The Mill on the Floss
Maggie would still be present for a little while,—when one more touch,
one more glance, might be snatched. For why not? There was nothing to
conceal between them; they knew, they had confessed their love, and
they had renounced each other; they were going to part. Honour and
conscience were going to divide them; Maggie, with that appeal from her
inmost soul, had decided it; but surely they might cast a lingering
look at each other across the gulf, before they turned away never to
look again till that strange light had forever faded out of their eyes.
Maggie, all this time, moved about with a quiescence and even torpor of
manner, so contrasted with her usual fitful brightness and ardor, that
Lucy would have had to seek some other cause for such a change, if she
had not been convinced that the position in which Maggie stood between
Philip and her brother, and the prospect of her self-imposed wearisome
banishment, were quite enough to account for a large amount of
depression. But under this torpor there was a fierce battle of
emotions, such as Maggie in all her life of struggle had never known or
foreboded; it seemed to her as if all the worst evil in her had lain in
ambush till now, and had suddenly started up full-armed, with hideous,
overpowering strength! There were moments in which a cruel selfishness
seemed to be getting possession of her; why should not Lucy, why should
not Philip, suffer? _She_ had had to suffer through many years of her
life; and who had renounced anything for her? And when something like
that fulness of existence—love, wealth, ease, refinement, all that her
nature craved—was brought within her reach, why was she to forego it,
that another might have it,—another, who perhaps needed it less? But
amidst all this new passionate tumult there were the old voices making
themselves heard with rising power, till, from time to time, the tumult
seemed quelled. _Was_ that existence which tempted her the full
existence she dreamed? Where, then, would be all the memories of early
striving; all the deep pity for another’s pain, which had been nurtured
in her through years of affection and hardship; all the divine
presentiment of something higher than mere personal enjoyment, which
had made the sacredness of life? She might as well hope to enjoy
walking by maiming her feet, as hope to enjoy an existence in which she
set out by maiming the faith and sympathy that were the best organs of
her soul. And then, if pain were so hard to _her_, what was it to
others? “Ah, God! preserve me from inflicting—give me strength to bear
it.” How had she sunk into this struggle with a temptation that she
would once have thought herself as secure from as from deliberate
crime? When was that first hateful moment in which she had been
conscious of a feeling that clashed with her truth, affection, and
gratitude, and had not shaken it from her with horror, as if it had
been a loathsome thing? And yet, since this strange, sweet, subduing
influence did not, should not, conquer her,—since it was to remain
simply her own suffering,—her mind was meeting Stephen’s in that
thought of his, that they might still snatch moments of mute confession
before the parting came. For was not he suffering too? She saw it
daily—saw it in the sickened look of fatigue with which, as soon as he
was not compelled to exert himself, he relapsed into indifference
toward everything but the possibility of watching her. Could she refuse
sometimes to answer that beseeching look which she felt to be following
her like a low murmur of love and pain? She refused it less and less,
till at last the evening for them both was sometimes made of a moment’s
mutual gaze; they thought of it till it came, and when it had come,
they thought of nothing else.
One other thing Stephen seemed now and then to care for, and that was
to sing; it was a way of speaking to Maggie. Perhaps he was not
distinctly conscious that he was impelled to it by a secret
longing—running counter to all his self-confessed resolves—to deepen
the hold he had on her. Watch your own speech, and notice how it is
guided by your less conscious purposes, and you will understand that
contradiction in Stephen.
Philip Wakem was a less frequent visitor, but he came occasionally in
the evening, and it happened that he was there when Lucy said, as they
sat out on the lawn, near sunset,—
“Now Maggie’s tale of visits to aunt Glegg is completed, I mean that we
shall go out boating every day until she goes. She has not had half
enough boating because of these tiresome visits, and she likes it
better than anything. Don’t you, Maggie?”
“Better than any sort of locomotion, I hope you mean,” said Philip,
smiling at Maggie, who was lolling backward in a low garden-chair;
“else she will be selling her soul to that ghostly boatman who haunts
the Floss, only for the sake of being drifted in a boat forever.”
“Should you like to be her boatman?” said Lucy. “Because, if you would,
you can come with us and take an oar. If the Floss were but a quiet
lake instead of a river, we should be independent of any gentleman, for
Maggie can row splendidly. As it is, we are reduced to ask services of
knights and squires, who do not seem to offer them with great
alacrity.”
She looked playful reproach at Stephen, who was sauntering up and down,
and was just singing in pianissimo falsetto,—
“The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine.”
He took no notice, but still kept aloof; he had done so frequently
during Philip’s recent visits.
“You don’t seem inclined for boating,” said Lucy, when he came to sit
down by her on the bench. “Doesn’t rowing suit you now?”
“Oh, I hate a large party in a boat,” he said, almost irritably. “I’ll
come when you have no one else.”
