The Mill on the Floss
with this coldness; I can’t answer for myself. But if you will go with
me only a little way I can live on that. You see plainly enough that
your anger has only made me ten times more unreasonable.”
Maggie turned. But Tancred, the bay horse, began to make such spirited
remonstrances against this frequent change of direction, that Stephen,
catching sight of Willy Moss peeping through the gate, called out,
“Here! just come and hold my horse for five minutes.”
“Oh, no,” said Maggie, hurriedly, “my aunt will think it so strange.”
“Never mind,” Stephen answered impatiently; “they don’t know the people
at St Ogg’s. Lead him up and down just here for five minutes,” he added
to Willy, who was now close to them; and then he turned to Maggie’s
side, and they walked on. It was clear that she _must_ go on now.
“Take my arm,” said Stephen, entreatingly; and she took it, feeling all
the while as if she were sliding downward in a nightmare.
“There is no end to this misery,” she began, struggling to repel the
influence by speech. “It is wicked—base—ever allowing a word or look
that Lucy—that others might not have seen. Think of Lucy.”
“I do think of her—bless her. If I didn’t——” Stephen had laid his hand
on Maggie’s that rested on his arm, and they both felt it difficult to
speak.
“And I have other ties,” Maggie went on, at last, with a desperate
effort, “even if Lucy did not exist.”
“You are engaged to Philip Wakem?” said Stephen, hastily. “Is it so?”
“I consider myself engaged to him; I don’t mean to marry any one else.”
Stephen was silent again until they had turned out of the sun into a
side lane, all grassy and sheltered. Then he burst out impetuously,—
“It is unnatural, it is horrible. Maggie, if you loved me as I love
you, we should throw everything else to the winds for the sake of
belonging to each other. We should break all these mistaken ties that
were made in blindness, and determine to marry each other.”
“I would rather die than fall into that temptation,” said Maggie, with
deep, slow distinctness, all the gathered spiritual force of painful
years coming to her aid in this extremity. She drew her arm from his as
she spoke.
“Tell me, then, that you don’t care for me,” he said, almost violently.
“Tell me that you love some one else better.”
It darted through Maggie’s mind that here was a mode of releasing
herself from outward struggle,—to tell Stephen that her whole heart was
Philip’s. But her lips would not utter that, and she was silent.
“If you do love me, dearest,” said Stephen, gently, taking her hand
again and laying it within his arm, “it is better—it is right that we
should marry each other. We can’t help the pain it will give. It is
come upon us without our seeking; it is natural; it has taken hold of
me in spite of every effort I have made to resist it. God knows, I’ve
been trying to be faithful to tacit engagements, and I’ve only made
things worse; I’d better have given way at first.”
Maggie was silent. If it were _not_ wrong—if she were once convinced of
that, and need no longer beat and struggle against this current, soft
and yet strong as the summer stream!
“Say ‘yes,’ dearest,” said Stephen, leaning to look entreatingly in her
face. “What could we care about in the whole world beside, if we
belonged to each other?”
Her breath was on his face, his lips were very near hers, but there was
a great dread dwelling in his love for her.
Her lips and eyelids quivered; she opened her eyes full on his for an
instant, like a lovely wild animal timid and struggling under caresses,
and then turned sharp round toward home again.
“And after all,” he went on, in an impatient tone, trying to defeat his
own scruples as well as hers, “I am breaking no positive engagement; if
Lucy’s affections had been withdrawn from me and given to some one
else, I should have felt no right to assert a claim on her. If you are
not absolutely pledged to Philip, we are neither of us bound.”
“You don’t believe that; it is not your real feeling,” said Maggie,
earnestly. “You feel, as I do, that the real tie lies in the feelings
and expectations we have raised in other minds. Else all pledges might
be broken, when there was no outward penalty. There would be no such
thing as faithfulness.”
Stephen was silent; he could not pursue that argument; the opposite
conviction had wrought in him too strongly through his previous time of
struggle. But it soon presented itself in a new form.
“The pledge _can’t_ be fulfilled,” he said, with impetuous insistence.
“It is unnatural; we can only pretend to give ourselves to any one
else. There is wrong in that too; there may be misery in it for _them_
as well as for us. Maggie, you must see that; you do see that.”
He was looking eagerly at her face for the least sign of compliance;
his large, firm, gentle grasp was on her hand. She was silent for a few
moments, with her eyes fixed on the ground; then she drew a deep
breath, and said, looking up at him with solemn sadness,—
“Oh, it is difficult,—life is very difficult! It seems right to me
sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but then, such
feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has
made for us,—the ties that have made others dependent on us,—and would
cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have
been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first toward
whom—I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, love
would be a sign that two people ought to belong to each other. But I
see—I feel it is not so now; there are things we must renounce in life;
some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark to me;
but I see one thing quite clearly,—that I must not, cannot, seek my own
happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural; but surely pity and
faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live in me
still, and punish me if I did not obey them. I should be haunted by the
suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned. Don’t urge me; help
me,—help me, _because_ I love you.”
Maggie had become more and more earnest as she went on; her face had
become flushed, and her eyes fuller and fuller of appealing love.
