The Mill on the Floss
which must by no means be put off to another opportunity; and aunt
Tulliver must go too, because she was concerned in some of the
purchases.
“You will have your row in the boat just the same, you know,” she said
to Maggie when they went out of the breakfast-room and upstairs
together; “Philip will be here at half-past ten, and it is a delicious
morning. Now don’t say a word against it, you dear dolorous thing. What
is the use of my being a fairy godmother, if you set your face against
all the wonders I work for you? Don’t think of awful cousin Tom; you
may disobey him a little.”
Maggie did not persist in objecting. She was almost glad of the plan,
for perhaps it would bring her some strength and calmness to be alone
with Philip again; it was like revisiting the scene of a quieter life,
in which the very struggles were repose, compared with the daily tumult
of the present. She prepared herself for the boat and at half-past ten
sat waiting in the drawing-room.
The ring of the door-bell was punctual, and she was thinking with
half-sad, affectionate pleasure of the surprise Philip would have in
finding that he was to be with her alone, when she distinguished a
firm, rapid step across the hall, that was certainly not Philip’s; the
door opened, and Stephen Guest entered.
In the first moment they were both too much agitated to speak; for
Stephen had learned from the servant that the others were gone out.
Maggie had started up and sat down again, with her heart beating
violently; and Stephen, throwing down his cap and gloves, came and sat
by her in silence. She thought Philip would be coming soon; and with
great effort—for she trembled visibly—she rose to go to a distant
chair.
“He is not coming,” said Stephen, in a low tone. “I am going in the
boat.”
“Oh, we can’t go,” said Maggie, sinking into her chair again. “Lucy did
not expect—she would be hurt. Why is not Philip come?”
“He is not well; he asked me to come instead.”
“Lucy is gone to Lindum,” said Maggie, taking off her bonnet with
hurried, trembling fingers. “We must not go.”
“Very well,” said Stephen, dreamily, looking at her, as he rested his
arm on the back of his chair. “Then we’ll stay here.”
He was looking into her deep, deep eyes, far off and mysterious as the
starlit blackness, and yet very near, and timidly loving. Maggie sat
perfectly still—perhaps for moments, perhaps for minutes—until the
helpless trembling had ceased, and there was a warm glow on her check.
“The man is waiting; he has taken the cushions,” she said. “Will you go
and tell him?”
“What shall I tell him?” said Stephen, almost in a whisper. He was
looking at the lips now.
Maggie made no answer.
“Let us go,” Stephen murmured entreatingly, rising, and taking her hand
to raise her too. “We shall not be long together.”
And they went. Maggie felt that she was being led down the garden among
the roses, being helped with firm, tender care into the boat, having
the cushion and cloak arranged for her feet, and her parasol opened for
her (which she had forgotten), all by this stronger presence that
seemed to bear her along without any act of her own will, like the
added self which comes with the sudden exalting influence of a strong
tonic, and she felt nothing else. Memory was excluded.
They glided rapidly along, Stephen rowing, helped by the
backward-flowing tide, past the Tofton trees and houses; on between the
silent sunny fields and pastures, which seemed filled with a natural
joy that had no reproach for theirs. The breath of the young, unwearied
day, the delicious rhythmic dip of the oars, the fragmentary song of a
passing bird heard now and then, as if it were only the overflowing of
brimful gladness, the sweet solitude of a twofold consciousness that
was mingled into one by that grave, untiring gaze which need not be
averted,—what else could there be in their minds for the first hour?
Some low, subdued, languid exclamation of love came from Stephen from
time to time, as he went on rowing idly, half automatically; otherwise
they spoke no word; for what could words have been but an inlet to
thought? and thought did not belong to that enchanted haze in which
they were enveloped,—it belonged to the past and the future that lay
outside the haze. Maggie was only dimly conscious of the banks, as they
passed them, and dwelt with no recognition on the villages; she knew
there were several to be passed before they reached Luckreth, where
they always stopped and left the boat. At all times she was so liable
to fits of absence, that she was likely enough to let her waymarks pass
unnoticed.
But at last Stephen, who had been rowing more and more idly, ceased to
row, laid down the oars, folded his arms, and looked down on the water
as if watching the pace at which the boat glided without his help. This
sudden change roused Maggie. She looked at the far-stretching fields,
at the banks close by, and felt that they were entirely strange to her.
A terrible alarm took possession of her.
“Oh, have we passed Luckreth, where we were to stop?” she exclaimed,
looking back to see if the place were out of sight. No village was to
be seen. She turned around again, with a look of distressed questioning
at Stephen.
He went on watching the water, and said, in a strange, dreamy, absent
tone, “Yes, a long way.”
“Oh, what shall I do?” cried Maggie, in an agony. “We shall not get
home for hours, and Lucy? O God, help me!”
She clasped her hands and broke into a sob, like a frightened child;
she thought of nothing but of meeting Lucy, and seeing her look of
pained surprise and doubt, perhaps of just upbraiding.
Stephen moved and sat near her, and gently drew down the clasped hands.