Lucy coloured, fearing that Philip would be hurt; it was quite a new
thing for Stephen to speak in that way; but he had certainly not been
well of late. Philip coloured too, but less from a feeling of personal
offence than from a vague suspicion that Stephen’s moodiness had some
relation to Maggie, who had started up from her chair as he spoke, and
had walked toward the hedge of laurels to look at the descending
sunlight on the river.
“As Miss Deane didn’t know she was excluding others by inviting me,”
said Philip, “I am bound to resign.”
“No, indeed, you shall not,” said Lucy, much vexed. “I particularly
wish for your company to-morrow. The tide will suit at half-past ten;
it will be a delicious time for a couple of hours to row to Luckreth
and walk back, before the sun gets too hot. And how can you object to
four people in a boat?” she added, looking at Stephen.
“I don’t object to the people, but the number,” said Stephen, who had
recovered himself, and was rather ashamed of his rudeness. “If I voted
for a fourth at all, of course it would be you, Phil. But we won’t
divide the pleasure of escorting the ladies; we’ll take it alternately.
I’ll go the next day.”
This incident had the effect of drawing Philip’s attention with
freshened solicitude toward Stephen and Maggie; but when they
re-entered the house, music was proposed, and Mrs Tulliver and Mr Deane
being occupied with cribbage, Maggie sat apart near the table where the
books and work were placed, doing nothing, however, but listening
abstractedly to the music. Stephen presently turned to a duet which he
insisted that Lucy and Philip should sing; he had often done the same
thing before; but this evening Philip thought he divined some double
intention in every word and look of Stephen’s, and watched him keenly,
angry with himself all the while for this clinging suspicion. For had
not Maggie virtually denied any ground for his doubts on her side? And
she was truth itself; it was impossible not to believe her word and
glance when they had last spoken together in the garden. Stephen might
be strongly fascinated by her (what was more natural?), but Philip felt
himself rather base for intruding on what must be his friend’s painful
secret. Still he watched. Stephen, moving away from the piano,
sauntered slowly toward the table near which Maggie sat, and turned
over the newspapers, apparently in mere idleness. Then he seated
himself with his back to the piano, dragging a newspaper under his
elbow, and thrusting his hand through his hair, as if he had been
attracted by some bit of local news in the “Laceham Courier.” He was in
reality looking at Maggie who had not taken the slightest notice of his
approach. She had always additional strength of resistance when Philip
was present, just as we can restrain our speech better in a spot that
we feel to be hallowed. But at last she heard the word “dearest”
uttered in the softest tone of pained entreaty, like that of a patient
who asks for something that ought to have been given without asking.
She had never heard that word since the moments in the lane at Basset,
when it had come from Stephen again and again, almost as involuntarily
as if it had been an inarticulate cry. Philip could hear no word, but
he had moved to the opposite side of the piano, and could see Maggie
start and blush, raise her eyes an instant toward Stephen’s face, but
immediately look apprehensively toward himself. It was not evident to
her that Philip had observed her; but a pang of shame, under the sense
of this concealment, made her move from her chair and walk to her
mother’s side to watch the game at cribbage.
Philip went home soon after in a state of hideous doubt mingled with
wretched certainty. It was impossible for him now to resist the
conviction that there was some mutual consciousness between Stephen and
Maggie; and for half the night his irritable, susceptible nerves were
pressed upon almost to frenzy by that one wretched fact; he could
attempt no explanation that would reconcile it with her words and
actions. When, at last, the need for belief in Maggie rose to its
habitual predominance, he was not long in imagining the truth,—she was
struggling, she was banishing herself; this was the clue to all he had
seen since his return. But athwart that belief there came other
possibilities that would not be driven out of sight. His imagination
wrought out the whole story; Stephen was madly in love with her; he
must have told her so; she had rejected him, and was hurrying away. But
would he give her up, knowing—Philip felt the fact with heart-crushing
despair—that she was made half helpless by her feeling toward him?
When the morning came, Philip was too ill to think of keeping his
engagement to go in the boat. In his present agitation he could decide
on nothing; he could only alternate between contradictory intentions.
First, he thought he must have an interview with Maggie, and entreat
her to confide in him; then, again, he distrusted his own interference.
Had he not been thrusting himself on Maggie all along? She had uttered
words long ago in her young ignorance; it was enough to make her hate
him that these should be continually present with her as a bond. And
had he any right to ask her for a revelation of feelings which she had
evidently intended to withhold from him? He would not trust himself to
see her, till he had assured himself that he could act from pure
anxiety for her, and not from egoistic irritation. He wrote a brief
note to Stephen, and sent it early by the servant, saying that he was
not well enough to fulfil his engagement to Miss Deane. Would Stephen
take his excuse, and fill his place?
Lucy had arranged a charming plan, which had made her quite content
with Stephen’s refusal to go in the boat. She discovered that her
father was to drive to Lindum this morning at ten; Lindum was the very
place she wanted to go to, to make purchases,—important purchases,