The Mill on the Floss
out one’s imperfect life and being three people at once,—to sing and
make the piano sing, and hear them both all the while,—or else to sing
and paint.”
“Ah, there you are an enviable fellow. I can do nothing with my hands,”
said Stephen. “That has generally been observed in men of great
administrative capacity, I believe,—a tendency to predominance of the
reflective powers in me! Haven’t you observed that, Miss Tulliver?”
Stephen had fallen by mistake into his habit of playful appeal to
Maggie, and she could not repress the answering flush and epigram.
“I _have_ observed a tendency to predominance,” she said, smiling; and
Philip at that moment devoutly hoped that she found the tendency
disagreeable.
“Come, come,” said Lucy; “music, music! We will discuss each other’s
qualities another time.”
Maggie always tried in vain to go on with her work when music began.
She tried harder than ever to-day; for the thought that Stephen knew
how much she cared for his singing was one that no longer roused a
merely playful resistance; and she knew, too, that it was his habit
always to stand so that he could look at her. But it was of no use; she
soon threw her work down, and all her intentions were lost in the vague
state of emotion produced by the inspiring duet,—emotion that seemed to
make her at once strong and weak; strong for all enjoyment, weak for
all resistance. When the strain passed into the minor, she half started
from her seat with the sudden thrill of that change. Poor Maggie! She
looked very beautiful when her soul was being played on in this way by
the inexorable power of sound. You might have seen the slightest
perceptible quivering through her whole frame as she leaned a little
forward, clasping her hands as if to steady herself; while her eyes
dilated and brightened into that wide-open, childish expression of
wondering delight which always came back in her happiest moments. Lucy,
who at other times had always been at the piano when Maggie was looking
in this way, could not resist the impulse to steal up to her and kiss
her. Philip, too, caught a glimpse of her now and then round the open
book on the desk, and felt that he had never before seen her under so
strong an influence.
“More, more!” said Lucy, when the duet had been encored. “Something
spirited again. Maggie always says she likes a great rush of sound.”
“It must be ‘Let us take the road,’ then,” said Stephen,—“so suitable
for a wet morning. But are you prepared to abandon the most sacred
duties of life, and come and sing with us?”
“Oh, yes,” said Lucy, laughing. “If you will look out the ‘Beggar’s
Opera’ from the large canterbury. It has a dingy cover.”
“That is a great clue, considering there are about a score covers here
of rival dinginess,” said Stephen, drawing out the canterbury.
“Oh, play something the while, Philip,” said Lucy, noticing that his
fingers were wandering over the keys. “What is that you are falling
into?—something delicious that I don’t know.”
“Don’t you know that?” said Philip, bringing out the tune more
definitely. “It’s from the ‘Sonnambula’—‘Ah! perchè non posso odiarti.’
I don’t know the opera, but it appears the tenor is telling the heroine
that he shall always love her though she may forsake him. You’ve heard
me sing it to the English words, ‘I love thee still.’”
It was not quite unintentionally that Philip had wandered into this
song, which might be an indirect expression to Maggie of what he could
not prevail on himself to say to her directly. Her ears had been open
to what he was saying, and when he began to sing, she understood the
plaintive passion of the music. That pleading tenor had no very fine
qualities as a voice, but it was not quite new to her; it had sung to
her by snatches, in a subdued way, among the grassy walks and hollows,
and underneath the leaning ash-tree in the Red Deeps. There seemed to
be some reproach in the words; did Philip mean that? She wished she had
assured him more distinctly in their conversation that she desired not
to renew the hope of love between them, _only_ because it clashed with
her inevitable circumstances. She was touched, not thrilled by the
song; it suggested distinct memories and thoughts, and brought quiet
regret in the place of excitement.
“That’s the way with you tenors,” said Stephen, who was waiting with
music in his hand while Philip finished the song. “You demoralise the
fair sex by warbling your sentimental love and constancy under all
sorts of vile treatment. Nothing short of having your heads served up
in a dish like that mediæval tenor or troubadour, would prevent you
from expressing your entire resignation. I must administer an antidote,
while Miss Deane prepares to tear herself away from her bobbins.”
Stephen rolled out, with saucy energy,—
“Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman’s fair?”
and seemed to make all the air in the room alive with a new influence.
Lucy, always proud of what Stephen did, went toward the piano with
laughing, admiring looks at him; and Maggie, in spite of her resistance
to the spirit of the song and to the singer, was taken hold of and
shaken by the invisible influence,—was borne along by a wave too strong
for her.
But, angrily resolved not to betray herself, she seized her work, and
went on making false stitches and pricking her fingers with much
perseverance, not looking up or taking notice of what was going
forward, until all the three voices united in “Let us take the road.”