“Maggie,” he said, in a deep tone of slow decision, “let us never go
home again, till no one can part us,—till we are married.”
The unusual tone, the startling words, arrested Maggie’s sob, and she
sat quite still, wondering; as if Stephen might have seen some
possibilities that would alter everything, and annul the wretched
facts.
“See, Maggie, how everything has come without our seeking,—in spite of
all our efforts. We never thought of being alone together again; it has
all been done by others. See how the tide is carrying us out, away from
all those unnatural bonds that we have been trying to make faster round
us, and trying in vain. It will carry us on to Torby, and we can land
there, and get some carriage, and hurry on to York and then to
Scotland,—and never pause a moment till we are bound to each other, so
that only death can part us. It is the only right thing, dearest; it is
the only way of escaping from this wretched entanglement. Everything
has concurred to point it out to us. We have contrived nothing, we have
thought of nothing ourselves.”
Stephen spoke with deep, earnest pleading. Maggie listened, passing
from her startled wonderment to the yearning after that belief that the
tide was doing it all, that she might glide along with the swift,
silent stream, and not struggle any more. But across that stealing
influence came the terrible shadow of past thoughts; and the sudden
horror lest now, at last, the moment of fatal intoxication was close
upon her, called up feelings of angry resistance toward Stephen.
“Let me go!” she said, in an agitated tone, flashing an indignant look
at him, and trying to get her hands free. “You have wanted to deprive
me of any choice. You knew we were come too far; you have dared to take
advantage of my thoughtlessness. It is unmanly to bring me into such a
position.”
Stung by this reproach, he released her hands, moved back to his former
place, and folded his arms, in a sort of desperation at the difficulty
Maggie’s words had made present to him. If she would not consent to go
on, he must curse himself for the embarrassment he had led her into.
But the reproach was the unendurable thing; the one thing worse than
parting with her was, that she should feel he had acted unworthily
toward her. At last he said, in a tone of suppressed rage,—
“I didn’t notice that we had passed Luckreth till we had got to the
next village; and then it came into my mind that we would go on. I
can’t justify it; I ought to have told you. It is enough to make you
hate me, since you don’t love me well enough to make everything else
indifferent to you, as I do you. Shall I stop the boat and try to get
you out here? I’ll tell Lucy that I was mad, and that you hate me; and
you shall be clear of me forever. No one can blame you, because I have
behaved unpardonably to you.”
Maggie was paralyzed; it was easier to resist Stephen’s pleading than
this picture he had called up of himself suffering while she was
vindicated; easier even to turn away from his look of tenderness than
from this look of angry misery, that seemed to place her in selfish
isolation from him. He had called up a state of feeling in which the
reasons which had acted on her conscience seemed to be transmitted into
mere self-regard. The indignant fire in her eyes was quenched, and she
began to look at him with timid distress. She had reproached him for
being hurried into irrevocable trespass,—she, who had been so weak
herself.
“As if I shouldn’t feel what happened to you—just the same,” she said,
with reproach of another kind,—the reproach of love, asking for more
trust. This yielding to the idea of Stephen’s suffering was more fatal
than the other yielding, because it was less distinguishable from that
sense of others’ claims which was the moral basis of her resistance.
He felt all the relenting in her look and tone; it was heaven opening
again. He moved to her side, and took her hand, leaning his elbow on
the back of the boat, and saying nothing. He dreaded to utter another
word, he dreaded to make another movement, that might provoke another
reproach or denial from her. Life hung on her consent; everything else
was hopeless, confused, sickening misery. They glided along in this
way, both resting in that silence as in a haven, both dreading lest
their feelings should be divided again,—till they became aware that the
clouds had gathered, and that the slightest perceptible freshening of
the breeze was growing and growing, so that the whole character of the
day was altered.
“You will be chill, Maggie, in this thin dress. Let me raise the cloak
over your shoulders. Get up an instant, dearest.”
Maggie obeyed; there was an unspeakable charm in being told what to do,
and having everything decided for her. She sat down again covered with
the cloak, and Stephen took to his oars again, making haste; for they
must try to get to Torby as fast as they could. Maggie was hardly
conscious of having said or done anything decisive. All yielding is
attended with a less vivid consciousness than resistance; it is the
partial sleep of thought; it is the submergence of our own personality
by another. Every influence tended to lull her into acquiescence. That
dreamy gliding in the boat which had lasted for four hours, and had
brought some weariness and exhaustion; the recoil of her fatigued
sensations from the impracticable difficulty of getting out of the boat
at this unknown distance from home, and walking for long miles,—all
helped to bring her into more complete subjection to that strong,
mysterious charm which made a last parting from Stephen seem the death
of all joy, and made the thought of wounding him like the first touch
of the torturing iron before which resolution shrank. And then there
was the present happiness of being with him, which was enough to absorb
all her languid energy.
Presently Stephen observed a vessel coming after them. Several vessels,
among them the steamer to Mudport, had passed them with the early tide,
but for the last hour they had seen none. He looked more and more