The Mill on the Floss
on the vessel,—it was not like being on the open sea, it was only a
little less pleasant than being in a boat on the Floss. But a
suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes, and Stephen became
more and more uneasy as the day advanced, under the sense that Maggie
had entirely lost her passiveness. He longed, but did not dare, to
speak of their marriage, of where they would go after it, and the steps
he would take to inform his father, and the rest, of what had happened.
He longed to assure himself of a tacit assent from her. But each time
he looked at her, he gathered a stronger dread of the new, quiet
sadness with which she met his eyes. And they were more and more
silent.
“Here we are in sight of Mudport,” he said at last. “Now, dearest,” he
added, turning toward her with a look that was half beseeching, “the
worst part of your fatigue is over. On the land we can command
swiftness. In another hour and a half we shall be in a chaise together,
and that will seem rest to you after this.”
Maggie felt it was time to speak; it would only be unkind now to assent
by silence. She spoke in the lowest tone, as he had done, but with
distinct decision.
“We shall not be together; we shall have parted.”
The blood rushed to Stephen’s face.
“We shall not,” he said. “I’ll die first.”
It was as he had dreaded—there was a struggle coming. But neither of
them dared to say another word till the boat was let down, and they
were taken to the landing-place. Here there was a cluster of gazers and
passengers awaiting the departure of the steamboat to St Ogg’s. Maggie
had a dim sense, when she had landed, and Stephen was hurrying her
along on his arm, that some one had advanced toward her from that
cluster as if he were coming to speak to her. But she was hurried
along, and was indifferent to everything but the coming trial.
A porter guided them to the nearest inn and posting-house, and Stephen
gave the order for the chaise as they passed through the yard. Maggie
took no notice of this, and only said, “Ask them to show us into a room
where we can sit down.”
When they entered, Maggie did not sit down, and Stephen, whose face had
a desperate determination in it, was about to ring the bell, when she
said, in a firm voice,—
“I’m not going; we must part here.”
“Maggie,” he said, turning round toward her, and speaking in the tones
of a man who feels a process of torture beginning, “do you mean to kill
me? What is the use of it now? The whole thing is done.”
“No, it is not done,” said Maggie. “Too much is done,—more than we can
ever remove the trace of. But I will go no farther. Don’t try to
prevail with me again. I couldn’t choose yesterday.”
What was he to do? He dared not go near her; her anger might leap out,
and make a new barrier. He walked backward and forward in maddening
perplexity.
“Maggie,” he said at last, pausing before her, and speaking in a tone
of imploring wretchedness, “have some pity—hear me—forgive me for what
I did yesterday. I will obey you now; I will do nothing without your
full consent. But don’t blight our lives forever by a rash perversity
that can answer no good purpose to any one, that can only create new
evils. Sit down, dearest; wait—think what you are going to do. Don’t
treat me as if you couldn’t trust me.”
He had chosen the most effective appeal; but Maggie’s will was fixed
unswervingly on the coming wrench. She had made up her mind to suffer.
“We must not wait,” she said, in a low but distinct voice; “we must
part at once.”
“We _can’t_ part, Maggie,” said Stephen, more impetuously. “I can’t
bear it. What is the use of inflicting that misery on me? The
blow—whatever it may have been—has been struck now. Will it help any
one else that you should drive me mad?”
“I will not begin any future, even for you,” said Maggie, tremulously,
“with a deliberate consent to what ought not to have been. What I told
you at Basset I feel now; I would rather have died than fall into this
temptation. It would have been better if we had parted forever then.
But we must part now.”
“We will _not_ part,” Stephen burst out, instinctively placing his back
against the door, forgetting everything he had said a few moments
before; “I will not endure it. You’ll make me desperate; I sha’n’t know
what I do.”
Maggie trembled. She felt that the parting could not be effected
suddenly. She must rely on a slower appeal to Stephen’s better self;
she must be prepared for a harder task than that of rushing away while
resolution was fresh. She sat down. Stephen, watching her with that
look of desperation which had come over him like a lurid light,
approached slowly from the door, seated himself close beside her, and
grasped her hand. Her heart beat like the heart of a frightened bird;
but this direct opposition helped her. She felt her determination
growing stronger.
“Remember what you felt weeks ago,” she began, with beseeching
earnestness; “remember what we both felt,—that we owed ourselves to
others, and must conquer every inclination which could make us false to
that debt. We have failed to keep our resolutions; but the wrong
remains the same.”
“No, it does _not_ remain the same,” said Stephen. “We have proved that
it was impossible to keep our resolutions. We have proved that the
feeling which draws us toward each other is too strong to be overcome.
That natural law surmounts every other; we can’t help what it clashes
with.”
“It is not so, Stephen; I’m quite sure that is wrong. I have tried to
think it again and again; but I see, if we judged in that way, there
would be a warrant for all treachery and cruelty; we should justify
breaking the most sacred ties that can ever be formed on earth. If the
past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but
the inclination of the moment.”