Stephen had the fibre of nobleness in him that vibrated to her appeal;
but in the same moment—how could it be otherwise?—that pleading beauty
gained new power over him.
“Dearest,” he said, in scarcely more than a whisper, while his arm
stole round her, “I’ll do, I’ll bear anything you wish. But—one
kiss—one—the last—before we part.”
One kiss, and then a long look, until Maggie said tremulously, “Let me
go,—let me make haste back.”
She hurried along, and not another word was spoken. Stephen stood still
and beckoned when they came within sight of Willy and the horse, and
Maggie went on through the gate. Mrs Moss was standing alone at the
door of the old porch; she had sent all the cousins in, with kind
thoughtfulness. It might be a joyful thing that Maggie had a rich and
handsome lover, but she would naturally feel embarrassed at coming in
again; and it might _not_ be joyful. In either case Mrs Moss waited
anxiously to receive Maggie by herself. The speaking face told plainly
enough that, if there was joy, it was of a very agitating, dubious
sort.
“Sit down here a bit, my dear.” She drew Maggie into the porch, and sat
down on the bench by her; there was no privacy in the house.
“Oh, aunt Gritty, I’m very wretched! I wish I could have died when I
was fifteen. It seemed so easy to give things up then; it is so hard
now.”
The poor child threw her arms round her aunt’s neck, and fell into
long, deep sobs.
Chapter XII.
A Family Party
Maggie left her good aunt Gritty at the end of the week, and went to
Garum Firs to pay her visit to aunt Pullet according to agreement. In
the mean time very unexpected things had happened, and there was to be
a family party at Garum to discuss and celebrate a change in the
fortunes of the Tullivers, which was likely finally to carry away the
shadow of their demerits like the last limb of an eclipse, and cause
their hitherto obscured virtues to shine forth in full-rounded
splendor. It is pleasant to know that a new ministry just come into
office are not the only fellow-men who enjoy a period of high
appreciation and full-blown eulogy; in many respectable families
throughout this realm, relatives becoming creditable meet with a
similar cordiality of recognition, which in its fine freedom from the
coercion of any antecedents, suggests the hopeful possibility that we
may some day without any notice find ourselves in full millennium, with
cockatrices who have ceased to bite, and wolves that no longer show
their teeth with any but the blandest intentions.
Lucy came so early as to have the start even of aunt Glegg; for she
longed to have some undisturbed talk with Maggie about the wonderful
news. It seemed, did it not? said Lucy, with her prettiest air of
wisdom, as if everything, even other people’s misfortunes (poor
creatures!) were conspiring now to make poor dear aunt Tulliver, and
cousin Tom, and naughty Maggie too, if she were not obstinately bent on
the contrary, as happy as they deserved to be after all their troubles.
To think that the very day—the _very day_—after Tom had come back from
Newcastle, that unfortunate young Jetsome, whom Mr Wakem had placed at
the Mill, had been pitched off his horse in a drunken fit, and was
lying at St Ogg’s in a dangerous state, so that Wakem had signified his
wish that the new purchasers should enter on the premises at once!
It was very dreadful for that unhappy young man, but it did seem as if
the misfortune had happened then, rather than at any other time, in
order that cousin Tom might all the sooner have the fit reward of his
exemplary conduct,—papa thought so very highly of him. Aunt Tulliver
must certainly go to the Mill now, and keep house for Tom; that was
rather a loss to Lucy in the matter of household comfort; but then, to
think of poor aunty being in her old place again, and gradually getting
comforts about her there!
On this last point Lucy had her cunning projects, and when she and
Maggie had made their dangerous way down the bright stairs into the
handsome parlour, where the very sunbeams seemed cleaner than
elsewhere, she directed her manœuvres, as any other great tactician
would have done, against the weaker side of the enemy.
“Aunt Pullet,” she said, seating herself on the sofa, and caressingly
adjusting that lady’s floating cap-string, “I want you to make up your
mind what linen and things you will give Tom toward housekeeping;
because you are always so generous,—you give such nice things, you
know; and if you set the example, aunt Glegg will follow.”
“That she never can, my dear,” said Mrs Pullet, with unusual vigor,
“for she hasn’t got the linen to follow suit wi’ mine, I can tell you.
She’d niver the taste, not if she’d spend the money. Big checks and
live things, like stags and foxes, all her table-linen is,—not a spot
nor a diamond among ’em. But it’s poor work dividing one’s linen before
one dies,—I niver thought to ha’ done that, Bessy,” Mrs Pullet
continued, shaking her head and looking at her sister Tulliver, “when
you and me chose the double diamont, the first flax iver we’d spun, and
the Lord knows where yours is gone.”
“I’d no choice, I’m sure, sister,” said poor Mrs Tulliver, accustomed
to consider herself in the light of an accused person. “I’m sure it was
no wish o’ mine, iver, as I should lie awake o’ nights thinking o’ my
best bleached linen all over the country.”
“Take a peppermint, Mrs Tulliver,” said uncle Pullet, feeling that he
was offering a cheap and wholesome form of comfort, which he was
recommending by example.