Bot-S: The Mill on the Floss

He seemed to be pausing over the record of his sister's birth and
marriage, as if it were suggesting new thoughts to him; then he
suddenly looked up at Tom, and said, in a sharp tone of alarm:

"They haven't come upo' Moss for the money as I lent him, have they?"

"No, father," said Tom; "the note was burnt."

Mr. Tulliver turned his eyes on the page again, and presently said:

"Ah--Elizabeth Dodson--it's eighteen year since I married her----"

"Come next Ladyday," said Mrs. Tulliver, going up to his side and
looking at the page.

Her husband fixed his eyes earnestly on her face.

"Poor Bessy," he said, "you was a pretty lass then,--everybody said
so,--and I used to think you kept your good looks rarely. But you're
sorely aged; don't you bear me ill-will--I meant to do well by you--we
promised one another for better or for worse----"

"But I never thought it 'ud be so for worse as this," said poor Mrs.
Tulliver, with the strange, scared look that had come over her of
late; "and my poor father gave me away--and to come on so all at
once----"

"Oh, mother!" said Maggie, "don't talk in that way."

"No, I know you won't let your poor mother speak--that's been the way
all my life--your father never minded what I said--it 'ud have been o'
no use for me to beg and pray--and it 'ud be no use now, not if I was
to go down o' my hands and knees----"

"Don't say so, Bessy," said Mr. Tulliver, whose pride, in these first
moments of humiliation, was in abeyance to the sense of some justice
in his wife's reproach. "It there's anything left as I could do to
make you amends, I wouldn't say you nay."

"Then we might stay here and get a living, and I might keep among my
own sisters,--and me been such a good wife to you, and never crossed
you from week's end to week's end--and they all say so--they say it
'ud be nothing but right, only you're so turned against Wakem."

"Mother," said Tom, severely, "this is not the time to talk about
that."

"Let her be," said Mr. Tulliver. "Say what you mean, Bessy."

"Why, now the mill and the land's all Wakem's, and he's got everything
in his hands, what's the use o' setting your face against him, when he
says you may stay here, and speaks as fair as can be, and says you may
manage the business, and have thirty shillings a-week, and a horse to
ride about to market? And where have we got to put our heads? We must
go into one o' the cottages in the village,--and me and my children
brought down to that,--and all because you must set your mind against
folks till there's no turning you."

Mr. Tulliver had sunk back in his chair trembling.

"You may do as you like wi' me, Bessy," he said, in a low voice; "I've
been the bringing of you to poverty--this world's too many for me--I'm
nought but a bankrupt; it's no use standing up for anything now."

"Father," said Tom, "I don't agree with my mother or my uncles, and I
don't think you ought to submit to be under Wakem. I get a pound
a-week now, and you can find something else to do when you get well."

"Say no more, Tom, say no more; I've had enough for this day. Give me
a kiss, Bessy, and let us bear one another no ill-will; we shall never
be young again--this world's been too many for me."



Chapter IX

An Item Added to the Family Register


That first moment of renunciation and submission was followed by days
of violent struggle in the miller's mind, as the gradual access of
bodily strength brought with it increasing ability to embrace in one
view all the conflicting conditions under which he found himself.
Feeble limbs easily resign themselves to be tethered, and when we are
subdued by sickness it seems possible to us to fulfil pledges which
the old vigor comes back and breaks. There were times when poor
Tulliver thought the fulfilment of his promise to Bessy was something
quite too hard for human nature; he had promised her without knowing
what she was going to say,--she might as well have asked him to carry
a ton weight on his back. But again, there were many feelings arguing
on her side, besides the sense that life had been made hard to her by
having married him. He saw a possibility, by much pinching, of saving
money out of his salary toward paying a second dividend to his
creditors, and it would not be easy elsewhere to get a situation such
as he could fill.

He had led an easy life, ordering much and working little, and had no
aptitude for any new business. He must perhaps take to day-labor, and
his wife must have help from her sisters,--a prospect doubly bitter to
him, now they had let all Bessy's precious things be sold, probably
because they liked to set her against him, by making her feel that he
had brought her to that pass. He listened to their admonitory talk,
when they came to urge on him what he was bound to do for poor Bessy's
sake, with averted eyes, that every now and then flashed on them
furtively when their backs were turned. Nothing but the dread of
needing their help could have made it an easier alternative to take
their advice.

But the strongest influence of all was the love of the old premises
where he had run about when he was a boy, just as Tom had done after
him. The Tullivers had lived on this spot for generations, and he had
sat listening on a low stool on winter evenings while his father
talked of the old half-timbered mill that had been there before the
last great floods which damaged it so that his grandfather pulled it
down and built the new one. It was when he got able to walk about and
look at all the old objects that he felt the strain of his clinging
affection for the old home as part of his life, part of himself. He
couldn't bear to think of himself living on any other spot than this,
where he knew the sound of every gate door, and felt that the shape
and color of every roof and weather-stain and broken hillock was good,
because his growing senses had been fed on them. Our instructed
vagrancy, which was hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs
away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and
banyans,--which is nourished on books of travel and stretches the
theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi,--can hardly get a dim
notion of what an old-fashioned man like Tulliver felt for this spot,
where all his memories centred, and where life seemed like a familiar
smooth-handled tool that the fingers clutch with loving ease. And just
now he was living in that freshened memory of the far-off time which
comes to us in the passive hours of recovery from sickness.

"Ay, Luke," he said one afternoon, as he stood looking over the
orchard gate, "I remember the day they planted those apple-trees. My
father was a huge man for planting,--it was like a merry-making to him
to get a cart full o' young trees; and I used to stand i' the cold
with him, and follow him about like a dog."

Then he turned round, and leaning against the gate-post, looked at the
opposite buildings.

"The old mill 'ud miss me, I think, Luke. There's a story as when the
mill changes hands, the river's angry; I've heard my father say it
many a time. There's no telling whether there mayn't be summat _in_
the story, for this is a puzzling world, and Old Harry's got a finger
in it--it's been too many for me, I know."

"Ay, sir," said Luke, with soothing sympathy, "what wi' the rust on
the wheat, an' the firin' o' the ricks an' that, as I've seen i' my
time,--things often looks comical; there's the bacon fat wi' our last
pig run away like butter,--it leaves nought but a scratchin'."

"It's just as if it was yesterday, now," Mr. Tulliver went on, "when
my father began the malting. I remember, the day they finished the
malt-house, I thought summat great was to come of it; for we'd a
plum-pudding that day and a bit of a feast, and I said to my
mother,--she was a fine dark-eyed woman, my mother was,--the little
wench 'ull be as like her as two peas." Here Mr. Tulliver put his
stick between his legs, and took out his snuff-box, for the greater
enjoyment of this anecdote, which dropped from him in fragments, as if
he every other moment lost narration in vision. "I was a little chap
no higher much than my mother's knee,--she was sore fond of us
children, Gritty and me,--and so I said to her, 'Mother,' I said,
'shall we have plum-pudding _every_ day because o' the malt-house? She
used to tell me o' that till her dying day. She was but a young woman
when she died, my mother was. But it's forty good year since they
finished the malt-house, and it isn't many days out of 'em all as I
haven't looked out into the yard there, the first thing in the
morning,--all weathers, from year's end to year's end. I should go off
my head in a new place. I should be like as if I'd lost my way. It's
all hard, whichever way I look at it,--the harness 'ull gall me, but
it 'ud be summat to draw along the old road, instead of a new un."

"Ay, sir," said Luke, "you'd be a deal better here nor in some new
place. I can't abide new places mysen: things is allays
awk'ard,--narrow-wheeled waggins, belike, and the stiles all another
sort, an' oat-cake i' some places, tow'rt th' head o' the Floss,
there. It's poor work, changing your country-side."

"But I doubt, Luke, they'll be for getting rid o' Ben, and making you
do with a lad; and I must help a bit wi' the mill. You'll have a worse
place."

"Ne'er mind, sir," said Luke, "I sha'n't plague mysen. I'n been wi'
you twenty year, an' you can't get twenty year wi' whistlin' for 'em,
no more nor you can make the trees grow: you mun wait till God
A'mighty sends 'em. I can't abide new victual nor new faces, _I_
can't,--you niver know but what they'll gripe you."

The walk was finished in silence after this, for Luke had disburthened
himself of thoughts to an extent that left his conversational
resources quite barren, and Mr. Tulliver had relapsed from his
recollections into a painful meditation on the choice of hardships
before him. Maggie noticed that he was unusually absent that evening
at tea; and afterward he sat leaning forward in his chair, looking at
the ground, moving his lips, and shaking his head from time to time.
Then he looked hard at Mrs. Tulliver, who was knitting opposite him,
then at Maggie, who, as she bent over her sewing, was intensely
conscious of some drama going forward in her father's mind. Suddenly
he took up the poker and broke the large coal fiercely.

"Dear heart, Mr. Tulliver, what can you be thinking of?" said his
wife, looking up in alarm; "it's very wasteful, breaking the coal, and
we've got hardly any large coal left, and I don't know where the rest
is to come from."

"I don't think you're quite so well to-night, are you, father?" said
Maggie; "you seem uneasy."

"Why, how is it Tom doesn't come?" said Mr. Tulliver, impatiently.

"Dear heart, is it time? I must go and get his supper," said Mrs.
Tulliver, laying down her knitting, and leaving the room.

"It's nigh upon half-past eight," said Mr. Tulliver. "He'll be here
soon. Go, go and get the big Bible, and open it at the beginning,
where everything's set down. And get the pen and ink."

Maggie obeyed, wondering; but her father gave no further orders, and
only sat listening for Tom's footfall on the gravel, apparently
irritated by the wind, which had risen, and was roaring so as to drown
all other sounds. There was a strange light in his eyes that rather
frightened Maggie; _she_ began to wish that Tom would come, too.

"There he is, then," said Mr. Tulliver, in an excited way, when the
knock came at last. Maggie went to open the door, but her mother came
out of the kitchen hurriedly, saying, "Stop a bit, Maggie; I'll open
it."

Mrs. Tulliver had begun to be a little frightened at her boy, but she
was jealous of every office others did for him.

"Your supper's ready by the kitchen-fire, my boy," she said, as he
took off his hat and coat. "You shall have it by yourself, just as you
like, and I won't speak to you."

"I think my father wants Tom, mother," said Maggie; "he must come into
the parlor first."

Tom entered with his usual saddened evening face, but his eyes fell
immediately on the open Bible and the inkstand, and he glanced with a
look of anxious surprise at his father, who was saying,--

"Come, come, you're late; I want you."

"Is there anything the matter, father?" said Tom.

"You sit down, all of you," said Mr. Tulliver, peremptorily.

"And, Tom, sit down here; I've got something for you to write i' the
Bible."

They all three sat down, looking at him. He began to speak slowly,
looking first at his wife.

"I've made up my mind, Bessy, and I'll be as good as my word to you.
There'll be the same grave made for us to lie down in, and we mustn't
be bearing one another ill-will. I'll stop in the old place, and I'll
serve under Wakem, and I'll serve him like an honest man; there's no
Tulliver but what's honest, mind that, Tom,"--here his voice
rose,--"they'll have it to throw up against me as I paid a dividend,
but it wasn't my fault; it was because there's raskills in the world.
They've been too many for me, and I must give in. I'll put my neck in
harness,--for you've a right to say as I've brought you into trouble,
Bessy,--and I'll serve him as honest as if he was no raskill; I'm an
honest man, though I shall never hold my head up no more. I'm a tree
as is broke--a tree as is broke."

He paused and looked on the ground. Then suddenly raising his head, he
said, in a louder yet deeper tone:

"But I won't forgive him! I know what they say, he never meant me any
harm. That's the way Old Harry props up the rascals. He's been at the
bottom of everything; but he's a fine gentleman,--I know, I know. I
shouldn't ha' gone to law, they say. But who made it so as there was
no arbitratin', and no justice to be got? It signifies nothing to him,
I know that; he's one o' them fine gentlemen as get money by doing
business for poorer folks, and when he's made beggars of 'em he'll
give 'em charity. I won't forgive him! I wish he might be punished
with shame till his own son 'ud like to forget him. I wish he may do
summat as they'd make him work at the treadmill! But he won't,--he's
too big a raskill to let the law lay hold on him. And you mind this,
Tom,--you never forgive him neither, if you mean to be my son.
There'll maybe come a time when you may make him feel; it'll never
come to me; I'n got my head under the yoke. Now write--write it i' the
Bible."

"Oh, father, what?" said Maggie, sinking down by his knee, pale and
trembling. "It's wicked to curse and bear malice."

"It isn't wicked, I tell you," said her father, fiercely. "It's wicked
as the raskills should prosper; it's the Devil's doing. Do as I tell
you, Tom. Write."

"What am I to write?" said Tom, with gloomy submission.

"Write as your father, Edward Tulliver, took service under John Wakem,
the man as had helped to ruin him, because I'd promised my wife to
make her what amends I could for her trouble, and because I wanted to
die in th' old place where I was born and my father was born. Put that
i' the right words--you know how--and then write, as I don't forgive
Wakem for all that; and for all I'll serve him honest, I wish evil may
befall him. Write that."

There was a dead silence as Tom's pen moved along the paper; Mrs.
Tulliver looked scared, and Maggie trembled like a leaf.

"Now let me hear what you've wrote," said Mr. Tulliver, Tom read aloud
slowly.

"Now write--write as you'll remember what Wakem's done to your father,
and you'll make him and his feel it, if ever the day comes. And sign
your name Thomas Tulliver."

"Oh no, father, dear father!" said Maggie, almost choked with fear.
"You shouldn't make Tom write that."

"Be quiet, Maggie!" said Tom. "I _shall_ write it."




Book IV

_The Valley of Humiliation_



Chapter I

A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet


Journeying down the Rhone on a summer's day, you have perhaps felt the
sunshine made dreary by those ruined villages which stud the banks in
certain parts of its course, telling how the swift river once rose,
like an angry, destroying god, sweeping down the feeble generations
whose breath is in their nostrils, and making their dwellings a
desolation. Strange contrast, you may have thought, between the
effect produced on us by these dismal remnants of commonplace
houses, which in their best days were but the sign of a sordid life,
belonging in all its details to our own vulgar era, and the effect
produced by those ruins on the castled Rhine, which have crumbled and
mellowed into such harmony with the green and rocky steeps that they
seem to have a natural fitness, like the mountain-pine; nay, even in
the day when they were built they must have had this fitness, as if
they had been raised by an earth-born race, who had inherited from
their mighty parent a sublime instinct of form. And that was a day of
romance; If those robber-barons were somewhat grim and drunken ogres,
they had a certain grandeur of the wild beast in them,--they were
forest boars with tusks, tearing and rending, not the ordinary
domestic grunter; they represented the demon forces forever in
collision with beauty, virtue, and the gentle uses of life; they made
a fine contrast in the picture with the wandering minstrel, the
soft-lipped princess, the pious recluse, and the timid Israelite. That
was a time of color, when the sunlight fell on glancing steel and
floating banners; a time of adventure and fierce struggle,--nay, of
living, religious art and religious enthusiasm; for were not
cathedrals built in those days, and did not great emperors leave their
Western palaces to die before the infidel strongholds in the sacred
East? Therefore it is that these Rhine castles thrill me with a sense
of poetry; they belong to the grand historic life of humanity, and
raise up for me the vision of an echo. But these dead-tinted,
hollow-eyed, angular skeletons of villages on the Rhone oppress me
with the feeling that human life--very much of it--is a narrow, ugly,
grovelling existence, which even calamity does not elevate, but rather
tends to exhibit in all its bare vulgarity of conception; and I have a
cruel conviction that the lives these ruins are the traces of were
part of a gross sum of obscure vitality, that will be swept into the
same oblivion with the generations of ants and beavers.

Perhaps something akin to this oppressive feeling may have weighed
upon you in watching this old-fashioned family life on the banks of
the Floss, which even sorrow hardly suffices to lift above the level
of the tragi-comic. It is a sordid life, you say, this of the
Tullivers and Dodsons, irradiated by no sublime principles, no
romantic visions, no active, self-renouncing faith; moved by none of
those wild, uncontrollable passions which create the dark shadows of
misery and crime; without that primitive, rough simplicity of wants,
that hard, submissive, ill-paid toil, that childlike spelling-out of
what nature has written, which gives its poetry to peasant life. Here
one has conventional worldly notions and habits without instruction
and without polish, surely the most prosaic form of human life; proud
respectability in a gig of unfashionable build; worldliness without
side-dishes. Observing these people narrowly, even when the iron hand
of misfortune has shaken them from their unquestioning hold on the
world, one sees little trace of religion, still less of a
distinctively Christian creed. Their belief in the Unseen, so far as
it manifests itself at all, seems to be rather a pagan kind; their
moral notions, though held with strong tenacity, seem to have no
standard beyond hereditary custom. You could not live among such
people; you are stifled for want of an outlet toward something
beautiful, great, or noble; you are irritated with these dull men and
women, as a kind of population out of keeping with the earth on which
they live,--with this rich plain where the great river flows forever
onward, and links the small pulse of the old English town with the
beatings of the world's mighty heart. A vigorous superstition, that
lashes its gods or lashes its own back, seems to be more congruous
with the mystery of the human lot, than the mental condition of these
emmet-like Dodsons and Tullivers.

I share with you this sense of oppressive narrowness; but it is
necessary that we should feel it, if we care to understand how it
acted on the lives of Tom and Maggie,--how it has acted on young
natures in many generations, that in the onward tendency of human
things have risen above the mental level of the generation before
them, to which they have been nevertheless tied by the strongest
fibres of their hearts. The suffering, whether of martyr or victim,
which belongs to every historical advance of mankind, is represented
in this way in every town, and by hundreds of obscure hearths; and we
need not shrink from this comparison of small things with great; for
does not science tell us that its highest striving is after the
ascertainment of a unity which shall bind the smallest things with the
greatest? In natural science, I have understood, there is nothing
petty to the mind that has a large vision of relations, and to which
every single object suggests a vast sum of conditions. It is surely
the same with the observation of human life.

Certainly the religious and moral ideas of the Dodsons and Tullivers
were of too specific a kind to be arrived at deductively, from the
statement that they were part of the Protestant population of Great
Britain. Their theory of life had its core of soundness, as all
theories must have on which decent and prosperous families have been
reared and have flourished; but it had the very slightest tincture of
theology. If, in the maiden days of the Dodson sisters, their Bibles
opened more easily at some parts than others, it was because of dried
tulip-petals, which had been distributed quite impartially, without
preference for the historical, devotional, or doctrinal. Their
religion was of a simple, semi-pagan kind, but there was no heresy in
it,--if heresy properly means choice,--for they didn't know there was
any other religion, except that of chapel-goers, which appeared to run
in families, like asthma. How _should_ they know? The vicar of their
pleasant rural parish was not a controversialist, but a good hand at
whist, and one who had a joke always ready for a blooming female
parishioner. The religion of the Dodsons consisted in revering
whatever was customary and respectable; it was necessary to be
baptized, else one could not be buried in the church-yard, and to take
the sacrament before death, as a security against more dimly
understood perils; but it was of equal necessity to have the proper
pall-bearers and well-cured hams at one's funeral, and to leave an
unimpeachable will. A Dodson would not be taxed with the omission of
anything that was becoming, or that belonged to that eternal fitness
of things which was plainly indicated in the practice of the most
substantial parishioners, and in the family traditions,--such as
obedience to parents, faithfulness to kindred, industry, rigid
honesty, thrift, the thorough scouring of wooden and copper utensils,
the hoarding of coins likely to disappear from the currency, the
production of first-rate commodities for the market, and the general
preference of whatever was home-made. The Dodsons were a very proud
race, and their pride lay in the utter frustration of all desire to
tax them with a breach of traditional duty or propriety. A wholesome
pride in many respects, since it identified honor with perfect
integrity, thoroughness of work, and faithfulness to admitted rules;
and society owes some worthy qualities in many of her members to
mothers of the Dodson class, who made their butter and their fromenty
well, and would have felt disgraced to make it otherwise. To be honest
and poor was never a Dodson motto, still less to seem rich though
being poor; rather, the family badge was to be honest and rich, and
not only rich, but richer than was supposed. To live respected, and
have the proper bearers at your funeral, was an achievement of the
ends of existence that would be entirely nullified if, on the reading
of your will, you sank in the opinion of your fellow-men, either by
turning out to be poorer than they expected, or by leaving your money
in a capricious manner, without strict regard to degrees of kin. The
right thing must always be done toward kindred. The right thing was to
correct them severely, if they were other than a credit to the family,
but still not to alienate from them the smallest rightful share in the
family shoebuckles and other property. A conspicuous quality in the
Dodson character was its genuineness; its vices and virtues alike were
phases of a proud honest egoism, which had a hearty dislike to
whatever made against its own credit and interest, and would be
frankly hard of speech to inconvenient "kin," but would never forsake
or ignore them,--would not let them want bread, but only require them
to eat it with bitter herbs.

The same sort of traditional belief ran in the Tulliver veins, but it
was carried in richer blood, having elements of generous imprudence,
warm affection, and hot-tempered rashness. Mr. Tulliver's grandfather
had been heard to say that he was descended from one Ralph Tulliver, a
wonderfully clever fellow, who had ruined himself. It is likely enough
that the clever Ralph was a high liver, rode spirited horses, and was
very decidedly of his own opinion. On the other hand, nobody had ever
heard of a Dodson who had ruined himself; it was not the way of that
family.

If such were the views of life on which the Dodsons and Tullivers had
been reared in the praiseworthy past of Pitt and high prices, you will
infer from what you already know concerning the state of society in
St. Ogg's, that there had been no highly modifying influence to act on
them in their maturer life. It was still possible, even in that later
time of anti-Catholic preaching, for people to hold many pagan ideas,
and believe themselves good church-people, notwithstanding; so we need
hardly feel any surprise at the fact that Mr. Tulliver, though a
regular church-goer, recorded his vindictiveness on the fly-leaf of
his Bible. It was not that any harm could be said concerning the vicar
of that charming rural parish to which Dorlcote Mill belonged; he was
a man of excellent family, an irreproachable bachelor, of elegant
pursuits,--had taken honors, and held a fellowship. Mr. Tulliver
regarded him with dutiful respect, as he did everything else belonging
to the church-service; but he considered that church was one thing and
common-sense another, and he wanted nobody to tell _him_ what
commonsense was. Certain seeds which are required to find a nidus for
themselves under unfavorable circumstances have been supplied by
nature with an apparatus of hooks, so that they will get a hold on
very unreceptive surfaces. The spiritual seed which had been scattered
over Mr. Tulliver had apparently been destitute of any corresponding
provision, and had slipped off to the winds again, from a total
absence of hooks.



Chapter II

The Torn Nest Is Pierced by the Thorns


There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies
the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a
stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It
is in the slow, changed life that follows; in the time when sorrow has
become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts
its pain; in the time when day follows day in dull, unexpectant
sameness, and trial is a dreary routine,--it is then that despair
threatens; it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt,
and eye and ear are strained after some unlearned secret of our
existence, which shall give to endurance the nature of satisfaction.

This time of utmost need was come to Maggie, with her short span of
thirteen years. To the usual precocity of the girl, she added that
early experience of struggle, of conflict between the inward impulse
and outward fact, which is the lot of every imaginative and passionate
nature; and the years since she hammered the nails into her wooden
Fetish among the worm-eaten shelves of the attic had been filled with
so eager a life in the triple world of Reality, Books, and Waking
Dreams, that Maggie was strangely old for her years in everything
except in her entire want of that prudence and self-command which were
the qualities that made Tom manly in the midst of his intellectual
boyishness. And now her lot was beginning to have a still, sad
monotony, which threw her more than ever on her inward self. Her
father was able to attend to business again, his affairs were settled,
and he was acting as Wakem's manager on the old spot. Tom went to and
fro every morning and evening, and became more and more silent in the
short intervals at home; what was there to say? One day was like
another; and Tom's interest in life, driven back and crushed on every
other side, was concentrating itself into the one channel of ambitious
resistance to misfortune. The peculiarities of his father and mother
were very irksome to him, now they were laid bare of all the softening
accompaniments of an easy, prosperous home; for Tom had very clear,
prosaic eyes, not apt to be dimmed by mists of feeling or imagination.
Poor Mrs. Tulliver, it seemed, would never recover her old self, her
placid household activity; how could she? The objects among which her
mind had moved complacently were all gone,--all the little hopes and
schemes and speculations, all the pleasant little cares about her
treasures which had made the world quite comprehensible to her for a
quarter of a century, since she had made her first purchase of the
sugar-tongs, had been suddenly snatched away from her, and she
remained bewildered in this empty life. Why that should have happened
to her which had not happened to other women remained an insoluble
question by which she expressed her perpetual ruminating comparison of
the past with the present. It was piteous to see the comely woman
getting thinner and more worn under a bodily as well as mental
restlessness, which made her often wander about the empty house after
her work was done, until Maggie, becoming alarmed about her, would
seek her, and bring her down by telling her how it vexed Tom that she
was injuring her health by never sitting down and resting herself. Yet
amidst this helpless imbecility there was a touching trait of humble,
self-devoting maternity, which made Maggie feel tenderly toward her
poor mother amidst all the little wearing griefs caused by her mental
feebleness. She would let Maggie do none of the work that was heaviest
and most soiling to the hands, and was quite peevish when Maggie
attempted to relieve her from her grate-brushing and scouring: "Let it
alone, my dear; your hands 'ull get as hard as hard," she would say;
"it's your mother's place to do that. I can't do the sewing--my eyes
fail me." And she would still brush and carefully tend Maggie's hair,
which she had become reconciled to, in spite of its refusal to curl,
now it was so long and massy. Maggie was not her pet child, and, in
general, would have been much better if she had been quite different;
yet the womanly heart, so bruised in its small personal desires, found
a future to rest on in the life of this young thing, and the mother
pleased herself with wearing out her own hands to save the hands that
had so much more life in them.

But the constant presence of her mother's regretful bewilderment was
less painful to Maggie than that of her father's sullen,
incommunicative depression. As long as the paralysis was upon him, and
it seemed as if he might always be in a childlike condition of
dependence,--as long as he was still only half awakened to his
trouble,--Maggie had felt the strong tide of pitying love almost as an
inspiration, a new power, that would make the most difficult life easy
for his sake; but now, instead of childlike dependence, there had come
a taciturn, hard concentration of purpose, in strange contrast with
his old vehement communicativeness and high spirit; and this lasted
from day to day, and from week to week, the dull eye never brightening
with any eagerness or any joy. It is something cruelly incomprehensible
to youthful natures, this sombre sameness in middle-aged and elderly
people, whose life has resulted in disappointment and discontent, to
whose faces a smile becomes so strange that the sad lines all about
the lips and brow seem to take no notice of it, and it hurries away
again for want of a welcome. "Why will they not kindle up and be
glad sometimes?" thinks young elasticity. "It would be so easy if they
only liked to do it." And these leaden clouds that never part are apt
to create impatience even in the filial affection that streams forth in
nothing but tenderness and pity in the time of more obvious affliction.

Mr. Tulliver lingered nowhere away from home; he hurried away from
market, he refused all invitations to stay and chat, as in old times,
in the houses where he called on business. He could not be reconciled
with his lot. There was no attitude in which his pride did not feel
its bruises; and in all behavior toward him, whether kind or cold, he
detected an allusion to the change in his circumstances. Even the days
on which Wakem came to ride round the land and inquire into the
business were not so black to him as those market-days on which he had
met several creditors who had accepted a composition from him. To save
something toward the repayment of those creditors was the object
toward which he was now bending all his thoughts and efforts; and
under the influence of this all-compelling demand of his nature, the
somewhat profuse man, who hated to be stinted or to stint any one else
in his own house, was gradually metamorphosed into the keen-eyed
grudger of morsels. Mrs. Tulliver could not economize enough to
satisfy him, in their food and firing; and he would eat nothing
himself but what was of the coarsest quality. Tom, though depressed
and strongly repelled by his father's sullenness, and the dreariness
of home, entered thoroughly into his father's feelings about paying
the creditors; and the poor lad brought his first quarter's money,
with a delicious sense of achievement, and gave it to his father to
put into the tin box which held the savings. The little store of
sovereigns in the tin box seemed to be the only sight that brought a
faint beam of pleasure into the miller's eyes,--faint and transient,
for it was soon dispelled by the thought that the time would be
long--perhaps longer than his life,--before the narrow savings could
remove the hateful incubus of debt. A deficit of more than five
hundred pounds, with the accumulating interest, seemed a deep pit to
fill with the savings from thirty shillings a-week, even when Tom's
probable savings were to be added. On this one point there was entire
community of feeling in the four widely differing beings who sat round
the dying fire of sticks, which made a cheap warmth for them on the
verge of bedtime. Mrs. Tulliver carried the proud integrity of the
Dodsons in her blood, and had been brought up to think that to wrong
people of their money, which was another phrase for debt, was a sort
of moral pillory; it would have been wickedness, to her mind, to have
run counter to her husband's desire to "do the right thing," and
retrieve his name. She had a confused, dreamy notion that, if the
creditors were all paid, her plate and linen ought to come back to
her; but she had an inbred perception that while people owed money
they were unable to pay, they couldn't rightly call anything their
own. She murmured a little that Mr. Tulliver so peremptorily refused
to receive anything in repayment from Mr. and Mrs. Moss; but to all
his requirements of household economy she was submissive to the point
of denying herself the cheapest indulgences of mere flavor; her only
rebellion was to smuggle into the kitchen something that would make
rather a better supper than usual for Tom.

