The Mill on the Floss
lose their keenness, like aged eyes. Then there are many other things I
long for,”—here Philip hesitated a little, and then said,—“things that
other men have, and that will always be denied me. My life will have
nothing great or beautiful in it; I would rather not have lived.”
“Oh, Philip,” said Maggie, “I wish you didn’t feel so.” But her heart
began to beat with something of Philip’s discontent.
“Well, then,” said he, turning quickly round and fixing his gray eyes
entreatingly on her face, “I should be contented to live, if you would
let me see you sometimes.” Then, checked by a fear which her face
suggested, he looked away again and said more calmly, “I have no friend
to whom I can tell everything, no one who cares enough about me; and if
I could only see you now and then, and you would let me talk to you a
little, and show me that you cared for me, and that we may always be
friends in heart, and help each other, then I might come to be glad of
life.”
“But how can I see you, Philip?” said Maggie, falteringly. (Could she
really do him good? It would be very hard to say “good-by” this day,
and not speak to him again. Here was a new interest to vary the days;
it was so much easier to renounce the interest before it came.)
“If you would let me see you here sometimes,—walk with you here,—I
would be contented if it were only once or twice in a month. _That_
could injure no one’s happiness, and it would sweeten my life.
Besides,” Philip went on, with all the inventive astuteness of love at
one-and-twenty, “if there is any enmity between those who belong to us,
we ought all the more to try and quench it by our friendship; I mean,
that by our influence on both sides we might bring about a healing of
the wounds that have been made in the past, if I could know everything
about them. And I don’t believe there is any enmity in my own father’s
mind; I think he has proved the contrary.”
Maggie shook her head slowly, and was silent, under conflicting
thoughts. It seemed to her inclination, that to see Philip now and
then, and keep up the bond of friendship with him, was something not
only innocent, but good; perhaps she might really help him to find
contentment as she had found it. The voice that said this made sweet
music to Maggie; but athwart it there came an urgent, monotonous
warning from another voice which she had been learning to obey,—the
warning that such interviews implied secrecy; implied doing something
she would dread to be discovered in, something that, if discovered,
must cause anger and pain; and that the admission of anything so near
doubleness would act as a spiritual blight. Yet the music would swell
out again, like chimes borne onward by a recurrent breeze, persuading
her that the wrong lay all in the faults and weaknesses of others, and
that there was such a thing as futile sacrifice for one to the injury
of another. It was very cruel for Philip that he should be shrunk from,
because of an unjustifiable vindictiveness toward his father,—poor
Philip, whom some people would shrink from only because he was
deformed. The idea that he might become her lover or that her meeting
him could cause disapproval in that light, had not occurred to her; and
Philip saw the absence of this idea clearly enough, saw it with a
certain pang, although it made her consent to his request the less
unlikely. There was bitterness to him in the perception that Maggie was
almost as frank and unconstrained toward him as when she was a child.
“I can’t say either yes or no,” she said at last, turning round and
walking toward the way she come; “I must wait, lest I should decide
wrongly. I must seek for guidance.”
“May I come again, then, to-morrow, or the next day, or next week?”
“I think I had better write,” said Maggie, faltering again. “I have to
go to St Ogg’s sometimes, and I can put the letter in the post.”
“Oh no,” said Philip eagerly; “that would not be so well. My father
might see the letter—and—he has not any enmity, I believe, but he views
things differently from me; he thinks a great deal about wealth and
position. Pray let me come here once more. _Tell_ me when it shall be;
or if you can’t tell me, I will come as often as I can till I do see
you.”
“I think it must be so, then,” said Maggie, “for I can’t be quite
certain of coming here any particular evening.”
Maggie felt a great relief in adjourning the decision. She was free now
to enjoy the minutes of companionship; she almost thought she might
linger a little; the next time they met she should have to pain Philip
by telling him her determination.
“I can’t help thinking,” she said, looking smilingly at him, after a
few moments of silence, “how strange it is that we should have met and
talked to each other, just as if it had been only yesterday when we
parted at Lorton. And yet we must both be very much altered in those
five years,—I think it is five years. How was it you seemed to have a
sort of feeling that I was the same Maggie? I was not quite so sure
that you would be the same; I know you are so clever, and you must have
seen and learnt so much to fill your mind; I was not quite sure you
would care about me now.”
“I have never had any doubt that you would be the same, whenever I
might see you,” said Philip,—“I mean, the same in everything that made
me like you better than any one else. I don’t want to explain that; I
don’t think any of the strongest effects our natures are susceptible of
can ever be explained. We can neither detect the process by which they
are arrived at, nor the mode in which they act on us. The greatest of
painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child; he couldn’t
have told how he did it, and we can’t tell why we feel it to be divine.
I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our
understandings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains of
music affect me so strangely; I can never hear them without their
changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would
last, I might be capable of heroisms.”
