The Mill on the Floss
i’ five years’ time. I’m makin’ you a present o’ th’ articles; I am,
indeed. That eightpence shaves off my profits as clean as a razor. Now
then, sir,” continued Bob, shouldering his pack, “if you please, I’ll
be glad to go and see about makin’ Mr Tom’s fortin. Eh, I wish I’d got
another twenty pound to lay out _my_sen; I shouldn’t stay to say my
Catechism afore I knowed what to do wi’t.”
“Stop a bit, Mr Glegg,” said the lady, as her husband took his hat,
“you never _will_ give me the chance o’ speaking. You’ll go away now,
and finish everything about this business, and come back and tell me
it’s too late for me to speak. As if I wasn’t my nephey’s own aunt, and
the head o’ the family on his mother’s side! and laid by guineas, all
full weight, for him, as he’ll know who to respect when I’m laid in my
coffin.”
“Well, Mrs G., say what you mean,” said Mr G., hastily.
“Well, then, I desire as nothing may be done without my knowing. I
don’t say as I sha’n’t venture twenty pounds, if you make out as
everything’s right and safe. And if I do, Tom,” concluded Mrs Glegg,
turning impressively to her nephew, “I hope you’ll allays bear it in
mind and be grateful for such an aunt. I mean you to pay me interest,
you know; I don’t approve o’ giving; we niver looked for that in _my_
family.”
“Thank you, aunt,” said Tom, rather proudly. “I prefer having the money
only lent to me.”
“Very well; that’s the Dodson sperrit,” said Mrs Glegg, rising to get
her knitting with the sense that any further remark after this would be
bathos.
Salt—that eminently “briny chap”—having been discovered in a cloud of
tobacco-smoke at the Anchor Tavern, Mr Glegg commenced inquiries which
turned out satisfactorily enough to warrant the advance of the
“nest-egg,” to which aunt Glegg contributed twenty pounds; and in this
modest beginning you see the ground of a fact which might otherwise
surprise you; namely, Tom’s accumulation of a fund, unknown to his
father, that promised in no very long time to meet the more tardy
process of saving, and quite cover the deficit. When once his attention
had been turned to this source of gain, Tom determined to make the most
of it, and lost no opportunity of obtaining information and extending
his small enterprises. In not telling his father, he was influenced by
that strange mixture of opposite feelings which often gives equal truth
to those who blame an action and those who admire it,—partly, it was
that disinclination to confidence which is seen between near kindred,
that family repulsion which spoils the most sacred relations of our
lives; partly, it was the desire to surprise his father with a great
joy. He did not see that it would have been better to soothe the
interval with a new hope, and prevent the delirium of a too sudden
elation.
At the time of Maggie’s first meeting with Philip, Tom had already
nearly a hundred and fifty pounds of his own capital; and while they
were walking by the evening light in the Red Deeps, he, by the same
evening light, was riding into Laceham, proud of being on his first
journey on behalf of Guest & Co., and revolving in his mind all the
chances that by the end of another year he should have doubled his
gains, lifted off the obloquy of debt from his father’s name, and
perhaps—for he should be twenty-one—have got a new start for himself,
on a higher platform of employment. Did he not desire it? He was quite
sure that he did.
Chapter III.
The Wavering Balance
I said that Maggie went home that evening from the Red Deeps with a
mental conflict already begun. You have seen clearly enough, in her
interview with Philip, what that conflict was. Here suddenly was an
opening in the rocky wall which shut in the narrow valley of
humiliation, where all her prospect was the remote, unfathomed sky; and
some of the memory-haunting earthly delights were no longer out of her
reach. She might have books, converse, affection; she might hear
tidings of the world from which her mind had not yet lost its sense of
exile; and it would be a kindness to Philip too, who was
pitiable,—clearly not happy. And perhaps here was an opportunity
indicated for making her mind more worthy of its highest service;
perhaps the noblest, completest devoutness could hardly exist without
some width of knowledge; _must_ she always live in this resigned
imprisonment? It was so blameless, so good a thing that there should be
friendship between her and Philip; the motives that forbade it were so
unreasonable, so unchristian! But the severe monotonous warning came
again and again,—that she was losing the simplicity and clearness of
her life by admitting a ground of concealment; and that, by forsaking
the simple rule of renunciation, she was throwing herself under the
seductive guidance of illimitable wants. She thought she had won
strength to obey the warning before she allowed herself the next week
to turn her steps in the evening to the Red Deeps. But while she was
resolved to say an affectionate farewell to Philip, how she looked
forward to that evening walk in the still, fleckered shade of the
hollows, away from all that was harsh and unlovely; to the
affectionate, admiring looks that would meet her; to the sense of
comradeship that childish memories would give to wiser, older talk; to
the certainty that Philip would care to hear everything she said, which
no one else cared for! It was a half-hour that it would be very hard to
turn her back upon, with the sense that there would be no other like
it. Yet she said what she meant to say; she looked firm as well as sad.
