The Mill on the Floss
should become more settled. In the counties higher up the Floss the
rains had been continuous, and the completion of the harvest had been
arrested. And now, for the last two days, the rains on this lower
course of the river had been incessant, so that the old men had shaken
their heads and talked of sixty years ago, when the same sort of
weather, happening about the equinox, brought on the great floods,
which swept the bridge away, and reduced the town to great misery. But
the younger generation, who had seen several small floods, thought
lightly of these sombre recollections and forebodings; and Bob Jakin,
naturally prone to take a hopeful view of his own luck, laughed at his
mother when she regretted their having taken a house by the riverside,
observing that but for that they would have had no boats, which were
the most lucky of possessions in case of a flood that obliged them to
go to a distance for food.
But the careless and the fearful were alike sleeping in their beds now.
There was hope that the rain would abate by the morrow; threatenings of
a worse kind, from sudden thaws after falls of snow, had often passed
off, in the experience of the younger ones; and at the very worst, the
banks would be sure to break lower down the river when the tide came in
with violence, and so the waters would be carried off, without causing
more than temporary inconvenience, and losses that would be felt only
by the poorer sort, whom charity would relieve.
All were in their beds now, for it was past midnight; all except some
solitary watchers such as Maggie. She was seated in her little parlour
toward the river, with one candle, that left everything dim in the room
except a letter which lay before her on the table. That letter, which
had come to her to-day, was one of the causes that had kept her up far
on into the night, unconscious how the hours were going, careless of
seeking rest, with no image of rest coming across her mind, except of
that far, far off rest from which there would be no more waking for her
into this struggling earthly life.
Two days before Maggie received that letter, she had been to the
Rectory for the last time. The heavy rain would have prevented her from
going since; but there was another reason. Dr Kenn, at first
enlightened only by a few hints as to the new turn which gossip and
slander had taken in relation to Maggie, had recently been made more
fully aware of it by an earnest remonstrance from one of his male
parishioners against the indiscretion of persisting in the attempt to
overcome the prevalent feeling in the parish by a course of resistance.
Dr Kenn, having a conscience void of offence in the matter, was still
inclined to persevere,—was still averse to give way before a public
sentiment that was odious and contemptible; but he was finally wrought
upon by the consideration of the peculiar responsibility attached to
his office, of avoiding the appearance of evil,—an “appearance” that is
always dependent on the average quality of surrounding minds. Where
these minds are low and gross, the area of that “appearance” is
proportionately widened. Perhaps he was in danger of acting from
obstinacy; perhaps it was his duty to succumb. Conscientious people are
apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course; and to
recede was always painful to Dr Kenn. He made up his mind that he must
advise Maggie to go away from St Ogg’s for a time; and he performed
that difficult task with as much delicacy as he could, only stating in
vague terms that he found his attempt to countenance her stay was a
source of discord between himself and his parishioners, that was likely
to obstruct his usefulness as a clergyman. He begged her to allow him
to write to a clerical friend of his, who might possibly take her into
his own family as governess; and, if not, would probably know of some
other available position for a young woman in whose welfare Dr Kenn
felt a strong interest.
Poor Maggie listened with a trembling lip; she could say nothing but a
faint “Thank you, I shall be grateful”; and she walked back to her
lodgings, through the driving rain, with a new sense of desolation. She
must be a lonely wanderer; she must go out among fresh faces, that
would look at her wonderingly, because the days did not seem joyful to
her; she must begin a new life, in which she would have to rouse
herself to receive new impressions; and she was so unspeakably,
sickeningly weary! There was no home, no help for the erring; even
those who pitied were constrained to hardness. But ought she to
complain? Ought she to shrink in this way from the long penance of
life, which was all the possibility she had of lightening the load to
some other sufferers, and so changing that passionate error into a new
force of unselfish human love? All the next day she sat in her lonely
room, with a window darkened by the cloud and the driving rain,
thinking of that future, and wrestling for patience; for what repose
could poor Maggie ever win except by wrestling?
And on the third day—this day of which she had just sat out the
close—the letter had come which was lying on the table before her.
The letter was from Stephen. He was come back from Holland; he was at
Mudport again, unknown to any of his friends, and had written to her
from that place, enclosing the letter to a person whom he trusted in St
Ogg’s. From beginning to end it was a passionate cry of reproach; an
appeal against her useless sacrifice of him, of herself, against that
perverted notion of right which led her to crush all his hopes, for the
sake of a mere idea, and not any substantial good,—_his_ hopes, whom
she loved, and who loved her with that single overpowering passion,
that worship, which a man never gives to a woman more than once in his
life.
“They have written to me that you are to marry Kenn. As if I should
believe that! Perhaps they have told you some such fables about me.