These narrow notions about debt, held by the old fashioned Tullivers,
may perhaps excite a smile on the faces of many readers in these days
of wide commercial views and wide philosophy, according to which
everything rights itself without any trouble of ours. The fact that my
tradesman is out of pocket by me is to be looked at through the serene
certainty that somebody else's tradesman is in pocket by somebody
else; and since there must be bad debts in the world, why, it is mere
egoism not to like that we in particular should make them instead of
our fellow-citizens. I am telling the history of very simple people,
who had never had any illuminating doubts as to personal integrity and
honor.

Under all this grim melancholy and narrowing concentration of desire,
Mr. Tulliver retained the feeling toward his "little wench" which made
her presence a need to him, though it would not suffice to cheer him.
She was still the desire of his eyes; but the sweet spring of fatherly
love was now mingled with bitterness, like everything else. When
Maggie laid down her work at night, it was her habit to get a low
stool and sit by her father's knee, leaning her cheek against it. How
she wished he would stroke her head, or give some sign that he was
soothed by the sense that he had a daughter who loved him! But now she
got no answer to her little caresses, either from her father or from
Tom,--the two idols of her life. Tom was weary and abstracted in the
short intervals when he was at home, and her father was bitterly
preoccupied with the thought that the girl was growing up, was
shooting up into a woman; and how was she to do well in life? She had
a poor chance for marrying, down in the world as they were. And he
hated the thought of her marrying poorly, as her aunt Gritty had done;
_that_ would be a thing to make him turn in his grave,--the little
wench so pulled down by children and toil, as her aunt Moss was. When
uncultured minds, confined to a narrow range of personal experience,
are under the pressure of continued misfortune, their inward life is
apt to become a perpetually repeated round of sad and bitter thoughts;
the same words, the same scenes, are revolved over and over again, the
same mood accompanies them; the end of the year finds them as much
what they were at the beginning as if they were machines set to a
recurrent series of movements.

The sameness of the days was broken by few visitors. Uncles and aunts
paid only short visits now; of course, they could not stay to meals,
and the constraint caused by Mr. Tulliver's savage silence, which
seemed to add to the hollow resonance of the bare, uncarpeted room
when the aunts were talking, heightened the unpleasantness of these
family visits on all sides, and tended to make them rare. As for other
acquaintances, there is a chill air surrounding those who are down in
the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold
room; human beings, mere men and women, without furniture, without
anything to offer you, who have ceased to count as anybody, present an
embarrassing negation of reasons for wishing to see them, or of
subjects on which to converse with them. At that distant day, there
was a dreary isolation in the civilized Christian society of these
realms for families that had dropped below their original level,
unless they belonged to a sectarian church, which gets some warmth of
brotherhood by walling in the sacred fire.



Chapter III

A Voice from the Past


One afternoon, when the chestnuts were coming into flower, Maggie had
brought her chair outside the front door, and was seated there with a
book on her knees. Her dark eyes had wandered from the book, but they
did not seem to be enjoying the sunshine which pierced the screen of
jasmine on the projecting porch at her right, and threw leafy shadows
on her pale round cheek; they seemed rather to be searching for
something that was not disclosed by the sunshine. It had been a more
miserable day than usual; her father, after a visit of Wakem's had had
a paroxysm of rage, in which for some trifling fault he had beaten the
boy who served in the mill. Once before, since his illness, he had had
a similar paroxysm, in which he had beaten his horse, and the scene
had left a lasting terror in Maggie's mind. The thought had risen,
that some time or other he might beat her mother if she happened to
speak in her feeble way at the wrong moment. The keenest of all dread
with her was lest her father should add to his present misfortune the
wretchedness of doing something irretrievably disgraceful. The
battered school-book of Tom's which she held on her knees could give
her no fortitude under the pressure of that dread; and again and again
her eyes had filled with tears, as they wandered vaguely, seeing
neither the chestnut-trees, nor the distant horizon, but only future
scenes of home-sorrow.

Suddenly she was roused by the sound of the opening gate and of
footsteps on the gravel. It was not Tom who was entering, but a man in
a sealskin cap and a blue plush waistcoat, carrying a pack on his
back, and followed closely by a bullterrier of brindled coat and
defiant aspect.

"Oh, Bob, it's you!" said Maggie, starting up with a smile of pleased
recognition, for there had been no abundance of kind acts to efface
the recollection of Bob's generosity; "I'm so glad to see you."

"Thank you, Miss," said Bob, lifting his cap and showing a delighted
face, but immediately relieving himself of some accompanying
embarrassment by looking down at his dog, and saying in a tone of
disgust, "Get out wi' you, you thunderin' sawney!"

"My brother is not at home yet, Bob," said Maggie; "he is always at
St. Ogg's in the daytime."

"Well, Miss," said Bob, "I should be glad to see Mr. Tom, but that
isn't just what I'm come for,--look here!"

Bob was in the act of depositing his pack on the door-step, and with
it a row of small books fastened together with string.

Apparently, however, they were not the object to which he wished to
call Maggie's attention, but rather something which he had carried
under his arm, wrapped in a red handkerchief.

"See here!" he said again, laying the red parcel on the others and
unfolding it; "you won't think I'm a-makin' too free, Miss, I hope,
but I lighted on these books, and I thought they might make up to you
a bit for them as you've lost; for I heared you speak o' picturs,--an'
as for picturs, _look_ here!"

The opening of the red handkerchief had disclosed a superannuated
"Keepsake" and six or seven numbers of a "Portrait Gallery," in royal
octavo; and the emphatic request to look referred to a portrait of
George the Fourth in all the majesty of his depressed cranium and
voluminous neckcloth.

"There's all sorts o' genelmen here," Bob went on, turning over the
leaves with some excitement, "wi' all sorts o' nones,--an' some bald
an' some wi' wigs,--Parlament genelmen, I reckon. An' here," he added,
opening the "Keepsake,"--"_here's_ ladies for you, some wi' curly hair
and some wi' smooth, an' some a-smiling wi' their heads o' one side,
an' some as if they were goin' to cry,--look here,--a-sittin' on the
ground out o' door, dressed like the ladies I'n seen get out o' the
carriages at the balls in th' Old Hall there. My eyes! I wonder what
the chaps wear as go a-courtin' 'em! I sot up till the clock was gone
twelve last night, a-lookin' at 'em,--I did,--till they stared at me
out o' the picturs as if they'd know when I spoke to 'em. But, lors! I
shouldn't know what to say to 'em. They'll be more fittin' company for
you, Miss; and the man at the book-stall, he said they banged
iverything for picturs; he said they was a fust-rate article."

"And you've bought them for me, Bob?" said Maggie, deeply touched by
this simple kindness. "How very, very good of you! But I'm afraid you
gave a great deal of money for them."

"Not me!" said Bob. "I'd ha' gev three times the money if they'll make
up to you a bit for them as was sold away from you, Miss. For I'n
niver forgot how you looked when you fretted about the books bein'
gone; it's stuck by me as if it was a pictur hingin' before me. An'
when I see'd the book open upo' the stall, wi' the lady lookin' out of
it wi' eyes a bit like your'n when you was frettin',--you'll excuse my
takin' the liberty, Miss,--I thought I'd make free to buy it for you,
an' then I bought the books full o' genelmen to match; an' then"--here
Bob took up the small stringed packet of books--"I thought you might
like a bit more print as well as the picturs, an' I got these for a
sayso,--they're cram-full o' print, an' I thought they'd do no harm
comin' along wi' these bettermost books. An' I hope you won't say me
nay, an' tell me as you won't have 'em, like Mr. Tom did wi' the
suvreigns."

"No, indeed, Bob," said Maggie, "I'm very thankful to you for thinking
of me, and being so good to me and Tom. I don't think any one ever did
such a kind thing for me before. I haven't many friends who care for
me."

"Hev a dog, Miss!--they're better friends nor any Christian," said
Bob, laying down his pack again, which he had taken up with the
intention of hurrying away; for he felt considerable shyness in
talking to a young lass like Maggie, though, as he usually said of
himself, "his tongue overrun him" when he began to speak. "I can't
give you Mumps, 'cause he'd break his heart to go away from me--eh,
Mumps, what do you say, you riff-raff?" (Mumps declined to express
himself more diffusely than by a single affirmative movement of his
tail.) "But I'd get you a pup, Miss, an' welcome."

"No, thank you, Bob. We have a yard dog, and I mayn't keep a dog of my
own."

"Eh, that's a pity; else there's a pup,--if you didn't mind about it
not being thoroughbred; its mother acts in the Punch show,--an
uncommon sensible bitch; she means more sense wi' her bark nor half
the chaps can put into their talk from breakfast to sundown. There's
one chap carries pots,--a poor, low trade as any on the road,--he
says, 'Why Toby's nought but a mongrel; there's nought to look at in
her.' But I says to him, 'Why, what are you yoursen but a mongrel?
There wasn't much pickin' o' _your_ feyther an' mother, to look at
you.' Not but I like a bit o' breed myself, but I can't abide to see
one cur grinnin' at another. I wish you good evenin', Miss," said Bob,
abruptly taking up his pack again, under the consciousness that his
tongue was acting in an undisciplined manner.

"Won't you come in the evening some time, and see my brother, Bob?"
said Maggie.

"Yes, Miss, thank you--another time. You'll give my duty to him, if
you please. Eh, he's a fine growed chap, Mr. Tom is; he took to
growin' i' the legs, an' _I_ didn't."

The pack was down again, now, the hook of the stick having somehow
gone wrong.

"You don't call Mumps a cur, I suppose?" said Maggie, divining that
any interest she showed in Mumps would be gratifying to his master.

"No, Miss, a fine way off that," said Bob, with pitying smile; "Mumps
is as fine a cross as you'll see anywhere along the Floss, an' I'n
been up it wi' the barge times enow. Why, the gentry stops to look at
him; but you won't catch Mumps a-looking at the gentry much,--he minds
his own business, he does."

The expression of Mump's face, which seemed to be tolerating the
superfluous existence of objects in general, was strongly confirmatory
of this high praise.

"He looks dreadfully surly," said Maggie. "Would he let me pat him?"

"Ay, that would he, and thank you. He knows his company, Mumps does.
He isn't a dog as 'ull be caught wi' gingerbread; he'd smell a thief a
good deal stronger nor the gingerbread, he would. Lors, I talk to him
by th' hour together, when I'm walking i' lone places, and if I'n done
a bit o' mischief, I allays tell him. I'n got no secrets but what
Mumps knows 'em. He knows about my big thumb, he does."

"Your big thumb--what's that, Bob?" said Maggie.

"That's what it is, Miss," said Bob, quickly, exhibiting a singularly
broad specimen of that difference between the man and the monkey. "It
tells i' measuring out the flannel, you see. I carry flannel, 'cause
it's light for my pack, an' it's dear stuff, you see, so a big thumb
tells. I clap my thumb at the end o' the yard and cut o' the hither
side of it, and the old women aren't up to't."

"But Bob," said Maggie, looking serious, "that's cheating; I don't
like to hear you say that."

"Don't you, Miss?" said Bob regretfully. "Then I'm sorry I said it.
But I'm so used to talking to Mumps, an' he doesn't mind a bit o'
cheating, when it's them skinflint women, as haggle an' haggle, an'
'ud like to get their flannel for nothing, an' 'ud niver ask
theirselves how I got my dinner out on't. I niver cheat anybody as
doesn't want to cheat me, Miss,--lors, I'm a honest chap, I am; only I
must hev a bit o' sport, an' now I don't go wi' th' ferrets, I'n got
no varmint to come over but them haggling women. I wish you good
evening, Miss."

"Good-by, Bob. Thank you very much for bringing me the books. And come
again to see Tom."

"Yes, Miss," said Bob, moving on a few steps; then turning half round
he said, "I'll leave off that trick wi' my big thumb, if you don't
think well on me for it, Miss; but it 'ud be a pity, it would. I
couldn't find another trick so good,--an' what 'ud be the use o'
havin' a big thumb? It might as well ha' been narrow."

Maggie, thus exalted into Bob's exalting Madonna, laughed in spite of
herself; at which her worshipper's blue eyes twinkled too, and under
these favoring auspices he touched his cap and walked away.

The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke's grand dirge
over them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a
youth and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch
so much as her little finger or the hem of her robe. Bob, with the
pack on his back, had as respectful an adoration for this dark-eyed
maiden as if he had been a knight in armor calling aloud on her name
as he pricked on to the fight.

That gleam of merriment soon died away from Maggie's face, and perhaps
only made the returning gloom deeper by contrast. She was too
dispirited even to like answering questions about Bob's present of
books, and she carried them away to her bedroom, laying them down
there and seating herself on her one stool, without caring to look at
them just yet. She leaned her cheek against the window-frame, and
thought that the light-hearted Bob had a lot much happier than hers.

Maggie's sense of loneliness, and utter privation of joy, had deepened
with the brightness of advancing spring. All the favorite outdoor
nooks about home, which seemed to have done their part with her
parents in nurturing and cherishing her, were now mixed up with the
home-sadness, and gathered no smile from the sunshine. Every
affection, every delight the poor child had had, was like an aching
nerve to her. There was no music for her any more,--no piano, no
harmonized voices, no delicious stringed instruments, with their
passionate cries of imprisoned spirits sending a strange vibration
through her frame. And of all her school-life there was nothing left
her now but her little collection of school-books, which she turned
over with a sickening sense that she knew them all, and they were all
barren of comfort. Even at school she had often wished for books with
_more_ in them; everything she learned there seemed like the ends of
long threads that snapped immediately. And now--without the indirect
charm of school-emulation--Télémaque was mere bran; so were the hard,
dry questions on Christian Doctrine; there was no flavor in them, no
strength. Sometimes Maggie thought she could have been contented with
absorbing fancies; if she could have had all Scott's novels and all
Byron's poems!--then, perhaps, she might have found happiness enough
to dull her sensibility to her actual daily life. And yet they were
hardly what she wanted. She could make dream-worlds of her own, but no
dream-world would satisfy her now. She wanted some explanation of this
hard, real life,--the unhappy-looking father, seated at the dull
breakfast-table; the childish, bewildered mother; the little sordid
tasks that filled the hours, or the more oppressive emptiness of
weary, joyless leisure; the need of some tender, demonstrative love;
the cruel sense that Tom didn't mind what she thought or felt, and
that they were no longer playfellows together; the privation of all
pleasant things that had come to _her_ more than to others,--she
wanted some key that would enable her to understand, and in
understanding, to endure, the heavy weight that had fallen on her
young heart. If she had been taught "real learning and wisdom, such as
great men knew," she thought she should have held the secrets of life;
if she had only books, that she might learn for herself what wise men
knew! Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages
and poets. She knew little of saints and martyrs, and had gathered, as
a general result of her teaching, that they were a temporary provision
against the spread of Catholicism, and had all died at Smithfield.

In one of these meditations it occurred to her that she had forgotten
Tom's school-books, which had been sent home in his trunk. But she
found the stock unaccountably shrunk down to the few old ones which
had been well thumbed,--the Latin Dictionary and Grammar, a Delectus,
a torn Eutropius, the well-worn Virgil, Aldrich's Logic, and the
exasperating Euclid. Still, Latin, Euclid, and Logic would surely be a
considerable step in masculine wisdom,--in that knowledge which made
men contented, and even glad to live. Not that the yearning for
effectual wisdom was quite unmixed; a certain mirage would now and
then rise on the desert of the future, in which she seemed to see
herself honored for her surprising attainments. And so the poor child,
with her soul's hunger and her illusions of self-flattery, began to
nibble at this thick-rinded fruit of the tree of knowledge, filling
her vacant hours with Latin, geometry, and the forms of the syllogism,
and feeling a gleam of triumph now and then that her understanding was
quite equal to these peculiarly masculine studies. For a week or two
she went on resolutely enough, though with an occasional sinking of
heart, as if she had set out toward the Promised Land alone, and found
it a thirsty, trackless, uncertain journey. In the severity of her
early resolution, she would take Aldrich out into the fields, and then
look off her book toward the sky, where the lark was twinkling, or to
the reeds and bushes by the river, from which the waterfowl rustled
forth on its anxious, awkward flight,--with a startled sense that the
relation between Aldrich and this living world was extremely remote
for her. The discouragement deepened as the days went on, and the
eager heart gained faster and faster on the patient mind. Somehow,
when she sat at the window with her book, her eyes _would_ fix
themselves blankly on the outdoor sunshine; then they would fill with
tears, and sometimes, if her mother was not in the room, the studies
would all end in sobbing. She rebelled against her lot, she fainted
under its loneliness, and fits even of anger and hatred toward her
father and mother, who were so unlike what she would have them to be;
toward Tom, who checked her, and met her thought or feeling always by
some thwarting difference,--would flow out over her affections and
conscience like a lava stream, and frighten her with a sense that it
was not difficult for her to become a demon. Then her brain would be
busy with wild romances of a flight from home in search of something
less sordid and dreary; she would go to some great man--Walter Scott,
perhaps--and tell him how wretched and how clever she was, and he
would surely do something for her. But, in the middle of her vision,
her father would perhaps enter the room for the evening, and,
surprised that she sat still without noticing him, would say
complainingly, "Come, am I to fetch my slippers myself?" The voice
pierced through Maggie like a sword; there was another sadness besides
her own, and she had been thinking of turning her back on it and
forsaking it.

This afternoon, the sight of Bob's cheerful freckled face had given
her discontent a new direction. She thought it was part of the
hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of
larger wants than others seemed to feel,--that she had to endure this
wide, hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was
greatest and best on this earth. She wished she could have been like
Bob, with his easily satisfied ignorance, or like Tom, who had
something to do on which he could fix his mind with a steady purpose,
and disregard everything else. Poor child! as she leaned her head
against the window-frame, with her hands clasped tighter and tighter,
and her foot beating the ground, she was as lonely in her trouble as
if she had been the only girl in the civilized world of that day who
had come out of her school-life with a soul untrained for inevitable
struggles, with no other part of her inherited share in the hard-won
treasures of thought which generations of painful toil have laid up
for the race of men, than shreds and patches of feeble literature and
false history, with much futile information about Saxon and other
kings of doubtful example, but unhappily quite without that knowledge
of the irreversible laws within and without her, which, governing the
habits, becomes morality, and developing the feelings of submission
and dependence, becomes religion,--as lonely in her trouble as if
every other girl besides herself had been cherished and watched over
by elder minds, not forgetful of their own early time, when need was
keen and impulse strong.

At last Maggie's eyes glanced down on the books that lay on the
window-shelf, and she half forsook her reverie to turn over listlessly
the leaves of the "Portrait Gallery," but she soon pushed this aside
to examine the little row of books tied together with string.
"Beauties of the Spectator," "Rasselas," "Economy of Human Life,"
"Gregory's Letters,"--she knew the sort of matter that was inside all
these; the "Christian Year,"--that seemed to be a hymnbook, and she
laid it down again; but _Thomas à Kempis?_--the name had come across
her in her reading, and she felt the satisfaction, which every one
knows, of getting some ideas to attach to a name that strays solitary
in the memory. She took up the little, old, clumsy book with some
curiosity; it had the corners turned down in many places, and some
hand, now forever quiet, had made at certain passages strong
pen-and-ink marks, long since browned by time. Maggie turned from leaf
to leaf, and read where the quiet hand pointed: "Know that the love of
thyself doth hurt thee more than anything in the world.... If thou
seekest this or that, and wouldst be here or there to enjoy thy own
will and pleasure, thou shalt never be quiet nor free from care; for
in everything somewhat will be wanting, and in every place there will
be some that will cross thee.... Both above and below, which way
soever thou dost turn thee, everywhere thou shalt find the Cross; and
everywhere of necessity thou must have patience, if thou wilt have
inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown.... If thou desirest to
mount unto this height, thou must set out courageously, and lay the
axe to the root, that thou mayest pluck up and destroy that hidden
inordinate inclination to thyself, and unto all private and earthly
good. On this sin, that a man inordinately loveth himself, almost all
dependeth, whatsoever is thoroughly to be overcome; which evil being
once overcome and subdued, there will presently ensue great peace and
tranquillity.... It is but little thou sufferest in comparison of them
that have suffered so much, were so strongly tempted, so grievously
afflicted, so many ways tried and exercised. Thou oughtest therefore
to call to mind the more heavy sufferings of others, that thou mayest
the easier bear thy little adversities. And if they seem not little
unto thee, beware lest thy impatience be the cause thereof.... Blessed
are those ears that receive the whispers of the divine voice, and
listen not to the whisperings of the world. Blessed are those ears
which hearken not unto the voice which soundeth outwardly, but unto
the Truth, which teacheth inwardly."

A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while she read, as if
she had been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling
of beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupor. She
went on from one brown mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to
point, hardly conscious that she was reading, seeming rather to listen
while a low voice said;

"Why dost thou here gaze about, since this is not the place of thy
rest? In heaven ought to be thy dwelling, and all earthly things are
to be looked on as they forward thy journey thither. All things pass
away, and thou together with them. Beware thou cleavest not unto them,
lest thou be entangled and perish.... If a man should give all his
substance, yet it is as nothing. And if he should do great penances,
yet are they but little. And if he should attain to all knowledge, he
is yet far off. And if he should be of great virtue, and very fervent
devotion, yet is there much wanting; to wit, one thing, which is most
necessary for him. What is that? That having left all, he leave
himself, and go wholly out of himself, and retain nothing of
self-love.... I have often said unto thee, and now again I say the
same, Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy much
inward peace.... Then shall all vain imaginations, evil perturbations,
and superfluous cares fly away; then shall immoderate fear leave thee,
and inordinate love shall die."

Maggie drew a long breath and pushed her heavy hair back, as if to see
a sudden vision more clearly. Here, then, was a secret of life that
would enable her to renounce all other secrets; here was a sublime
height to be reached without the help of outward things; here was
insight, and strength, and conquest, to be won by means entirely
within her own soul, where a supreme Teacher was waiting to be heard.
It flashed through her like the suddenly apprehended solution of a
problem, that all the miseries of her young life had come from fixing
her heart on her own pleasure, as if that were the central necessity
of the universe; and for the first time she saw the possibility of
shifting the position from which she looked at the gratification of
her own desires,--of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at
her own life as an insignificant part of a divinely guided whole. She
read on and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with
the invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all
strength; returning to it after she had been called away, and reading
till the sun went down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an
imagination that could never rest in the present, she sat in the
deepening twilight forming plans of self-humiliation and entire
devotedness; and in the ardor of first discovery, renunciation seemed
to her the entrance into that satisfaction which she had so long been
craving in vain. She had not perceived--how could she until she had
lived longer?--the inmost truth of the old monk's out-pourings, that
renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly. Maggie
was still panting for happiness, and was in ecstasy because she had
found the key to it. She knew nothing of doctrines and systems, of
mysticism or quietism; but this voice out of the far-off middle ages
was the direct communication of a human soul's belief and experience,
and came to Maggie as an unquestioned message.

I suppose that is the reason why the small old-fashioned book, for
which you need only pay sixpence at a book-stall, works miracles to
this day, turning bitter waters into sweetness; while expensive
sermons and treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they were
before. It was written down by a hand that waited for the heart's
prompting; it is the chronicle of a solitary, hidden anguish,
struggle, trust, and triumph, not written on velvet cushions to teach
endurance to those who are treading with bleeding feet on the stones.
And so it remains to all time a lasting record of human needs and
human consolations; the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt and
suffered and renounced,--in the cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and
tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion
of speech different from ours,--but under the same silent far-off
heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same strivings, the
same failures, the same weariness.

In writing the history of unfashionable families, one is apt to fall
into a tone of emphasis which is very far from being the tone of good
society, where principles and beliefs are not only of an extremely
moderate kind, but are always presupposed, no subjects being eligible
but such as can be touched with a light and graceful irony. But then
good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its
dinner-engagements six weeks deep, its opera and its faëry ball-rooms;
rides off its _ennui_ on thoroughbred horses; lounges at the club; has
to keep clear of crinoline vortices; gets its science done by Faraday,
and its religion by the superior clergy who are to be met in the best
houses,--how should it have time or need for belief and emphasis? But
good society, floated on gossamer wings of light irony, is of very
expensive production; requiring nothing less than a wide and arduous
national life condensed in unfragrant deafening factories, cramping
itself in mines, sweating at furnaces, grinding, hammering, weaving
under more or less oppression of carbonic acid, or else, spread over
sheepwalks, and scattered in lonely houses and huts on the clayey or
chalky corn-lands, where the rainy days look dreary. This wide
national life is based entirely on emphasis,--the emphasis of want,
which urges it into all the activities necessary for the maintenance
of good society and light irony; it spends its heavy years often in a
chill, uncarpeted fashion, amidst family discord unsoftened by long
corridors. Under such circumstances, there are many among its myriads
of souls who have absolutely needed an emphatic belief, life in this
unpleasurable shape demanding some solution even to unspeculative
minds,--just as you inquire into the stuffing of your couch when
anything galls you there, whereas eider-down and perfect French
springs excite no question. Some have an emphatic belief in alcohol,
and seek their _ekstasis_ or outside standing-ground in gin; but the
rest require something that good society calls "enthusiasm," something
that will present motives in an entire absence of high prizes;
something that will give patience and feed human love when the limbs
ache with weariness, and human looks are hard upon us; something,
clearly, that lies outside personal desires, that includes resignation
for ourselves and active love for what is not ourselves. Now and then
that sort of enthusiasm finds a far-echoing voice that comes from an
experience springing out of the deepest need; and it was by being
brought within the long lingering vibrations of such a voice that
Maggie, with her girl's face and unnoted sorrows, found an effort and
a hope that helped her through years of loneliness, making out a faith
for herself without the aid of established authorities and appointed
guides; for they were not at hand, and her need was pressing. From
what you know of her, you will not be surprised that she threw some
exaggeration and wilfulness, some pride and impetuosity, even into her
self-renunciation; her own life was still a drama for her, in which
she demanded of herself that her part should be played with intensity.
And so it came to pass that she often lost the spirit of humility by
being excessive in the outward act; she often strove after too high a
flight, and came down with her poor little half-fledged wings dabbled
in the mud. For example, she not only determined to work at plain
sewing, that she might contribute something toward the fund in the tin
box, but she went, in the first instance, in her zeal of
self-mortification, to ask for it at a linen shop in St. Ogg's,
instead of getting it in a more quiet and indirect way; and could see
nothing but what was entirely wrong and unkind, nay, persecuting, in
Tom's reproof of her for this unnecessary act. "I don't like _my_
sister to do such things," said Tom, "_I'll_ take care that the debts
are paid, without your lowering yourself in that way." Surely there
was some tenderness and bravery mingled with the worldliness and
self-assertion of that little speech; but Maggie held it as dross,
overlooking the grains of gold, and took Tom's rebuke as one of her
outward crosses. Tom was very hard to her, she used to think, in her
long night-watchings,--to her who had always loved him so; and then
she strove to be contented with that hardness, and to require nothing.
That is the path we all like when we set out on our abandonment of
egoism,--the path of martyrdom and endurance, where the palm-branches
grow, rather than the steep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and
self-blame, where there are no leafy honors to be gathered and worn.

The old books, Virgil, Euclid, and Aldrich--that wrinkled fruit of the
tree of knowledge--had been all laid by; for Maggie had turned her
back on the vain ambition to share the thoughts of the wise. In her
first ardor she flung away the books with a sort of triumph that she
had risen above the need of them; and if they had been her own, she
would have burned them, believing that she would never repent. She
read so eagerly and constantly in her three books, the Bible, Thomas à
Kempis, and the "Christian Year" (no longer rejected as a
"hymn-book"), that they filled her mind with a continual stream of
rhythmic memories; and she was too ardently learning to see all nature
and life in the light of her new faith, to need any other material for
her mind to work on, as she sat with her well-plied needle, making
shirts and other complicated stitchings, falsely called "plain,"--by
no means plain to Maggie, since wristband and sleeve and the like had
a capability of being sewed in wrong side outward in moments of mental
wandering.

