The Mill on the Floss
curly ears that drooped over Maggie’s arm. It was not a suggestive
remark, and as the speaker did not follow it up by further development,
it naturally left the conversation at a standstill. It seemed to
Stephen like some action in a dream that he was obliged to do, and
wonder at himself all the while,—to go on stroking Minny’s head. Yet it
was very pleasant; he only wished he dared look at Maggie, and that she
would look at him,—let him have one long look into those deep, strange
eyes of hers, and then he would be satisfied and quite reasonable after
that. He thought it was becoming a sort of monomania with him, to want
that long look from Maggie; and he was racking his invention
continually to find out some means by which he could have it without
its appearing singular and entailing subsequent embarrassment. As for
Maggie, she had no distinct thought, only the sense of a presence like
that of a closely hovering broad-winged bird in the darkness, for she
was unable to look up, and saw nothing but Minny’s black wavy coat.
But this must end some time, perhaps it ended very soon, and only
_seemed_ long, as a minute’s dream does. Stephen at last sat upright
sideways in his chair, leaning one hand and arm over the back and
looking at Maggie. What should he say?
“We shall have a splendid sunset, I think; sha’n’t you go out and see
it?”
“I don’t know,” said Maggie. Then courageously raising her eyes and
looking out of the window, “if I’m not playing cribbage with my uncle.”
A pause; during which Minny is stroked again, but has sufficient
insight not to be grateful for it, to growl rather.
“Do you like sitting alone?”
A rather arch look came over Maggie’s face, and, just glancing at
Stephen, she said, “Would it be quite civil to say ‘yes’?”
“It _was_ rather a dangerous question for an intruder to ask,” said
Stephen, delighted with that glance, and getting determined to stay for
another. “But you will have more than half an hour to yourself after I
am gone,” he added, taking out his watch. “I know Mr Deane never comes
in till half-past seven.”
Another pause, during which Maggie looked steadily out of the window,
till by a great effort she moved her head to look down at Minny’s back
again, and said,—
“I wish Lucy had not been obliged to go out. We lose our music.”
“We shall have a new voice to-morrow night,” said Stephen. “Will you
tell your cousin that our friend Philip Wakem is come back? I saw him
as I went home.”
Maggie gave a little start,—it seemed hardly more than a vibration that
passed from head to foot in an instant. But the new images summoned by
Philip’s name dispersed half the oppressive spell she had been under.
She rose from her chair with a sudden resolution, and laying Minny on
his cushion, went to reach Lucy’s large work-basket from its corner.
Stephen was vexed and disappointed; he thought perhaps Maggie didn’t
like the name of Wakem to be mentioned to her in that abrupt way, for
he now recalled what Lucy had told him of the family quarrel. It was of
no use to stay any longer. Maggie was seating herself at the table with
her work, and looking chill and proud; and he—he looked like a
simpleton for having come. A gratuitous, entirely superfluous visit of
that sort was sure to make a man disagreeable and ridiculous. Of course
it was palpable to Maggie’s thinking that he had dined hastily in his
own room for the sake of setting off again and finding her alone.
A boyish state of mind for an accomplished young gentleman of
five-and-twenty, not without legal knowledge! But a reference to
history, perhaps, may make it not incredible.
At this moment Maggie’s ball of knitting-wool rolled along the ground,
and she started up to reach it. Stephen rose too, and picking up the
ball, met her with a vexed, complaining look that gave his eyes quite a
new expression to Maggie, whose own eyes met them as he presented the
ball to her.
“Good-bye,” said Stephen, in a tone that had the same beseeching
discontent as his eyes. He dared not put out his hand; he thrust both
hands into his tail-pockets as he spoke. Maggie thought she had perhaps
been rude.
“Won’t you stay?” she said timidly, not looking away, for that would
have seemed rude again.
“No, thank you,” said Stephen, looking still into the half-unwilling,
half-fascinated eyes, as a thirsty man looks toward the track of the
distant brook. “The boat is waiting for me. You’ll tell your cousin?”
“Yes.”
“That I brought the music, I mean?”
“Yes.”
“And that Philip is come back?”
“Yes.” (Maggie did not notice Philip’s name this time.)
“Won’t you come out a little way into the garden?” said Stephen, in a
still gentler tone; but the next moment he was vexed that she did not
say “No,” for she moved away now toward the open window, and he was
obliged to take his hat and walk by her side. But he thought of
something to make him amends.
“Do take my arm,” he said, in a low tone, as if it were a secret.
There is something strangely winning to most women in that offer of the
firm arm; the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the
sense of help, the presence of strength that is outside them and yet
theirs, meets a continual want of the imagination. Either on that
ground or some other, Maggie took the arm. And they walked together
round the grassplot and under the drooping green of the laburnums, in
the same dim, dreamy state as they had been in a quarter of an hour
before; only that Stephen had had the look he longed for, without yet
perceiving in himself the symptoms of returning reasonableness, and
Maggie had darting thoughts across the dimness,—how came he to be
there? Why had she come out? Not a word was spoken. If it had been,
each would have been less intensely conscious of the other.