“Ah! I know what you mean about music; _I_ feel so,” said Maggie,
clasping her hands with her old impetuosity. “At least,” she added, in
a saddened tone, “I used to feel so when I had any music; I never have
any now except the organ at church.”
“And you long for it, Maggie?” said Philip, looking at her with
affectionate pity. “Ah, you can have very little that is beautiful in
your life. Have you many books? You were so fond of them when you were
a little girl.”
They were come back to the hollow, round which the dog-roses grew, and
they both paused under the charm of the faëry evening light, reflected
from the pale pink clusters.
“No, I have given up books,” said Maggie, quietly, “except a very, very
few.”
Philip had already taken from his pocket a small volume, and was
looking at the back as he said:
“Ah, this is the second volume, I see, else you might have liked to
take it home with you. I put it in my pocket because I am studying a
scene for a picture.”
Maggie had looked at the back too, and saw the title; it revived an old
impression with overmastering force.
“‘The Pirate,’” she said, taking the book from Philip’s hands. “Oh, I
began that once; I read to where Minna is walking with Cleveland, and I
could never get to read the rest. I went on with it in my own head, and
I made several endings; but they were all unhappy. I could never make a
happy ending out of that beginning. Poor Minna! I wonder what is the
real end. For a long while I couldn’t get my mind away from the
Shetland Isles,—I used to feel the wind blowing on me from the rough
sea.”
Maggie spoke rapidly, with glistening eyes.
“Take that volume home with you, Maggie,” said Philip, watching her
with delight. “I don’t want it now. I shall make a picture of you
instead,—you, among the Scotch firs and the slanting shadows.”
Maggie had not heard a word he had said; she was absorbed in a page at
which she had opened. But suddenly she closed the book, and gave it
back to Philip, shaking her head with a backward movement, as if to say
“avaunt” to floating visions.
“Do keep it, Maggie,” said Philip, entreatingly; “it will give you
pleasure.”
“No, thank you,” said Maggie, putting it aside with her hand and
walking on. “It would make me in love with this world again, as I used
to be; it would make me long to see and know many things; it would make
me long for a full life.”
“But you will not always be shut up in your present lot; why should you
starve your mind in that way? It is narrow asceticism; I don’t like to
see you persisting in it, Maggie. Poetry and art and knowledge are
sacred and pure.”
“But not for me, not for me,” said Maggie, walking more hurriedly;
“because I should want too much. I must wait; this life will not last
long.”
“Don’t hurry away from me without saying ‘good-by,’ Maggie,” said
Philip, as they reached the group of Scotch firs, and she continued
still to walk along without speaking. “I must not go any farther, I
think, must I?”
“Oh no, I forgot; good-by,” said Maggie, pausing, and putting out her
hand to him. The action brought her feeling back in a strong current to
Philip; and after they had stood looking at each other in silence for a
few moments, with their hands clasped, she said, withdrawing her hand:
“I’m very grateful to you for thinking of me all those years. It is
very sweet to have people love us. What a wonderful, beautiful thing it
seems that God should have made your heart so that you could care about
a queer little girl whom you only knew for a few weeks! I remember
saying to you that I thought you cared for me more than Tom did.”
“Ah, Maggie,” said Philip, almost fretfully, “you would never love me
so well as you love your brother.”
“Perhaps not,” said Maggie, simply; “but then, you know, the first
thing I ever remember in my life is standing with Tom by the side of
the Floss, while he held my hand; everything before that is dark to me.
But I shall never forget you, though we must keep apart.”
“Don’t say so, Maggie,” said Philip. “If I kept that little girl in my
mind for five years, didn’t I earn some part in her? She ought not to
take herself quite away from me.”
“Not if I were free,” said Maggie; “but I am not, I must submit.” She
hesitated a moment, and then added, “And I wanted to say to you, that
you had better not take more notice of my brother than just bowing to
him. He once told me not to speak to you again, and he doesn’t change
his mind—Oh dear, the sun is set. I am too long away. Good-by.” She
gave him her hand once more.
“I shall come here as often as I can till I see you again, Maggie. Have
some feeling for _me_ as well as for others.”
“Yes, yes, I have,” said Maggie, hurrying away, and quickly
disappearing behind the last fir-tree; though Philip’s gaze after her
remained immovable for minutes as if he saw her still.
Maggie went home, with an inward conflict already begun; Philip went
home to do nothing but remember and hope. You can hardly help blaming
him severely. He was four or five years older than Maggie, and had a
full consciousness of his feeling toward her to aid him in foreseeing
the character his contemplated interviews with her would bear in the
opinion of a third person. But you must not suppose that he was capable
of a gross selfishness, or that he could have been satisfied without
persuading himself that he was seeking to infuse some happiness into
Maggie’s life,—seeking this even more than any direct ends for himself.
He could give her sympathy; he could give her help. There was not the
slightest promise of love toward him in her manner; it was nothing more
than the sweet girlish tenderness she had shown him when she was