Hanging diligently over her sewing, Maggie was a sight any one might
have been pleased to look at. That new inward life of hers,
notwithstanding some volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions, yet
shone out in her face with a tender soft light that mingled itself as
added loveliness with the gradually enriched color and outline of her
blossoming youth. Her mother felt the change in her with a sort of
puzzled wonder that Maggie should be "growing up so good"; it was
amazing that this once "contrairy" child was become so submissive, so
backward to assert her own will. Maggie used to look up from her work
and find her mother's eyes fixed upon her; they were watching and
waiting for the large young glance, as if her elder frame got some
needful warmth from it. The mother was getting fond of her tall, brown
girl,--the only bit of furniture now on which she could bestow her
anxiety and pride; and Maggie, in spite of her own ascetic wish to
have no personal adornment, was obliged to give way to her mother
about her hair, and submit to have the abundant black locks plaited
into a coronet on the summit of her head, after the pitiable fashion
of those antiquated times.

"Let your mother have that bit o' pleasure, my dear," said Mrs.
Tulliver; "I'd trouble enough with your hair once."

So Maggie, glad of anything that would soothe her mother, and cheer
their long day together, consented to the vain decoration, and showed
a queenly head above her old frocks, steadily refusing, however, to
look at herself in the glass. Mrs. Tulliver liked to call the father's
attention to Maggie's hair and other unexpected virtues, but he had a
brusk reply to give.

"I knew well enough what she'd be, before now,--it's nothing new to
me. But it's a pity she isn't made o' commoner stuff; she'll be thrown
away, I doubt,--there'll be nobody to marry her as is fit for her."

And Maggie's graces of mind and body fed his gloom. He sat patiently
enough while she read him a chapter, or said something timidly when
they were alone together about trouble being turned into a blessing.
He took it all as part of his daughter's goodness, which made his
misfortunes the sadder to him because they damaged her chance in life.
In a mind charged with an eager purpose and an unsatisfied
vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings; Mr. Tulliver did
not want spiritual consolation--he wanted to shake off the degradation
of debt, and to have his revenge.




Book V

_Wheat and Tares_



Chapter I

In the Red Deeps


The family sitting-room was a long room with a window at each end; one
looking toward the croft and along the Ripple to the banks of the
Floss, the other into the mill-yard. Maggie was sitting with her work
against the latter window when she saw Mr. Wakem entering the yard, as
usual, on his fine black horse; but not alone, as usual. Some one was
with him,--a figure in a cloak, on a handsome pony. Maggie had hardly
time to feel that it was Philip come back, before they were in front
of the window, and he was raising his hat to her; while his father,
catching the movement by a side-glance, looked sharply round at them
both.

Maggie hurried away from the window and carried her work upstairs; for
Mr. Wakem sometimes came in and inspected the books, and Maggie felt
that the meeting with Philip would be robbed of all pleasure in the
presence of the two fathers. Some day, perhaps, she could see him when
they could just shake hands, and she could tell him that she
remembered his goodness to Tom, and the things he had said to her in
the old days, though they could never be friends any more. It was not
at all agitating to Maggie to see Philip again; she retained her
childish gratitude and pity toward him, and remembered his cleverness;
and in the early weeks of her loneliness she had continually recalled
the image of him among the people who had been kind to her in life,
often wishing she had him for a brother and a teacher, as they had
fancied it might have been, in their talk together. But that sort of
wishing had been banished along with other dreams that savored of
seeking her own will; and she thought, besides, that Philip might be
altered by his life abroad,--he might have become worldly, and really
not care about her saying anything to him now. And yet his face was
wonderfully little altered,--it was only a larger, more manly copy of
the pale, small-featured boy's face, with the gray eyes, and the
boyish waving brown hair; there was the old deformity to awaken the
old pity; and after all her meditations, Maggie felt that she really
_should_ like to say a few words to him. He might still be melancholy,
as he always used to be, and like her to look at him kindly. She
wondered if he remembered how he used to like her eyes; with that
thought Maggie glanced toward the square looking-glass which was
condemned to hang with its face toward the wall, and she half started
from her seat to reach it down; but she checked herself and snatched
up her work, trying to repress the rising wishes by forcing her memory
to recall snatches of hymns, until she saw Philip and his father
returning along the road, and she could go down again.

It was far on in June now, and Maggie was inclined to lengthen the
daily walk which was her one indulgence; but this day and the
following she was so busy with work which must be finished that she
never went beyond the gate, and satisfied her need of the open air by
sitting out of doors. One of her frequent walks, when she was not
obliged to go to St. Ogg's, was to a spot that lay beyond what was
called the "Hill,"--an insignificant rise of ground crowned by trees,
lying along the side of the road which ran by the gates of Dorlcote
Mill. Insignificant I call it, because in height it was hardly more
than a bank; but there may come moments when Nature makes a mere bank
a means toward a fateful result; and that is why I ask you to imagine
this high bank crowned with trees, making an uneven wall for some
quarter of a mile along the left side of Dorlcote Mill and the
pleasant fields behind it, bounded by the murmuring Ripple. Just where
this line of bank sloped down again to the level, a by-road turned off
and led to the other side of the rise, where it was broken into very
capricious hollows and mounds by the working of an exhausted
stone-quarry, so long exhausted that both mounds and hollows were now
clothed with brambles and trees, and here and there by a stretch of
grass which a few sheep kept close-nibbled. In her childish days
Maggie held this place, called the Red Deeps, in very great awe, and
needed all her confidence in Tom's bravery to reconcile her to an
excursion thither,--visions of robbers and fierce animals haunting
every hollow. But now it had the charm for her which any broken
ground, any mimic rock and ravine, have for the eyes that rest
habitually on the level; especially in summer, when she could sit on a
grassy hollow under the shadow of a branching ash, stooping aslant
from the steep above her, and listen to the hum of insects, like
tiniest bells on the garment of Silence, or see the sunlight piercing
the distant boughs, as if to chase and drive home the truant heavenly
blue of the wild hyacinths. In this June time, too, the dog-roses were
in their glory, and that was an additional reason why Maggie should
direct her walk to the Red Deeps, rather than to any other spot, on
the first day she was free to wander at her will,--a pleasure she
loved so well, that sometimes, in her ardors of renunciation, she
thought she ought to deny herself the frequent indulgence in it.

You may see her now, as she walks down the favorite turning and enters
the Deeps by a narrow path through a group of Scotch firs, her tall
figure and old lavender gown visible through an hereditary black silk
shawl of some wide-meshed net-like material; and now she is sure of
being unseen she takes off her bonnet and ties it over her arm. One
would certainly suppose her to be farther on in life than her
seventeenth year--perhaps because of the slow resigned sadness of the
glance from which all search and unrest seem to have departed; perhaps
because her broad-chested figure has the mould of early womanhood.
Youth and health have withstood well the involuntary and voluntary
hardships of her lot, and the nights in which she has lain on the hard
floor for a penance have left no obvious trace; the eyes are liquid,
the brown cheek is firm and round, the full lips are red. With her
dark coloring and jet crown surmounting her tall figure, she seems to
have a sort of kinship with the grand Scotch firs, at which she is
looking up as if she loved them well. Yet one has a sense of
uneasiness in looking at her,--a sense of opposing elements, of which
a fierce collision is imminent; surely there is a hushed expression,
such as one often sees in older faces under borderless caps, out of
keeping with the resistant youth, which one expects to flash out in a
sudden, passionate glance, that will dissipate all the quietude, like
a damp fire leaping out again when all seemed safe.

But Maggie herself was not uneasy at this moment. She was calmly
enjoying the free air, while she looked up at the old fir-trees, and
thought that those broken ends of branches were the records of past
storms, which had only made the red stems soar higher. But while her
eyes were still turned upward, she became conscious of a moving shadow
cast by the evening sun on the grassy path before her, and looked down
with a startled gesture to see Philip Wakem, who first raised his hat,
and then, blushing deeply, came forward to her and put out his hand.
Maggie, too, colored with surprise, which soon gave way to pleasure.
She put out her hand and looked down at the deformed figure before her
with frank eyes, filled for the moment with nothing but the memory of
her child's feelings,--a memory that was always strong in her. She was
the first to speak.

"You startled me," she said, smiling faintly; "I never meet any one
here. How came you to be walking here? Did you come to meet _me?_"

It was impossible not to perceive that Maggie felt herself a child
again.

"Yes, I did," said Philip, still embarrassed; "I wished to see you
very much. I watched a long while yesterday on the bank near your
house to see if you would come out, but you never came. Then I watched
again to-day, and when I saw the way you took, I kept you in sight and
came down the bank, behind there. I hope you will not be displeased
with me."

"No," said Maggie, with simple seriousness, walking on as if she meant
Philip to accompany her, "I'm very glad you came, for I wished very
much to have an opportunity of speaking to you. I've never forgotten
how good you were long ago to Tom, and me too; but I was not sure that
you would remember us so well. Tom and I have had a great deal of
trouble since then, and I think _that_ makes one think more of what
happened before the trouble came."

"I can't believe that you have thought of me so much as I have thought
of you," said Philip, timidly. "Do you know, when I was away, I made a
picture of you as you looked that morning in the study when you said
you would not forget me."

Philip drew a large miniature-case from his pocket, and opened it.
Maggie saw her old self leaning on a table, with her black locks
hanging down behind her ears, looking into space, with strange, dreamy
eyes. It was a water-color sketch, of real merit as a portrait.

"Oh dear," said Maggie, smiling, and flushed with pleasure, "what a
queer little girl I was! I remember myself with my hair in that way,
in that pink frock. I really _was_ like a gypsy. I dare say I am now,"
she added, after a little pause; "am I like what you expected me to
be?"

The words might have been those of a coquette, but the full, bright
glance Maggie turned on Philip was not that of a coquette. She really
did hope he liked her face as it was now, but it was simply the rising
again of her innate delight in admiration and love. Philip met her
eyes and looked at her in silence for a long moment, before he said
quietly, "No, Maggie."

The light died out a little from Maggie's face, and there was a slight
trembling of the lip. Her eyelids fell lower, but she did not turn
away her head, and Philip continued to look at her. Then he said
slowly:

"You are very much more beautiful than I thought you would be."

"Am I?" said Maggie, the pleasure returning in a deeper flush. She
turned her face away from him and took some steps, looking straight
before her in silence, as if she were adjusting her consciousness to
this new idea. Girls are so accustomed to think of dress as the main
ground of vanity, that, in abstaining from the looking-glass, Maggie
had thought more of abandoning all care for adornment than of
renouncing the contemplation of her face. Comparing herself with
elegant, wealthy young ladies, it had not occurred to her that she
could produce any effect with her person. Philip seemed to like the
silence well. He walked by her side, watching her face, as if that
sight left no room for any other wish. They had passed from among the
fir-trees, and had now come to a green hollow almost surrounded by an
amphitheatre of the pale pink dog-roses. But as the light about them
had brightened, Maggie's face had lost its glow.

She stood still when they were in the hollows, and looking at Philip
again, she said in a serious, sad voice:

"I wish we could have been friends,--I mean, if it would have been
good and right for us. But that is the trial I have to bear in
everything; I may not keep anything I used to love when I was little.
The old books went; and Tom is different, and my father. It is like
death. I must part with everything I cared for when I was a child. And
I must part with you; we must never take any notice of each other
again. That was what I wanted to speak to you for. I wanted to let you
know that Tom and I can't do as we like about such things, and that if
I behave as if I had forgotten all about you, it is not out of envy or
pride--or--or any bad feeling."

Maggie spoke with more and more sorrowful gentleness as she went on,
and her eyes began to fill with tears. The deepening expression of
pain on Philip's face gave him a stronger resemblance to his boyish
self, and made the deformity appeal more strongly to her pity.

"I know; I see all that you mean," he said, in a voice that had become
feebler from discouragement; "I know what there is to keep us apart on
both sides. But it is not right, Maggie,--don't you be angry with me,
I am so used to call you Maggie in my thoughts,--it is not right to
sacrifice everything to other people's unreasonable feelings. I would
give up a great deal for _my_ father; but I would not give up a
friendship or--or an attachment of any sort, in obedience to any wish
of his that I didn't recognize as right."

"I don't know," said Maggie, musingly. "Often, when I have been angry
and discontented, it has seemed to me that I was not bound to give up
anything; and I have gone on thinking till it has seemed to me that I
could think away all my duty. But no good has ever come of that; it
was an evil state of mind. I'm quite sure that whatever I might do, I
should wish in the end that I had gone without anything for myself,
rather than have made my father's life harder to him."

"But would it make his life harder if we were to see each other
sometimes?" said Philip. He was going to say something else, but
checked himself.

"Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't like it. Don't ask me why, or anything about
it," said Maggie, in a distressed tone. "My father feels so strongly
about some things. He is not at all happy."

"No more am I," said Philip, impetuously; "I am not happy."

"Why?" said Maggie, gently. "At least--I ought not to ask--but I'm
very, very sorry."

Philip turned to walk on, as if he had not patience to stand still any
longer, and they went out of the hollow, winding amongst the trees and
bushes in silence. After that last word of Philip's, Maggie could not
bear to insist immediately on their parting.

"I've been a great deal happier," she said at last, timidly, "since I
have given up thinking about what is easy and pleasant, and being
discontented because I couldn't have my own will. Our life is
determined for us; and it makes the mind very free when we give up
wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and doing
what is given us to do."

"But I can't give up wishing," said Philip, impatiently. "It seems to
me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly
alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and
we _must_ hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them
until our feelings are deadened? I delight in fine pictures; I long to
be able to paint such. I strive and strive, and can't produce what I
want. That is pain to me, and always _will_ be pain, until my
faculties lose their keenness, like aged eyes. Then there are many
other things I long for,"--here Philip hesitated a little, and then
said,--"things that other men have, and that will always be denied me.
My life will have nothing great or beautiful in it; I would rather not
have lived."

"Oh, Philip," said Maggie, "I wish you didn't feel so." But her heart
began to beat with something of Philip's discontent.

"Well, then," said he, turning quickly round and fixing his gray eyes
entreatingly on her face, "I should be contented to live, if you would
let me see you sometimes." Then, checked by a fear which her face
suggested, he looked away again and said more calmly, "I have no
friend to whom I can tell everything, no one who cares enough about
me; and if I could only see you now and then, and you would let me
talk to you a little, and show me that you cared for me, and that we
may always be friends in heart, and help each other, then I might come
to be glad of life."

"But how can I see you, Philip?" said Maggie, falteringly. (Could she
really do him good? It would be very hard to say "good-by" this day,
and not speak to him again. Here was a new interest to vary the days;
it was so much easier to renounce the interest before it came.)

"If you would let me see you here sometimes,--walk with you here,--I
would be contented if it were only once or twice in a month. _That_
could injure no one's happiness, and it would sweeten my life.
Besides," Philip went on, with all the inventive astuteness of love at
one-and-twenty, "if there is any enmity between those who belong to
us, we ought all the more to try and quench it by our friendship; I
mean, that by our influence on both sides we might bring about a
healing of the wounds that have been made in the past, if I could know
everything about them. And I don't believe there is any enmity in my
own father's mind; I think he has proved the contrary."

Maggie shook her head slowly, and was silent, under conflicting
thoughts. It seemed to her inclination, that to see Philip now and
then, and keep up the bond of friendship with him, was something not
only innocent, but good; perhaps she might really help him to find
contentment as she had found it. The voice that said this made sweet
music to Maggie; but athwart it there came an urgent, monotonous
warning from another voice which she had been learning to obey,--the
warning that such interviews implied secrecy; implied doing something
she would dread to be discovered in, something that, if discovered,
must cause anger and pain; and that the admission of anything so near
doubleness would act as a spiritual blight. Yet the music would swell
out again, like chimes borne onward by a recurrent breeze, persuading
her that the wrong lay all in the faults and weaknesses of others, and
that there was such a thing as futile sacrifice for one to the injury
of another. It was very cruel for Philip that he should be shrunk
from, because of an unjustifiable vindictiveness toward his
father,--poor Philip, whom some people would shrink from only because
he was deformed. The idea that he might become her lover or that her
meeting him could cause disapproval in that light, had not occurred to
her; and Philip saw the absence of this idea clearly enough, saw it
with a certain pang, although it made her consent to his request the
less unlikely. There was bitterness to him in the perception that
Maggie was almost as frank and unconstrained toward him as when she
was a child.

"I can't say either yes or no," she said at last, turning round and
walking toward the way she come; "I must wait, lest I should decide
wrongly. I must seek for guidance."

"May I come again, then, to-morrow, or the next day, or next week?"

"I think I had better write," said Maggie, faltering again. "I have to
go to St. Ogg's sometimes, and I can put the letter in the post."

"Oh no," said Philip eagerly; "that would not be so well. My father
might see the letter--and--he has not any enmity, I believe, but he
views things differently from me; he thinks a great deal about wealth
and position. Pray let me come here once more. _Tell_ me when it shall
be; or if you can't tell me, I will come as often as I can till I do
see you."

"I think it must be so, then," said Maggie, "for I can't be quite
certain of coming here any particular evening."

Maggie felt a great relief in adjourning the decision. She was free
now to enjoy the minutes of companionship; she almost thought she
might linger a little; the next time they met she should have to pain
Philip by telling him her determination.

"I can't help thinking," she said, looking smilingly at him, after a
few moments of silence, "how strange it is that we should have met and
talked to each other, just as if it had been only yesterday when we
parted at Lorton. And yet we must both be very much altered in those
five years,--I think it is five years. How was it you seemed to have a
sort of feeling that I was the same Maggie? I was not quite so sure
that you would be the same; I know you are so clever, and you must
have seen and learnt so much to fill your mind; I was not quite sure
you would care about me now."

"I have never had any doubt that you would be the same, whenever I
might see you," said Philip,--"I mean, the same in everything that made
me like you better than any one else. I don't want to explain that; I
don't think any of the strongest effects our natures are susceptible
of can ever be explained. We can neither detect the process by which
they are arrived at, nor the mode in which they act on us. The
greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child; he
couldn't have told how he did it, and we can't tell why we feel it to
be divine. I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that
our understandings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains
of music affect me so strangely; I can never hear them without their
changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would
last, I might be capable of heroisms."

"Ah! I know what you mean about music; _I_ feel so," said Maggie,
clasping her hands with her old impetuosity. "At least," she added, in
a saddened tone, "I used to feel so when I had any music; I never have
any now except the organ at church."

"And you long for it, Maggie?" said Philip, looking at her with
affectionate pity. "Ah, you can have very little that is beautiful in
your life. Have you many books? You were so fond of them when you were
a little girl."

They were come back to the hollow, round which the dog-roses grew, and
they both paused under the charm of the faëry evening light, reflected
from the pale pink clusters.

"No, I have given up books," said Maggie, quietly, "except a very,
very few."

Philip had already taken from his pocket a small volume, and was
looking at the back as he said:

"Ah, this is the second volume, I see, else you might have liked to
take it home with you. I put it in my pocket because I am studying a
scene for a picture."

Maggie had looked at the back too, and saw the title; it revived an
old impression with overmastering force.

"'The Pirate,'" she said, taking the book from Philip's hands. "Oh, I
began that once; I read to where Minna is walking with Cleveland, and
I could never get to read the rest. I went on with it in my own head,
and I made several endings; but they were all unhappy. I could never
make a happy ending out of that beginning. Poor Minna! I wonder what
is the real end. For a long while I couldn't get my mind away from the
Shetland Isles,--I used to feel the wind blowing on me from the rough
sea."

Maggie spoke rapidly, with glistening eyes.

"Take that volume home with you, Maggie," said Philip, watching her
with delight. "I don't want it now. I shall make a picture of you
instead,--you, among the Scotch firs and the slanting shadows."

Maggie had not heard a word he had said; she was absorbed in a page at
which she had opened. But suddenly she closed the book, and gave it
back to Philip, shaking her head with a backward movement, as if to
say "avaunt" to floating visions.

"Do keep it, Maggie," said Philip, entreatingly; "it will give you
pleasure."

"No, thank you," said Maggie, putting it aside with her hand and
walking on. "It would make me in love with this world again, as I used
to be; it would make me long to see and know many things; it would
make me long for a full life."

"But you will not always be shut up in your present lot; why should
you starve your mind in that way? It is narrow asceticism; I don't
like to see you persisting in it, Maggie. Poetry and art and knowledge
are sacred and pure."

"But not for me, not for me," said Maggie, walking more hurriedly;
"because I should want too much. I must wait; this life will not last
long."

"Don't hurry away from me without saying 'good-by,' Maggie," said
Philip, as they reached the group of Scotch firs, and she continued
still to walk along without speaking. "I must not go any farther, I
think, must I?"

"Oh no, I forgot; good-by," said Maggie, pausing, and putting out her
hand to him. The action brought her feeling back in a strong current
to Philip; and after they had stood looking at each other in silence
for a few moments, with their hands clasped, she said, withdrawing her
hand:

"I'm very grateful to you for thinking of me all those years. It is
very sweet to have people love us. What a wonderful, beautiful thing
it seems that God should have made your heart so that you could care
about a queer little girl whom you only knew for a few weeks! I
remember saying to you that I thought you cared for me more than Tom
did."

"Ah, Maggie," said Philip, almost fretfully, "you would never love me
so well as you love your brother."

"Perhaps not," said Maggie, simply; "but then, you know, the first
thing I ever remember in my life is standing with Tom by the side of
the Floss, while he held my hand; everything before that is dark to
me. But I shall never forget you, though we must keep apart."

"Don't say so, Maggie," said Philip. "If I kept that little girl in my
mind for five years, didn't I earn some part in her? She ought not to
take herself quite away from me."

"Not if I were free," said Maggie; "but I am not, I must submit." She
hesitated a moment, and then added, "And I wanted to say to you, that
you had better not take more notice of my brother than just bowing to
him. He once told me not to speak to you again, and he doesn't change
his mind--Oh dear, the sun is set. I am too long away. Good-by." She
gave him her hand once more.

"I shall come here as often as I can till I see you again, Maggie.
Have some feeling for _me_ as well as for others."

"Yes, yes, I have," said Maggie, hurrying away, and quickly
disappearing behind the last fir-tree; though Philip's gaze after her
remained immovable for minutes as if he saw her still.

Maggie went home, with an inward conflict already begun; Philip went
home to do nothing but remember and hope. You can hardly help blaming
him severely. He was four or five years older than Maggie, and had a
full consciousness of his feeling toward her to aid him in foreseeing
the character his contemplated interviews with her would bear in the
opinion of a third person. But you must not suppose that he was
capable of a gross selfishness, or that he could have been satisfied
without persuading himself that he was seeking to infuse some
happiness into Maggie's life,--seeking this even more than any direct
ends for himself. He could give her sympathy; he could give her help.
There was not the slightest promise of love toward him in her manner;
it was nothing more than the sweet girlish tenderness she had shown
him when she was twelve. Perhaps she would never love him; perhaps no
woman ever _could_ love him. Well, then, he would endure that; he
should at least have the happiness of seeing her, of feeling some
nearness to her. And he clutched passionately the possibility that she
_might_ love him; perhaps the feeling would grow, if she could come to
associate him with that watchful tenderness which her nature would be
so keenly alive to. If any woman could love him, surely Maggie was
that woman; there was such wealth of love in her, and there was no one
to claim it all. Then, the pity of it, that a mind like hers should be
withering in its very youth, like a young forest-tree, for want of the
light and space it was formed to flourish in! Could he not hinder
that, by persuading her out of her system of privation? He would be
her guardian angel; he would do anything, bear anything, for her
sake--except not seeing her.



Chapter II

Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob's Thumb


While Maggie's life-struggles had lain almost entirely within her own
soul, one shadowy army fighting another, and the slain shadows forever
rising again, Tom was engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare, grappling
with more substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite conquests.
So it has been since the days of Hecuba, and of Hector, Tamer of
horses; inside the gates, the women with streaming hair and uplifted
hands offering prayers, watching the world's combat from afar, filling
their long, empty days with memories and fears; outside, the men, in
fierce struggle with things divine and human, quenching memory in the
stronger light of purpose, losing the sense of dread and even of
wounds in the hurrying ardor of action.

From what you have seen of Tom, I think he is not a youth of whom you
would prophesy failure in anything he had thoroughly wished; the
wagers are likely to be on his side, notwithstanding his small success
in the classics. For Tom had never desired success in this field of
enterprise; and for getting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity
there is nothing like pouring out on a mind a good amount of subjects
in which it feels no interest. But now Tom's strong will bound
together his integrity, his pride, his family regrets, and his
personal ambition, and made them one force, concentrating his efforts
and surmounting discouragements. His uncle Deane, who watched him
closely, soon began to conceive hopes of him, and to be rather proud
that he had brought into the employment of the firm a nephew who
appeared to be made of such good commercial stuff. The real kindness
of placing him in the warehouse first was soon evident to Tom, in the
hints his uncle began to throw out, that after a time he might perhaps
be trusted to travel at certain seasons, and buy in for the firm
various vulgar commodities with which I need not shock refined ears in
this place; and it was doubtless with a view to this result that Mr.
Deane, when he expected to take his wine alone, would tell Tom to step
in and sit with him an hour, and would pass that hour in much
lecturing and catechising concerning articles of export and import,
with an occasional excursus of more indirect utility on the relative
advantages to the merchants of St. Ogg's of having goods brought in
their own and in foreign bottoms,--a subject on which Mr. Deane, as a
ship-owner, naturally threw off a few sparks when he got warmed with
talk and wine.

Already, in the second year, Tom's salary was raised; but all, except
the price of his dinner and clothes, went home into the tin box; and
he shunned comradeship, lest it should lead him into expenses in spite
of himself. Not that Tom was moulded on the spoony type of the
Industrious Apprentice; he had a very strong appetite for
pleasure,--would have liked to be a Tamer of horses and to make a
distinguished figure in all neighboring eyes, dispensing treats and
benefits to others with well-judged liberality, and being pronounced
one of the finest young fellows of those parts; nay, he determined to
achieve these things sooner or later; but his practical shrewdness
told him that the means no such achievements could only lie for him in
present abstinence and self-denial; there were certain milestones to
be passed, and one of the first was the payment of his father's debts.
Having made up his mind on that point, he strode along without
swerving, contracting some rather saturnine sternness, as a young man
is likely to do who has a premature call upon him for self-reliance.
Tom felt intensely that common cause with his father which springs
from family pride, and was bent on being irreproachable as a son; but
his growing experience caused him to pass much silent criticism on the
rashness and imprudence of his father's past conduct; their
dispositions were not in sympathy, and Tom's face showed little
radiance during his few home hours. Maggie had an awe of him, against
which she struggled as something unfair to her consciousness of wider
thoughts and deeper motives; but it was of no use to struggle. A
character at unity with itself--that performs what it intends, subdues
every counteracting impulse, and has no visions beyond the distinctly
possible--is strong by its very negations.

You may imagine that Tom's more and more obvious unlikeness to his
father was well fitted to conciliate the maternal aunts and uncles;
and Mr. Deane's favorable reports and predictions to Mr. Glegg
concerning Tom's qualifications for business began to be discussed
amongst them with various acceptance. He was likely, it appeared, to
do the family credit without causing it any expense and trouble. Mrs.
Pullet had always thought it strange if Tom's excellent complexion, so
entirely that of the Dodsons, did not argue a certainty that he would
turn out well; his juvenile errors of running down the peacock, and
general disrespect to his aunts, only indicating a tinge of Tulliver
blood which he had doubtless outgrown. Mr. Glegg, who had contracted a
cautious liking for Tom ever since his spirited and sensible behavior
when the execution was in the house, was now warming into a resolution
to further his prospects actively,--some time, when an opportunity
offered of doing so in a prudent manner, without ultimate loss; but
Mrs. Glegg observed that she was not given to speak without book, as
some people were; that those who said least were most likely to find
their words made good; and that when the right moment came, it would
be seen who could do something better than talk. Uncle Pullet, after
silent meditation for a period of several lozenges, came distinctly to
the conclusion, that when a young man was likely to do well, it was
better not to meddle with him.

Tom, meanwhile, had shown no disposition to rely on any one but
himself, though, with a natural sensitiveness toward all indications
of favorable opinion, he was glad to see his uncle Glegg look in on
him sometimes in a friendly way during business hours, and glad to be
invited to dine at his house, though he usually preferred declining on
the ground that he was not sure of being punctual. But about a year
ago, something had occurred which induced Tom to test his uncle
Glegg's friendly disposition.

Bob Jakin, who rarely returned from one of his rounds without seeing
Tom and Maggie, awaited him on the bridge as he was coming home from
St. Ogg's one evening, that they might have a little private talk. He
took the liberty of asking if Mr. Tom had ever thought of making money
by trading a bit on his own account. Trading, how? Tom wished to know.
Why, by sending out a bit of a cargo to foreign ports; because Bob had
a particular friend who had offered to do a little business for him in
that way in Laceham goods, and would be glad to serve Mr. Tom on the
same footing. Tom was interested at once, and begged for full
explanation, wondering he had not thought of this plan before.

