The Mill on the Floss
“Come in, my child,” Mrs Tulliver whispered. “He’ll let you stay and
sleep in my bed. He won’t deny that if I ask him.”
“No, mother,” said Maggie, in a low tone, like a moan. “I will never go
in.”
“Then wait for me outside. I’ll get ready and come with you.”
When his mother appeared with her bonnet on, Tom came out to her in the
passage, and put money into her hands.
“My house is yours, mother, always,” he said. “You will come and let me
know everything you want; you will come back to me.”
Poor Mrs Tulliver took the money, too frightened to say anything. The
only thing clear to her was the mother’s instinct that she would go
with her unhappy child.
Maggie was waiting outside the gate; she took her mother’s hand and
they walked a little way in silence.
“Mother,” said Maggie, at last, “we will go to Luke’s cottage. Luke
will take me in. He was very good to me when I was a little girl.”
“He’s got no room for us, my dear, now; his wife’s got so many
children. I don’t know where to go, if it isn’t to one o’ your aunts;
and I hardly durst,” said poor Mrs Tulliver, quite destitute of mental
resources in this extremity.
Maggie was silent a little while, and then said,—
“Let us go to Bob Jakin’s, mother; his wife will have room for us, if
they have no other lodger.”
So they went on their way to St Ogg’s, to the old house by the
river-side.
Bob himself was at home, with a heaviness at heart which resisted even
the new joy and pride of possessing a two-months’-old baby, quite the
liveliest of its age that had ever been born to prince or packman. He
would perhaps not so thoroughly have understood all the dubiousness of
Maggie’s appearance with Mr Stephen Guest on the quay at Mudport if he
had not witnessed the effect it produced on Tom when he went to report
it; and since then, the circumstances which in any case gave a
disastrous character to her elopement had passed beyond the more polite
circles of St Ogg’s, and had become matter of common talk, accessible
to the grooms and errand-boys. So that when he opened the door and saw
Maggie standing before him in her sorrow and weariness, he had no
questions to ask except one which he dared only ask himself,—where was
Mr Stephen Guest? Bob, for his part, hoped he might be in the warmest
department of an asylum understood to exist in the other world for
gentlemen who are likely to be in fallen circumstances there.
The lodgings were vacant, and both Mrs Jakin the larger and Mrs Jakin
the less were commanded to make all things comfortable for “the old
Missis and the young Miss”; alas that she was still “Miss!” The
ingenious Bob was sorely perplexed as to how this result could have
come about; how Mr Stephen Guest could have gone away from her, or
could have let her go away from him, when he had the chance of keeping
her with him. But he was silent, and would not allow his wife to ask
him a question; would not present himself in the room, lest it should
appear like intrusion and a wish to pry; having the same chivalry
toward dark-eyed Maggie as in the days when he had bought her the
memorable present of books.
But after a day or two Mrs Tulliver was gone to the Mill again for a
few hours to see to Tom’s household matters. Maggie had wished this;
after the first violent outburst of feeling which came as soon as she
had no longer any active purpose to fulfil, she was less in need of her
mother’s presence; she even desired to be alone with her grief. But she
had been solitary only a little while in the old sitting-room that
looked on the river, when there came a tap at the door, and turning
round her sad face as she said “Come in,” she saw Bob enter, with the
baby in his arms and Mumps at his heels.
“We’ll go back, if it disturbs you, Miss,” said Bob.
“No,” said Maggie, in a low voice, wishing she could smile.
Bob, closing the door behind him, came and stood before her.
“You see, we’ve got a little un, Miss, and I want’d you to look at it,
and take it in your arms, if you’d be so good. For we made free to name
it after you, and it ’ud be better for your takin’ a bit o’ notice on
it.”
Maggie could not speak, but she put out her arms to receive the tiny
baby, while Mumps snuffed at it anxiously, to ascertain that this
transference was all right. Maggie’s heart had swelled at this action
and speech of Bob’s; she knew well enough that it was a way he had
chosen to show his sympathy and respect.
“Sit down, Bob,” she said presently, and he sat down in silence,
finding his tongue unmanageable in quite a new fashion, refusing to say
what he wanted it to say.
“Bob,” she said, after a few moments, looking down at the baby, and
holding it anxiously, as if she feared it might slip from her mind and
her fingers, “I have a favour to ask of you.”
“Don’t you speak so, Miss,” said Bob, grasping the skin of Mumps’s
neck; “if there’s anything I can do for you, I should look upon it as a
day’s earnings.”
“I want you to go to Dr Kenn’s, and ask to speak to him, and tell him
that I am here, and should be very grateful if he would come to me
while my mother is away. She will not come back till evening.”
“Eh, Miss, I’d do it in a minute,—it is but a step,—but Dr Kenn’s wife
lies dead; she’s to be buried to-morrow; died the day I come from
Mudport. It’s all the more pity she should ha’ died just now, if you
want him. I hardly like to go a-nigh him yet.”
“Oh no, Bob,” said Maggie, “we must let it be,—till after a few days,
perhaps, when you hear that he is going about again. But perhaps he may
be going out of town—to a distance,” she added, with a new sense of
despondency at this idea.
