The Mill on the Floss
tints of life.
A mad impulse seized on Stephen; he darted toward the arm, and showered
kisses on it, clasping the wrist.
But the next moment Maggie snatched it from him, and glared at him like
a wounded war-goddess, quivering with rage and humiliation.
“How dare you?” She spoke in a deeply shaken, half-smothered voice.
“What right have I given you to insult me?”
She darted from him into the adjoining room, and threw herself on the
sofa, panting and trembling.
A horrible punishment was come upon her for the sin of allowing a
moment’s happiness that was treachery to Lucy, to Philip, to her own
better soul. That momentary happiness had been smitten with a blight, a
leprosy; Stephen thought more lightly of _her_ than he did of Lucy.
As for Stephen, he leaned back against the framework of the
conservatory, dizzy with the conflict of passions,—love, rage, and
confused despair; despair at his want of self-mastery, and despair that
he had offended Maggie.
The last feeling surmounted every other; to be by her side again and
entreat forgiveness was the only thing that had the force of a motive
for him, and she had not been seated more than a few minutes when he
came and stood humbly before her. But Maggie’s bitter rage was unspent.
“Leave me to myself, if you please,” she said, with impetuous
haughtiness, “and for the future avoid me.”
Stephen turned away, and walked backward and forward at the other end
of the room. There was the dire necessity of going back into the
dancing-room again, and he was beginning to be conscious of that. They
had been absent so short a time, that when he went in again the waltz
was not ended.
Maggie, too, was not long before she re-entered. All the pride of her
nature was stung into activity; the hateful weakness which had dragged
her within reach of this wound to her self-respect had at least wrought
its own cure. The thoughts and temptations of the last month should all
be flung away into an unvisited chamber of memory. There was nothing to
allure her now; duty would be easy, and all the old calm purposes would
reign peacefully once more. She re-entered the drawing-room still with
some excited brightness in her face, but with a sense of proud
self-command that defied anything to agitate her. She refused to dance
again, but she talked quite readily and calmly with every one who
addressed her. And when they got home that night, she kissed Lucy with
a free heart, almost exulting in this scorching moment, which had
delivered her from the possibility of another word or look that would
have the stamp of treachery toward that gentle, unsuspicious sister.
The next morning Maggie did not set off to Basset quite so soon as she
had expected. Her mother was to accompany her in the carriage, and
household business could not be dispatched hastily by Mrs Tulliver. So
Maggie, who had been in a hurry to prepare herself, had to sit waiting,
equipped for the drive, in the garden. Lucy was busy in the house
wrapping up some bazaar presents for the younger ones at Basset, and
when there was a loud ring at the door-bell, Maggie felt some alarm
lest Lucy should bring out Stephen to her; it was sure to be Stephen.
But presently the visitor came out into the garden alone, and seated
himself by her on the garden-chair. It was not Stephen.
“We can just catch the tips of the Scotch firs, Maggie, from this
seat,” said Philip.
They had taken each other’s hands in silence, but Maggie had looked at
him with a more complete revival of the old childlike affectionate
smile than he had seen before, and he felt encouraged.
“Yes,” she said, “I often look at them, and wish I could see the low
sunlight on the stems again. But I have never been that way but
once,—to the churchyard with my mother.”
“I have been there, I go there, continually,” said Philip. “I have
nothing but the past to live upon.”
A keen remembrance and keen pity impelled Maggie to put her hand in
Philip’s. They had so often walked hand in hand!
“I remember all the spots,” she said,—“just where you told me of
particular things, beautiful stories that I had never heard of before.”
“You will go there again soon, won’t you, Maggie?” said Philip, getting
timid. “The Mill will soon be your brother’s home again.”
“Yes; but I shall not be there,” said Maggie. “I shall only hear of
that happiness. I am going away again; Lucy has not told you, perhaps?”
“Then the future will never join on to the past again, Maggie? That
book is quite closed?”
The gray eyes that had so often looked up at her with entreating
worship, looked up at her now, with a last struggling ray of hope in
them, and Maggie met them with her large sincere gaze.
“That book never will be closed, Philip,” she said, with grave sadness;
“I desire no future that will break the ties of the past. But the tie
to my brother is one of the strongest. I can do nothing willingly that
will divide me always from him.”
“Is that the only reason that would keep us apart forever, Maggie?”
said Philip, with a desperate determination to have a definite answer.
“The only reason,” said Maggie, with calm decision. And she believed
it. At that moment she felt as if the enchanted cup had been dashed to
the ground. The reactionary excitement that gave her a proud
self-mastery had not subsided, and she looked at the future with a
sense of calm choice.
They sat hand in hand without looking at each other or speaking for a
few minutes; in Maggie’s mind the first scenes of love and parting were
more present than the actual moment, and she was looking at Philip in
the Red Deeps.
Philip felt that he ought to have been thoroughly happy in that answer
of hers; she was as open and transparent as a rock-pool. Why was he not
thoroughly happy? Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an
omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.
Chapter XI.
