The Mill on the Floss
never felt that I had enough music,—I wanted more instruments playing
together; I wanted voices to be fuller and deeper. Do you ever sing
now, Philip?” she added abruptly, as if she had forgotten what went
before.
“Yes,” he said, “every day, almost. But my voice is only middling, like
everything else in me.”
“Oh, sing me something,—just one song. I _may_ listen to that before I
go,—something you used to sing at Lorton on a Saturday afternoon, when
we had the drawing-room all to ourselves, and I put my apron over my
head to listen.”
“_I_ know,” said Philip; and Maggie buried her face in her hands while
he sang _sotto voce_, “Love in her eyes sits playing,” and then said,
“That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Oh no, I won’t stay,” said Maggie, starting up. “It will only haunt
me. Let us walk, Philip. I must go home.”
She moved away, so that he was obliged to rise and follow her.
“Maggie,” he said, in a tone of remonstrance, “don’t persist in this
wilful, senseless privation. It makes me wretched to see you benumbing
and cramping your nature in this way. You were so full of life when you
were a child; I thought you would be a brilliant woman,—all wit and
bright imagination. And it flashes out in your face still, until you
draw that veil of dull quiescence over it.”
“Why do you speak so bitterly to me, Philip?” said Maggie.
“Because I foresee it will not end well; you can never carry on this
self-torture.”
“I shall have strength given me,” said Maggie, tremulously.
“No, you will not, Maggie; no one has strength given to do what is
unnatural. It is mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No
character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world
some day, and then every rational satisfaction of your nature that you
deny now will assault you like a savage appetite.”
Maggie started and paused, looking at Philip with alarm in her face.
“Philip, how dare you shake me in this way? You are a tempter.”
“No, I am not; but love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives
foreboding. _Listen_ to me,—let _me_ supply you with books; do let me
see you sometimes,—be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton.
It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be
committing this long suicide.”
Maggie felt unable to speak. She shook her head and walked on in
silence, till they came to the end of the Scotch firs, and she put out
her hand in sign of parting.
“Do you banish me from this place forever, then, Maggie? Surely I may
come and walk in it sometimes? If I meet you by chance, there is no
concealment in that?”
It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become
irrevocable—when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us—that
tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm
conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long
struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.
Maggie felt her heart leap at this subterfuge of Philip’s, and there
passed over her face that almost imperceptible shock which accompanies
any relief. He saw it, and they parted in silence.
Philip’s sense of the situation was too complete for him not to be
visited with glancing fears lest he had been intervening too
presumptuously in the action of Maggie’s conscience, perhaps for a
selfish end. But no!—he persuaded himself his end was not selfish. He
had little hope that Maggie would ever return the strong feeling he had
for her; and it must be better for Maggie’s future life, when these
petty family obstacles to her freedom had disappeared, that the present
should not be entirely sacrificed, and that she should have some
opportunity of culture,—some interchange with a mind above the vulgar
level of those she was now condemned to live with. If we only look far
enough off for the consequence of our actions, we can always find some
point in the combination of results by which those actions can be
justified; by adopting the point of view of a Providence who arranges
results, or of a philosopher who traces them, we shall find it possible
to obtain perfect complacency in choosing to do what is most agreeable
to us in the present moment. And it was in this way that Philip
justified his subtle efforts to overcome Maggie’s true prompting
against a concealment that would introduce doubleness into her own
mind, and might cause new misery to those who had the primary natural
claim on her. But there was a surplus of passion in him that made him
half independent of justifying motives. His longing to see Maggie, and
make an element in her life, had in it some of that savage impulse to
snatch an offered joy which springs from a life in which the mental and
bodily constitution have made pain predominate. He had not his full
share in the common good of men; he could not even pass muster with the
insignificant, but must be singled out for pity, and excepted from what
was a matter of course with others. Even to Maggie he was an exception;
it was clear that the thought of his being her lover had never entered
her mind.
Do not think too hardly of Philip. Ugly and deformed people have great
need of unusual virtues, because they are likely to be extremely
uncomfortable without them; but the theory that unusual virtues spring
by a direct consequence out of personal disadvantages, as animals get
thicker wool in severe climates, is perhaps a little overstrained. The
temptations of beauty are much dwelt upon, but I fancy they only bear
the same relation to those of ugliness, as the temptation to excess at
a feast, where the delights are varied for eye and ear as well as
palate, bears to the temptations that assail the desperation of hunger.
Does not the Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what
is human in us?