I am afraid there would have been a subtle, stealing gratification in
her mind if she had known how entirely this saucy, defiant Stephen was
occupied with her; how he was passing rapidly from a determination to
treat her with ostentatious indifference to an irritating desire for
some sign of inclination from her,—some interchange of subdued word or
look with her. It was not long before he found an opportunity, when
they had passed to the music of “The Tempest.” Maggie, feeling the need
of a footstool, was walking across the room to get one, when Stephen,
who was not singing just then, and was conscious of all her movements,
guessed her want, and flew to anticipate her, lifting the footstool
with an entreating look at her, which made it impossible not to return
a glance of gratitude. And then, to have the footstool placed carefully
by a too self-confident personage,—not _any_ self-confident personage,
but one in particular, who suddenly looks humble and anxious, and
lingers, bending still, to ask if there is not some draught in that
position between the window and the fireplace, and if he may not be
allowed to move the work-table for her,—these things will summon a
little of the too ready, traitorous tenderness into a woman’s eyes,
compelled as she is in her girlish time to learn her life-lessons in
very trivial language. And to Maggie such things had not been everyday
incidents, but were a new element in her life, and found her keen
appetite for homage quite fresh. That tone of gentle solicitude obliged
her to look at the face that was bent toward her, and to say, “No,
thank you”; and nothing could prevent that mutual glance from being
delicious to both, as it had been the evening before.
It was but an ordinary act of politeness in Stephen; it had hardly
taken two minutes; and Lucy, who was singing, scarcely noticed it. But
to Philip’s mind, filled already with a vague anxiety that was likely
to find a definite ground for itself in any trivial incident, this
sudden eagerness in Stephen, and the change in Maggie’s face, which was
plainly reflecting a beam from his, seemed so strong a contrast with
the previous overwrought signs of indifference, as to be charged with
painful meaning. Stephen’s voice, pouring in again, jarred upon his
nervous susceptibility as if it had been the clang of sheet-iron, and
he felt inclined to make the piano shriek in utter discord. He had
really seen no communicable ground for suspecting any ususual feeling
between Stephen and Maggie; his own reason told him so, and he wanted
to go home at once that he might reflect coolly on these false images,
till he had convinced himself of their nullity. But then, again, he
wanted to stay as long as Stephen stayed,—always to be present when
Stephen was present with Maggie. It seemed to poor Philip so natural,
nay, inevitable, that any man who was near Maggie should fall in love
with her! There was no promise of happiness for her if she were
beguiled into loving Stephen Guest; and this thought emboldened Philip
to view his own love for her in the light of a less unequal offering.
He was beginning to play very falsely under this deafening inward
tumult, and Lucy was looking at him in astonishment, when Mrs
Tulliver’s entrance to summon them to lunch came as an excuse for
abruptly breaking off the music.
“Ah, Mr Philip!” said Mr Deane, when they entered the dining-room,
“I’ve not seen you for a long while. Your father’s not at home, I
think, is he? I went after him to the office the other day, and they
said he was out of town.”
“He’s been to Mudport on business for several days,” said Philip; “but
he’s come back now.”
“As fond of his farming hobby as ever, eh?”
“I believe so,” said Philip, rather wondering at this sudden interest
in his father’s pursuits.
“Ah!” said Mr Deane, “he’s got some land in his own hands on this side
the river as well as the other, I think?”
“Yes, he has.”
“Ah!” continued Mr Deane, as he dispensed the pigeonpie, “he must find
farming a heavy item,—an expensive hobby. I never had a hobby myself,
never would give in to that. And the worst of all hobbies are those
that people think they can get money at. They shoot their money down
like corn out of a sack then.”
Lucy felt a little nervous under her father’s apparently gratuitous
criticism of Mr Wakem’s expenditure. But it ceased there, and Mr Deane
became unusually silent and meditative during his luncheon. Lucy,
accustomed to watch all indications in her father, and having reasons,
which had recently become strong, for an extra interest in what
referred to the Wakems, felt an unusual curiosity to know what had
prompted her father’s questions. His subsequent silence made her
suspect there had been some special reason for them in his mind.
With this idea in her head, she resorted to her usual plan when she
wanted to tell or ask her father anything particular: she found a
reason for her aunt Tulliver to leave the dining-room after dinner, and
seated herself on a small stool at her father’s knee. Mr Deane, under
those circumstances, considered that he tasted some of the most
agreeable moments his merits had purchased him in life, notwithstanding
that Lucy, disliking to have her hair powdered with snuff, usually
began by mastering his snuff-box on such occasions.
“You don’t want to go to sleep yet, papa, _do_ you?” she said, as she
brought up her stool and opened the large fingers that clutched the
snuff-box.
“Not yet,” said Mr Deane, glancing at the reward of merit in the
decanter. “But what do _you_ want?” he added, pinching the dimpled chin
fondly,—“to coax some more sovereigns out of my pocket for your bazaar?
Eh?”
“No, I have no base motives at all to-day. I only want to talk, not to
beg. I want to know what made you ask Philip Wakem about his father’s
farming to-day, papa? It seemed rather odd, because you never hardly
say anything to him about his father; and why should you care about Mr
Wakem’s losing money by his hobby?”
“Something to do with business,” said Mr Deane, waving his hands, as if
to repel intrusion into that mystery.
“But, papa, you always say Mr Wakem has brought Philip up like a girl;
how came you to think you should get any business knowledge out of him?