“Take care of this step,” said Stephen at last.
“Oh, I will go in now,” said Maggie, feeling that the step had come
like a rescue. “Good-evening.”
In an instant she had withdrawn her arm, and was running back to the
house. She did not reflect that this sudden action would only add to
the embarrassing recollections of the last half-hour. She had no
thought left for that. She only threw herself into the low arm-chair,
and burst into tears.
“Oh, Philip, Philip, I wish we were together again—so quietly—in the
Red Deeps.”
Stephen looked after her a moment, then went on to the boat, and was
soon landed at the wharf. He spent the evening in the billiard-room,
smoking one cigar after another, and losing “lives” at pool. But he
would not leave off. He was determined not to think,—not to admit any
more distinct remembrance than was urged upon him by the perpetual
presence of Maggie. He was looking at her, and she was on his arm.
But there came the necessity of walking home in the cool starlight, and
with it the necessity of cursing his own folly, and bitterly
determining that he would never trust himself alone with Maggie again.
It was all madness; he was in love, thoroughly attached to Lucy, and
engaged,—engaged as strongly as an honourable man need be. He wished he
had never seen this Maggie Tulliver, to be thrown into a fever by her
in this way; she would make a sweet, strange, troublesome, adorable
wife to some man or other, but he would never have chosen her himself.
Did she feel as he did? He hoped she did—not. He ought not to have
gone. He would master himself in future. He would make himself
disagreeable to her, quarrel with her perhaps. Quarrel with her? Was it
possible to quarrel with a creature who had such eyes,—defying and
deprecating, contradicting and clinging, imperious and beseeching,—full
of delicious opposites? To see such a creature subdued by love for one
would be a lot worth having—to another man.
There was a muttered exclamation which ended this inward soliloquy, as
Stephen threw away the end of his last cigar, and thrusting his hands
into his pockets, stalked along at a quieter pace through the
shrubbery. It was not of a benedictory kind.
Chapter VII.
Philip Re-enters
The next morning was very wet,—the sort of morning on which male
neighbours who have no imperative occupation at home are likely to pay
their fair friends an illimitable visit. The rain, which has been
endurable enough for the walk or ride one way, is sure to become so
heavy, and at the same time so certain to clear up by and by, that
nothing but an open quarrel can abbreviate the visit; latent
detestation will not do at all. And if people happen to be lovers, what
can be so delightful, in England, as a rainy morning? English sunshine
is dubious; bonnets are never quite secure; and if you sit down on the
grass, it may lead to catarrhs. But the rain is to be depended on. You
gallop through it in a mackintosh, and presently find yourself in the
seat you like best,—a little above or a little below the one on which
your goddess sits (it is the same thing to the metaphysical mind, and
that is the reason why women are at once worshipped and looked down
upon), with a satisfactory confidence that there will be no
lady-callers.
“Stephen will come earlier this morning, I know,” said Lucy; “he always
does when it’s rainy.”
Maggie made no answer. She was angry with Stephen; she began to think
she should dislike him; and if it had not been for the rain, she would
have gone to her aunt Glegg’s this morning, and so have avoided him
altogether. As it was, she must find some reason for remaining out of
the room with her mother.
But Stephen did not come earlier, and there was another visitor—a
nearer neighbour—who preceded him. When Philip entered the room, he was
going merely to bow to Maggie, feeling that their acquaintance was a
secret which he was bound not to betray; but when she advanced toward
him and put out her hand, he guessed at once that Lucy had been taken
into her confidence. It was a moment of some agitation to both, though
Philip had spent many hours in preparing for it; but like all persons
who have passed through life with little expectation of sympathy, he
seldom lost his self-control, and shrank with the most sensitive pride
from any noticeable betrayal of emotion. A little extra paleness, a
little tension of the nostril when he spoke, and the voice pitched in
rather a higher key, that to strangers would seem expressive of cold
indifference, were all the signs Philip usually gave of an inward drama
that was not without its fierceness. But Maggie, who had little more
power of concealing the impressions made upon her than if she had been
constructed of musical strings, felt her eyes getting larger with tears
as they took each other’s hands in silence. They were not painful
tears; they had rather something of the same origin as the tears women
and children shed when they have found some protection to cling to and
look back on the threatened danger. For Philip, who a little while ago
was associated continually in Maggie’s mind with the sense that Tom
might reproach her with some justice, had now, in this short space,
become a sort of outward conscience to her, that she might fly to for
rescue and strength. Her tranquil, tender affection for Philip, with
its root deep down in her childhood, and its memories of long quiet
talk confirming by distinct successive impressions the first
instinctive bias,—the fact that in him the appeal was more strongly to
her pity and womanly devotedness than to her vanity or other egoistic
excitability of her nature,—seemed now to make a sort of sacred place,
a sanctuary where she could find refuge from an alluring influence
which the best part of herself must resist; which must bring horrible
tumult within, wretchedness without. This new sense of her relation to
Philip nullified the anxious scruples she would otherwise have felt,