Philip had never been soothed by that mother’s love which flows out to
us in the greater abundance because our need is greater, which clings
to us the more tenderly because we are the less likely to be winners in
the game of life; and the sense of his father’s affection and
indulgence toward him was marred by the keener perception of his
father’s faults. Kept aloof from all practical life as Philip had been,
and by nature half feminine in sensitiveness, he had some of the
woman’s intolerant repulsion toward worldliness and the deliberate
pursuit of sensual enjoyment; and this one strong natural tie in his
life,—his relation as a son,—was like an aching limb to him. Perhaps
there is inevitably something morbid in a human being who is in any way
unfavourably excepted from ordinary conditions, until the good force
has had time to triumph; and it has rarely had time for that at
two-and-twenty. That force was present in Philip in much strength, but
the sun himself looks feeble through the morning mists.
Chapter IV.
Another Love-Scene
Early in the following April, nearly a year after that dubious parting
you have just witnessed, you may, if you like, again see Maggie
entering the Red Deeps through the group of Scotch firs. But it is
early afternoon and not evening, and the edge of sharpness in the
spring air makes her draw her large shawl close about her and trip
along rather quickly; though she looks round, as usual, that she may
take in the sight of her beloved trees. There is a more eager,
inquiring look in her eyes than there was last June, and a smile is
hovering about her lips, as if some playful speech were awaiting the
right hearer. The hearer was not long in appearing.
“Take back your _Corinne_,” said Maggie, drawing a book from under her
shawl. “You were right in telling me she would do me no good; but you
were wrong in thinking I should wish to be like her.”
“Wouldn’t you really like to be a tenth Muse, then, Maggie?” said
Philip looking up in her face as we look at a first parting in the
clouds that promises us a bright heaven once more.
“Not at all,” said Maggie, laughing. “The Muses were uncomfortable
goddesses, I think,—obliged always to carry rolls and musical
instruments about with them. If I carried a harp in this climate, you
know, I must have a green baize cover for it; and I should be sure to
leave it behind me by mistake.”
“You agree with me in not liking Corinne, then?”
“I didn’t finish the book,” said Maggie. “As soon as I came to the
blond-haired young lady reading in the park, I shut it up, and
determined to read no further. I foresaw that that light-complexioned
girl would win away all the love from Corinne and make her miserable.
I’m determined to read no more books where the blond-haired women carry
away all the happiness. I should begin to have a prejudice against
them. If you could give me some story, now, where the dark woman
triumphs, it would restore the balance. I want to avenge Rebecca and
Flora MacIvor and Minna, and all the rest of the dark unhappy ones.
Since you are my tutor, you ought to preserve my mind from prejudices;
you are always arguing against prejudices.”
“Well, perhaps you will avenge the dark women in your own person, and
carry away all the love from your cousin Lucy. She is sure to have some
handsome young man of St Ogg’s at her feet now; and you have only to
shine upon him—your fair little cousin will be quite quenched in your
beams.”
“Philip, that is not pretty of you, to apply my nonsense to anything
real,” said Maggie, looking hurt. “As if I, with my old gowns and want
of all accomplishments, could be a rival of dear little Lucy,—who knows
and does all sorts of charming things, and is ten times prettier than I
am,—even if I were odious and base enough to wish to be her rival.
Besides, I never go to aunt Deane’s when any one is there; it is only
because dear Lucy is good, and loves me, that she comes to see me, and
will have me go to see her sometimes.”
“Maggie,” said Philip, with surprise, “it is not like you to take
playfulness literally. You must have been in St Ogg’s this morning, and
brought away a slight infection of dulness.”
“Well,” said Maggie, smiling, “if you meant that for a joke, it was a
poor one; but I thought it was a very good reproof. I thought you
wanted to remind me that I am vain, and wish every one to admire me
most. But it isn’t for that that I’m jealous for the dark women,—not
because I’m dark myself; it’s because I always care the most about the
unhappy people. If the blond girl were forsaken, I should like _her_
best. I always take the side of the rejected lover in the stories.”
“Then you would never have the heart to reject one yourself, should
you, Maggie?” said Philip, flushing a little.
“I don’t know,” said Maggie, hesitatingly. Then with a bright smile, “I
think perhaps I could if he were very conceited; and yet, if he got
extremely humiliated afterward, I should relent.”
“I’ve often wondered, Maggie,” Philip said, with some effort, “whether
you wouldn’t really be more likely to love a man that other women were
not likely to love.”
“That would depend on what they didn’t like him for,” said Maggie,
laughing. “He might be very disagreeable. He might look at me through
an eye-glass stuck in his eye, making a hideous face, as young Torry
does. I should think other women are not fond of that; but I never felt
any pity for young Torry. I’ve never any pity for conceited people,
because I think they carry their comfort about with them.”
“But suppose, Maggie,—suppose it was a man who was not conceited, who
felt he had nothing to be conceited about; who had been marked from
childhood for a peculiar kind of suffering, and to whom you were the
day-star of his life; who loved you, worshipped you, so entirely that
he felt it happiness enough for him if you would let him see you at
rare moments——”
Philip paused with a pang of dread lest his confession should cut short