Perhaps they tell you I’ve been ‘travelling.’ My body has been dragged
about somewhere; but _I_ have never travelled from the hideous place
where you left me; where I started up from the stupor of helpless rage
to find you gone.
“Maggie! whose pain can have been like mine? Whose injury is like mine?
Who besides me has met that long look of love that has burnt itself
into my soul, so that no other image can come there? Maggie, call me
back to you! Call me back to life and goodness! I am banished from both
now. I have no motives; I am indifferent to everything. Two months have
only deepened the certainty that I can never care for life without you.
Write me one word; say ‘Come!’ In two days I should be with you.
Maggie, have you forgotten what it was to be together,—to be within
reach of a look, to be within hearing of each other’s voice?”
When Maggie first read this letter she felt as if her real temptation
had only just begun. At the entrance of the chill dark cavern, we turn
with unworn courage from the warm light; but how, when we have trodden
far in the damp darkness, and have begun to be faint and weary; how, if
there is a sudden opening above us, and we are invited back again to
the life-nourishing day? The leap of natural longing from under the
pressure of pain is so strong, that all less immediate motives are
likely to be forgotten—till the pain has been escaped from.
For hours Maggie felt as if her struggle had been in vain. For hours
every other thought that she strove to summon was thrust aside by the
image of Stephen waiting for the single word that would bring him to
her. She did not _read_ the letter: she heard him uttering it, and the
voice shook her with its old strange power. All the day before she had
been filled with the vision of a lonely future through which she must
carry the burthen of regret, upheld only by clinging faith. And here,
close within her reach, urging itself upon her even as a claim, was
another future, in which hard endurance and effort were to be exchanged
for easy, delicious leaning on another’s loving strength! And yet that
promise of joy in the place of sadness did not make the dire force of
the temptation to Maggie.
It was Stephen’s tone of misery, it was the doubt in the justice of her
own resolve, that made the balance tremble, and made her once start
from her seat to reach the pen and paper, and write “Come!”
But close upon that decisive act, her mind recoiled; and the sense of
contradiction with her past self in her moments of strength and
clearness came upon her like a pang of conscious degradation. No, she
must wait; she must pray; the light that had forsaken her would come
again; she should feel again what she had felt when she had fled away,
under an inspiration strong enough to conquer agony,—to conquer love;
she should feel again what she had felt when Lucy stood by her, when
Philip’s letter had stirred all the fibres that bound her to the calmer
past.
She sat quite still, far on into the night, with no impulse to change
her attitude, without active force enough even for the mental act of
prayer; only waiting for the light that would surely come again. It
came with the memories that no passion could long quench; the long past
came back to her, and with it the fountains of self-renouncing pity and
affection, of faithfulness and resolve. The words that were marked by
the quiet hand in the little old book that she had long ago learned by
heart, rushed even to her lips, and found a vent for themselves in a
low murmur that was quite lost in the loud driving of the rain against
the window and the loud moan and roar of the wind. “I have received the
Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear it
till death, as Thou hast laid it upon me.”
But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a
sob,—“Forgive me, Stephen! It will pass away. You will come back to
her.”
She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it burn slowly
on the hearth. To-morrow she would write to him the last word of
parting.
“I will bear it, and bear it till death. But how long it will be before
death comes! I am so young, so healthy. How shall I have patience and
strength? Am I to struggle and fall and repent again? Has life other
trials as hard for me still?”
With that cry of self-despair, Maggie fell on her knees against the
table, and buried her sorrow-stricken face. Her soul went out to the
Unseen Pity that would be with her to the end. Surely there was
something being taught her by this experience of great need; and she
must be learning a secret of human tenderness and long-suffering, that
the less erring could hardly know? “O God, if my life is to be long,
let me live to bless and comfort——”
At that moment Maggie felt a startling sensation of sudden cold about
her knees and feet; it was water flowing under her. She started up; the
stream was flowing under the door that led into the passage. She was
not bewildered for an instant; she knew it was the flood!
The tumult of emotion she had been enduring for the last twelve hours
seemed to have left a great calm in her; without screaming, she hurried
with the candle upstairs to Bob Jakin’s bedroom. The door was ajar; she
went in and shook him by the shoulder.
“Bob, the flood is come! it is in the house; let us see if we can make
the boats safe.”
She lighted his candle, while the poor wife, snatching up her baby,
burst into screams; and then she hurried down again to see if the
waters were rising fast. There was a step down into the room at the
door leading from the staircase; she saw that the water was already on
a level with the step. While she was looking, something came with a
tremendous crash against the window, and sent the leaded panes and the
old wooden framework inward in shivers, the water pouring in after it.