“Philip, I have made up my mind; it is right that we should give each
other up, in everything but memory. I could not see you without
concealment—stay, I know what you are going to say,—it is other
people’s wrong feelings that make concealment necessary; but
concealment is bad, however it may be caused. I feel that it would be
bad for me, for us both. And then, if our secret were discovered, there
would be nothing but misery,—dreadful anger; and then we must part
after all, and it would be harder, when we were used to seeing each
other.”
Philip’s face had flushed, and there was a momentary eagerness of
expression, as if he had been about to resist this decision with all
his might.
But he controlled himself, and said, with assumed calmness: “Well,
Maggie, if we must part, let us try and forget it for one half hour;
let us talk together a little while, for the last time.”
He took her hand, and Maggie felt no reason to withdraw it; his
quietness made her all the more sure she had given him great pain, and
she wanted to show him how unwillingly she had given it. They walked
together hand in hand in silence.
“Let us sit down in the hollow,” said Philip, “where we stood the last
time. See how the dog-roses have strewed the ground, and spread their
opal petals over it.”
They sat down at the roots of the slanting ash.
“I’ve begun my picture of you among the Scotch firs, Maggie,” said
Philip, “so you must let me study your face a little, while you
stay,—since I am not to see it again. Please turn your head this way.”
This was said in an entreating voice, and it would have been very hard
of Maggie to refuse. The full, lustrous face, with the bright black
coronet, looked down like that of a divinity well pleased to be
worshipped, on the pale-hued, small-featured face that was turned up to
it.
“I shall be sitting for my second portrait then,” she said, smiling.
“Will it be larger than the other?”
“Oh yes, much larger. It is an oil-painting. You will look like a tall
Hamadryad, dark and strong and noble, just issued from one of the
fir-trees, when the stems are casting their afternoon shadows on the
grass.”
“You seem to think more of painting than of anything now, Philip?”
“Perhaps I do,” said Philip, rather sadly; “but I think of too many
things,—sow all sorts of seeds, and get no great harvest from any one
of them. I’m cursed with susceptibility in every direction, and
effective faculty in none. I care for painting and music; I care for
classic literature, and mediæval literature, and modern literature; I
flutter all ways, and fly in none.”
“But surely that is a happiness to have so many tastes,—to enjoy so
many beautiful things, when they are within your reach,” said Maggie,
musingly. “It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to
have one sort of talent,—almost like a carrier-pigeon.”
“It might be a happiness to have many tastes if I were like other men,”
said Philip, bitterly. “I might get some power and distinction by mere
mediocrity, as they do; at least I should get those middling
satisfactions which make men contented to do without great ones. I
might think society at St Ogg’s agreeable then. But nothing could make
life worth the purchase-money of pain to me, but some faculty that
would lift me above the dead level of provincial existence. Yes, there
is one thing,—a passion answers as well as a faculty.”
Maggie did not hear the last words; she was struggling against the
consciousness that Philip’s words had set her own discontent vibrating
again as it used to do.
“I understand what you mean,” she said, “though I know so much less
than you do. I used to think I could never bear life if it kept on
being the same every day, and I must always be doing things of no
consequence, and never know anything greater. But, dear Philip, I think
we are only like children that some one who is wiser is taking care of.
Is it not right to resign ourselves entirely, whatever may be denied
us? I have found great peace in that for the last two or three years,
even joy in subduing my own will.”
“Yes, Maggie,” said Philip, vehemently; “and you are shutting yourself
up in a narrow, self-delusive fanaticism, which is only a way of
escaping pain by starving into dulness all the highest powers of your
nature. Joy and peace are not resignation; resignation is the willing
endurance of a pain that is not allayed, that you don’t expect to be
allayed. Stupefaction is not resignation; and it is stupefaction to
remain in ignorance,—to shut up all the avenues by which the life of
your fellow-men might become known to you. I am not resigned; I am not
sure that life is long enough to learn that lesson. _You_ are not
resigned; you are only trying to stupefy yourself.”
Maggie’s lips trembled; she felt there was some truth in what Philip
said, and yet there was a deeper consciousness that, for any immediate
application it had to her conduct, it was no better than falsity. Her
double impression corresponded to the double impulse of the speaker.
Philip seriously believed what he said, but he said it with vehemence
because it made an argument against the resolution that opposed his
wishes. But Maggie’s face, made more childlike by the gathering tears,
touched him with a tenderer, less egotistic feeling. He took her hand
and said gently:
“Don’t let us think of such things in this short half-hour, Maggie. Let
us only care about being together. We shall be friends in spite of
separation. We shall always think of each other. I shall be glad to
live as long as you are alive, because I shall think there may always
come a time when I can—when you will let me help you in some way.”
“What a dear, good brother you would have been, Philip,” said Maggie,
smiling through the haze of tears. “I think you would have made as much
fuss about me, and been as pleased for me to love you, as would have
satisfied even me. You would have loved me well enough to bear with me,
and forgive me everything. That was what I always longed that Tom
should do. I was never satisfied with a _little_ of anything. That is
why it is better for me to do without earthly happiness altogether. I