“Not he, Miss,” said Bob. “_He’ll_ none go away. He isn’t one o’ them
gentlefolks as go to cry at waterin’-places when their wives die; he’s
got summat else to do. He looks fine and sharp after the parish, he
does. He christened the little un; an’ he was _at_ me to know what I
did of a Sunday, as I didn’t come to church. But I told him I was upo’
the travel three parts o’ the Sundays,—an’ then I’m so used to bein’ on
my legs, I can’t sit so long on end,—‘an’ lors, sir,’ says I, ‘a
packman can do wi’ a small ’lowance o’ church; it tastes strong,’ says
I; ‘there’s no call to lay it on thick.’ Eh, Miss, how good the little
un is wi’ you! It’s like as if it knowed you; it partly does, I’ll be
bound,—like the birds know the mornin’.”
Bob’s tongue was now evidently loosed from its unwonted bondage, and
might even be in danger of doing more work than was required of it. But
the subjects on which he longed to be informed were so steep and
difficult of approach, that his tongue was likely to run on along the
level rather than to carry him on that unbeaten road. He felt this, and
was silent again for a little while, ruminating much on the possible
forms in which he might put a question. At last he said, in a more
timid voice than usual,—
“Will you give me leave to ask you only one thing, Miss?”
Maggie was rather startled, but she answered, “Yes, Bob, if it is about
myself—not about any one else.”
“Well, Miss, it’s this. _Do_ you owe anybody a grudge?”
“No, not any one,” said Maggie, looking up at him inquiringly. “Why?”
“Oh, lors, Miss,” said Bob, pinching Mumps’s neck harder than ever. “I
wish you did, an’ tell me; I’d leather him till I couldn’t see—I
would—an’ the Justice might do what he liked to me arter.”
“Oh, Bob,” said Maggie, smiling faintly, “you’re a very good friend to
me. But I shouldn’t like to punish any one, even if they’d done me
wrong; I’ve done wrong myself too often.”
This view of things was puzzling to Bob, and threw more obscurity than
ever over what could possibly have happened between Stephen and Maggie.
But further questions would have been too intrusive, even if he could
have framed them suitably, and he was obliged to carry baby away again
to an expectant mother.
“Happen you’d like Mumps for company, Miss,” he said when he had taken
the baby again. “He’s rare company, Mumps is; he knows iverything, an’
makes no bother about it. If I tell him, he’ll lie before you an’ watch
you, as still,—just as he watches my pack. You’d better let me leave
him a bit; he’ll get fond on you. Lors, it’s a fine thing to hev a dumb
brute fond on you; it’ll stick to you, an’ make no jaw.”
“Yes, do leave him, please,” said Maggie. “I think I should like to
have Mumps for a friend.”
“Mumps, lie down there,” said Bob, pointing to a place in front of
Maggie, “and niver do you stir till you’re spoke to.”
Mumps lay down at once, and made no sign of restlessness when his
master left the room.
Chapter II.
St Ogg’s Passes Judgment
It was soon known throughout St Ogg’s that Miss Tulliver was come back;
she had not, then, eloped in order to be married to Mr Stephen
Guest,—at all events, Mr Stephen Guest had not married her; which came
to the same thing, so far as her culpability was concerned. We judge
others according to results; how else?—not knowing the process by which
results are arrived at. If Miss Tulliver, after a few months of
well-chosen travel, had returned as Mrs Stephen Guest, with a
post-marital _trousseau_, and all the advantages possessed even by the
most unwelcome wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St Ogg’s,
as else where, always knew what to think, would have judged in strict
consistency with those results. Public opinion, in these cases, is
always of the feminine gender,—not the world, but the world’s wife; and
she would have seen that two handsome young people—the gentleman of
quite the first family in St Ogg’s—having found themselves in a false
position, had been led into a course which, to say the least of it, was
highly injudicious, and productive of sad pain and disappointment,
especially to that sweet young thing, Miss Deane. Mr Stephen Guest had
certainly not behaved well; but then, young men were liable to those
sudden infatuated attachments; and bad as it might seem in Mrs Stephen
Guest to admit the faintest advances from her cousin’s lover (indeed it
_had_ been said that she was actually engaged to young Wakem,—old Wakem
himself had mentioned it), still, she was very young,—“and a deformed
young man, you know!—and young Guest so very fascinating; and, they
say, he positively worships her (to be sure, that can’t last!), and he
ran away with her in the boat quite against her will, and what could
she do? She couldn’t come back then; no one would have spoken to her;
and how very well that maize-coloured satinette becomes her complexion!
It seems as if the folds in front were quite come in; several of her
dresses are made so,—they say he thinks nothing too handsome to buy for
her. Poor Miss Deane! She is very pitiable; but then there was no
positive engagement; and the air at the coast will do her good. After
all, if young Guest felt no more for her than _that_ it was better for
her not to marry him. What a wonderful marriage for a girl like Miss
Tulliver,—quite romantic? Why, young Guest will put up for the borough
at the next election. Nothing like commerce nowadays! That young Wakem
nearly went out of his mind; he always _was_ rather queer; but he’s
gone abroad again to be out of the way,—quite the best thing for a
deformed young man. Miss Unit declares she will never visit Mr and Mrs
Stephen Guest,—such nonsense! pretending to be better than other
people. Society couldn’t be carried on if we inquired into private
conduct in that way,—and Christianity tells us to think no evil,—and my
belief is, that Miss Unit had no cards sent her.”
But the results, we know, were not of a kind to warrant this
extenuation of the past. Maggie had returned without a _trousseau_,
without a husband,—in that degraded and outcast condition to which
error is well known to lead; and the world’s wife, with that fine