He was so well pleased with the prospect of a speculation that might
change the slow process of addition into multiplication, that he at
once determined to mention the matter to his father, and get his
consent to appropriate some of the savings in the tin box to the
purchase of a small cargo. He would rather not have consulted his
father, but he had just paid his last quarter's money into the tin
box, and there was no other resource. All the savings were there; for
Mr. Tulliver would not consent to put the money out at interest lest
he should lose it. Since he had speculated in the purchase of some
corn, and had lost by it, he could not be easy without keeping the
money under his eye.

Tom approached the subject carefully, as he was seated on the hearth
with his father that evening, and Mr. Tulliver listened, leaning
forward in his arm-chair and looking up in Tom's face with a sceptical
glance. His first impulse was to give a positive refusal, but he was
in some awe of Tom's wishes, and since he had the sense of being an
"unlucky" father, he had lost some of his old peremptoriness and
determination to be master. He took the key of the bureau from his
pocket, got out the key of the large chest, and fetched down the tin
box,--slowly, as if he were trying to defer the moment of a painful
parting. Then he seated himself against the table, and opened the box
with that little padlock-key which he fingered in his waistcoat pocket
in all vacant moments. There they were, the dingy bank-notes and the
bright sovereigns, and he counted them out on the table--only a
hundred and sixteen pounds in two years, after all the pinching.

"How much do you want, then?" he said, speaking as if the words burnt
his lips.

"Suppose I begin with the thirty-six pounds, father?" said Tom.

Mr. Tulliver separated this sum from the rest, and keeping his hand
over it, said:

"It's as much as I can save out o' my pay in a year."

"Yes, father; it is such slow work, saving out of the little money we
get. And in this way we might double our savings."

"Ay, my lad," said the father, keeping his hand on the money, "but you
might lose it,--you might lose a year o' my life,--and I haven't got
many."

Tom was silent.

"And you know I wouldn't pay a dividend with the first hundred,
because I wanted to see it all in a lump,--and when I see it, I'm sure
on't. If you trust to luck, it's sure to be against me. It's Old
Harry's got the luck in his hands; and if I lose one year, I shall
never pick it up again; death 'ull o'ertake me."

Mr. Tulliver's voice trembled, and Tom was silent for a few minutes
before he said:

"I'll give it up, father, since you object to it so strongly."

But, unwilling to abandon the scheme altogether, he determined to ask
his uncle Glegg to venture twenty pounds, on condition of receiving
five per cent. of the profits. That was really a very small thing to
ask. So when Bob called the next day at the wharf to know the
decision, Tom proposed that they should go together to his uncle
Glegg's to open the business; for his diffident pride clung to him,
and made him feel that Bobs' tongue would relieve him from some
embarrassment.

Mr. Glegg, at the pleasant hour of four in the afternoon of a hot
August day, was naturally counting his wall-fruit to assure himself
that the sum total had not varied since yesterday. To him entered Tom,
in what appeared to Mr. Glegg very questionable companionship,--that
of a man with a pack on his back,--for Bob was equipped for a new
journey,--and of a huge brindled bull-terrier, who walked with a slow,
swaying movement from side to side, and glanced from under his
eye-lids with a surly indifference which might after all be a cover to
the most offensive designs.

Mr. Glegg's spectacles, which had been assisting him in counting the
fruit, made these suspicious details alarmingly evident to him.

"Heigh! heigh! keep that dog back, will you?" he shouted, snatching up
a stake and holding it before him as a shield when the visitors were
within three yards of him.

"Get out wi' you, Mumps," said Bob, with a kick. "He's as quiet as a
lamb, sir,"--an observation which Mumps corroborated by a low growl as
he retreated behind his master's legs.

"Why, what ever does this mean, Tom?" said Mr. Glegg. "Have you
brought information about the scoundrels as cut my trees?" If Bob came
in the character of "information," Mr. Glegg saw reasons for
tolerating some irregularity.

"No, sir," said Tom; "I came to speak to you about a little matter of
business of my own."

"Ay--well; but what has this dog got to do with it?" said the old
gentleman, getting mild again.

"It's my dog, sir," said the ready Bob. "An' it's me as put Mr. Tom up
to the bit o' business; for Mr. Tom's been a friend o' mine iver since
I was a little chap; fust thing iver I did was frightenin' the birds
for th' old master. An' if a bit o' luck turns up, I'm allays thinkin'
if I can let Mr. Tom have a pull at it. An' it's a downright roarin'
shame, as when he's got the chance o' making a bit o' money wi'
sending goods out,--ten or twelve per zent clear, when freight an'
commission's paid,--as he shouldn't lay hold o' the chance for want o'
money. An' when there's the Laceham goods,--lors! they're made o'
purpose for folks as want to send out a little carguy; light, an' take
up no room,--you may pack twenty pound so as you can't see the
passill; an' they're manifacturs as please fools, so I reckon they
aren't like to want a market. An' I'd go to Laceham an' buy in the
goods for Mr. Tom along wi' my own. An' there's the shupercargo o' the
bit of a vessel as is goin' to take 'em out. I know him partic'lar;
he's a solid man, an' got a family i' the town here. Salt, his name
is,--an' a briny chap he is too,--an' if you don't believe me, I can
take you to him."

Uncle Glegg stood open-mouthed with astonishment at this unembarrassed
loquacity, with which his understanding could hardly keep pace. He
looked at Bob, first over his spectacles, then through them, then over
them again; while Tom, doubtful of his uncle's impression, began to
wish he had not brought this singular Aaron, or mouthpiece. Bob's talk
appeared less seemly, now some one besides himself was listening to
it.

"You seem to be a knowing fellow," said Mr. Glegg, at last.

"Ay, sir, you say true," returned Bob, nodding his head aside; "I
think my head's all alive inside like an old cheese, for I'm so full
o' plans, one knocks another over. If I hadn't Mumps to talk to, I
should get top-heavy an' tumble in a fit. I suppose it's because I
niver went to school much. That's what I jaw my old mother for. I
says, 'You should ha' sent me to school a bit more,' I says, 'an' then
I could ha' read i' the books like fun, an' kep' my head cool an'
empty.' Lors, she's fine an' comfor'ble now, my old mother is; she
ates her baked meat an' taters as often as she likes. For I'm gettin'
so full o' money, I must hev a wife to spend it for me. But it's
botherin,' a wife is,--and Mumps mightn't like her."

Uncle Glegg, who regarded himself as a jocose man since he had retired
from business, was beginning to find Bob amusing, but he had still a
disapproving observation to make, which kept his face serious.

"Ah," he said, "I should think you're at a loss for ways o' spending
your money, else you wouldn't keep that big dog, to eat as much as two
Christians. It's shameful--shameful!" But he spoke more in sorrow than
in anger, and quickly added:

"But, come now, let's hear more about this business, Tom. I suppose
you want a little sum to make a venture with. But where's all your own
money? You don't spend it all--eh?"

"No, sir," said Tom, coloring; "but my father is unwilling to risk it,
and I don't like to press him. If I could get twenty or thirty pounds
to begin with, I could pay five per cent for it, and then I could
gradually make a little capital of my own, and do without a loan."

"Ay--ay," said Mr. Glegg, in an approving tone; "that's not a bad
notion, and I won't say as I wouldn't be your man. But it 'ull be as
well for me to see this Salt, as you talk on. And then--here's this
friend o' yours offers to buy the goods for you. Perhaps you've got
somebody to stand surety for you if the money's put into your hands?"
added the cautious old gentleman, looking over his spectacles at Bob.

"I don't think that's necessary, uncle," said Tom. "At least, I mean
it would not be necessary for me, because I know Bob well; but perhaps
it would be right for you to have some security."

"You get your percentage out o' the purchase, I suppose?" said Mr.
Glegg, looking at Bob.

"No, sir," said Bob, rather indignantly; "I didn't offer to get a
apple for Mr. Tom, o' purpose to hev a bite out of it myself. When I
play folks tricks, there'll be more fun in 'em nor that."

"Well, but it's nothing but right you should have a small percentage,"
said Mr. Glegg. "I've no opinion o' transactions where folks do things
for nothing. It allays looks bad."

"Well, then," said Bob, whose keenness saw at once what was implied,
"I'll tell you what I get by't, an' it's money in my pocket in the
end,--I make myself look big, wi' makin' a bigger purchase. That's
what I'm thinking on. Lors! I'm a 'cute chap,--I am."

"Mr. Glegg, Mr. Glegg!" said a severe voice from the open parlor
window, "pray are you coming in to tea, or are you going to stand
talking with packmen till you get murdered in the open daylight?"

"Murdered?" said Mr. Glegg; "what's the woman talking of? Here's your
nephey Tom come about a bit o' business."

"Murdered,--yes,--it isn't many 'sizes ago since a packman murdered a
young woman in a lone place, and stole her thimble, and threw her body
into a ditch."

"Nay, nay," said Mr. Glegg, soothingly, "you're thinking o' the man
wi' no legs, as drove a dog-cart."

"Well, it's the same thing, Mr. Glegg, only you're fond o'
contradicting what I say; and if my nephey's come about business, it
'ud be more fitting if you'd bring him into the house, and let his
aunt know about it, instead o' whispering in corners, in that
plotting, underminding way."

"Well, well," said Mr. Glegg, "we'll come in now."

"You needn't stay here," said the lady to Bob, in a loud voice,
adapted to the moral, not the physical, distance between them. "We
don't want anything. I don't deal wi' packmen. Mind you shut the gate
after you."

"Stop a bit; not so fast," said Mr. Glegg; "I haven't done with this
young man yet. Come in, Tom; come in," he added, stepping in at the
French window.

"Mr. Glegg," said Mrs. G., in a fatal tone, "if you're going to let
that man and his dog in on my carpet, before my very face, be so good
as to let me know. A wife's got a right to ask that, I hope."

"Don't you be uneasy, mum," said Bob, touching his cap. He saw at once
that Mrs. Glegg was a bit of game worth running down, and longed to be
at the sport; "we'll stay out upo' the gravel here,--Mumps and me
will. Mumps knows his company,--he does. I might hish at him by th'
hour together, before he'd fly at a real gentlewoman like you. It's
wonderful how he knows which is the good-looking ladies; and's
partic'lar fond of 'em when they've good shapes. Lors!" added Bob,
laying down his pack on the gravel, "it's a thousand pities such a
lady as you shouldn't deal with a packman, i' stead o' goin' into
these newfangled shops, where there's half-a-dozen fine gents wi'
their chins propped up wi' a stiff stock, a-looking like bottles wi'
ornamental stoppers, an' all got to get their dinner out of a bit o'
calico; it stan's to reason you must pay three times the price you pay
a packman, as is the nat'ral way o' gettin' goods,--an' pays no rent,
an' isn't forced to throttle himself till the lies are squeezed out on
him, whether he will or no. But lors! mum, you know what it is better
nor I do,--_you_ can see through them shopmen, I'll be bound."

"Yes, I reckon I can, and through the packmen too," observed Mrs.
Glegg, intending to imply that Bob's flattery had produced no effect
on _her;_ while her husband, standing behind her with his hands in his
pockets and legs apart, winked and smiled with conjugal delight at the
probability of his wife's being circumvented.

"Ay, to be sure, mum," said Bob. "Why, you must ha' dealt wi' no end
o' packmen when you war a young lass--before the master here had the
luck to set eyes on you. I know where you lived, I do,--seen th' house
many a time,--close upon Squire Darleigh's,--a stone house wi'
steps----"

"Ah, that it had," said Mrs. Glegg, pouring out the tea. "You know
something o' my family, then? Are you akin to that packman with a
squint in his eye, as used to bring th' Irish linen?"

"Look you there now!" said Bob, evasively. "Didn't I know as you'd
remember the best bargains you've made in your life was made wi'
packmen? Why, you see even a squintin' packman's better nor a shopman
as can see straight. Lors! if I'd had the luck to call at the stone
house wi' my pack, as lies here,"--stooping and thumping the bundle
emphatically with his fist,--"an' th' handsome young lasses all
stannin' out on the stone steps, it ud' ha' been summat like openin' a
pack, that would. It's on'y the poor houses now as a packman calls on,
if it isn't for the sake o' the sarvant-maids. They're paltry times,
these are. Why, mum, look at the printed cottons now, an' what they
was when you wore 'em,--why, you wouldn't put such a thing on now, I
can see. It must be first-rate quality, the manifactur as you'd
buy,--summat as 'ud wear as well as your own faitures."

"Yes, better quality nor any you're like to carry; you've got nothing
first-rate but brazenness, I'll be bound," said Mrs. Glegg, with a
triumphant sense of her insurmountable sagacity. "Mr. Glegg, are you
going ever to sit down to your tea? Tom, there's a cup for you."

"You speak true there, mum," said Bob. "My pack isn't for ladies like
you. The time's gone by for that. Bargains picked up dirt cheap! A bit
o' damage here an' there, as can be cut out, or else niver seen i' the
wearin', but not fit to offer to rich folks as can pay for the look o'
things as nobody sees. I'm not the man as 'ud offer t' open my pack to
_you_, mum; no, no; I'm a imperent chap, as you say,--these times
makes folks imperent,--but I'm not up to the mark o' that."

"Why, what goods do you carry in your pack?" said Mrs. Glegg.
"Fine-colored things, I suppose,--shawls an' that?"

"All sorts, mum, all sorts," said Bob,--thumping his bundle; "but let
us say no more about that, if _you_ please. I'm here upo' Mr. Tom's
business, an' I'm not the man to take up the time wi' my own."

"And pray, what _is_ this business as is to be kept from me?" said
Mrs. Glegg, who, solicited by a double curiosity, was obliged to let
the one-half wait.

"A little plan o' nephey Tom's here," said good-natured Mr. Glegg;
"and not altogether a bad 'un, I think. A little plan for making
money; that's the right sort o' plan for young folks as have got their
fortin to make, eh, Jane?"

"But I hope it isn't a plan where he expects iverything to be done for
him by his friends; that's what the young folks think of mostly
nowadays. And pray, what has this packman got to do wi' what goes on
in our family? Can't you speak for yourself, Tom, and let your aunt
know things, as a nephey should?"

"This is Bob Jakin, aunt," said Tom, bridling the irritation that aunt
Glegg's voice always produced. "I've known him ever since we were
little boys. He's a very good fellow, and always ready to do me a
kindness. And he has had some experience in sending goods out,--a
small part of a cargo as a private speculation; and he thinks if I
could begin to do a little in the same way, I might make some money. A
large interest is got in that way."

"Large int'rest?" said aunt Glegg, with eagerness; "and what do you
call large int'rest?"

"Ten or twelve per cent, Bob says, after expenses are paid."

"Then why wasn't I let to know o' such things before, Mr. Glegg?" said
Mrs. Glegg, turning to her husband, with a deep grating tone of
reproach. "Haven't you allays told me as there was no getting more nor
five per cent?"

"Pooh, pooh, nonsense, my good woman," said Mr. Glegg. "You couldn't
go into trade, could you? You can't get more than five per cent with
security."

"But I can turn a bit o' money for you, an' welcome, mum," said Bob,
"if you'd like to risk it,--not as there's any risk to speak on. But
if you'd a mind to lend a bit o' money to Mr. Tom, he'd pay you six or
seven per zent, an' get a trifle for himself as well; an' a
good-natur'd lady like you 'ud like the feel o' the money better if
your nephey took part on it."

"What do you say, Mrs. G.?" said Mr. Glegg. "I've a notion, when I've
made a bit more inquiry, as I shall perhaps start Tom here with a bit
of a nest-egg,--he'll pay me int'rest, you know,--an' if you've got
some little sums lyin' idle twisted up in a stockin' toe, or that----"

"Mr. Glegg, it's beyond iverything! You'll go and give information to
the tramps next, as they may come and rob me."

"Well, well, as I was sayin', if you like to join me wi' twenty
pounds, you can--I'll make it fifty. That'll be a pretty good
nest-egg, eh, Tom?"

"You're not counting on me, Mr. Glegg, I hope," said his wife. "You
could do fine things wi' my money, I don't doubt."

"Very well," said Mr. Glegg, rather snappishly, "then we'll do without
you. I shall go with you to see this Salt," he added, turning to Bob.

"And now, I suppose, you'll go all the other way, Mr. Glegg," said
Mrs. G., "and want to shut me out o' my own nephey's business. I never
said I wouldn't put money into it,--I don't say as it shall be twenty
pounds, though you're so ready to say it for me,--but he'll see some
day as his aunt's in the right not to risk the money she's saved for
him till it's proved as it won't be lost."

"Ay, that's a pleasant sort o'risk, that is," said Mr. Glegg,
indiscreetly winking at Tom, who couldn't avoid smiling. But Bob
stemmed the injured lady's outburst.

"Ay, mum," he said admiringly, "you know what's what--you do. An' it's
nothing but fair. _You_ see how the first bit of a job answers, an'
then you'll come down handsome. Lors, it's a fine thing to hev good
kin. I got my bit of a nest-egg, as the master calls it, all by my own
sharpness,--ten suvreigns it was,--wi' dousing the fire at Torry's
mill, an' it's growed an' growed by a bit an' a bit, till I'n got a
matter o' thirty pound to lay out, besides makin' my mother
comfor'ble. I should get more, on'y I'm such a soft wi' the women,--I
can't help lettin' 'em hev such good bargains. There's this bundle,
now," thumping it lustily, "any other chap 'ud make a pretty penny out
on it. But me!--lors, I shall sell 'em for pretty near what I paid for
'em."

"Have you got a bit of good net, now?" said Mrs. Glegg, in a
patronizing tone, moving from the tea-table, and folding her napkin.

"Eh, mum, not what you'd think it worth your while to look at. I'd
scorn to show it you. It 'ud be an insult to you."

"But let me see," said Mrs. Glegg, still patronizing. "If they're
damaged goods, they're like enough to be a bit the better quality."

"No, mum, I know my place," said Bob, lifting up his pack and
shouldering it. "I'm not going t' expose the lowness o' my trade to a
lady like you. Packs is come down i' the world; it 'ud cut you to th'
heart to see the difference. I'm at your sarvice, sir, when you've a
mind to go and see Salt."

"All in good time," said Mr. Glegg, really unwilling to cut short the
dialogue. "Are you wanted at the wharf, Tom?"

"No, sir; I left Stowe in my place."

"Come, put down your pack, and let me see," said Mrs. Glegg, drawing a
chair to the window and seating herself with much dignity.

"Don't you ask it, mum," said Bob, entreatingly.

"Make no more words," said Mrs. Glegg, severely, "but do as I tell
you."

"Eh mum, I'm loth, that I am," said Bob, slowly depositing his pack on
the step, and beginning to untie it with unwilling fingers. "But what
you order shall be done" (much fumbling in pauses between the
sentences). "It's not as you'll buy a single thing on me,--I'd be
sorry for you to do it,--for think o' them poor women up i' the
villages there, as niver stir a hundred yards from home,--it 'ud be a
pity for anybody to buy up their bargains. Lors, it's as good as a
junketing to 'em when they see me wi' my pack, an' I shall niver pick
up such bargains for 'em again. Least ways, I've no time now, for I'm
off to Laceham. See here now," Bob went on, becoming rapid again, and
holding up a scarlet woollen Kerchief with an embroidered wreath in
the corner; "here's a thing to make a lass's mouth water, an' on'y two
shillin'--an' why? Why, 'cause there's a bit of a moth-hole 'i this
plain end. Lors, I think the moths an' the mildew was sent by
Providence o' purpose to cheapen the goods a bit for the good-lookin'
women as han't got much money. If it hadn't been for the moths, now,
every hankicher on 'em 'ud ha' gone to the rich, handsome ladies, like
you, mum, at five shillin' apiece,--not a farthin' less; but what does
the moth do? Why, it nibbles off three shillin' o' the price i' no
time; an' then a packman like me can carry 't to the poor lasses as
live under the dark thack, to make a bit of a blaze for 'em. Lors,
it's as good as a fire, to look at such a hankicher!"

Bob held it at a distance for admiration, but Mrs. Glegg said sharply:

"Yes, but nobody wants a fire this time o' year. Put these colored
things by; let me look at your nets, if you've got 'em."

"Eh, mum, I told you how it 'ud be," said Bob, flinging aside the
colored things with an air of desperation. "I knowed it ud' turn
again' you to look at such paltry articles as I carry. Here's a piece
o' figured muslin now, what's the use o' you lookin' at it? You might
as well look at poor folks's victual, mum; it 'ud on'y take away your
appetite. There's a yard i' the middle on't as the pattern's all
missed,--lors, why, it's a muslin as the Princess Victoree might ha'
wore; but," added Bob, flinging it behind him on to the turf, as if to
save Mrs. Glegg's eyes, "it'll be bought up by the huckster's wife at
Fibb's End,--that's where _it'll_ go--ten shillin' for the whole
lot--ten yards, countin' the damaged un--five-an'-twenty shillin' 'ud
ha' been the price, not a penny less. But I'll say no more, mum; it's
nothing to you, a piece o' muslin like that; you can afford to pay
three times the money for a thing as isn't half so good. It's nets
_you_ talked on; well, I've got a piece as 'ull serve you to make fun
on----"

"Bring me that muslin," said Mrs. Glegg. "It's a buff; I'm partial to
buff."

"Eh, but a _damaged_ thing," said Bob, in a tone of deprecating
disgust. "You'd do nothing with it, mum, you'd give it to the cook, I
know you would, an' it 'ud be a pity,--she'd look too much like a lady
in it; it's unbecoming for servants."

"Fetch it, and let me see you measure it," said Mrs. Glegg,
authoritatively.

Bob obeyed with ostentatious reluctance.

"See what there is over measure!" he said, holding forth the extra
half-yard, while Mrs. Glegg was busy examining the damaged yard, and
throwing her head back to see how far the fault would be lost on a
distant view.

"I'll give you six shilling for it," she said, throwing it down with
the air of a person who mentions an ultimatum.

"Didn't I tell you now, mum, as it 'ud hurt your feelings to look at
my pack? That damaged bit's turned your stomach now; I see it has,"
said Bob, wrapping the muslin up with the utmost quickness, and
apparently about to fasten up his pack. "You're used to seein' a
different sort o' article carried by packmen, when you lived at the
stone house. Packs is come down i' the world; I told you that; _my_
goods are for common folks. Mrs. Pepper 'ull give me ten shillin' for
that muslin, an' be sorry as I didn't ask her more. Such articles
answer i' the wearin',--they keep their color till the threads melt
away i' the wash-tub, an' that won't be while _I'm_ a young un."

"Well, seven shilling," said Mrs. Glegg.

"Put it out o' your mind, mum, now do," said Bob. "Here's a bit o'
net, then, for you to look at before I tie up my pack, just for you to
see what my trade's come to,--spotted and sprigged, you see, beautiful
but yallow,--'s been lyin' by an' got the wrong color. I could niver
ha' bought such net, if it hadn't been yallow. Lors, it's took me a
deal o' study to know the vally o' such articles; when I begun to
carry a pack, I was as ignirant as a pig; net or calico was all the
same to me. I thought them things the most vally as was the thickest.
I was took in dreadful, for I'm a straightforrard chap,--up to no
tricks, mum. I can only say my nose is my own, for if I went beyond, I
should lose myself pretty quick. An' I gev five-an'-eightpence for
that piece o' net,--if I was to tell y' anything else I should be
tellin' you fibs,--an' five-an'-eightpence I shall ask of it, not a
penny more, for it's a woman's article, an' I like to 'commodate the
women. Five-an'-eightpence for six yards,--as cheap as if it was only
the dirt on it as was paid for.'"

"I don't mind having three yards of it,'" said Mrs. Glegg.

"Why, there's but six altogether," said Bob. "No, mum, it isn't worth
your while; you can go to the shop to-morrow an' get the same pattern
ready whitened. It's on'y three times the money; what's that to a lady
like you?" He gave an emphatic tie to his bundle.

"Come, lay me out that muslin," said Mrs. Glegg. "Here's eight
shilling for it."

"You _will_ be jokin'," said Bob, looking up with a laughing face; "I
see'd you was a pleasant lady when I fust come to the winder."

"Well, put it me out," said Mrs. Glegg, peremptorily.

"But if I let you have it for ten shillin', mum, you'll be so good as
not tell nobody. I should be a laughin'-stock; the trade 'ud hoot me,
if they knowed it. I'm obliged to make believe as I ask more nor I do
for my goods, else they'd find out I was a flat. I'm glad you don't
insist upo' buyin' the net, for then I should ha' lost my two best
bargains for Mrs. Pepper o' Fibb's End, an' she's a rare customer."

"Let me look at the net again," said Mrs. Glegg, yearning after the
cheap spots and sprigs, now they were vanishing.

"Well, I can't deny _you_, mum," said Bob handing it out.

"Eh!, see what a pattern now! Real Laceham goods. Now, this is the
sort o' article I'm recommendin' Mr. Tom to send out. Lors, it's a
fine thing for anybody as has got a bit o' money; these Laceham goods
'ud make it breed like maggits. If I was a lady wi' a bit o'
money!--why, I know one as put thirty pounds into them goods,--a lady
wi' a cork leg, but as sharp,--you wouldn't catch _her_ runnin' her
head into a sack; _she'd_ see her way clear out o' anything afore
she'd be in a hurry to start. Well, she let out thirty pound to a
young man in the drapering line, and he laid it out i' Laceham goods,
an' a shupercargo o' my acquinetance (not Salt) took 'em out, an' she
got her eight per zent fust go off; an' now you can't hold her but she
must be sendin' out carguies wi' every ship, till she's gettin' as
rich as a Jew. Bucks her name is, she doesn't live i' this town. Now
then, mum, if you'll please to give me the net----"

"Here's fifteen shilling, then, for the two," said Mrs. Glegg. "But
it's a shameful price."

"Nay, mum, you'll niver say that when you're upo' your knees i' church
i' five years' time. I'm makin' you a present o' th' articles; I am,
indeed. That eightpence shaves off my profits as clean as a razor. Now
then, sir," continued Bob, shouldering his pack, "if you please, I'll
be glad to go and see about makin' Mr. Tom's fortin. Eh, I wish I'd
got another twenty pound to lay out _my_sen; I shouldn't stay to say
my Catechism afore I knowed what to do wi't."

"Stop a bit, Mr. Glegg," said the lady, as her husband took his hat,
"you never _will_ give me the chance o' speaking. You'll go away now,
and finish everything about this business, and come back and tell me
it's too late for me to speak. As if I wasn't my nephey's own aunt,
and the head o' the family on his mother's side! and laid by guineas,
all full weight, for him, as he'll know who to respect when I'm laid
in my coffin."

"Well, Mrs. G., say what you mean," said Mr. G., hastily.

"Well, then, I desire as nothing may be done without my knowing. I
don't say as I sha'n't venture twenty pounds, if you make out as
everything's right and safe. And if I do, Tom," concluded Mrs. Glegg,
turning impressively to her nephew, "I hope you'll allays bear it in
mind and be grateful for such an aunt. I mean you to pay me interest,
you know; I don't approve o' giving; we niver looked for that in _my_
family."

"Thank you, aunt," said Tom, rather proudly. "I prefer having the
money only lent to me."

"Very well; that's the Dodson sperrit," said Mrs. Glegg, rising to get
her knitting with the sense that any further remark after this would
be bathos.

Salt--that eminently "briny chap"--having been discovered in a cloud
of tobacco-smoke at the Anchor Tavern, Mr. Glegg commenced inquiries
which turned out satisfactorily enough to warrant the advance of the
"nest-egg," to which aunt Glegg contributed twenty pounds; and in this
modest beginning you see the ground of a fact which might otherwise
surprise you; namely, Tom's accumulation of a fund, unknown to his
father, that promised in no very long time to meet the more tardy
process of saving, and quite cover the deficit. When once his
attention had been turned to this source of gain, Tom determined to
make the most of it, and lost no opportunity of obtaining information
and extending his small enterprises. In not telling his father, he was
influenced by that strange mixture of opposite feelings which often
gives equal truth to those who blame an action and those who admire
it,--partly, it was that disinclination to confidence which is seen
between near kindred, that family repulsion which spoils the most
sacred relations of our lives; partly, it was the desire to surprise
his father with a great joy. He did not see that it would have been
better to soothe the interval with a new hope, and prevent the
delirium of a too sudden elation.

