The Mill on the Floss
who can chill themselves on this warm day by thinking of the frosty
Caucasus. Stern reason is my forte, you know. You must get Philip to
buy those. By the way, why doesn’t he come?”
“He never likes going where there are many people, though I enjoined
him to come. He said he would buy up any of my goods that the rest of
the world rejected. But now, do go and buy something of Maggie.”
“No, no; see, she has got a customer; there is old Wakem himself just
coming up.”
Lucy’s eyes turned with anxious interest toward Maggie to see how she
went through this first interview, since a sadly memorable time, with a
man toward whom she must have so strange a mixture of feelings; but she
was pleased to notice that Wakem had tact enough to enter at once into
talk about the bazaar wares, and appear interested in purchasing,
smiling now and then kindly at Maggie, and not calling on her to speak
much, as if he observed that she was rather pale and tremulous.
“Why, Wakem is making himself particularly amiable to your cousin,”
said Stephen, in an undertone to Lucy; “is it pure magnanimity? You
talked of a family quarrel.”
“Oh, that will soon be quite healed, I hope,” said Lucy, becoming a
little indiscreet in her satisfaction, and speaking with an air of
significance. But Stephen did not appear to notice this, and as some
lady-purchasers came up, he lounged on toward Maggie’s end, handling
trifles and standing aloof until Wakem, who had taken out his purse,
had finished his transactions.
“My son came with me,” he overheard Wakem saying, “but he has vanished
into some other part of the building, and has left all these charitable
gallantries to me. I hope you’ll reproach him for his shabby conduct.”
She returned his smile and bow without speaking, and he turned away,
only then observing Stephen and nodding to him. Maggie, conscious that
Stephen was still there, busied herself with counting money, and
avoided looking up. She had been well pleased that he had devoted
himself to Lucy to-day, and had not come near her. They had begun the
morning with an indifferent salutation, and both had rejoiced in being
aloof from each other, like a patient who has actually done without his
opium, in spite of former failures in resolution. And during the last
few days they had even been making up their minds to failures, looking
to the outward events that must soon come to separate them, as a reason
for dispensing with self-conquest in detail.
Stephen moved step by step as if he were being unwillingly dragged,
until he had got round the open end of the stall, and was half hidden
by a screen of draperies. Maggie went on counting her money till she
suddenly heard a deep gentle voice saying, “Aren’t you very tired? Do
let me bring you something,—some fruit or jelly, mayn’t I?”
The unexpected tones shook her like a sudden accidental vibration of a
harp close by her.
“Oh no, thank you,” she said faintly, and only half looking up for an
instant.
“You look so pale,” Stephen insisted, in a more entreating tone. “I’m
sure you’re exhausted. I must disobey you, and bring something.”
“No, indeed, I couldn’t take it.”
“Are you angry with me? What have I done? _Do_ look at me.”
“Pray, go away,” said Maggie, looking at him helplessly, her eyes
glancing immediately from him to the opposite corner of the orchestra,
which was half hidden by the folds of the old faded green curtain.
Maggie had no sooner uttered this entreaty than she was wretched at the
admission it implied; but Stephen turned away at once, and following
her upward glance, he saw Philip Wakem sealed in the half-hidden
corner, so that he could command little more than that angle of the
hall in which Maggie sat. An entirely new thought occurred to Stephen,
and linking itself with what he had observed of Wakem’s manner, and
with Lucy’s reply to his observation, it convinced him that there had
been some former relation between Philip and Maggie beyond that
childish one of which he had heard. More than one impulse made him
immediately leave the hall and go upstairs to the refreshment-room,
where, walking up to Philip, he sat down behind him, and put his hand
on his shoulder.
“Are you studying for a portrait, Phil,” he said, “or for a sketch of
that oriel window? By George, it makes a capital bit from this dark
corner, with the curtain just marking it off.”
“I have been studying expression,” said Philip, curtly.
“What! Miss Tulliver’s? It’s rather of the savage-moody order to-day, I
think,—something of the fallen princess serving behind a counter. Her
cousin sent me to her with a civil offer to get her some refreshment,
but I have been snubbed, as usual. There’s natural antipathy between
us, I suppose; I have seldom the honour to please her.”
“What a hypocrite you are!” said Philip, flushing angrily.
“What! because experience must have told me that I’m universally
pleasing? I admit the law, but there’s some disturbing force here.”
“I am going,” said Philip, rising abruptly.
“So am I—to get a breath of fresh air; this place gets oppressive. I
think I have done suit and service long enough.”
The two friends walked downstairs together without speaking. Philip
turned through the outer door into the court-yard; but Stephen, saying,
“Oh, by the by, I must call in here,” went on along the passage to one
of the rooms at the other end of the building, which were appropriated
to the town library. He had the room all to himself, and a man requires
nothing less than this when he wants to dash his cap on the table,
throw himself astride a chair, and stare at a high brick wall with a
frown which would not have been beneath the occasion if he had been
slaying “the giant Python.” The conduct that issues from a moral
conflict has often so close a resemblance to vice that the distinction
escapes all outward judgments founded on a mere comparison of actions.
