The Mill on the Floss
embroidery, or other rational and improving occupation. At least this
was the effect on Lucy; and you will not, I hope, consider it an
indication of vanity predominating over more tender impulses, that she
just glanced in the chimney-glass as her walk brought her near it. The
desire to know that one has not looked an absolute fright during a few
hours of conversation may be construed as lying within the bounds of a
laudable benevolent consideration for others. And Lucy had so much of
this benevolence in her nature that I am inclined to think her small
egoisms were impregnated with it, just as there are people not
altogether unknown to you whose small benevolences have a predominant
and somewhat rank odor of egoism. Even now, that she is walking up and
down with a little triumphant flutter of her girlish heart at the sense
that she is loved by the person of chief consequence in her small
world, you may see in her hazel eyes an ever-present sunny benignity,
in which the momentary harmless flashes of personal vanity are quite
lost; and if she is happy in thinking of her lover, it is because the
thought of him mingles readily with all the gentle affections and
good-natured offices with which she fills her peaceful days. Even now,
her mind, with that instantaneous alternation which makes two currents
of feeling or imagination seem simultaneous, is glancing continually
from Stephen to the preparations she has only half finished in Maggie’s
room. Cousin Maggie should be treated as well as the grandest
lady-visitor,—nay, better, for she should have Lucy’s best prints and
drawings in her bedroom, and the very finest bouquet of spring flowers
on her table. Maggie would enjoy all that, she was so found of pretty
things! And there was poor aunt Tulliver, that no one made any account
of, she was to be surprised with the present of a cap of superlative
quality, and to have her health drunk in a gratifying manner, for which
Lucy was going to lay a plot with her father this evening. Clearly, she
had not time to indulge in long reveries about her own happy
love-affairs. With this thought she walked toward the door, but paused
there.
“What’s the matter, then, Minny?” she said, stooping in answer to some
whimpering of that small quadruped, and lifting his glossy head against
her pink cheek. “Did you think I was going without you? Come, then, let
us go and see Sinbad.”
Sinbad was Lucy’s chestnut horse, that she always fed with her own hand
when he was turned out in the paddock. She was fond of feeding
dependent creatures, and knew the private tastes of all the animals
about the house, delighting in the little rippling sounds of her
canaries when their beaks were busy with fresh seed, and in the small
nibbling pleasures of certain animals which, lest she should appear too
trivial, I will here call “the more familiar rodents.”
Was not Stephen Guest right in his decided opinion that this slim
maiden of eighteen was quite the sort of wife a man would not be likely
to repent of marrying,—a woman who was loving and thoughtful for other
women, not giving them Judas-kisses with eyes askance on their welcome
defects, but with real care and vision for their half-hidden pains and
mortifications, with long ruminating enjoyment of little pleasures
prepared for them? Perhaps the emphasis of his admiration did not fall
precisely on this rarest quality in her; perhaps he approved his own
choice of her chiefly because she did not strike him as a remarkable
rarity. A man likes his wife to be pretty; well, Lucy was pretty, but
not to a maddening extent. A man likes his wife to be accomplished,
gentle, affectionate, and not stupid; and Lucy had all these
qualifications. Stephen was not surprised to find himself in love with
her, and was conscious of excellent judgment in preferring her to Miss
Leyburn, the daughter of the county member, although Lucy was only the
daughter of his father’s subordinate partner; besides, he had had to
defy and overcome a slight unwillingness and disappointment in his
father and sisters,—a circumstance which gives a young man an agreeable
consciousness of his own dignity. Stephen was aware that he had sense
and independence enough to choose the wife who was likely to make him
happy, unbiassed by any indirect considerations. He meant to choose
Lucy; she was a little darling, and exactly the sort of woman he had
always admired.
Chapter II.
First Impressions
“He is very clever, Maggie,” said Lucy. She was kneeling on a footstool
at Maggie’s feet, after placing that dark lady in the large
crimson-velvet chair. “I feel sure you will like him. I hope you will.”
“I shall be very difficult to please,” said Maggie, smiling, and
holding up one of Lucy’s long curls, that the sunlight might shine
through it. “A gentleman who thinks he is good enough for Lucy must
expect to be sharply criticised.”
“Indeed, he’s a great deal too good for me. And sometimes, when he is
away, I almost think it can’t really be that he loves me. But I can
never doubt it when he is with me, though I couldn’t bear any one but
you to know that I feel in that way, Maggie.”
“Oh, then, if I disapprove of him you can give him up, since you are
not engaged,” said Maggie, with playful gravity.
“I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to
think of being married soon,” said Lucy, too thoroughly preoccupied to
notice Maggie’s joke; “and I should like everything to go on for a long
while just as it is. Sometimes I am quite frightened lest Stephen
should say that he has spoken to papa; and from something that fell
from papa the other day, I feel sure he and Mr Guest are expecting
that. And Stephen’s sisters are very civil to me now. At first, I think
they didn’t like his paying me attention; and that was natural. It
_does_ seem out of keeping that I should ever live in a great place
like the Park House, such a little insignificant thing as I am.”
“But people are not expected to be large in proportion to the houses
they live in, like snails,” said Maggie, laughing. “Pray, are Mr
Guest’s sisters giantesses?”