At the time of Maggie's first meeting with Philip, Tom had already
nearly a hundred and fifty pounds of his own capital; and while they
were walking by the evening light in the Red Deeps, he, by the same
evening light, was riding into Laceham, proud of being on his first
journey on behalf of Guest & Co., and revolving in his mind all the
chances that by the end of another year he should have doubled his
gains, lifted off the obloquy of debt from his father's name, and
perhaps--for he should be twenty-one--have got a new start for
himself, on a higher platform of employment. Did he not desire it? He
was quite sure that he did.



Chapter III

The Wavering Balance


I said that Maggie went home that evening from the Red Deeps with a
mental conflict already begun. You have seen clearly enough, in her
interview with Philip, what that conflict was. Here suddenly was an
opening in the rocky wall which shut in the narrow valley of
humiliation, where all her prospect was the remote, unfathomed sky;
and some of the memory-haunting earthly delights were no longer out of
her reach. She might have books, converse, affection; she might hear
tidings of the world from which her mind had not yet lost its sense of
exile; and it would be a kindness to Philip too, who was
pitiable,--clearly not happy. And perhaps here was an opportunity
indicated for making her mind more worthy of its highest service;
perhaps the noblest, completest devoutness could hardly exist without
some width of knowledge; _must_ she always live in this resigned
imprisonment? It was so blameless, so good a thing that there should
be friendship between her and Philip; the motives that forbade it were
so unreasonable, so unchristian! But the severe monotonous warning
came again and again,--that she was losing the simplicity and
clearness of her life by admitting a ground of concealment; and that,
by forsaking the simple rule of renunciation, she was throwing herself
under the seductive guidance of illimitable wants. She thought she had
won strength to obey the warning before she allowed herself the next
week to turn her steps in the evening to the Red Deeps. But while she
was resolved to say an affectionate farewell to Philip, how she looked
forward to that evening walk in the still, fleckered shade of the
hollows, away from all that was harsh and unlovely; to the
affectionate, admiring looks that would meet her; to the sense of
comradeship that childish memories would give to wiser, older talk; to
the certainty that Philip would care to hear everything she said,
which no one else cared for! It was a half-hour that it would be very
hard to turn her back upon, with the sense that there would be no
other like it. Yet she said what she meant to say; she looked firm as
well as sad.

"Philip, I have made up my mind; it is right that we should give each
other up, in everything but memory. I could not see you without
concealment--stay, I know what you are going to say,--it is other
people's wrong feelings that make concealment necessary; but
concealment is bad, however it may be caused. I feel that it would be
bad for me, for us both. And then, if our secret were discovered,
there would be nothing but misery,--dreadful anger; and then we must
part after all, and it would be harder, when we were used to seeing
each other."

Philip's face had flushed, and there was a momentary eagerness of
expression, as if he had been about to resist this decision with all
his might.

But he controlled himself, and said, with assumed calmness: "Well,
Maggie, if we must part, let us try and forget it for one half hour;
let us talk together a little while, for the last time."

He took her hand, and Maggie felt no reason to withdraw it; his
quietness made her all the more sure she had given him great pain, and
she wanted to show him how unwillingly she had given it. They walked
together hand in hand in silence.

"Let us sit down in the hollow," said Philip, "where we stood the last
time. See how the dog-roses have strewed the ground, and spread their
opal petals over it."

They sat down at the roots of the slanting ash.

"I've begun my picture of you among the Scotch firs, Maggie," said
Philip, "so you must let me study your face a little, while you
stay,--since I am not to see it again. Please turn your head this
way."

This was said in an entreating voice, and it would have been very hard
of Maggie to refuse. The full, lustrous face, with the bright black
coronet, looked down like that of a divinity well pleased to be
worshipped, on the pale-hued, small-featured face that was turned up
to it.

"I shall be sitting for my second portrait then," she said, smiling.
"Will it be larger than the other?"

"Oh yes, much larger. It is an oil-painting. You will look like a tall
Hamadryad, dark and strong and noble, just issued from one of the
fir-trees, when the stems are casting their afternoon shadows on the
grass."

"You seem to think more of painting than of anything now, Philip?"

"Perhaps I do," said Philip, rather sadly; "but I think of too many
things,--sow all sorts of seeds, and get no great harvest from any one
of them. I'm cursed with susceptibility in every direction, and
effective faculty in none. I care for painting and music; I care for
classic literature, and mediæval literature, and modern literature; I
flutter all ways, and fly in none."

"But surely that is a happiness to have so many tastes,--to enjoy so
many beautiful things, when they are within your reach," said Maggie,
musingly. "It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to
have one sort of talent,--almost like a carrier-pigeon."

"It might be a happiness to have many tastes if I were like other
men," said Philip, bitterly. "I might get some power and distinction
by mere mediocrity, as they do; at least I should get those middling
satisfactions which make men contented to do without great ones. I
might think society at St. Ogg's agreeable then. But nothing could
make life worth the purchase-money of pain to me, but some faculty
that would lift me above the dead level of provincial existence. Yes,
there is one thing,--a passion answers as well as a faculty."

Maggie did not hear the last words; she was struggling against the
consciousness that Philip's words had set her own discontent vibrating
again as it used to do.

"I understand what you mean," she said, "though I know so much less
than you do. I used to think I could never bear life if it kept on
being the same every day, and I must always be doing things of no
consequence, and never know anything greater. But, dear Philip, I
think we are only like children that some one who is wiser is taking
care of. Is it not right to resign ourselves entirely, whatever may be
denied us? I have found great peace in that for the last two or three
years, even joy in subduing my own will."

"Yes, Maggie," said Philip, vehemently; "and you are shutting yourself
up in a narrow, self-delusive fanaticism, which is only a way of
escaping pain by starving into dulness all the highest powers of your
nature. Joy and peace are not resignation; resignation is the willing
endurance of a pain that is not allayed, that you don't expect to be
allayed. Stupefaction is not resignation; and it is stupefaction to
remain in ignorance,--to shut up all the avenues by which the life of
your fellow-men might become known to you. I am not resigned; I am not
sure that life is long enough to learn that lesson. _You_ are not
resigned; you are only trying to stupefy yourself."

Maggie's lips trembled; she felt there was some truth in what Philip
said, and yet there was a deeper consciousness that, for any immediate
application it had to her conduct, it was no better than falsity. Her
double impression corresponded to the double impulse of the speaker.
Philip seriously believed what he said, but he said it with vehemence
because it made an argument against the resolution that opposed his
wishes. But Maggie's face, made more childlike by the gathering tears,
touched him with a tenderer, less egotistic feeling. He took her hand
and said gently:

"Don't let us think of such things in this short half-hour, Maggie. Let
us only care about being together. We shall be friends in spite of
separation. We shall always think of each other. I shall be glad to
live as long as you are alive, because I shall think there may always
come a time when I can--when you will let me help you in some way."

"What a dear, good brother you would have been, Philip," said Maggie,
smiling through the haze of tears. "I think you would have made as
much fuss about me, and been as pleased for me to love you, as would
have satisfied even me. You would have loved me well enough to bear
with me, and forgive me everything. That was what I always longed that
Tom should do. I was never satisfied with a _little_ of anything. That
is why it is better for me to do without earthly happiness altogether.
I never felt that I had enough music,--I wanted more instruments
playing together; I wanted voices to be fuller and deeper. Do you ever
sing now, Philip?" she added abruptly, as if she had forgotten what
went before.

"Yes," he said, "every day, almost. But my voice is only middling,
like everything else in me."

"Oh, sing me something,--just one song. I _may_ listen to that before
I go,--something you used to sing at Lorton on a Saturday afternoon,
when we had the drawing-room all to ourselves, and I put my apron over
my head to listen."

"_I_ know," said Philip; and Maggie buried her face in her hands while
he sang _sotto voce_, "Love in her eyes sits playing," and then said,
"That's it, isn't it?"

"Oh no, I won't stay," said Maggie, starting up. "It will only haunt
me. Let us walk, Philip. I must go home."

She moved away, so that he was obliged to rise and follow her.

"Maggie," he said, in a tone of remonstrance, "don't persist in this
wilful, senseless privation. It makes me wretched to see you benumbing
and cramping your nature in this way. You were so full of life when
you were a child; I thought you would be a brilliant woman,--all wit
and bright imagination. And it flashes out in your face still, until
you draw that veil of dull quiescence over it."

"Why do you speak so bitterly to me, Philip?" said Maggie.

"Because I foresee it will not end well; you can never carry on this
self-torture."

"I shall have strength given me," said Maggie, tremulously.

"No, you will not, Maggie; no one has strength given to do what is
unnatural. It is mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No
character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the
world some day, and then every rational satisfaction of your nature
that you deny now will assault you like a savage appetite."

Maggie started and paused, looking at Philip with alarm in her face.

"Philip, how dare you shake me in this way? You are a tempter."

"No, I am not; but love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives
foreboding. _Listen_ to me,--let _me_ supply you with books; do let me
see you sometimes,--be your brother and teacher, as you said at
Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should
be committing this long suicide."

Maggie felt unable to speak. She shook her head and walked on in
silence, till they came to the end of the Scotch firs, and she put out
her hand in sign of parting.

"Do you banish me from this place forever, then, Maggie? Surely I may
come and walk in it sometimes? If I meet you by chance, there is no
concealment in that?"

It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become
irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon
us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and
firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long
struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.

Maggie felt her heart leap at this subterfuge of Philip's, and there
passed over her face that almost imperceptible shock which accompanies
any relief. He saw it, and they parted in silence.

Philip's sense of the situation was too complete for him not to be
visited with glancing fears lest he had been intervening too
presumptuously in the action of Maggie's conscience, perhaps for a
selfish end. But no!--he persuaded himself his end was not selfish. He
had little hope that Maggie would ever return the strong feeling he
had for her; and it must be better for Maggie's future life, when
these petty family obstacles to her freedom had disappeared, that the
present should not be entirely sacrificed, and that she should have
some opportunity of culture,--some interchange with a mind above the
vulgar level of those she was now condemned to live with. If we only
look far enough off for the consequence of our actions, we can always
find some point in the combination of results by which those actions
can be justified; by adopting the point of view of a Providence who
arranges results, or of a philosopher who traces them, we shall find
it possible to obtain perfect complacency in choosing to do what is
most agreeable to us in the present moment. And it was in this way
that Philip justified his subtle efforts to overcome Maggie's true
prompting against a concealment that would introduce doubleness into
her own mind, and might cause new misery to those who had the primary
natural claim on her. But there was a surplus of passion in him that
made him half independent of justifying motives. His longing to see
Maggie, and make an element in her life, had in it some of that savage
impulse to snatch an offered joy which springs from a life in which
the mental and bodily constitution have made pain predominate. He had
not his full share in the common good of men; he could not even pass
muster with the insignificant, but must be singled out for pity, and
excepted from what was a matter of course with others. Even to Maggie
he was an exception; it was clear that the thought of his being her
lover had never entered her mind.

Do not think too hardly of Philip. Ugly and deformed people have great
need of unusual virtues, because they are likely to be extremely
uncomfortable without them; but the theory that unusual virtues spring
by a direct consequence out of personal disadvantages, as animals get
thicker wool in severe climates, is perhaps a little overstrained. The
temptations of beauty are much dwelt upon, but I fancy they only bear
the same relation to those of ugliness, as the temptation to excess at
a feast, where the delights are varied for eye and ear as well as
palate, bears to the temptations that assail the desperation of
hunger. Does not the Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost
trial to what is human in us?

Philip had never been soothed by that mother's love which flows out to
us in the greater abundance because our need is greater, which clings
to us the more tenderly because we are the less likely to be winners
in the game of life; and the sense of his father's affection and
indulgence toward him was marred by the keener perception of his
father's faults. Kept aloof from all practical life as Philip had
been, and by nature half feminine in sensitiveness, he had some of the
woman's intolerant repulsion toward worldliness and the deliberate
pursuit of sensual enjoyment; and this one strong natural tie in his
life,--his relation as a son,--was like an aching limb to him. Perhaps
there is inevitably something morbid in a human being who is in any
way unfavorably excepted from ordinary conditions, until the good
force has had time to triumph; and it has rarely had time for that at
two-and-twenty. That force was present in Philip in much strength, but
the sun himself looks feeble through the morning mists.



Chapter IV

Another Love-Scene


Early in the following April, nearly a year after that dubious parting
you have just witnessed, you may, if you like, again see Maggie
entering the Red Deeps through the group of Scotch firs. But it is
early afternoon and not evening, and the edge of sharpness in the
spring air makes her draw her large shawl close about her and trip
along rather quickly; though she looks round, as usual, that she may
take in the sight of her beloved trees. There is a more eager,
inquiring look in her eyes than there was last June, and a smile is
hovering about her lips, as if some playful speech were awaiting the
right hearer. The hearer was not long in appearing.

"Take back your _Corinne_," said Maggie, drawing a book from under her
shawl. "You were right in telling me she would do me no good; but you
were wrong in thinking I should wish to be like her."

"Wouldn't you really like to be a tenth Muse, then, Maggie?" said
Philip looking up in her face as we look at a first parting in the
clouds that promises us a bright heaven once more.

"Not at all," said Maggie, laughing. "The Muses were uncomfortable
goddesses, I think,--obliged always to carry rolls and musical
instruments about with them. If I carried a harp in this climate, you
know, I must have a green baize cover for it; and I should be sure to
leave it behind me by mistake."

"You agree with me in not liking Corinne, then?"

"I didn't finish the book," said Maggie. "As soon as I came to the
blond-haired young lady reading in the park, I shut it up, and
determined to read no further. I foresaw that that light-complexioned
girl would win away all the love from Corinne and make her miserable.
I'm determined to read no more books where the blond-haired women
carry away all the happiness. I should begin to have a prejudice
against them. If you could give me some story, now, where the dark
woman triumphs, it would restore the balance. I want to avenge Rebecca
and Flora MacIvor and Minna, and all the rest of the dark unhappy
ones. Since you are my tutor, you ought to preserve my mind from
prejudices; you are always arguing against prejudices."

"Well, perhaps you will avenge the dark women in your own person, and
carry away all the love from your cousin Lucy. She is sure to have
some handsome young man of St. Ogg's at her feet now; and you have
only to shine upon him--your fair little cousin will be quite quenched
in your beams."

"Philip, that is not pretty of you, to apply my nonsense to anything
real," said Maggie, looking hurt. "As if I, with my old gowns and want
of all accomplishments, could be a rival of dear little Lucy,--who
knows and does all sorts of charming things, and is ten times prettier
than I am,--even if I were odious and base enough to wish to be her
rival. Besides, I never go to aunt Deane's when any one is there; it
is only because dear Lucy is good, and loves me, that she comes to see
me, and will have me go to see her sometimes."

"Maggie," said Philip, with surprise, "it is not like you to take
playfulness literally. You must have been in St. Ogg's this morning,
and brought away a slight infection of dulness."

"Well," said Maggie, smiling, "if you meant that for a joke, it was a
poor one; but I thought it was a very good reproof. I thought you
wanted to remind me that I am vain, and wish every one to admire me
most. But it isn't for that that I'm jealous for the dark women,--not
because I'm dark myself; it's because I always care the most about the
unhappy people. If the blond girl were forsaken, I should like _her_
best. I always take the side of the rejected lover in the stories."

"Then you would never have the heart to reject one yourself, should
you, Maggie?" said Philip, flushing a little.

"I don't know," said Maggie, hesitatingly. Then with a bright smile,
"I think perhaps I could if he were very conceited; and yet, if he got
extremely humiliated afterward, I should relent."

"I've often wondered, Maggie," Philip said, with some effort, "whether
you wouldn't really be more likely to love a man that other women were
not likely to love."

"That would depend on what they didn't like him for," said Maggie,
laughing. "He might be very disagreeable. He might look at me through
an eye-glass stuck in his eye, making a hideous face, as young Torry
does. I should think other women are not fond of that; but I never
felt any pity for young Torry. I've never any pity for conceited
people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them."

"But suppose, Maggie,--suppose it was a man who was not conceited, who
felt he had nothing to be conceited about; who had been marked from
childhood for a peculiar kind of suffering, and to whom you were the
day-star of his life; who loved you, worshipped you, so entirely that
he felt it happiness enough for him if you would let him see you at
rare moments----"

Philip paused with a pang of dread lest his confession should cut
short this very happiness,--a pang of the same dread that had kept his
love mute through long months. A rush of self-consciousness told him
that he was besotted to have said all this. Maggie's manner this
morning had been as unconstrained and indifferent as ever.

But she was not looking indifferent now. Struck with the unusual
emotion in Philip's tone, she had turned quickly to look at him; and
as he went on speaking, a great change came over her face,--a flush
and slight spasm of the features, such as we see in people who hear
some news that will require them to readjust their conceptions of the
past. She was quite silent, and walking on toward the trunk of a
fallen tree, she sat down, as if she had no strength to spare for her
muscles. She was trembling.

"Maggie," said Philip, getting more and more alarmed in every fresh
moment of silence, "I was a fool to say it; forget that I've said it.
I shall be contented if things can be as they were."

The distress with which he spoke urged Maggie to say something. "I am
so surprised, Philip; I had not thought of it." And the effort to say
this brought the tears down too.

"Has it made you hate me, Maggie?" said Philip, impetuously. "Do you
think I'm a presumptuous fool?"

"Oh, Philip!" said Maggie, "how can you think I have such feelings? As
if I were not grateful for _any_ love. But--but I had never thought of
your being my lover. It seemed so far off--like a dream--only like one
of the stories one imagines--that I should ever have a lover."

"Then can you bear to think of me as your lover, Maggie?" said Philip,
seating himself by her, and taking her hand, in the elation of a
sudden hope. "_Do_ you love me?"

Maggie turned rather pale; this direct question seemed not easy to
answer. But her eyes met Philip's, which were in this moment liquid
and beautiful with beseeching love. She spoke with hesitation, yet
with sweet, simple, girlish tenderness.

"I think I could hardly love any one better; there is nothing but what
I love you for." She paused a little while, and then added: "But it
will be better for us not to say any more about it, won't it, dear
Philip? You know we couldn't even be friends, if our friendship were
discovered. I have never felt that I was right in giving way about
seeing you, though it has been so precious to me in some ways; and now
the fear comes upon me strongly again, that it will lead to evil."

"But no evil has come, Maggie; and if you had been guided by that fear
before, you would only have lived through another dreary, benumbing
year, instead of reviving into your real self."

Maggie shook her head. "It has been very sweet, I know,--all the
talking together, and the books, and the feeling that I had the walk
to look forward to, when I could tell you the thoughts that had come
into my head while I was away from you. But it has made me restless;
it has made me think a great deal about the world; and I have
impatient thoughts again,--I get weary of my home; and then it cuts me
to the heart afterward, that I should ever have felt weary of my
father and mother. I think what you call being benumbed was
better--better for me--for then my selfish desires were benumbed."

Philip had risen again, and was walking backward and forward
impatiently.

"No, Maggie, you have wrong ideas of self-conquest, as I've often told
you. What you call self-conquest--binding and deafening yourself to
all but one train of impressions--is only the culture of monomania in
a nature like yours."

He had spoken with some irritation, but now he sat down by her again
and took her hand.

"Don't think of the past now, Maggie; think only of our love. If you
can really cling to me with all your heart, every obstacle will be
overcome in time; we need only wait. I can live on hope. Look at me,
Maggie; tell me again it is possible for you to love me. Don't look
away from me to that cloven tree; it is a bad omen."

She turned her large dark glance upon him with a sad smile.

"Come, Maggie, say one kind word, or else you were better to me at
Lorton. You asked me if I should like you to kiss me,--don't you
remember?--and you promised to kiss me when you met me again. You
never kept the promise."

The recollection of that childish time came as a sweet relief to
Maggie. It made the present moment less strange to her. She kissed him
almost as simply and quietly as she had done when she was twelve years
old. Philip's eyes flashed with delight, but his next words were words
of discontent.

"You don't seem happy enough, Maggie; you are forcing yourself to say
you love me, out of pity."

"No, Philip," said Maggie, shaking her head, in her old childish way;
"I'm telling you the truth. It is all new and strange to me; but I
don't think I could love any one better than I love you. I should like
always to live with you--to make you happy. I have always been happy
when I have been with you. There is only one thing I will not do for
your sake; I will never do anything to wound my father. You must never
ask that from me."

"No, Maggie, I will ask nothing; I will bear everything; I'll wait
another year only for a kiss, if you will only give me the first place
in your heart."

"No," said Maggie, smiling, "I won't make you wait so long as that."
But then, looking serious again, she added, as she rose from her
seat,--

"But what would your own father say, Philip? Oh, it is quite
impossible we can ever be more than friends,--brother and sister in
secret, as we have been. Let us give up thinking of everything else."

"No, Maggie, I can't give you up,--unless you are deceiving me; unless
you really only care for me as if I were your brother. Tell me the
truth."

"Indeed I do, Philip. What happiness have I ever had so great as being
with you,--since I was a little girl,--the days Tom was good to me?
And your mind is a sort of world to me; you can tell me all I want to
know. I think I should never be tired of being with you."

They were walking hand in hand, looking at each other; Maggie, indeed,
was hurrying along, for she felt it time to be gone. But the sense
that their parting was near made her more anxious lest she should have
unintentionally left some painful impression on Philip's mind. It was
one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and
deceptive; when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves
floodmarks which are never reached again.

They stopped to part among the Scotch firs.

"Then my life will be filled with hope, Maggie, and I shall be happier
than other men, in spite of all? We _do_ belong to each other--for
always--whether we are apart or together?"

"Yes, Philip; I should like never to part; I should like to make your
life very happy."

"I am waiting for something else. I wonder whether it will come."

Maggie smiled, with glistening tears, and then stooped her tall head
to kiss the pale face that was full of pleading, timid love,--like a
woman's.

She had a moment of real happiness then,--a moment of belief that, if
there were sacrifice in this love, it was all the richer and more
satisfying.

She turned away and hurried home, feeling that in the hour since she
had trodden this road before, a new era had begun for her. The tissue
of vague dreams must now get narrower and narrower, and all the
threads of thought and emotion be gradually absorbed in the woof of
her actual daily life.



Chapter V

The Cloven Tree


Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any programme
our fear has sketched out. Fear is almost always haunted by terrible
dramatic scenes, which recur in spite of the best-argued probabilities
against them; and during a year that Maggie had had the burthen of
concealment on her mind, the possibility of discovery had continually
presented itself under the form of a sudden meeting with her father or
Tom when she was walking with Philip in the Red Deeps. She was aware
that this was not one of the most likely events; but it was the scene
that most completely symbolized her inward dread. Those slight
indirect suggestions which are dependent on apparently trivial
coincidences and incalculable states of mind, are the favorite
machinery of Fact, but are not the stuff in which Imagination is apt
to work.

Certainly one of the persons about whom Maggie's fears were furthest
from troubling themselves was her aunt Pullet, on whom, seeing that
she did not live in St. Ogg's, and was neither sharp-eyed nor
sharp-tempered, it would surely have been quite whimsical of them to
fix rather than on aunt Glegg. And yet the channel of fatality--the
pathway of the lightning--was no other than aunt Pullet. She did not
live at St. Ogg's, but the road from Garum Firs lay by the Red Deeps,
at the end opposite that by which Maggie entered.

The day after Maggie's last meeting with Philip, being a Sunday on
which Mr. Pullet was bound to appear in funeral hatband and scarf at
St. Ogg's church, Mrs. Pullet made this the occasion of dining with
sister Glegg, and taking tea with poor sister Tulliver. Sunday was the
one day in the week on which Tom was at home in the afternoon; and
today the brighter spirits he had been in of late had flowed over in
unusually cheerful open chat with his father, and in the invitation,
"Come, Magsie, you come too!" when he strolled out with his mother in
the garden to see the advancing cherry-blossoms. He had been better
pleased with Maggie since she had been less odd and ascetic; he was
even getting rather proud of her; several persons had remarked in his
hearing that his sister was a very fine girl. To-day there was a
peculiar brightness in her face, due in reality to an undercurrent of
excitement, which had as much doubt and pain as pleasure in it; but it
might pass for a sign of happiness.

"You look very well, my dear," said aunt Pullet, shaking her head
sadly, as they sat round the tea-table. "I niver thought your girl 'ud
be so good-looking, Bessy. But you must wear pink, my dear; that blue
thing as your aunt Glegg gave you turns you into a crowflower. Jane
never _was_ tasty. Why don't you wear that gown o' mine?"

"It is so pretty and so smart, aunt. I think it's too showy for
me,--at least for my other clothes, that I must wear with it.

"To be sure, it 'ud be unbecoming if it wasn't well known you've got
them belonging to you as can afford to give you such things when
they've done with 'em themselves. It stands to reason I must give my
own niece clothes now and then,--such things as _I_ buy every year,
and never wear anything out. And as for Lucy, there's no giving to
her, for she's got everything o' the choicest; sister Deane may well
hold her head up,--though she looks dreadful yallow, poor thing--I
doubt this liver complaint 'ull carry her off. That's what this new
vicar, this Dr. Kenn, said in the funeral sermon to-day."

"Ah, he's a wonderful preacher, by all account,--isn't he, Sophy?"
said Mrs. Tulliver.

"Why, Lucy had got a collar on this blessed day," continued Mrs.
Pullet, with her eyes fixed in a ruminating manner, "as I don't say I
haven't got as good, but I must look out my best to match it."

"Miss Lucy's called the bell o' St. Ogg's, they say; that's a cur'ous
word," observed Mr. Pullet, on whom the mysteries of etymology
sometimes fell with an oppressive weight.

"Pooh!" said Mr. Tulliver, jealous for Maggie, "she's a small thing,
not much of a figure. But fine feathers make fine birds. I see nothing
to admire so much in those diminutive women; they look silly by the
side o' the men,--out o' proportion. When I chose my wife, I chose her
the right size,--neither too little nor too big."

The poor wife, with her withered beauty, smiled complacently.

"But the men aren't _all_ big," said uncle Pullet, not without some
self-reference; "a young fellow may be good-looking and yet not be a
six-foot, like Master Tom here.

"Ah, it's poor talking about littleness and bigness,--anybody may
think it's a mercy they're straight," said aunt Pullet. "There's that
mismade son o' Lawyer Wakem's, I saw him at church to-day. Dear, dear!
to think o' the property he's like to have; and they say he's very
queer and lonely, doesn't like much company. I shouldn't wonder if he
goes out of his mind; for we never come along the road but he's
a-scrambling out o' the trees and brambles at the Red Deeps."

This wide statement, by which Mrs. Pullet represented the fact that
she had twice seen Philip at the spot indicated, produced an effect on
Maggie which was all the stronger because Tom sate opposite her, and
she was intensely anxious to look indifferent. At Philip's name she
had blushed, and the blush deepened every instant from consciousness,
until the mention of the Red Deeps made her feel as if the whole
secret were betrayed, and she dared not even hold her tea-spoon lest
she should show how she trembled. She sat with her hands clasped under
the table, not daring to look round. Happily, her father was seated on
the same side with herself, beyond her uncle Pullet, and could not see
her face without stooping forward. Her mother's voice brought the
first relief, turning the conversation; for Mrs. Tulliver was always
alarmed when the name of Wakem was mentioned in her husband's
presence. Gradually Maggie recovered composure enough to look up; her
eyes met Tom's, but he turned away his head immediately; and she went
to bed that night wondering if he had gathered any suspicion from her
confusion. Perhaps not; perhaps he would think it was only her alarm
at her aunt's mention of Wakem before her father; that was the
interpretation her mother had put in it. To her father, Wakem was like
a disfiguring disease, of which he was obliged to endure the
consciousness, but was exasperated to have the existence recognized by
others; and no amount of sensitiveness in her about her father could
be surprising, Maggie thought.

But Tom was too keen-sighted to rest satisfied with such an
interpretation; he had seen clearly enough that there was something
distinct from anxiety about her father in Maggie's excessive
confusion. In trying to recall all the details that could give shape
to his suspicions, he remembered only lately hearing his mother scold
Maggie for walking in the Red Deeps when the ground was wet, and
bringing home shoes clogged with red soil; still Tom, retaining all
his old repulsion for Philip's deformity, shrank from attributing to
his sister the probability of feeling more than a friendly interest in
such an unfortunate exception to the common run of men. Tom's was a
nature which had a sort of superstitious repugnance to everything
exceptional. A love for a deformed man would be odious in any woman,
in a sister intolerable. But if she had been carrying on any kind of
intercourse whatever with Philip, a stop must be put to it at once;
she was disobeying her father's strongest feelings and her brother's
express commands, besides compromising herself by secret meetings. He
left home the next morning in that watchful state of mind which turns
the most ordinary course of things into pregnant coincidences.

That afternoon, about half-past three o'clock, Tom was standing on the
wharf, talking with Bob Jakin about the probability of the good ship
Adelaide coming in, in a day or two, with results highly important to
both of them.