“But there are ties that can’t be kept by mere resolution,” said
Stephen, starting up and walking about again. “What is outward
faithfulness? Would they have thanked us for anything so hollow as
constancy without love?”
Maggie did not answer immediately. She was undergoing an inward as well
as an outward contest. At last she said, with a passionate assertion of
her conviction, as much against herself as against him,—
“That seems right—at first; but when I look further, I’m sure it is
_not_ right. Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides
doing what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean
renouncing whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in
us,—whatever would cause misery to those whom the course of our lives
has made dependent on us. If we—if I had been better, nobler, those
claims would have been so strongly present with me,—I should have felt
them pressing on my heart so continually, just as they do now in the
moments when my conscience is awake,—that the opposite feeling would
never have grown in me, as it has done; it would have been quenched at
once, I should have prayed for help so earnestly, I should have rushed
away as we rush from hideous danger. I feel no excuse for myself, none.
I should never have failed toward Lucy and Philip as I have done, if I
had not been weak, selfish, and hard,—able to think of their pain
without a pain to myself that would have destroyed all temptation. Oh,
what is Lucy feeling now? She believed in me—she loved me—she was so
good to me. Think of her——”
Maggie’s voice was getting choked as she uttered these last words.
“I _can’t_ think of her,” said Stephen, stamping as if with pain. “I
can think of nothing but you, Maggie. You demand of a man what is
impossible. I felt that once; but I can’t go back to it now. And where
is the use of _your_ thinking of it, except to torture me? You can’t
save them from pain now; you can only tear yourself from me, and make
my life worthless to me. And even if we could go back, and both fulfil
our engagements,—if that were possible now,—it would be hateful,
horrible, to think of your ever being Philip’s wife,—of your ever being
the wife of a man you didn’t love. We have both been rescued from a
mistake.”
A deep flush came over Maggie’s face, and she couldn’t speak. Stephen
saw this. He sat down again, taking her hand in his, and looking at her
with passionate entreaty.
“Maggie! Dearest! If you love me, you are mine. Who can have so great a
claim on you as I have? My life is bound up in your love. There is
nothing in the past that can annul our right to each other; it is the
first time we have either of us loved with our whole heart and soul.”
Maggie was still silent for a little while, looking down. Stephen was
in a flutter of new hope; he was going to triumph. But she raised her
eyes and met his with a glance that was filled with the anguish of
regret, not with yielding.
“No, not with my whole heart and soul, Stephen,” she said with timid
resolution. “I have never consented to it with my whole mind. There are
memories, and affections, and longings after perfect goodness, that
have such a strong hold on me; they would never quit me for long; they
would come back and be pain to me—repentance. I couldn’t live in peace
if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God. I have
caused sorrow already—I know—I feel it; but I have never deliberately
consented to it; I have never said, ‘They shall suffer, that I may have
joy.’ It has never been my will to marry you; if you were to win
consent from the momentary triumph of my feeling for you, you would not
have my whole soul. If I could wake back again into the time before
yesterday, I would choose to be true to my calmer affections, and live
without the joy of love.”
Stephen loosed her hand, and rising impatiently, walked up and down the
room in suppressed rage.
“Good God!” he burst out at last, “what a miserable thing a woman’s
love is to a man’s! I could commit crimes for you,—and you can balance
and choose in that way. But you _don’t_ love me; if you had a tithe of
the feeling for me that I have for you, it would be impossible to you
to think for a moment of sacrificing me. But it weighs nothing with you
that you are robbing me of _my_ life’s happiness.”
Maggie pressed her fingers together almost convulsively as she held
them clasped on her lap. A great terror was upon her, as if she were
ever and anon seeing where she stood by great flashes of lightning, and
then again stretched forth her hands in the darkness.
“No, I don’t sacrifice you—I couldn’t sacrifice you,” she said, as soon
as she could speak again; “but I can’t believe in a good for you, that
I feel, that we both feel, is a wrong toward others. We can’t choose
happiness either for ourselves or for another; we can’t tell where that
will lie. We can only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the
present moment, or whether we will renounce that, for the sake of
obeying the divine voice within us,—for the sake of being true to all
the motives that sanctify our lives. I know this belief is hard; it has
slipped away from me again and again; but I have felt that if I let it
go forever, I should have no light through the darkness of this life.”
“But, Maggie,” said Stephen, seating himself by her again, “is it
possible you don’t see that what happened yesterday has altered the
whole position of things? What infatuation is it, what obstinate
prepossession, that blinds you to that? It is too late to say what we
might have done or what we ought to have done. Admitting the very worst
view of what has been done, it is a fact we must act on now; our
position is altered; the right course is no longer what it was before.
We must accept our own actions and start afresh from them. Suppose we
had been married yesterday? It is nearly the same thing. The effect on
others would not have been different. It would only have made this