, ‘Why, what are you yoursen but a mongrel? There wasn’t
much pickin’ o’ _your_ feyther an’ mother, to look at you.’ Not but I
like a bit o’ breed myself, but I can’t abide to see one cur grinnin’
at another. I wish you good evenin’, Miss,” said Bob, abruptly taking
up his pack again, under the consciousness that his tongue was acting
in an undisciplined manner.
“Won’t you come in the evening some time, and see my brother, Bob?”
said Maggie.
“Yes, Miss, thank you—another time. You’ll give my duty to him, if you
please. Eh, he’s a fine growed chap, Mr Tom is; he took to growin’ i’
the legs, an’ _I_ didn’t.”
The pack was down again, now, the hook of the stick having somehow gone
wrong.
“You don’t call Mumps a cur, I suppose?” said Maggie, divining that any
interest she showed in Mumps would be gratifying to his master.
“No, Miss, a fine way off that,” said Bob, with pitying smile; “Mumps
is as fine a cross as you’ll see anywhere along the Floss, an’ I’n been
up it wi’ the barge times enow. Why, the gentry stops to look at him;
but you won’t catch Mumps a-looking at the gentry much,—he minds his
own business, he does.”
The expression of Mump’s face, which seemed to be tolerating the
superfluous existence of objects in general, was strongly confirmatory
of this high praise.
“He looks dreadfully surly,” said Maggie. “Would he let me pat him?”
“Ay, that would he, and thank you. He knows his company, Mumps does. He
isn’t a dog as ’ull be caught wi’ gingerbread; he’d smell a thief a
good deal stronger nor the gingerbread, he would. Lors, I talk to him
by th’ hour together, when I’m walking i’ lone places, and if I’n done
a bit o’ mischief, I allays tell him. I’n got no secrets but what Mumps
knows ’em. He knows about my big thumb, he does.”
“Your big thumb—what’s that, Bob?” said Maggie.
“That’s what it is, Miss,” said Bob, quickly, exhibiting a singularly
broad specimen of that difference between the man and the monkey. “It
tells i’ measuring out the flannel, you see. I carry flannel, ’cause
it’s light for my pack, an’ it’s dear stuff, you see, so a big thumb
tells. I clap my thumb at the end o’ the yard and cut o’ the hither
side of it, and the old women aren’t up to’t.”
“But Bob,” said Maggie, looking serious, “that’s cheating; I don’t like
to hear you say that.”
“Don’t you, Miss?” said Bob regretfully. “Then I’m sorry I said it. But
I’m so used to talking to Mumps, an’ he doesn’t mind a bit o’ cheating,
when it’s them skinflint women, as haggle an’ haggle, an’ ’ud like to
get their flannel for nothing, an’ ’ud niver ask theirselves how I got
my dinner out on’t. I niver cheat anybody as doesn’t want to cheat me,
Miss,—lors, I’m a honest chap, I am; only I must hev a bit o’ sport,
an’ now I don’t go wi’ th’ ferrets, I’n got no varmint to come over but
them haggling women. I wish you good evening, Miss.”
“Good-by, Bob. Thank you very much for bringing me the books. And come
again to see Tom.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Bob, moving on a few steps; then turning half round
he said, “I’ll leave off that trick wi’ my big thumb, if you don’t
think well on me for it, Miss; but it ’ud be a pity, it would. I
couldn’t find another trick so good,—an’ what ’ud be the use o’ havin’
a big thumb? It might as well ha’ been narrow.”
Maggie, thus exalted into Bob’s exalting Madonna, laughed in spite of
herself; at which her worshipper’s blue eyes twinkled too, and under
these favouring auspices he touched his cap and walked away.
The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke’s grand dirge
over them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth
and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so
much as her little finger or the hem of her robe. Bob, with the pack on
his back, had as respectful an adoration for this dark-eyed maiden as
if he had been a knight in armor calling aloud on her name as he
pricked on to the fight.
That gleam of merriment soon died away from Maggie’s face, and perhaps
only made the returning gloom deeper by contrast. She was too
dispirited even to like answering questions about Bob’s present of
books, and she carried them away to her bedroom, laying them down there
and seating herself on her one stool, without caring to look at them
just yet. She leaned her cheek against the window-frame, and thought
that the light-hearted Bob had a lot much happier than hers.
Maggie’s sense of loneliness, and utter privation of joy, had deepened
with the brightness of advancing spring. All the favourite outdoor
nooks about home, which seemed to have done their part with her parents
in nurturing and cherishing her, were now mixed up with the
home-sadness, and gathered no smile from the sunshine. Every affection,
every delight the poor child had had, was like an aching nerve to her.
There was no music for her any more,—no piano, no harmonised voices, no
delicious stringed instruments, with their passionate cries of
imprisoned spirits sending a strange vibration through her frame. And
of all her school-life there was nothing left her now but her little
collection of school-books, which she turned over with a sickening
sense that she knew them all, and they were all barren of comfort. Even
at school she had often wished for books with _more_ in them;
everything she learned there seemed like the ends of long threads that
snapped immediately. And now—without the indirect charm of
school-emulation—Télémaque was mere bran; so were the hard, dry
questions on Christian Doctrine; there was no flavour in them, no
strength. Sometimes Maggie thought she could have been contented with
absorbing fancies; if she could have had all Scott’s novels and all
Byron’s poems!—then, perhaps, she might have found happiness enough to
dull her sensibility to her actual daily life. And yet they were hardly
what she wanted. She could make dream-worlds of her own, but no
dream-world would satisfy her now. She wanted some explanation of this