"Eh," said Bob, parenthetically, as he looked over the fields on the
other side of the river, "there goes that crooked young Wakem. I know
him or his shadder as far off as I can see 'em; I'm allays lighting on
him o' that side the river."

A sudden thought seemed to have darted through Tom's mind. "I must go,
Bob," he said; "I've something to attend to," hurrying off to the
warehouse, where he left notice for some one to take his place; he was
called away home on peremptory business.

The swiftest pace and the shortest road took him to the gate, and he
was pausing to open it deliberately, that he might walk into the house
with an appearance of perfect composure, when Maggie came out at the
front door in bonnet and shawl. His conjecture was fulfilled, and he
waited for her at the gate. She started violently when she saw him.

"Tom, how is it you are come home? Is there anything the matter?"
Maggie spoke in a low, tremulous voice.

"I'm come to walk with you to the Red Deeps, and meet Philip Wakem,"
said Tom, the central fold in his brow, which had become habitual with
him, deepening as he spoke.

Maggie stood helpless, pale and cold. By some means, then, Tom knew
everything. At last she said, "I'm not going," and turned round.

"Yes, you are; but I want to speak to you first. Where is my father?"

"Out on horseback."

"And my mother?"

"In the yard, I think, with the poultry."

"I can go in, then, without her seeing me?"

They walked in together, and Tom, entering the parlor, said to Maggie,
"Come in here."

She obeyed, and he closed the door behind her.

"Now, Maggie, tell me this instant everything that has passed between
you and Philip Wakem."

"Does my father know anything?" said Maggie, still trembling.

"No," said Tom indignantly. "But he _shall_ know, if you attempt to
use deceit toward me any further."

"I don't wish to use deceit," said Maggie, flushing into resentment at
hearing this word applied to her conduct.

"Tell me the whole truth, then."

"Perhaps you know it."

"Never mind whether I know it or not. Tell me exactly what has
happened, or my father shall know everything."

"I tell it for my father's sake, then."

"Yes, it becomes you to profess affection for your father, when you
have despised his strongest feelings."

"You never do wrong, Tom," said Maggie, tauntingly.

"Not if I know it," answered Tom, with proud sincerity.

"But I have nothing to say to you beyond this: tell me what has passed
between you and Philip Wakem. When did you first meet him in the Red
Deeps?"

"A year ago," said Maggie, quietly. Tom's severity gave her a certain
fund of defiance, and kept her sense of error in abeyance. "You need
ask me no more questions. We have been friendly a year. We have met
and walked together often. He has lent me books."

"Is that all?" said Tom, looking straight at her with his frown.

Maggie paused a moment; then, determined to make an end of Tom's right
to accuse her of deceit, she said haughtily:

"No, not quite all. On Saturday he told me that he loved me. I didn't
think of it before then; I had only thought of him as an old friend."

"And you _encouraged_ him?" said Tom, with an expression of disgust.

"I told him that I loved him too."

Tom was silent a few moments, looking on the ground and frowning, with
his hands in his pockets. At last he looked up and said coldly,--

"Now, then, Maggie, there are but two courses for you to take,--either
you vow solemnly to me, with your hand on my father's Bible, that you
will never have another meeting or speak another word in private with
Philip Wakem, or you refuse, and I tell my father everything; and this
month, when by my exertions he might be made happy once more, you will
cause him the blow of knowing that you are a disobedient, deceitful
daughter, who throws away her own respectability by clandestine
meetings with the son of a man that has helped to ruin her father.
Choose!" Tom ended with cold decision, going up to the large Bible,
drawing it forward, and opening it at the fly-leaf, where the writing
was.

It was a crushing alternative to Maggie.

"Tom," she said, urged out of pride into pleading, "don't ask me that.
I will promise you to give up all intercourse with Philip, if you will
let me see him once, or even only write to him and explain
everything,--to give it up as long as it would ever cause any pain to
my father. I feel something for Philip too. _He_ is not happy."

"I don't wish to hear anything of your feelings; I have said exactly
what I mean. Choose, and quickly, lest my mother should come in."

"If I give you my word, that will be as strong a bond to me as if I
laid my hand on the Bible. I don't require that to bind me."

"Do what _I_ require," said Tom. "I can't trust you, Maggie. There is
no consistency in you. Put your hand on this Bible, and say, 'I
renounce all private speech and intercourse with Philip Wakem from
this time forth.' Else you will bring shame on us all, and grief on my
father; and what is the use of my exerting myself and giving up
everything else for the sake of paying my father's debts, if you are
to bring madness and vexation on him, just when he might be easy and
hold up his head once more?"

"Oh, Tom, _will_ the debts be paid soon?" said Maggie, clasping her
hands, with a sudden flash of joy across her wretchedness.

"If things turn out as I expect," said Tom. "But," he added, his voice
trembling with indignation, "while I have been contriving and working
that my father may have some peace of mind before he dies,--working
for the respectability of our family,--you have done all you can to
destroy both."

Maggie felt a deep movement of compunction; for the moment, her mind
ceased to contend against what she felt to be cruel and unreasonable,
and in her self-blame she justified her brother.

"Tom," she said in a low voice, "it was wrong of me; but I was so
lonely, and I was sorry for Philip. And I think enmity and hatred are
wicked."

"Nonsense!" said Tom. "Your duty was clear enough. Say no more; but
promise, in the words I told you."

"I _must_ speak to Philip once more."

"You will go with me now and speak to him."

"I give you my word not to meet him or write to him again without your
knowledge. That is the only thing I will say. I will put my hand on
the Bible if you like."

"Say it, then."

Maggie laid her hand on the page of manuscript and repeated the
promise. Tom closed the book, and said, "Now let us go."

Not a word was spoken as they walked along. Maggie was suffering in
anticipation of what Philip was about to suffer, and dreading the
galling words that would fall on him from Tom's lips; but she felt it
was in vain to attempt anything but submission. Tom had his terrible
clutch on her conscience and her deepest dread; she writhed under the
demonstrable truth of the character he had given to her conduct, and
yet her whole soul rebelled against it as unfair from its
incompleteness. He, meanwhile, felt the impetus of his indignation
diverted toward Philip. He did not know how much of an old boyish
repulsion and of mere personal pride and animosity was concerned in
the bitter severity of the words by which he meant to do the duty of a
son and a brother. Tom was not given to inquire subtly into his own
motives any more than into other matters of an intangible kind; he was
quite sure that his own motives as well as actions were good, else he
would have had nothing to do with them.

Maggie's only hope was that something might, for the first time, have
prevented Philip from coming. Then there would be delay,--then she
might get Tom's permission to write to him. Her heart beat with double
violence when they got under the Scotch firs. It was the last moment
of suspense, she thought; Philip always met her soon after she got
beyond them. But they passed across the more open green space, and
entered the narrow bushy path by the mound. Another turning, and they
came so close upon him that both Tom and Philip stopped suddenly
within a yard of each other. There was a moment's silence, in which
Philip darted a look of inquiry at Maggie's face. He saw an answer
there, in the pale, parted lips, and the terrified tension of the
large eyes. Her imagination, always rushing extravagantly beyond an
immediate impression, saw her tall, strong brother grasping the feeble
Philip bodily, crushing him and trampling on him.

"Do you call this acting the part of a man and a gentleman, sir?" Tom
said, in a voice of harsh scorn, as soon as Philip's eyes were turned
on him again.

"What do you mean?" answered Philip, haughtily.

"Mean? Stand farther from me, lest I should lay hands on you, and I'll
tell you what I mean. I mean, taking advantage of a young girl's
foolishness and ignorance to get her to have secret meetings with you.
I mean, daring to trifle with the respectability of a family that has
a good and honest name to support."

"I deny that," interrupted Philip, impetuously. "I could never trifle
with anything that affected your sister's happiness. She is dearer to
me than she is to you; I honor her more than you can ever honor her; I
would give up my life to her."

"Don't talk high-flown nonsense to me, sir! Do you mean to pretend
that you didn't know it would be injurious to her to meet you here
week after week? Do you pretend you had any right to make professions
of love to her, even if you had been a fit husband for her, when
neither her father nor your father would ever consent to a marriage
between you? And _you_,--_you_ to try and worm yourself into the
affections of a handsome girl who is not eighteen, and has been shut
out from the world by her father's misfortunes! That's your crooked
notion of honor, is it? I call it base treachery; I call it taking
advantage of circumstances to win what's too good for you,--what you'd
never get by fair means."

"It is manly of you to talk in this way to _me_," said Philip,
bitterly, his whole frame shaken by violent emotions. "Giants have an
immemorial right to stupidity and insolent abuse. You are incapable
even of understanding what I feel for your sister. I feel so much for
her that I could even desire to be at friendship with _you_."

"I should be very sorry to understand your feelings," said Tom, with
scorching contempt. "What I wish is that you should understand
_me_,--that I shall take care of _my_ sister, and that if you dare to
make the least attempt to come near her, or to write to her, or to
keep the slightest hold on her mind, your puny, miserable body, that
ought to have put some modesty into your mind, shall not protect you.
I'll thrash you; I'll hold you up to public scorn. Who wouldn't laugh
at the idea of _your_ turning lover to a fine girl?"

Tom and Maggie walked on in silence for some yards. He burst out, in a
convulsed voice.

"Stay, Maggie!" said Philip, making a strong effort to speak. Then
looking at Tom, "You have dragged your sister here, I suppose, that
she may stand by while you threaten and insult me. These naturally
seemed to you the right means to influence me. But you are mistaken.
Let your sister speak. If she says she is bound to give me up, I shall
abide by her wishes to the slightest word."

"It was for my father's sake, Philip," said Maggie, imploringly. "Tom
threatens to tell my father, and he couldn't bear it; I have promised,
I have vowed solemnly, that we will not have any intercourse without
my brother's knowledge."

"It is enough, Maggie. _I_ shall not change; but I wish you to hold
yourself entirely free. But trust me; remember that I can never seek
for anything but good to what belongs to you."

"Yes," said Tom, exasperated by this attitude of Philip's, "you can
talk of seeking good for her and what belongs to her now; did you seek
her good before?"

"I did,--at some risk, perhaps. But I wished her to have a friend for
life,--who would cherish her, who would do her more justice than a
coarse and narrow-minded brother, that she has always lavished her
affections on."

"Yes, my way of befriending her is different from yours; and I'll tell
you what is my way. I'll save her from disobeying and disgracing her
father; I'll save her from throwing herself away on you,--from making
herself a laughing-stock,--from being flouted by a man like _your_
father, because she's not good enough for his son. You know well
enough what sort of justice and cherishing you were preparing for her.
I'm not to be imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean.
Come away, Maggie."

He seized Maggie's right wrist as he spoke, and she put out her left
hand. Philip clasped it an instant, with one eager look, and then
hurried away.

Tom and Maggie walked on in silence for some yards. He was still
holding her wrist tightly, as if he were compelling a culprit from the
scene of action. At last Maggie, with a violent snatch, drew her hand
away, and her pent-up, long-gathered irritation burst into utterance.

"Don't suppose that I think you are right, Tom, or that I bow to your
will. I despise the feelings you have shown in speaking to Philip; I
detest your insulting, unmanly allusions to his deformity. You have
been reproaching other people all your life; you have been always sure
you yourself are right. It is because you have not a mind large enough
to see that there is anything better than your own conduct and your
own petty aims."

"Certainly," said Tom, coolly. "I don't see that your conduct is
better, or your aims either. If your conduct, and Philip Wakem's
conduct, has been right, why are you ashamed of its being known?
Answer me that. I know what I have aimed at in my conduct, and I've
succeeded; pray, what good has your conduct brought to you or any one
else?"

"I don't want to defend myself," said Maggie, still with vehemence: "I
know I've been wrong,--often, continually. But yet, sometimes when I
have done wrong, it has been because I have feelings that you would be
the better for, if you had them. If _you_ were in fault ever, if you
had done anything very wrong, I should be sorry for the pain it
brought you; I should not want punishment to be heaped on you. But you
have always enjoyed punishing me; you have always been hard and cruel
to me; even when I was a little girl, and always loved you better than
any one else in the world, you would let me go crying to bed without
forgiving me. You have no pity; you have no sense of your own
imperfection and your own sins. It is a sin to be hard; it is not
fitting for a mortal, for a Christian. You are nothing but a Pharisee.
You thank God for nothing but your own virtues; you think they are
great enough to win you everything else. You have not even a vision of
feelings by the side of which your shining virtues are mere darkness!"

"Well," said Tom, with cold scorn, "if your feelings are so much
better than mine, let me see you show them in some other way than by
conduct that's likely to disgrace us all,--than by ridiculous flights
first into one extreme and then into another. Pray, how have you shown
your love, that you talk of, either to me or my father? By disobeying
and deceiving us. I have a different way of showing my affection."

"Because you are a man, Tom, and have power, and can do something in
the world."

"Then, if you can do nothing, submit to those that can."

"So I _will_ submit to what I acknowledge and feel to be right. I will
submit even to what is unreasonable from my father, but I will not
submit to it from you. You boast of your virtues as if they purchased
you a right to be cruel and unmanly, as you've been to-day. Don't
suppose I would give up Philip Wakem in obedience to you. The
deformity you insult would make me cling to him and care for him the
more."

"Very well; that is your view of things." said Tom, more coldly than
ever; "you need say no more to show me what a wide distance there is
between us. Let us remember that in future, and be silent."

Tom went back to St. Ogg's, to fulfill an appointment with his uncle
Deane, and receive directions about a journey on which he was to set
out the next morning.

Maggie went up to her own room to pour out all that indignant
remonstrance, against which Tom's mind was close barred, in bitter
tears. Then, when the first burst of unsatisfied anger was gone by,
came the recollection of that quiet time before the pleasure which had
ended in to-day's misery had perturbed the clearness and simplicity of
her life. She used to think in that time that she had made great
conquests, and won a lasting stand on serene heights above worldly
temptations and conflict. And here she was down again in the thick of
a hot strife with her own and others' passions. Life was not so short,
then, and perfect rest was not so near as she had dreamed when she was
two years younger. There was more struggle for her, and perhaps more
falling. If she had felt that she was entirely wrong, and that Tom had
been entirely right, she could sooner have recovered more inward
harmony; but now her penitence and submission were constantly
obstructed by resentment that would present itself to her no otherwise
than as a just indignation. Her heart bled for Philip; she went on
recalling the insults that had been flung at him with so vivid a
conception of what he had felt under them, that it was almost like a
sharp bodily pain to her, making her beat the floor with her foot and
tighten her fingers on her palm.

And yet, how was it that she was now and then conscious of a certain
dim background of relief in the forced separation from Philip? Surely
it was only because the sense of a deliverance from concealment was
welcome at any cost.



Chapter VI

The Hard-Won Triumph


Three weeks later, when Dorlcote Mill was at its prettiest moment in
all the year,--the great chestnuts in blossom, and the grass all deep
and daisied,--Tom Tulliver came home to it earlier than usual in the
evening, and as he passed over the bridge, he looked with the old
deep-rooted affection at the respectable red brick house, which always
seemed cheerful and inviting outside, let the rooms be as bare and the
hearts as sad as they might inside. There is a very pleasant light in
Tom's blue-gray eyes as he glances at the house-windows; that fold in
his brow never disappears, but it is not unbecoming; it seems to imply
a strength of will that may possibly be without harshness, when the
eyes and mouth have their gentlest expression. His firm step becomes
quicker, and the corners of his mouth rebel against the compression
which is meant to forbid a smile.

The eyes in the parlor were not turned toward the bridge just then,
and the group there was sitting in unexpectant silence,--Mr. Tulliver
in his arm-chair, tired with a long ride, and ruminating with a worn
look, fixed chiefly on Maggie, who was bending over her sewing while
her mother was making the tea.

They all looked up with surprise when they heard the well-known foot.

"Why, what's up now, Tom?" said his father. "You're a bit earlier than
usual."

"Oh, there was nothing more for me to do, so I came away. Well,
mother!"

Tom went up to his mother and kissed her, a sign of unusual good-humor
with him. Hardly a word or look had passed between him and Maggie in
all the three weeks; but his usual incommunicativeness at home
prevented this from being noticeable to their parents.

"Father," said Tom, when they had finished tea, "do you know exactly
how much money there is in the tin box?"

"Only a hundred and ninety-three pound," said Mr. Tulliver. "You've
brought less o' late; but young fellows like to have their own way
with their money. Though I didn't do as I liked before _I_ was of
age." He spoke with rather timid discontent.

"Are you quite sure that's the sum, father?" said Tom. "I wish you
would take the trouble to fetch the tin box down. I think you have
perhaps made a mistake."

"How should I make a mistake?" said his father, sharply. "I've counted
it often enough; but I can fetch it, if you won't believe me."

It was always an incident Mr. Tulliver liked, in his gloomy life, to
fetch the tin box and count the money.

"Don't go out of the room, mother," said Tom, as he saw her moving
when his father was gone upstairs.

"And isn't Maggie to go?" said Mrs. Tulliver; "because somebody must
take away the things."

"Just as she likes," said Tom indifferently.

That was a cutting word to Maggie. Her heart had leaped with the
sudden conviction that Tom was going to tell their father the debts
could be paid; and Tom would have let her be absent when that news was
told! But she carried away the tray and came back immediately. The
feeling of injury on her own behalf could not predominate at that
moment.

Tom drew to the corner of the table near his father when the tin box
was set down and opened, and the red evening light falling on them
made conspicuous the worn, sour gloom of the dark-eyed father and the
suppressed joy in the face of the fair-complexioned son. The mother
and Maggie sat at the other end of the table, the one in blank
patience, the other in palpitating expectation.

Mr. Tulliver counted out the money, setting it in order on the table,
and then said, glancing sharply at Tom:

"There now! you see I was right enough."

He paused, looking at the money with bitter despondency.

"There's more nor three hundred wanting; it'll be a fine while before
_I_ can save that. Losing that forty-two pound wi' the corn was a sore
job. This world's been too many for me. It's took four year to lay
_this_ by; it's much if I'm above ground for another four year. I must
trusten to you to pay 'em," he went on, with a trembling voice, "if
you keep i' the same mind now you're coming o' age. But you're like
enough to bury me first."

He looked up in Tom's face with a querulous desire for some assurance.

"No, father," said Tom, speaking with energetic decision, though there
was tremor discernible in his voice too, "you will live to see the
debts all paid. You shall pay them with your own hand."

His tone implied something more than mere hopefulness or resolution. A
slight electric shock seemed to pass through Mr. Tulliver, and he kept
his eyes fixed on Tom with a look of eager inquiry, while Maggie,
unable to restrain herself, rushed to her father's side and knelt down
by him. Tom was silent a little while before he went on.

"A good while ago, my uncle Glegg lent me a little money to trade
with, and that has answered. I have three hundred and twenty pounds in
the bank."

His mother's arms were round his neck as soon as the last words were
uttered, and she said, half crying:

"Oh, my boy, I knew you'd make iverything right again, when you got a
man."

But his father was silent; the flood of emotion hemmed in all power of
speech. Both Tom and Maggie were struck with fear lest the shock of
joy might even be fatal. But the blessed relief of tears came. The
broad chest heaved, the muscles of the face gave way, and the
gray-haired man burst into loud sobs. The fit of weeping gradually
subsided, and he sat quiet, recovering the regularity of his
breathing. At last he looked up at his wife and said, in a gentle
tone:

"Bessy, you must come and kiss me now--the lad has made you amends.
You'll see a bit o' comfort again, belike."

When she had kissed him, and he had held her hand a minute, his
thoughts went back to the money.

"I wish you'd brought me the money to look at, Tom," he said,
fingering the sovereigns on the table; "I should ha' felt surer."

"You shall see it to-morrow, father," said Tom. "My uncle Deane has
appointed the creditors to meet to-morrow at the Golden Lion, and he
has ordered a dinner for them at two o'clock. My uncle Glegg and he
will both be there. It was advertised in the 'Messenger' on Saturday."

"Then Wakem knows on't!" said Mr. Tulliver, his eye kindling with
triumphant fire. "Ah!" he went on, with a long-drawn guttural
enunciation, taking out his snuff-box, the only luxury he had left
himself, and tapping it with something of his old air of defiance.
"I'll get from under _his_ thumb now, though I _must_ leave the old
mill. I thought I could ha' held out to die here--but I can't----we've
got a glass o' nothing in the house, have we, Bessy?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Tulliver, drawing out her much-reduced bunch of keys,
"there's some brandy sister Deane brought me when I was ill."

"Get it me, then; get it me. I feel a bit weak."

"Tom, my lad," he said, in a stronger voice, when he had taken some
brandy-and-water, "you shall make a speech to 'em. I'll tell 'em it's
you as got the best part o' the money. They'll see I'm honest at last,
and ha' got an honest son. Ah! Wakem 'ud be fine and glad to have a
son like mine,--a fine straight fellow,--i'stead o' that poor crooked
creatur! You'll prosper i' the world, my lad; you'll maybe see the day
when Wakem and his son 'ull be a round or two below you. You'll like
enough be ta'en into partnership, as your uncle Deane was before
you,--you're in the right way for't; and then there's nothing to
hinder your getting rich. And if ever you're rich enough--mind
this--try and get th' old mill again."

Mr. Tulliver threw himself back in his chair; his mind, which had so
long been the home of nothing but bitter discontent and foreboding,
suddenly filled, by the magic of joy, with visions of good fortune.
But some subtle influence prevented him from foreseeing the good
fortune as happening to himself.

"Shake hands wi' me, my lad," he said, suddenly putting out his hand.
"It's a great thing when a man can be proud as he's got a good son.
I've had _that_ luck."

Tom never lived to taste another moment so delicious as that; and
Maggie couldn't help forgetting her own grievances. Tom _was_ good;
and in the sweet humility that springs in us all in moments of true
admiration and gratitude, she felt that the faults he had to pardon in
her had never been redeemed, as his faults were. She felt no jealousy
this evening that, for the first time, she seemed to be thrown into
the background in her father's mind.

There was much more talk before bedtime. Mr. Tulliver naturally wanted
to hear all the particulars of Tom's trading adventures, and he
listened with growing excitement and delight. He was curious to know
what had been said on every occasion; if possible, what had been
thought; and Bob Jakin's part in the business threw him into peculiar
outbursts of sympathy with the triumphant knowingness of that
remarkable packman. Bob's juvenile history, so far as it had come
under Mr. Tulliver's knowledge, was recalled with that sense of
astonishing promise it displayed, which is observable in all
reminiscences of the childhood of great men.

It was well that there was this interest of narrative to keep under
the vague but fierce sense of triumph over Wakem, which would
otherwise have been the channel his joy would have rushed into with
dangerous force. Even as it was, that feeling from time to time gave
threats of its ultimate mastery, in sudden bursts of irrelevant
exclamation.

It was long before Mr. Tulliver got to sleep that night; and the
sleep, when it came, was filled with vivid dreams. At half-past five
o'clock in the morning, when Mrs. Tulliver was already rising, he
alarmed her by starting up with a sort of smothered shout, and looking
round in a bewildered way at the walls of the bedroom.

"What's the matter, Mr. Tulliver?" said his wife. He looked at her,
still with a puzzled expression, and said at last:

"Ah!--I was dreaming--did I make a noise?--I thought I'd got hold of
him."



Chapter VII

A Day of Reckoning


Mr. Tulliver was an essentially sober man,--able to take his glass and
not averse to it, but never exceeding the bounds of moderation. He had
naturally an active Hotspur temperament, which did not crave liquid
fire to set it aglow; his impetuosity was usually equal to an exciting
occasion without any such reinforcements; and his desire for the
brandy-and-water implied that the too sudden joy had fallen with a
dangerous shock on a frame depressed by four years of gloom and
unaccustomed hard fare. But that first doubtful tottering moment
passed, he seemed to gather strength with his gathering excitement;
and the next day, when he was seated at table with his creditors, his
eye kindling and his cheek flushed with the consciousness that he was
about to make an honorable figure once more, he looked more like the
proud, confident, warm-hearted, and warm-tempered Tulliver of old
times than might have seemed possible to any one who had met him a
week before, riding along as had been his wont for the last four years
since the sense of failure and debt had been upon him,--with his head
hanging down, casting brief, unwilling looks on those who forced
themselves on his notice. He made his speech, asserting his honest
principles with his old confident eagerness, alluding to the rascals
and the luck that had been against him, but that he had triumphed
over, to some extent, by hard efforts and the aid of a good son; and
winding up with the story of how Tom had got the best part of the
needful money. But the streak of irritation and hostile triumph seemed
to melt for a little while into purer fatherly pride and pleasure,
when, Tom's health having been proposed, and uncle Deane having taken
occasion to say a few words of eulogy on his general character and
conduct, Tom himself got up and made the single speech of his life. It
could hardly have been briefer. He thanked the gentlemen for the honor
they had done him. He was glad that he had been able to help his
father in proving his integrity and regaining his honest name; and,
for his own part, he hoped he should never undo that work and disgrace
that name. But the applause that followed was so great, and Tom looked
so gentlemanly as well as tall and straight, that Mr. Tulliver
remarked, in an explanatory manner, to his friends on his right and
left, that he had spent a deal of money on his son's education.

The party broke up in very sober fashion at five o'clock. Tom remained
in St. Ogg's to attend to some business, and Mr. Tulliver mounted his
horse to go home, and describe the memorable things that had been said
and done, to "poor Bessy and the little wench." The air of excitement
that hung about him was but faintly due to good cheer or any stimulus
but the potent wine of triumphant joy. He did not choose any back
street to-day, but rode slowly, with uplifted head and free glances,
along the principal street all the way to the bridge.

Why did he not happen to meet Wakem? The want of that coincidence
vexed him, and set his mind at work in an irritating way. Perhaps
Wakem was gone out of town to-day on purpose to avoid seeing or
hearing anything of an honorable action which might well cause him
some unpleasant twinges. If Wakem were to meet him then, Mr. Tulliver
would look straight at him, and the rascal would perhaps be forsaken a
little by his cool, domineering impudence. He would know by and by
that an honest man was not going to serve _him_ any longer, and lend
his honesty to fill a pocket already over-full of dishonest gains.
Perhaps the luck was beginning to turn; perhaps the Devil didn't
always hold the best cards in this world.

Simmering in this way, Mr. Tulliver approached the yardgates of
Dorlcote Mill, near enough to see a well-known figure coming out of
them on a fine black horse. They met about fifty yards from the gates,
between the great chestnuts and elms and the high bank.

"Tulliver," said Wakem, abruptly, in a haughtier tone than usual,
"what a fool's trick you did,--spreading those hard lumps on that Far
Close! I told you how it would be; but you men never learn to farm
with any method."

"Oh!" said Tulliver, suddenly boiling up; "get somebody else to farm
for you, then, as'll ask _you_ to teach him."

"You have been drinking, I suppose," said Wakem, really believing that
this was the meaning of Tulliver's flushed face and sparkling eyes.

"No, I've not been drinking," said Tulliver; "I want no drinking to
help me make up my mind as I'll serve no longer under a scoundrel."

"Very well! you may leave my premises to-morrow, then; hold your
insolent tongue and let me pass." (Tulliver was backing his horse
across the road to hem Wakem in.)

"No, I _sha'n't_ let you pass," said Tulliver, getting fiercer. "I
shall tell you what I think of you first. You're too big a raskill to
get hanged--you're----"

"Let me pass, you ignorant brute, or I'll ride over you."

Mr. Tulliver, spurring his horse and raising his whip, made a rush
forward; and Wakem's horse, rearing and staggering backward, threw his
rider from the saddle and sent him sideways on the ground. Wakem had
had the presence of mind to loose the bridle at once, and as the horse
only staggered a few paces and then stood still, he might have risen
and remounted without more inconvenience than a bruise and a shake.
But before he could rise, Tulliver was off his horse too. The sight of
the long-hated predominant man down, and in his power, threw him into
a frenzy of triumphant vengeance, which seemed to give him
preternatural agility and strength. He rushed on Wakem, who was in the
act of trying to recover his feet, grasped him by the left arm so as
to press Wakem's whole weight on the right arm, which rested on the
ground, and flogged him fiercely across the back with his riding-whip.
Wakem shouted for help, but no help came, until a woman's scream was
heard, and the cry of "Father, father!"

Suddenly, Wakem felt, something had arrested Mr. Tulliver's arm; for
the flogging ceased, and the grasp on his own arm was relaxed.

"Get away with you--go!" said Tulliver, angrily. But it was not to
Wakem that he spoke. Slowly the lawyer rose, and, as he turned his
head, saw that Tulliver's arms were being held by a girl, rather by
the fear of hurting the girl that clung to him with all her young
might.

"Oh, Luke--mother--come and help Mr. Wakem!" Maggie cried, as she
heard the longed-for footsteps.

"Help me on to that low horse," said Wakem to Luke, "then I shall
perhaps manage; though--confound it--I think this arm is sprained."