In the Lane
Maggie had been four days at her aunt Moss’s giving the early June
sunshine quite a new brightness in the care-dimmed eyes of that
affectionate woman, and making an epoch for her cousins great and
small, who were learning her words and actions by heart, as if she had
been a transient avatar of perfect wisdom and beauty.
She was standing on the causeway with her aunt and a group of cousins
feeding the chickens, at that quiet moment in the life of the farmyards
before the afternoon milking-time. The great buildings round the hollow
yard were as dreary and tumbledown as ever, but over the old
garden-wall the straggling rose-bushes were beginning to toss their
summer weight, and the gray wood and old bricks of the house, on its
higher level, had a look of sleepy age in the broad afternoon sunlight,
that suited the quiescent time. Maggie, with her bonnet over her arm,
was smiling down at the hatch of small fluffy chickens, when her aunt
exclaimed,—
“Goodness me! who is that gentleman coming in at the gate?”
It was a gentleman on a tall bay horse; and the flanks and neck of the
horse were streaked black with fast riding. Maggie felt a beating at
head and heart, horrible as the sudden leaping to life of a savage
enemy who had feigned death.
“Who is it, my dear?” said Mrs Moss, seeing in Maggie’s face the
evidence that she knew.
“It is Mr Stephen Guest,” said Maggie, rather faintly. “My cousin
Lucy’s—a gentleman who is very intimate at my cousin’s.”
Stephen was already close to them, had jumped off his horse, and now
raised his hat as he advanced.
“Hold the horse, Willy,” said Mrs Moss to the twelve-year-old boy.
“No, thank you,” said Stephen, pulling at the horse’s impatiently
tossing head. “I must be going again immediately. I have a message to
deliver to you, Miss Tulliver, on private business. May I take the
liberty of asking you to walk a few yards with me?”
He had a half-jaded, half-irritated look, such as a man gets when he
has been dogged by some care or annoyance that makes his bed and his
dinner of little use to him. He spoke almost abruptly, as if his errand
were too pressing for him to trouble himself about what would be
thought by Mrs Moss of his visit and request. Good Mrs Moss, rather
nervous in the presence of this apparently haughty gentleman, was
inwardly wondering whether she would be doing right or wrong to invite
him again to leave his horse and walk in, when Maggie, feeling all the
embarrassment of the situation, and unable to say anything, put on her
bonnet, and turned to walk toward the gate.
Stephen turned too, and walked by her side, leading his horse.
Not a word was spoken till they were out in the lane, and had walked
four or five yards, when Maggie, who had been looking straight before
her all the while, turned again to walk back, saying, with haughty
resentment,—
“There is no need for me to go any farther. I don’t know whether you
consider it gentlemanly and delicate conduct to place me in a position
that forced me to come out with you, or whether you wished to insult me
still further by thrusting an interview upon me in this way.”
“Of course you are angry with me for coming,” said Stephen, bitterly.
“Of course it is of no consequence what a man has to suffer; it is only
your woman’s dignity that you care about.”
Maggie gave a slight start, such as might have come from the slightest
possible electric shock.
“As if it were not enough that I’m entangled in this way; that I’m mad
with love for you; that I resist the strongest passion a man can feel,
because I try to be true to other claims; but you must treat me as if I
were a coarse brute, who would willingly offend you. And when, if I had
my own choice, I should ask you to take my hand and my fortune and my
whole life, and do what you liked with them! I know I forgot myself. I
took an unwarrantable liberty. I hate myself for having done it. But I
repented immediately; I’ve been repenting ever since. You ought not to
think it unpardonable; a man who loves with his whole soul, as I do
you, is liable to be mastered by his feelings for a moment; but you
know—you must believe—that the worst pain I could have is to have
pained you; that I would give the world to recall the error.”
Maggie dared not speak, dared not turn her head. The strength that had
come from resentment was all gone, and her lips were quivering visibly.
She could not trust herself to utter the full forgiveness that rose in
answer to that confession.
They were come nearly in front of the gate again, and she paused,
trembling.
“You must not say these things; I must not hear them,” she said,
looking down in misery, as Stephen came in front of her, to prevent her
from going farther toward the gate. “I’m very sorry for any pain you
have to go through; but it is of no use to speak.”
“Yes, it _is_ of use,” said Stephen, impetuously. “It would be of use
if you would treat me with some sort of pity and consideration, instead
of doing me vile injustice in your mind. I could bear everything more
quietly if I knew you didn’t hate me for an insolent coxcomb. Look at
me; see what a hunted devil I am; I’ve been riding thirty miles every
day to get away from the thought of you.”
Maggie did not—dared not—look. She had already seen the harassed face.
But she said gently,—
“I don’t think any evil of you.”
“Then, dearest, look at me,” said Stephen, in deepest, tenderest tones
of entreaty. “Don’t go away from me yet. Give me a moment’s happiness;
make me feel you’ve forgiven me.”
“Yes, I do forgive you,” said Maggie, shaken by those tones, and all
the more frightened at herself. “But pray let me go in again. Pray go
away.”
A great tear fell from under her lowered eyelids.
“I can’t go away from you; I can’t leave you,” said Stephen, with still
more passionate pleading. “I shall come back again if you send me away