It is clear to you, I hope, that Stephen was not a hypocrite,—capable
of deliberate doubleness for a selfish end; and yet his fluctuations
between the indulgence of a feeling and the systematic concealment of
it might have made a good case in support of Philip’s accusation.
Meanwhile, Maggie sat at her stall cold and trembling, with that
painful sensation in the eyes which comes from resolutely repressed
tears. Was her life to be always like this,—always bringing some new
source of inward strife? She heard confusedly the busy, indifferent
voices around her, and wished her mind could flow into that easy
babbling current. It was at this moment that Dr Kenn, who had quite
lately come into the hall, and was now walking down the middle with his
hands behind him, taking a general view, fixed his eyes on Maggie for
the first time, and was struck with the expression of pain on her
beautiful face. She was sitting quite still, for the stream of
customers had lessened at this late hour in the afternoon; the
gentlemen had chiefly chosen the middle of the day, and Maggie’s stall
was looking rather bare. This, with her absent, pained expression,
finished the contrast between her and her companions, who were all
bright, eager, and busy. He was strongly arrested. Her face had
naturally drawn his attention as a new and striking one at church, and
he had been introduced to her during a short call on business at Mr
Deane’s, but he had never spoken more than three words to her. He
walked toward her now, and Maggie, perceiving some one approaching,
roused herself to look up and be prepared to speak. She felt a
childlike, instinctive relief from the sense of uneasiness in this
exertion, when she saw it was Dr Kenn’s face that was looking at her;
that plain, middle-aged face, with a grave, penetrating kindness in it,
seeming to tell of a human being who had reached a firm, safe strand,
but was looking with helpful pity toward the strugglers still tossed by
the waves, had an effect on Maggie at this moment which was afterward
remembered by her as if it had been a promise. The middle-aged, who
have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time
when memory is still half passionate and not merely contemplative,
should surely be a sort of natural priesthood, whom life has
disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of early
stumblers and victims of self-despair. Most of us, at some moment in
our young lives, would have welcomed a priest of that natural order in
any sort of canonicals or uncanonicals, but had to scramble upward into
all the difficulties of nineteen entirely without such aid, as Maggie
did.
“You find your office rather a fatiguing one, I fear, Miss Tulliver,”
said Dr Kenn.
“It is, rather,” said Maggie, simply, not being accustomed to simpler
amiable denials of obvious facts.
“But I can tell Mrs Kenn that you have disposed of her goods very
quickly,” he added; “she will be very much obliged to you.”
“Oh, I have done nothing; the gentlemen came very fast to buy the
dressing-gowns and embroidered waistcoats, but I think any of the other
ladies would have sold more; I didn’t know what to say about them.”
Dr Kenn smiled. “I hope I’m going to have you as a permanent
parishioner now, Miss Tulliver; am I? You have been at a distance from
us hitherto.”
“I have been a teacher in a school, and I’m going into another
situation of the same kind very soon.”
“Ah? I was hoping you would remain among your friends, who are all in
this neighbourhood, I believe.”
“Oh, _I must go_,” said Maggie, earnestly, looking at Dr Kenn with an
expression of reliance, as if she had told him her history in those
three words. It was one of those moments of implicit revelation which
will sometimes happen even between people who meet quite
transiently,—on a mile’s journey, perhaps, or when resting by the
wayside. There is always this possibility of a word or look from a
stranger to keep alive the sense of human brotherhood.
Dr Kenn’s ear and eye took in all the signs that this brief confidence
of Maggie’s was charged with meaning.
“I understand,” he said; “you feel it right to go. But that will not
prevent our meeting again, I hope; it will not prevent my knowing you
better, if I can be of any service to you.”
He put out his hand and pressed hers kindly before he turned away.
“She has some trouble or other at heart,” he thought. “Poor child! she
looks as if she might turn out to be one of
‘The souls by nature pitched too high,
By suffering plunged too low.’
“There’s something wonderfully honest in those beautiful eyes.”
It may be surprising that Maggie, among whose many imperfections an
excessive delight in admiration and acknowledged supremacy were not
absent now, any more than when she was instructing the gypsies with a
view toward achieving a royal position among them, was not more elated
on a day when she had had the tribute of so many looks and smiles,
together with that satisfactory consciousness which had necessarily
come from being taken before Lucy’s chevalglass, and made to look at
the full length of her tall beauty, crowned by the night of her massy
hair. Maggie had smiled at herself then, and for the moment had
forgotten everything in the sense of her own beauty. If that state of
mind could have lasted, her choice would have been to have Stephen
Guest at her feet, offering her a life filled with all luxuries, with
daily incense of adoration near and distant, and with all possibilities
of culture at her command. But there were things in her stronger than
vanity,—passion and affection, and long, deep memories of early
discipline and effort, of early claims on her love and pity; and the
stream of vanity was soon swept along and mingled imperceptibly with
that wider current which was at its highest force today, under the