“Oh no; and not handsome,—that is, not very,” said Lucy, half-penitent
at this uncharitable remark. “But _he_ is—at least he is generally
considered very handsome.”
“Though you are unable to share that opinion?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lucy, blushing pink over brow and neck. “It is
a bad plan to raise expectation; you will perhaps be disappointed. But
I have prepared a charming surprise for _him;_ I shall have a glorious
laugh against him. I shall not tell you what it is, though.”
Lucy rose from her knees and went to a little distance, holding her
pretty head on one side, as if she had been arranging Maggie for a
portrait, and wished to judge of the general effect.
“Stand up a moment, Maggie.”
“What is your pleasure now?” said Maggie, smiling languidly as she rose
from her chair and looked down on her slight, aerial cousin, whose
figure was quite subordinate to her faultless drapery of silk and
crape.
Lucy kept her contemplative attitude a moment or two in silence, and
then said,—
“I can’t think what witchery it is in you, Maggie, that makes you look
best in shabby clothes; though you really must have a new dress now.
But do you know, last night I was trying to fancy you in a handsome,
fashionable dress, and do what I would, that old limp merino would come
back as the only right thing for you. I wonder if Marie Antoinette
looked all the grander when her gown was darned at the elbows. Now, if
_I_ were to put anything shabby on, I should be quite unnoticeable. I
should be a mere rag.”
“Oh, quite,” said Maggie, with mock gravity. “You would be liable to be
swept out of the room with the cobwebs and carpet-dust, and to find
yourself under the grate, like Cinderella. Mayn’t I sit down now?”
“Yes, now you may,” said Lucy, laughing. Then, with an air of serious
reflection, unfastening her large jet brooch, “But you must change
brooches, Maggie; that little butterfly looks silly on you.”
“But won’t that mar the charming effect of my consistent shabbiness?”
said Maggie, seating herself submissively, while Lucy knelt again and
unfastened the contemptible butterfly. “I wish my mother were of your
opinion, for she was fretting last night because this is my best frock.
I’ve been saving my money to pay for some lessons; I shall never get a
better situation without more accomplishments.”
Maggie gave a little sigh.
“Now, don’t put on that sad look again,” said Lucy, pinning the large
brooch below Maggie’s fine throat. “You’re forgetting that you’ve left
that dreary schoolroom behind you, and have no little girls’ clothes to
mend.”
“Yes,” said Maggie. “It is with me as I used to think it would be with
the poor uneasy white bear I saw at the show. I thought he must have
got so stupid with the habit of turning backward and forward in that
narrow space that he would keep doing it if they set him free. One gets
a bad habit of being unhappy.”
“But I shall put you under a discipline of pleasure that will make you
lose that bad habit,” said Lucy, sticking the black butterfly absently
in her own collar, while her eyes met Maggie’s affectionately.
“You dear, tiny thing,” said Maggie, in one of her bursts of loving
admiration, “you enjoy other people’s happiness so much, I believe you
would do without any of your own. I wish I were like you.”
“I’ve never been tried in that way,” said Lucy. “I’ve always been so
happy. I don’t know whether I could bear much trouble; I never had any
but poor mamma’s death. You _have_ been tried, Maggie; and I’m sure you
feel for other people quite as much as I do.”
“No, Lucy,” said Maggie, shaking her head slowly, “I don’t enjoy their
happiness as you do, else I should be more contented. I do feel for
them when they are in trouble; I don’t think I could ever bear to make
any one _un_happy; and yet I often hate myself, because I get angry
sometimes at the sight of happy people. I think I get worse as I get
older, more selfish. That seems very dreadful.”
“Now, Maggie!” said Lucy, in a tone of remonstrance, “I don’t believe a
word of that. It is all a gloomy fancy, just because you are depressed
by a dull, wearisome life.”
“Well, perhaps it is,” said Maggie, resolutely clearing away the clouds
from her face with a bright smile, and throwing herself backward in her
chair. “Perhaps it comes from the school diet,—watery rice-pudding
spiced with Pinnock. Let us hope it will give way before my mother’s
custards and this charming Geoffrey Crayon.”
Maggie took up the “Sketch Book,” which lay by her on the table.
“Do I look fit to be seen with this little brooch?” said Lucy, going to
survey the effect in the chimney-glass.
“Oh no, Mr Guest will be obliged to go out of the room again if he sees
you in it. Pray make haste and put another on.”
Lucy hurried out of the room, but Maggie did not take the opportunity
of opening her book; she let it fall on her knees, while her eyes
wandered to the window, where she could see the sunshine falling on the
rich clumps of spring flowers and on the long hedge of laurels, and
beyond, the silvery breadth of the dear old Floss, that at this
distance seemed to be sleeping in a morning holiday. The sweet fresh
garden-scent came through the open window, and the birds were busy
flitting and alighting, gurgling and singing. Yet Maggie’s eyes began
to fill with tears. The sight of the old scenes had made the rush of
memories so painful that even yesterday she had only been able to
rejoice in her mother’s restored comfort and Tom’s brotherly
friendliness as we rejoice in good news of friends at a distance,
rather than in the presence of a happiness which we share. Memory and