With some difficulty, Wakem was heaved on to Tulliver's horse. Then he
turned toward the miller and said, with white rage, "You'll suffer for
this, sir. Your daughter is a witness that you've assaulted me."

"I don't care," said Mr. Tulliver, in a thick, fierce voice; "go and
show your back, and tell 'em I thrashed you. Tell 'em I've made things
a bit more even i' the world."

"Ride my horse home with me," said Wakem to Luke. "By the Tofton
Ferry, not through the town."

"Father, come in!" said Maggie, imploringly. Then, seeing that Wakem
had ridden off, and that no further violence was possible, she
slackened her hold and burst into hysteric sobs, while poor Mrs.
Tulliver stood by in silence, quivering with fear. But Maggie became
conscious that as she was slackening her hold her father was beginning
to grasp her and lean on her. The surprise checked her sobs.

"I feel ill--faintish," he said. "Help me in, Bessy--I'm giddy--I've a
pain i' the head."

He walked in slowly, propped by his wife and daughter and tottered
into his arm-chair. The almost purple flush had given way to paleness,
and his hand was cold.

"Hadn't we better send for the doctor?" said Mrs. Tulliver.

He seemed to be too faint and suffering to hear her; but presently,
when she said to Maggie, "Go and seek for somebody to fetch the
doctor," he looked up at her with full comprehension, and said,
"Doctor? No--no doctor. It's my head, that's all. Help me to bed."

Sad ending to the day that had risen on them all like a beginning of
better times! But mingled seed must bear a mingled crop.

In half an hour after his father had lain down Tom came home. Bob
Jakin was with him, come to congratulate "the old master," not without
some excusable pride that he had had his share in bringing about Mr.
Tom's good luck; and Tom had thought his father would like nothing
better, as a finish to the day, than a talk with Bob. But now Tom
could only spend the evening in gloomy expectation of the unpleasant
consequences that must follow on this mad outbreak of his father's
long-smothered hate. After the painful news had been told, he sat in
silence; he had not spirit or inclination to tell his mother and
sister anything about the dinner; they hardly cared to ask it.
Apparently the mingled thread in the web of their life was so
curiously twisted together that there could be no joy without a sorrow
coming close upon it. Tom was dejected by the thought that his
exemplary effort must always be baffled by the wrong-doing of others;
Maggie was living through, over and over again, the agony of the
moment in which she had rushed to throw herself on her father's arm,
with a vague, shuddering foreboding of wretched scenes to come. Not
one of the three felt any particular alarm about Mr. Tulliver's
health; the symptoms did not recall his former dangerous attack, and
it seemed only a necessary consequence that his violent passion and
effort of strength, after many hours of unusual excitement, should
have made him feel ill. Rest would probably cure him.

Tom, tired out by his active day, fell asleep soon, and slept soundly;
it seemed to him as if he had only just come to bed, when he waked to
see his mother standing by him in the gray light of early morning.

"My boy, you must get up this minute; I've sent for the doctor, and
your father wants you and Maggie to come to him."

"Is he worse, mother?"

"He's been very ill all night with his head, but he doesn't say it's
worse; he only said suddenly, 'Bessy, fetch the boy and girl. Tell 'em
to make haste.'"

Maggie and Tom threw on their clothes hastily in the chill gray light,
and reached their father's room almost at the same moment. He was
watching for them with an expression of pain on his brow, but with
sharpened, anxious consciousness in his eyes. Mrs. Tulliver stood at
the foot of the bed, frightened and trembling, looking worn and aged
from disturbed rest. Maggie was at the bedside first, but her father's
glance was toward Tom, who came and stood next to her.

"Tom, my lad, it's come upon me as I sha'n't get up again. This
world's been too many for me, my lad, but you've done what you could
to make things a bit even. Shake hands wi' me again, my lad, before I
go away from you."

The father and son clasped hands and looked at each other an instant.
Then Tom said, trying to speak firmly,--

"Have you any wish, father--that I can fulfil, when----"

"Ay, my lad--you'll try and get the old mill back."

"Yes, father."

"And there's your mother--you'll try and make her amends, all you can,
for my bad luck--and there's the little wench----"

The father turned his eyes on Maggie with a still more eager look,
while she, with a bursting heart, sank on her knees, to be closer to
the dear, time-worn face which had been present with her through long
years, as the sign of her deepest love and hardest trial.

"You must take care of her, Tom--don't you fret, my wench--there'll
come somebody as'll love you and take your part--and you must be good
to her, my lad. I was good to _my_ sister. Kiss me, Maggie.--Come,
Bessy.--You'll manage to pay for a brick grave, Tom, so as your mother
and me can lie together."

He looked away from them all when he had said this, and lay silent for
some minutes, while they stood watching him, not daring to move. The
morning light was growing clearer for them, and they could see the
heaviness gathering in his face, and the dulness in his eyes. But at
last he looked toward Tom and said,--

"I had my turn--I beat him. That was nothing but fair. I never wanted
anything but what was fair."

"But, father, dear father," said Maggie, an unspeakable anxiety
predominating over her grief, "you forgive him--you forgive every one
now?"

He did not move his eyes to look at her, but he said,--

"No, my wench. I don't forgive him. What's forgiving to do? I can't
love a raskill----"

His voice had become thicker; but he wanted to say more, and moved his
lips again and again, struggling in vain to speak. At length the words
forced their way.

"Does God forgive raskills?--but if He does, He won't be hard wi' me."

His hands moved uneasily, as if he wanted them to remove some
obstruction that weighed upon him. Two or three times there fell from
him some broken words,--

"This world's--too many--honest man--puzzling----"

Soon they merged into mere mutterings; the eyes had ceased to discern;
and then came the final silence.

But not of death. For an hour or more the chest heaved, the loud, hard
breathing continued, getting gradually slower, as the cold dews
gathered on the brow.

At last there was total stillness, and poor Tulliver's dimly lighted
soul had forever ceased to be vexed with the painful riddle of this
world.

Help was come now; Luke and his wife were there, and Mr. Turnbull had
arrived, too late for everything but to say, "This is death."

Tom and Maggie went downstairs together into the room where their
father's place was empty. Their eyes turned to the same spot, and
Maggie spoke,--

"Tom, forgive me--let us always love each other"; and they clung and
wept together.




Book VI

_The Great Temptation_



Chapter I

A Duet in Paradise


The well-furnished drawing-room, with the open grand piano, and the
pleasant outlook down a sloping garden to a boat-house by the side of
the Floss, is Mr. Deane's. The neat little lady in mourning, whose
light-brown ringlets are falling over the colored embroidery with
which her fingers are busy, is of course Lucy Deane; and the fine
young man who is leaning down from his chair to snap the scissors in
the extremely abbreviated face of the "King Charles" lying on the
young lady's feet is no other than Mr. Stephen Guest, whose diamond
ring, attar of roses, and air of _nonchalant_ leisure, at twelve
o'clock in the day, are the graceful and odoriferous result of the
largest oil-mill and the most extensive wharf in St. Ogg's. There is
an apparent triviality in the action with the scissors, but your
discernment perceives at once that there is a design in it which makes
it eminently worthy of a large-headed, long-limbed young man; for you
see that Lucy wants the scissors, and is compelled, reluctant as she
may be, to shake her ringlets back, raise her soft hazel eyes, smile
playfully down on the face that is so very nearly on a level with her
knee, and holding out her little shell-pink palm, to say,--

"My scissors, please, if you can renounce the great pleasure of
persecuting my poor Minny."

The foolish scissors have slipped too far over the knuckles, it seems,
and Hercules holds out his entrapped fingers hopelessly.

"Confound the scissors! The oval lies the wrong way. Please draw them
off for me."

"Draw them off with your other hand," says Miss Lucy, roguishly.

"Oh, but that's my left hand; I'm not left-handed."

Lucy laughs, and the scissors are drawn off with gentle touches from
tiny tips, which naturally dispose Mr. Stephen for a repetition _da
capo_. Accordingly, he watches for the release of the scissors, that
he may get them into his possession again.

"No, no," said Lucy, sticking them in her band, "you shall not have my
scissors again,--you have strained them already. Now don't set Minny
growling again. Sit up and behave properly, and then I will tell you
some news."

"What is that?" said Stephen, throwing himself back and hanging his
right arm over the corner of his chair. He might have been sitting for
his portrait, which would have represented a rather striking young man
of five-and-twenty, with a square forehead, short dark-brown hair,
standing erect, with a slight wave at the end, like a thick crop of
corn, and a half-ardent, half-sarcastic glance from under his
well-marked horizontal eyebrows. "Is it very important news?"

"Yes, very. Guess."

"You are going to change Minny's diet, and give him three ratafias
soaked in a dessert-spoonful of cream daily?"

"Quite wrong."

"Well, then, Dr. Kenn has been preaching against buckram, and you
ladies have all been sending him a roundrobin, saying, 'This is a hard
doctrine; who can bear it?'"

"For shame!" said Lucy, adjusting her little mouth gravely. "It is
rather dull of you not to guess my news, because it is about something
I mentioned to you not very long ago."

"But you have mentioned many things to me not long ago. Does your
feminine tyranny require that when you say the thing you mean is one
of several things, I should know it immediately by that mark?"

"Yes, I know you think I am silly."

"I think you are perfectly charming."

"And my silliness is part of my charm?"

"I didn't say _that_."

"But I know you like women to be rather insipid. Philip Wakem betrayed
you; he said so one day when you were not here."

"Oh, I know Phil is fierce on that point; he makes it quite a personal
matter. I think he must be love-sick for some unknown lady,--some
exalted Beatrice whom he met abroad."

"By the by," said Lucy, pausing in her work, "it has just occurred to
me that I never found out whether my cousin Maggie will object to see
Philip, as her brother does. Tom will not enter a room where Philip
is, if he knows it; perhaps Maggie may be the same, and then we
sha'n't be able to sing our glees, shall we?"

"What! is your cousin coming to stay with you?" said Stephen, with a
look of slight annoyance.

"Yes; that was my news, which you have forgotten. She's going to leave
her situation, where she has been nearly two years, poor thing,--ever
since her father's death; and she will stay with me a month or
two,--many months, I hope."

"And am I bound to be pleased at that news?"

"Oh no, not at all," said Lucy, with a little air of pique. "_I_ am
pleased, but that, of course, is no reason why _you_ should be
pleased. There is no girl in the world I love so well as my cousin
Maggie."

"And you will be inseparable I suppose, when she comes. There will be
no possibility of a _tête-à-tête_ with you any more, unless you can
find an admirer for her, who will pair off with her occasionally. What
is the ground of dislike to Philip? He might have been a resource."

"It is a family quarrel with Philip's father. There were very painful
circumstances, I believe. I never quite understood them, or knew them
all. My uncle Tulliver was unfortunate and lost all his property, and
I think he considered Mr. Wakem was somehow the cause of it. Mr. Wakem
bought Dorlcote Mill, my uncle's old place, where he always lived. You
must remember my uncle Tulliver, don't you?"

"No," said Stephen, with rather supercilious indifference. "I've
always known the name, and I dare say I knew the man by sight, apart
from his name. I know half the names and faces in the neighborhood in
that detached, disjointed way."

"He was a very hot-tempered man. I remember, when I was a little girl
and used to go to see my cousins, he often frightened me by talking as
if he were angry. Papa told me there was a dreadful quarrel, the very
day before my uncle's death, between him and Mr. Wakem, but it was
hushed up. That was when you were in London. Papa says my uncle was
quite mistaken in many ways; his mind had become embittered. But Tom
and Maggie must naturally feel it very painful to be reminded of these
things. They have had so much, so very much trouble. Maggie was at
school with me six years ago, when she was fetched away because of her
father's misfortunes, and she has hardly had any pleasure since, I
think. She has been in a dreary situation in a school since uncle's
death, because she is determined to be independent, and not live with
aunt Pullet; and I could hardly wish her to come to me then, because
dear mamma was ill, and everything was so sad. That is why I want her
to come to me now, and have a long, long holiday."

"Very sweet and angelic of you," said Stephen, looking at her with an
admiring smile; "and all the more so if she has the conversational
qualities of her mother."

"Poor aunty! You are cruel to ridicule her. She is very valuable to
_me_, I know. She manages the house beautifully,--much better than any
stranger would,--and she was a great comfort to me in mamma's
illness."

"Yes, but in point of companionship one would prefer that she should
be represented by her brandy-cherries and cream-cakes. I think with a
shudder that her daughter will always be present in person, and have
no agreeable proxies of that kind,--a fat, blond girl, with round blue
eyes, who will stare at us silently."

"Oh yes!" exclaimed Lucy, laughing wickedly, and clapping her hands,
"that is just my cousin Maggie. You must have seen her!"

"No, indeed; I'm only guessing what Mrs. Tulliver's daughter must be;
and then if she is to banish Philip, our only apology for a tenor,
that will be an additional bore."

"But I hope that may not be. I think I will ask you to call on Philip
and tell him Maggie is coming to-morrow. He is quite aware of Tom's
feeling, and always keeps out of his way; so he will understand, if
you tell him, that I asked you to warn him not to come until I write
to ask him."

"I think you had better write a pretty note for me to take; Phil is so
sensitive, you know, the least thing might frighten him off coming at
all, and we had hard work to get him. I can never induce him to come
to the park; he doesn't like my sisters, I think. It is only your
faëry touch that can lay his ruffled feathers."

Stephen mastered the little hand that was straying toward the table,
and touched it lightly with his lips. Little Lucy felt very proud and
happy. She and Stephen were in that stage of courtship which makes the
most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of
passion,--when each is sure of the other's love, but no formal
declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting the
most trivial word, the lightest gesture, into thrills delicate and
delicious as wafted jasmine scent. The explicitness of an engagement
wears off this finest edge of susceptibility; it is jasmine gathered
and presented in a large bouquet.

"But it is really odd that you should have hit so exactly on Maggie's
appearance and manners," said the cunning Lucy, moving to reach her
desk, "because she might have been like her brother, you know; and Tom
has not round eyes; and he is as far as possible from staring at
people."

"Oh, I suppose he is like the father; he seems to be as proud as
Lucifer. Not a brilliant companion, though, I should think."

"I like Tom. He gave me my Minny when I lost Lolo; and papa is very
fond of him: he says Tom has excellent principles. It was through him
that his father was able to pay all his debts before he died."

"Oh, ah; I've heard about that. I heard your father and mine talking
about it a little while ago, after dinner, in one of their
interminable discussions about business. They think of doing something
for young Tulliver; he saved them from a considerable loss by riding
home in some marvellous way, like Turpin, to bring them news about the
stoppage of a bank, or something of that sort. But I was rather drowsy
at the time."

Stephen rose from his seat, and sauntered to the piano, humming in
falsetto, "Graceful Consort," as he turned over the volume of "The
Creation," which stood open on the desk.

"Come and sing this," he said, when he saw Lucy rising.

"What, 'Graceful Consort'? I don't think it suits your voice."

"Never mind; it exactly suits my feeling, which, Philip will have it,
is the grand element of good singing. I notice men with indifferent
voices are usually of that opinion."

"Philip burst into one of his invectives against 'The Creation' the
other day," said Lucy, seating herself at the piano. "He says it has a
sort of sugared complacency and flattering make-believe in it, as if
it were written for the birthday _fête_ of a German Grand-Duke."

"Oh, pooh! He is the fallen Adam with a soured temper. We are Adam and
Eve unfallen, in Paradise. Now, then,--the recitative, for the sake of
the moral. You will sing the whole duty of woman,--'And from obedience
grows my pride and happiness.'"

"Oh no, I shall not respect an Adam who drags the _tempo_, as you
will," said Lucy, beginning to play the duet.

Surely the only courtship unshaken by doubts and fears must be that in
which the lovers can sing together. The sense of mutual fitness that
springs from the two deep notes fulfilling expectation just at the
right moment between the notes of the silvery soprano, from the
perfect accord of descending thirds and fifths, from the preconcerted
loving chase of a fugue, is likely enough to supersede any immediate
demand for less impassioned forms of agreement. The contralto will not
care to catechise the bass; the tenor will foresee no embarrassing
dearth of remark in evenings spent with the lovely soprano. In the
provinces, too, where music was so scarce in that remote time, how
could the musical people avoid falling in love with each other? Even
political principle must have been in danger of relaxation under such
circumstances; and the violin, faithful to rotten boroughs, must have
been tempted to fraternize in a demoralizing way with a reforming
violoncello. In that case, the linnet-throated soprano and the
full-toned bass singing,--

  "With thee delight is ever new,
  With thee is life incessant bliss,"

believed what they sang all the more _because_ they sang it.

"Now for Raphael's great song," said Lucy, when they had finished the
duet. "You do the 'heavy beasts' to perfection."

"That sounds complimentary," said Stephen, looking at his watch. "By
Jove, it's nearly half-past one! Well, I can just sing this."

Stephen delivered with admirable ease the deep notes representing the
tread of the heavy beasts; but when a singer has an audience of two,
there is room for divided sentiments. Minny's mistress was charmed;
but Minny, who had intrenched himself, trembling, in his basket as
soon as the music began, found this thunder so little to his taste
that he leaped out and scampered under the remotest _chiffonnier_, as
the most eligible place in which a small dog could await the crack of
doom.

"Adieu, 'graceful consort,'" said Stephen, buttoning his coat across
when he had done singing, and smiling down from his tall height, with
the air of rather a patronizing lover, at the little lady on the
music-stool. "My bliss is not incessant, for I must gallop home. I
promised to be there at lunch."

"You will not be able to call on Philip, then? It is of no
consequence; I have said everything in my note."

"You will be engaged with your cousin to-morrow, I suppose?"

"Yes, we are going to have a little family-party. My cousin Tom will
dine with us; and poor aunty will have her two children together for
the first time. It will be very pretty; I think a great deal about
it."

"But I may come the next day?"

"Oh yes! Come and be introduced to my cousin Maggie; though you can
hardly be said not to have seen her, you have described her so well."

"Good-bye, then." And there was that slight pressure of the hands, and
momentary meeting of the eyes, which will often leave a little lady
with a slight flush and smile on her face that do not subside
immediately when the door is closed, and with an inclination to walk
up and down the room rather than to seat herself quietly at her
embroidery, or other rational and improving occupation. At least this
was the effect on Lucy; and you will not, I hope, consider it an
indication of vanity predominating over more tender impulses, that she
just glanced in the chimney-glass as her walk brought her near it. The
desire to know that one has not looked an absolute fright during a few
hours of conversation may be construed as lying within the bounds of a
laudable benevolent consideration for others. And Lucy had so much of
this benevolence in her nature that I am inclined to think her small
egoisms were impregnated with it, just as there are people not
altogether unknown to you whose small benevolences have a predominant
and somewhat rank odor of egoism. Even now, that she is walking up and
down with a little triumphant flutter of her girlish heart at the
sense that she is loved by the person of chief consequence in her
small world, you may see in her hazel eyes an ever-present sunny
benignity, in which the momentary harmless flashes of personal vanity
are quite lost; and if she is happy in thinking of her lover, it is
because the thought of him mingles readily with all the gentle
affections and good-natured offices with which she fills her peaceful
days. Even now, her mind, with that instantaneous alternation which
makes two currents of feeling or imagination seem simultaneous, is
glancing continually from Stephen to the preparations she has only
half finished in Maggie's room. Cousin Maggie should be treated as
well as the grandest lady-visitor,--nay, better, for she should have
Lucy's best prints and drawings in her bedroom, and the very finest
bouquet of spring flowers on her table. Maggie would enjoy all that,
she was so found of pretty things! And there was poor aunt Tulliver,
that no one made any account of, she was to be surprised with the
present of a cap of superlative quality, and to have her health drunk
in a gratifying manner, for which Lucy was going to lay a plot with
her father this evening. Clearly, she had not time to indulge in long
reveries about her own happy love-affairs. With this thought she
walked toward the door, but paused there.

"What's the matter, then, Minny?" she said, stooping in answer to some
whimpering of that small quadruped, and lifting his glossy head
against her pink cheek. "Did you think I was going without you? Come,
then, let us go and see Sinbad."

Sinbad was Lucy's chestnut horse, that she always fed with her own
hand when he was turned out in the paddock. She was fond of feeding
dependent creatures, and knew the private tastes of all the animals
about the house, delighting in the little rippling sounds of her
canaries when their beaks were busy with fresh seed, and in the small
nibbling pleasures of certain animals which, lest she should appear
too trivial, I will here call "the more familiar rodents."

Was not Stephen Guest right in his decided opinion that this slim
maiden of eighteen was quite the sort of wife a man would not be
likely to repent of marrying,--a woman who was loving and thoughtful
for other women, not giving them Judas-kisses with eyes askance on
their welcome defects, but with real care and vision for their
half-hidden pains and mortifications, with long ruminating enjoyment
of little pleasures prepared for them? Perhaps the emphasis of his
admiration did not fall precisely on this rarest quality in her;
perhaps he approved his own choice of her chiefly because she did not
strike him as a remarkable rarity. A man likes his wife to be pretty;
well, Lucy was pretty, but not to a maddening extent. A man likes his
wife to be accomplished, gentle, affectionate, and not stupid; and
Lucy had all these qualifications. Stephen was not surprised to find
himself in love with her, and was conscious of excellent judgment in
preferring her to Miss Leyburn, the daughter of the county member,
although Lucy was only the daughter of his father's subordinate
partner; besides, he had had to defy and overcome a slight
unwillingness and disappointment in his father and sisters,--a
circumstance which gives a young man an agreeable consciousness of his
own dignity. Stephen was aware that he had sense and independence
enough to choose the wife who was likely to make him happy, unbiassed
by any indirect considerations. He meant to choose Lucy; she was a
little darling, and exactly the sort of woman he had always admired.



Chapter II

First Impressions


"He is very clever, Maggie," said Lucy. She was kneeling on a
footstool at Maggie's feet, after placing that dark lady in the large
crimson-velvet chair. "I feel sure you will like him. I hope you
will."

"I shall be very difficult to please," said Maggie, smiling, and
holding up one of Lucy's long curls, that the sunlight might shine
through it. "A gentleman who thinks he is good enough for Lucy must
expect to be sharply criticised."

"Indeed, he's a great deal too good for me. And sometimes, when he is
away, I almost think it can't really be that he loves me. But I can
never doubt it when he is with me, though I couldn't bear any one but
you to know that I feel in that way, Maggie."

"Oh, then, if I disapprove of him you can give him up, since you are
not engaged," said Maggie, with playful gravity.

"I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to
think of being married soon," said Lucy, too thoroughly preoccupied to
notice Maggie's joke; "and I should like everything to go on for a
long while just as it is. Sometimes I am quite frightened lest Stephen
should say that he has spoken to papa; and from something that fell
from papa the other day, I feel sure he and Mr. Guest are expecting
that. And Stephen's sisters are very civil to me now. At first, I
think they didn't like his paying me attention; and that was natural.
It _does_ seem out of keeping that I should ever live in a great place
like the Park House, such a little insignificant thing as I am."

"But people are not expected to be large in proportion to the houses
they live in, like snails," said Maggie, laughing. "Pray, are Mr.
Guest's sisters giantesses?"

"Oh no; and not handsome,--that is, not very," said Lucy,
half-penitent at this uncharitable remark. "But _he_ is--at least he
is generally considered very handsome."

"Though you are unable to share that opinion?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Lucy, blushing pink over brow and neck. "It
is a bad plan to raise expectation; you will perhaps be disappointed.
But I have prepared a charming surprise for _him;_ I shall have a
glorious laugh against him. I shall not tell you what it is, though."

Lucy rose from her knees and went to a little distance, holding her
pretty head on one side, as if she had been arranging Maggie for a
portrait, and wished to judge of the general effect.

"Stand up a moment, Maggie."

"What is your pleasure now?" said Maggie, smiling languidly as she
rose from her chair and looked down on her slight, aerial cousin,
whose figure was quite subordinate to her faultless drapery of silk
and crape.

Lucy kept her contemplative attitude a moment or two in silence, and
then said,--

"I can't think what witchery it is in you, Maggie, that makes you look
best in shabby clothes; though you really must have a new dress now.
But do you know, last night I was trying to fancy you in a handsome,
fashionable dress, and do what I would, that old limp merino would
come back as the only right thing for you. I wonder if Marie
Antoinette looked all the grander when her gown was darned at the
elbows. Now, if _I_ were to put anything shabby on, I should be quite
unnoticeable. I should be a mere rag."

"Oh, quite," said Maggie, with mock gravity. "You would be liable to
be swept out of the room with the cobwebs and carpet-dust, and to find
yourself under the grate, like Cinderella. Mayn't I sit down now?"

"Yes, now you may," said Lucy, laughing. Then, with an air of serious
reflection, unfastening her large jet brooch, "But you must change
brooches, Maggie; that little butterfly looks silly on you."

"But won't that mar the charming effect of my consistent shabbiness?"
said Maggie, seating herself submissively, while Lucy knelt again and
unfastened the contemptible butterfly. "I wish my mother were of your
opinion, for she was fretting last night because this is my best
frock. I've been saving my money to pay for some lessons; I shall
never get a better situation without more accomplishments."

Maggie gave a little sigh.

"Now, don't put on that sad look again," said Lucy, pinning the large
brooch below Maggie's fine throat. "You're forgetting that you've left
that dreary schoolroom behind you, and have no little girls' clothes
to mend."

"Yes," said Maggie. "It is with me as I used to think it would be with
the poor uneasy white bear I saw at the show. I thought he must have
got so stupid with the habit of turning backward and forward in that
narrow space that he would keep doing it if they set him free. One
gets a bad habit of being unhappy."

"But I shall put you under a discipline of pleasure that will make you
lose that bad habit," said Lucy, sticking the black butterfly absently
in her own collar, while her eyes met Maggie's affectionately.

"You dear, tiny thing," said Maggie, in one of her bursts of loving
admiration, "you enjoy other people's happiness so much, I believe you
would do without any of your own. I wish I were like you."

"I've never been tried in that way," said Lucy. "I've always been so
happy. I don't know whether I could bear much trouble; I never had any
but poor mamma's death. You _have_ been tried, Maggie; and I'm sure
you feel for other people quite as much as I do."

"No, Lucy," said Maggie, shaking her head slowly, "I don't enjoy their
happiness as you do, else I should be more contented. I do feel for
them when they are in trouble; I don't think I could ever bear to make
any one _un_happy; and yet I often hate myself, because I get angry
sometimes at the sight of happy people. I think I get worse as I get
older, more selfish. That seems very dreadful."

"Now, Maggie!" said Lucy, in a tone of remonstrance, "I don't believe
a word of that. It is all a gloomy fancy, just because you are
depressed by a dull, wearisome life."

"Well, perhaps it is," said Maggie, resolutely clearing away the
clouds from her face with a bright smile, and throwing herself
backward in her chair. "Perhaps it comes from the school diet,--watery
rice-pudding spiced with Pinnock. Let us hope it will give way before
my mother's custards and this charming Geoffrey Crayon."

Maggie took up the "Sketch Book," which lay by her on the table.

"Do I look fit to be seen with this little brooch?" said Lucy, going
to survey the effect in the chimney-glass.

"Oh no, Mr. Guest will be obliged to go out of the room again if he
sees you in it. Pray make haste and put another on."

Lucy hurried out of the room, but Maggie did not take the opportunity
of opening her book; she let it fall on her knees, while her eyes
wandered to the window, where she could see the sunshine falling on
the rich clumps of spring flowers and on the long hedge of laurels,
and beyond, the silvery breadth of the dear old Floss, that at this
distance seemed to be sleeping in a morning holiday. The sweet fresh
garden-scent came through the open window, and the birds were busy
flitting and alighting, gurgling and singing. Yet Maggie's eyes began
to fill with tears. The sight of the old scenes had made the rush of
memories so painful that even yesterday she had only been able to
rejoice in her mother's restored comfort and Tom's brotherly
friendliness as we rejoice in good news of friends at a distance,
rather than in the presence of a happiness which we share. Memory and
imagination urged upon her a sense of privation too keen to let her
taste what was offered in the transient present. Her future, she
thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of
contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing;
she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder;
she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for,
and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate. The sound of the
opening door roused her, and hastily wiping away her tears, she began
to turn over the leaves of her book.

"There is one pleasure, I know, Maggie, that your deepest dismalness
will never resist," said Lucy, beginning to speak as soon as she
entered the room. "That is music, and I mean you to have quite a
riotous feast of it. I mean you to get up your playing again, which
used to be so much better than mine, when we were at Laceham."

"You would have laughed to see me playing the little girls' tunes over
and over to them, when I took them to practise," said Maggie, "just
for the sake of fingering the dear keys again. But I don't know
whether I could play anything more difficult now than 'Begone, dull
care!'"

"I know what a wild state of joy you used to be in when the glee-men
came round," said Lucy, taking up her embroidery; "and we might have
all those old glees that you used to love so, if I were certain that
you don't feel exactly as Tom does about some things."

"I should have thought there was nothing you might be more certain
of," said Maggie, smiling.

"I ought rather to have said, one particular thing. Because if you
feel just as he does about that, we shall want our third voice. St.
Ogg's is so miserably provided with musical gentlemen. There are
really only Stephen and Philip Wakem who have any knowledge of music,
so as to be able to sing a part."

Lucy had looked up from her work as she uttered the last sentence, and
saw that there was a change in Maggie's face.

"Does it hurt you to hear the name mentioned, Maggie? If it does, I
will not speak of him again. I know Tom will not see him if he can
avoid it."

"I don't feel at all as Tom does on that subject," said Maggie, rising
and going to the window as if she wanted to see more of the landscape.
"I've always liked Philip Wakem ever since I was a little girl, and
saw him at Lorton. He was so good when Tom hurt his foot."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" said Lucy. "Then you won't mind his coming
sometimes, and we can have much more music than we could without him.
I'm very fond of poor Philip, only I wish he were not so morbid about
his deformity. I suppose it _is_ his deformity that makes him so sad,
and sometimes bitter. It is certainly very piteous to see his poor
little crooked body and pale face among great, strong people."

"But, Lucy----" said Maggie, trying to arrest the prattling stream.

"Ah, there is the door-bell. That must be Stephen," Lucy went on, not
noticing Maggie's faint effort to speak. "One of the things I most
admire in Stephen is that he makes a greater friend of Philip than any
one."

It was too late for Maggie to speak now; the drawingroom door was
opening, and Minny was already growling in a small way at the entrance
of a tall gentleman, who went up to Lucy and took her hand with a
half-polite, half-tender glance and tone of inquiry, which seemed to
indicate that he was unconscious of any other presence.

"Let me introduce you to my cousin, Miss Tulliver," said Lucy, turning
with wicked enjoyment toward Maggie, who now approached from the
farther window. "This is Mr. Stephen Guest."

For one instant Stephen could not conceal his astonishment at the
sight of this tall, dark-eyed nymph with her jet-black coronet of
hair; the next, Maggie felt herself, for the first time in her life,
receiving the tribute of a very deep blush and a very deep bow from a
person toward whom she herself was conscious of timidity.

This new experience was very agreeable to her, so agreeable that it
almost effaced her previous emotion about Philip. There was a new
brightness in her eyes, and a very becoming flush on her cheek, as she
seated herself.

"I hope you perceive what a striking likeness you drew the day before
yesterday," said Lucy, with a pretty laugh of triumph. She enjoyed her
lover's confusion; the advantage was usually on his side.

"This designing cousin of yours quite deceived me, Miss Tulliver,"
said Stephen, seating himself by Lucy, and stooping to play with
Minny, only looking at Maggie furtively. "She said you had light hair
and blue eyes."

"Nay, it was you who said so," remonstrated Lucy. "I only refrained
from destroying your confidence in your own second-sight."

"I wish I could always err in the same way," said Stephen, "and find
reality so much more beautiful than my preconceptions."

"Now you have proved yourself equal to the occasion," said Maggie,
"and said what it was incumbent on you to say under the
circumstances."

She flashed a slightly defiant look at him; it was clear to her that
he had been drawing a satirical portrait of her beforehand. Lucy had
said he was inclined to be satirical, and Maggie had mentally supplied
the addition, "and rather conceited."

"An alarming amount of devil there," was Stephen's first thought. The
second, when she had bent over her work, was, "I wish she would look
at me again." The next was to answer,--

"I suppose all phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true.
A man is occasionally grateful when he says 'Thank you.' It's rather
hard upon him that he must use the same words with which all the world
declines a disagreeable invitation, don't you think so, Miss
Tulliver?"

"No," said Maggie, looking at him with her direct glance; "if we use
common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because
they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners,
or every-day clothes, hung up in a sacred place."

"Then my compliment ought to be eloquent," said Stephen, really not
quite knowing what he said while Maggie looked at him, "seeing that
the words were so far beneath the occasion."

"No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of
indifference," said Maggie, flushing a little.

Lucy was rather alarmed; she thought Stephen and Maggie were not going
to like each other. She had always feared lest Maggie should appear
too old and clever to please that critical gentleman. "Why, dear
Maggie," she interposed, "you have always pretended that you are too
fond of being admired; and now, I think, you are angry because some
one ventures to admire you."

"Not at all," said Maggie; "I like too well to feel that I am admired,
but compliments never make me feel that."

"I will never pay you a compliment again, Miss Tulliver," said
Stephen.

"Thank you; that will be a proof of respect."

Poor Maggie! She was so unused to society that she could take nothing
as a matter of course, and had never in her life spoken from the lips
merely, so that she must necessarily appear absurd to more experienced
ladies, from the excessive feeling she was apt to throw into very
trivial incidents. But she was even conscious herself of a little
absurdity in this instance. It was true she had a theoretic objection
to compliments, and had once said impatiently to Philip that she
didn't see why women were to be told with a simper that they were
beautiful, any more than old men were to be told that they were
venerable; still, to be so irritated by a common practice in the case
of a stranger like Mr. Stephen Guest, and to care about his having
spoken slightingly of her before he had seen her, was certainly
unreasonable, and as soon as she was silent she began to be ashamed of
herself. It did not occur to her that her irritation was due to the
pleasanter emotion which preceded it, just as when we are satisfied
with a sense of glowing warmth an innocent drop of cold water may fall
upon us as a sudden smart.

Stephen was too well bred not to seem unaware that the previous
conversation could have been felt embarrassing, and at once began to
talk of impersonal matters, asking Lucy if she knew when the bazaar
was at length to take place, so that there might be some hope of
seeing her rain the influence of her eyes on objects more grateful
than those worsted flowers that were growing under her fingers.

"Some day next month, I believe," said Lucy. "But your sisters are
doing more for it than I am; they are to have the largest stall."

"Ah yes; but they carry on their manufactures in their own
sitting-room, where I don't intrude on them. I see you are not
addicted to the fashionable vice of fancy-work, Miss Tulliver," said
Stephen, looking at Maggie's plain hemming.

"No," said Maggie, "I can do nothing more difficult or more elegant
than shirt-making."

"And your plain sewing is so beautiful, Maggie," said Lucy, "that I
think I shall beg a few specimens of you to show as fancy-work. Your
exquisite sewing is quite a mystery to me, you used to dislike that
sort of work so much in old days."

"It is a mystery easily explained, dear," said Maggie, looking up
quietly. "Plain sewing was the only thing I could get money by, so I
was obliged to try and do it well."

Lucy, good and simple as she was, could not help blushing a little.
She did not quite like that Stephen should know that; Maggie need not
have mentioned it. Perhaps there was some pride in the confession,--
the pride of poverty that will not be ashamed of itself. But if Maggie
had been the queen of coquettes she could hardly have invented a means
of giving greater piquancy to her beauty in Stephen's eyes; I am not
sure that the quiet admission of plain sewing and poverty would have
done alone, but assisted by the beauty, they made Maggie more unlike
other women even than she had seemed at first.

"But I can knit, Lucy," Maggie went on, "if that will be of any use
for your bazaar."

"Oh yes, of infinite use. I shall set you to work with scarlet wool
to-morrow. But your sister is the most enviable person," continued
Lucy, turning to Stephen, "to have the talent of modelling. She is
doing a wonderful bust of Dr. Kenn entirely from memory."

"Why, if she can remember to put the eyes very near together, and the
corners of the mouth very far apart, the likeness can hardly fail to
be striking in St. Ogg's."

"Now that is very wicked of you," said Lucy, looking rather hurt. "I
didn't think you would speak disrespectfully of Dr. Kenn."

"I say anything disrespectful of Dr. Kenn? Heaven forbid! But I am not
bound to respect a libellous bust of him. I think Kenn one of the
finest fellows in the world. I don't care much about the tall
candlesticks he has put on the communion-table, and I shouldn't like
to spoil my temper by getting up to early prayers every morning. But
he's the only man I ever knew personally who seems to me to have
anything of the real apostle in him,--a man who has eight hundred
a-year and is contented with deal furniture and boiled beef because he
gives away two-thirds of his income. That was a very fine thing of
him,--taking into his house that poor lad Grattan, who shot his mother
by accident. He sacrifices more time than a less busy man could spare,
to save the poor fellow from getting into a morbid state of mind about
it. He takes the lad out with him constantly, I see."

"That is beautiful," said Maggie, who had let her work fall, and was
listening with keen interest. "I never knew any one who did such things."

"And one admires that sort of action in Kenn all the more," said
Stephen, "because his manners in general are rather cold and severe.
There's nothing sugary and maudlin about him."

"Oh, I think he's a perfect character!" said Lucy, with pretty
enthusiasm.

"No; there I can't agree with you," said Stephen, shaking his head
with sarcastic gravity.

"Now, what fault can you point out in him?"

"He's an Anglican."

"Well, those are the right views, I think," said Lucy, gravely.

"That settles the question in the abstract," said Stephen, "but not
from a parliamentary point of view. He has set the Dissenters and the
Church people by the ears; and a rising senator like myself, of whose
services the country is very much in need, will find it inconvenient
when he puts up for the honor of representing St. Ogg's in
Parliament."

"Do you really think of that?" said Lucy, her eyes brightening with a
proud pleasure that made her neglect the argumentative interests of
Anglicanism.

"Decidedly, whenever old Mr. Leyburn's public spirit and gout induce
him to give way. My father's heart is set on it; and gifts like mine,
you know"--here Stephen drew himself up, and rubbed his large white
hands over his hair with playful self-admiration--"gifts like mine
involve great responsibilities. Don't you think so, Miss Tulliver?"

"Yes," said Maggie, smiling, but not looking up; "so much fluency and
self-possession should not be wasted entirely on private occasions."

"Ah, I see how much penetration you have," said Stephen. "You have
discovered already that I am talkative and impudent. Now superficial
people never discern that, owing to my manner, I suppose."

"She doesn't look at me when I talk of myself," he thought, while his
listeners were laughing. "I must try other subjects."

Did Lucy intend to be present at the meeting of the Book Club next
week? was the next question. Then followed the recommendation to
choose Southey's "Life of Cowper," unless she were inclined to be
philosophical, and startle the ladies of St. Ogg's by voting for one
of the Bridgewater Treatises. Of course Lucy wished to know what these
alarmingly learned books were; and as it is always pleasant to improve
the minds of ladies by talking to them at ease on subjects of which
they know nothing, Stephen became quite brilliant in an account of
Buckland's Treatise, which he had just been reading. He was rewarded
by seeing Maggie let her work fall, and gradually get so absorbed in
his wonderful geological story that she sat looking at him, leaning
forward with crossed arms, and with an entire absence of
self-consciousness, as if he had been the snuffiest of old professors,
and she a downy-lipped alumna. He was so fascinated by the clear,
large gaze that at last he forgot to look away from it occasionally
toward Lucy; but she, sweet child, was only rejoicing that Stephen was
proving to Maggie how clever he was, and that they would certainly be
good friends after all.

"I will bring you the book, shall I, Miss Tulliver?" said Stephen,
when he found the stream of his recollections running rather shallow.
"There are many illustrations in it that you will like to see."

"Oh, thank you," said Maggie, blushing with returning
self-consciousness at this direct address, and taking up her work
again.

"No, no," Lucy interposed. "I must forbid your plunging Maggie in
books. I shall never get her away from them; and I want her to have
delicious do-nothing days, filled with boating and chatting and riding
and driving; that is the holiday she needs."

"Apropos!" said Stephen, looking at his watch. "Shall we go out for a
row on the river now? The tide will suit for us to the Tofton way, and
we can walk back."

That was a delightful proposition to Maggie, for it was years since
she had been on the river. When she was gone to put on her bonnet,
Lucy lingered to give an order to the servant, and took the
opportunity of telling Stephen that Maggie had no objection to seeing
Philip, so that it was a pity she had sent that note the day before
yesterday. But she would write another to-morrow and invite him.

"I'll call and beat him up to-morrow," said Stephen, "and bring him
with me in the evening, shall I? My sisters will want to call on you
when I tell them your cousin is with you. I must leave the field clear
for them in the morning."

"Oh yes, pray bring him," said Lucy. "And you _will_ like Maggie,
sha'n't you?" she added, in a beseeching tone. "Isn't she a dear,
noble-looking creature?"

"Too tall," said Stephen, smiling down upon her, "and a little too
fiery. She is not my type of woman, you know."

Gentlemen, you are aware, are apt to impart these imprudent
confidences to ladies concerning their unfavorable opinion of sister
fair ones. That is why so many women have the advantage of knowing
that they are secretly repulsive to men who have self-denyingly made
ardent love to them. And hardly anything could be more distinctively
characteristic of Lucy than that she both implicitly believed what
Stephen said, and was determined that Maggie should not know it. But
you, who have a higher logic than the verbal to guide you, have
already foreseen, as the direct sequence to that unfavorable opinion
of Stephen's, that he walked down to the boathouse calculating, by the
aid of a vivid imagination, that Maggie must give him her hand at
least twice in consequence of this pleasant boating plan, and that a
gentleman who wishes ladies to look at him is advantageously situated
when he is rowing them in a boat. What then? Had he fallen in love
with this surprising daughter of Mrs. Tulliver at first sight?
Certainly not. Such passions are never heard of in real life. Besides,
he was in love already, and half-engaged to the dearest little
creature in the world; and he was not a man to make a fool of himself
in any way. But when one is five-and-twenty, one has not chalk-stones
at one's finger-ends that the touch of a handsome girl should be
entirely indifferent. It was perfectly natural and safe to admire
beauty and enjoy looking at it,--at least under such circumstances as
the present. And there was really something very interesting about
this girl, with her poverty and troubles; it was gratifying to see the
friendship between the two cousins. Generally, Stephen admitted, he
was not fond of women who had any peculiarity of character, but here
the peculiarity seemed really of a superior kind, and provided one is
not obliged to marry such women, why, they certainly make a variety in
social intercourse.

Maggie did not fulfil Stephen's hope by looking at him during the
first quarter of an hour; her eyes were too full of the old banks that
she knew so well. She felt lonely, cut off from Philip,--the only
person who had ever seemed to love her devotedly, as she had always
longed to be loved. But presently the rhythmic movement of the oars
attracted her, and she thought she should like to learn how to row.
This roused her from her reverie, and she asked if she might take an
oar. It appeared that she required much teaching, and she became
ambitious. The exercise brought the warm blood into her cheeks, and
made her inclined to take her lesson merrily.

"I shall not be satisfied until I can manage both oars, and row you
and Lucy," she said, looking very bright as she stepped out of the
boat. Maggie, we know, was apt to forget the thing she was doing, and
she had chosen an inopportune moment for her remark; her foot slipped,
but happily Mr. Stephen Guest held her hand, and kept her up with a
firm grasp.

"You have not hurt yourself at all, I hope?" he said, bending to look
in her face with anxiety. It was very charming to be taken care of in
that kind, graceful manner by some one taller and stronger than one's
self. Maggie had never felt just in the same way before.

When they reached home again, they found uncle and aunt Pullet seated
with Mrs. Tulliver in the drawing-room, and Stephen hurried away,
asking leave to come again in the evening.

"And pray bring with you the volume of Purcell that you took away,"
said Lucy. "I want Maggie to hear your best songs."

Aunt Pullet, under the certainty that Maggie would be invited to go
out with Lucy, probably to Park House, was much shocked at the
shabbiness of her clothes, which when witnessed by the higher society
of St. Ogg's, would be a discredit to the family, that demanded a
strong and prompt remedy; and the consultation as to what would be
most suitable to this end from among the superfluities of Mrs.
Pullet's wardrobe was one that Lucy as well as Mrs. Tulliver entered
into with some zeal. Maggie must really have an evening dress as soon
as possible, and she was about the same height as aunt Pullet.

"But she's so much broader across the shoulders than I am, it's very
ill-convenient," said Mrs. Pullet, "else she might wear that beautiful
black brocade o' mine without any alteration; and her arms are beyond
everything," added Mrs. Pullet, sorrowfully, as she lifted Maggie's
large round arm, "She'd never get my sleeves on."

"Oh, never mind that, aunt; send us the dress," said Lucy. "I don't
mean Maggie to have long sleeves, and I have abundance of black lace
for trimming. Her arms will look beautiful."

"Maggie's arms _are_ a pretty shape," said Mrs. Tulliver. "They're
like mine used to be, only mine was never brown; I wish she'd had
_our_ family skin."

"Nonsense, aunty!" said Lucy, patting her aunt Tulliver's shoulder,
"you don't understand those things. A painter would think Maggie's
complexion beautiful."

"Maybe, my dear," said Mrs. Tulliver, submissively. "You know better
than I do. Only when I was young a brown skin wasn't thought well on
among respectable folks."

"No," said uncle Pullet, who took intense interest in the ladies'
conversation as he sucked his lozenges. "Though there was a song about
the 'Nut-brown Maid' too; I think she was crazy,--crazy Kate,--but I
can't justly remember."

"Oh dear, dear!" said Maggie, laughing, but impatient; "I think that
will be the end of _my_ brown skin, if it is always to be talked about
so much."



Chapter III

Confidential Moments


When Maggie went up to her bedroom that night, it appeared that she
was not at all inclined to undress. She set down her candle on the
first table that presented itself, and began to walk up and down her
room, which was a large one, with a firm, regular, and rather rapid
step, which showed that the exercise was the instinctive vent of
strong excitement. Her eyes and cheeks had an almost feverish
brilliancy; her head was thrown backward, and her hands were clasped
with the palms outward, and with that tension of the arms which is apt
to accompany mental absorption.

Had anything remarkable happened?

Nothing that you are not likely to consider in the highest degree
unimportant. She had been hearing some fine music sung by a fine bass
voice,--but then it was sung in a provincial, amateur fashion, such as
would have left a critical ear much to desire. And she was conscious
of having been looked at a great deal, in rather a furtive manner,
from beneath a pair of well-marked horizontal eyebrows, with a glance
that seemed somehow to have caught the vibratory influence of the
voice. Such things could have had no perceptible effect on a
thoroughly well-educated young lady, with a perfectly balanced mind,
who had had all the advantages of fortune, training, and refined
society. But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably
have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few
vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the happiest
women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

In poor Maggie's highly-strung, hungry nature,--just come away from a
third-rate schoolroom, with all its jarring sounds and petty round of
tasks,--these apparently trivial causes had the effect of rousing and
exalting her imagination in a way that was mysterious to herself. It
was not that she thought distinctly of Mr. Stephen Guest, or dwelt on
the indications that he looked at her with admiration; it was rather
that she felt the half-remote presence of a world of love and beauty
and delight, made up of vague, mingled images from all the poetry and
romance she had ever read, or had ever woven in her dreamy reveries.
Her mind glanced back once or twice to the time when she had courted
privation, when she had thought all longing, all impatience was
subdued; but that condition seemed irrecoverably gone, and she
recoiled from the remembrance of it. No prayer, no striving now, would
bring back that negative peace; the battle of her life, it seemed, was
not to be decided in that short and easy way,--by perfect renunciation
at the very threshold of her youth.

The music was vibrating in her still,--Purcell's music, with its wild
passion and fancy,--and she could not stay in the recollection of that
bare, lonely past. She was in her brighter aerial world again, when a
little tap came at the door; of course it was her cousin, who entered
in ample white dressing-gown.

"Why, Maggie, you naughty child, haven't you begun to undress?" said
Lucy, in astonishment. "I promised not to come and talk to you,
because I thought you must be tired. But here you are, looking as if
you were ready to dress for a ball. Come, come, get on your
dressing-gown and unplait your hair."

"Well, _you_ are not very forward," retorted Maggie, hastily reaching
her own pink cotton gown, and looking at Lucy's light-brown hair
brushed back in curly disorder.

"Oh, I have not much to do. I shall sit down and talk to you till I
see you are really on the way to bed."

While Maggie stood and unplaited her long black hair over her pink
drapery, Lucy sat down near the toilette-table, watching her with
affectionate eyes, and head a little aside, like a pretty spaniel. If
it appears to you at all incredible that young ladies should be led on
to talk confidentially in a situation of this kind, I will beg you to
remember that human life furnishes many exceptional cases.

"You really _have_ enjoyed the music to-night, haven't you Maggie?"

"Oh yes, that is what prevented me from feeling sleepy. I think I
should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of
music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my
brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with
music. At other times one is conscious of carrying a weight."

"And Stephen has a splendid voice, hasn't he?"

"Well, perhaps we are neither of us judges of that," said Maggie,
laughing, as she seated herself and tossed her long hair back. "You
are not impartial, and _I_ think any barrel-organ splendid."

"But tell me what you think of him, now. Tell me exactly; good and bad
too."

"Oh, I think you should humiliate him a little. A lover should not be
so much at ease, and so self-confident. He ought to tremble more."

"Nonsense, Maggie! As if any one could tremble at me! You think he is
conceited, I see that. But you don't dislike him, do you?"

"Dislike him! No. Am I in the habit of seeing such charming people,
that I should be very difficult to please? Besides, how could I
dislike any one that promised to make you happy, my dear thing!"
Maggie pinched Lucy's dimpled chin.

"We shall have more music to-morrow evening," said Lucy, looking happy
already, "for Stephen will bring Philip Wakem with him."

"Oh, Lucy, I can't see him," said Maggie, turning pale. "At least, I
could not see him without Tom's leave."

"Is Tom such a tyrant as that?" said Lucy, surprised. "I'll take the
responsibility, then,--tell him it was my fault."

"But, dear," said Maggie, falteringly, "I promised Tom very solemnly,
before my father's death,--I promised him I would not speak to Philip
without his knowledge and consent. And I have a great dread of opening
the subject with Tom,--of getting into a quarrel with him again."

"But I never heard of anything so strange and unreasonable. What harm
can poor Philip have done? May I speak to Tom about it?"

"Oh no, pray don't, dear," said Maggie. "I'll go to him myself
to-morrow, and tell him that you wish Philip to come. I've thought
before of asking him to absolve me from my promise, but I've not had
the courage to determine on it."

They were both silent for some moments, and then Lucy said,--

"Maggie, you have secrets from me, and I have none from you."

Maggie looked meditatively away from Lucy. Then she turned to her and
said, "I _should_ like to tell you about Philip. But, Lucy, you must
not betray that you know it to any one--least of all to Philip
himself, or to Mr. Stephen Guest."

The narrative lasted long, for Maggie had never before known the
relief of such an outpouring; she had never before told Lucy anything
of her inmost life; and the sweet face bent toward her with
sympathetic interest, and the little hand pressing hers, encouraged
her to speak on. On two points only she was not expansive. She did not
betray fully what still rankled in her mind as Tom's great
offence,--the insults he had heaped on Philip. Angry as the
remembrance still made her, she could not bear that any one else
should know it at all, both for Tom's sake and Philip's. And she could
not bear to tell Lucy of the last scene between her father and Wakem,
though it was this scene which she had ever since felt to be a new
barrier between herself and Philip. She merely said, she saw now that
Tom was, on the whole, right in regarding any prospect of love and
marriage between her and Philip as put out of the question by the
relation of the two families. Of course Philip's father would never
consent.

"There, Lucy, you have had my story," said Maggie, smiling, with the
tears in her eyes. "You see I am like Sir Andrew Aguecheek. _I_ was
adored once."

"Ah, now I see how it is you know Shakespeare and everything, and have
learned so much since you left school; which always seemed to me
witchcraft before,--part of your general uncanniness," said Lucy.

She mused a little with her eyes downward, and then added, looking at
Maggie, "It is very beautiful that you should love Philip; I never
thought such a happiness would befall him. And in my opinion, you
ought not to give him up. There are obstacles now; but they may be
done away with in time."

Maggie shook her head.

"Yes, yes," persisted Lucy; "I can't help being hopeful about it.
There is something romantic in it,--out of the common way,--just what
everything that happens to you ought to be. And Philip will adore you
like a husband in a fairy tale. Oh, I shall puzzle my small brain to
contrive some plot that will bring everybody into the right mind, so
that you may marry Philip when I marry--somebody else. Wouldn't that
be a pretty ending to all my poor, poor Maggie's troubles?"

Maggie tried to smile, but shivered, as if she felt a sudden chill.

"Ah, dear, you are cold," said Lucy. "You must go to bed; and so must
I. I dare not think what time it is."

They kissed each other, and Lucy went away, possessed of a confidence
which had a strong influence over her subsequent impressions. Maggie
had been thoroughly sincere; her nature had never found it easy to be
otherwise. But confidences are sometimes blinding, even when they are
sincere.



Chapter IV

Brother and Sister


Maggie was obliged to go to Tom's lodgings in the middle of the day,
when he would be coming in to dinner, else she would not have found
him at home. He was not lodging with entire strangers. Our friend Bob
Jakin had, with Mumps's tacit consent, taken not only a wife about
eight months ago, but also one of those queer old houses, pierced with
surprising passages, by the water-side, where, as he observed, his
wife and mother could keep themselves out of mischief by letting out
two "pleasure-boats," in which he had invested some of his savings,
and by taking in a lodger for the parlor and spare bedroom. Under
these circumstances, what could be better for the interests of all
parties, sanitary considerations apart, than that the lodger should be
Mr. Tom?

It was Bob's wife who opened the door to Maggie. She was a tiny woman,
with the general physiognomy of a Dutch doll, looking, in comparison
with Bob's mother, who filled up the passage in the rear, very much
like one of those human figures which the artist finds conveniently
standing near a colossal statue to show the proportions. The tiny
woman curtsied and looked up at Maggie with some awe as soon as she
had opened the door; but the words, "Is my brother at home?" which
Maggie uttered smilingly, made her turn round with sudden excitement,
and say,--

"Eh, mother, mother--tell Bob!--it's Miss Maggie! Come in, Miss, for
goodness do," she went on, opening a side door, and endeavoring to
flatten her person against the wall to make the utmost space for the
visitor.

Sad recollections crowded on Maggie as she entered the small parlor,
which was now all that poor Tom had to call by the name of
"home,"--that name which had once, so many years ago, meant for both
of them the same sum of dear familiar objects. But everything was not
strange to her in this new room; the first thing her eyes dwelt on was
the large old Bible, and the sight was not likely to disperse the old
memories. She stood without speaking.

"If you please to take the privilege o' sitting down, Miss," said Mrs.
Jakin, rubbing her apron over a perfectly clean chair, and then
lifting up the corner of that garment and holding it to her face with
an air of embarrassment, as she looked wonderingly at Maggie.

"Bob is at home, then?" said Maggie, recovering herself, and smiling
at the bashful Dutch doll.

"Yes, Miss; but I think he must be washing and dressing himself; I'll
go and see," said Mrs. Jakin, disappearing.

But she presently came back walking with new courage a little way
behind her husband, who showed the brilliancy of his blue eyes and
regular white teeth in the doorway, bowing respectfully.

"How do you do, Bob?" said Maggie, coming forward and putting out her
hand to him; "I always meant to pay your wife a visit, and I shall
come another day on purpose for that, if she will let me. But I was
obliged to come to-day to speak to my brother."

"He'll be in before long, Miss. He's doin' finely, Mr. Tom is; he'll
be one o' the first men hereabouts,--you'll see that."

"Well, Bob, I'm sure he'll be indebted to you, whatever he becomes; he
said so himself only the other night, when he was talking of you."

"Eh, Miss, that's his way o' takin' it. But I think the more on't when
he says a thing, because his tongue doesn't overshoot him as mine
does. Lors! I'm no better nor a tilted bottle, I ar'n't,--I can't stop
mysen when once I begin. But you look rarely, Miss; it does me good to
see you. What do you say now, Prissy?"--here Bob turned to his
wife,--"Isn't it all come true as I said? Though there isn't many
sorts o' goods as I can't over-praise when I set my tongue to't."

Mrs. Bob's small nose seemed to be following the example of her eyes
in turning up reverentially toward Maggie, but she was able now to
smile and curtsey, and say, "I'd looked forrard like aenything to
seein' you, Miss, for my husband's tongue's been runnin' on you, like
as if he was light-headed, iver since first he come a-courtin' on me."

"Well, well," said Bob, looking rather silly. "Go an' see after the
taters, else Mr. Tom 'ull have to wait for 'em."

"I hope Mumps is friendly with Mrs. Jakin, Bob," said Maggie, smiling.
"I remember you used to say he wouldn't like your marrying."

"Eh, Miss," said Bob, "he made up his mind to't when he see'd what a
little un she was. He pretends not to see her mostly, or else to think
as she isn't full-growed. But about Mr. Tom, Miss," said Bob, speaking
lower and looking serious, "he's as close as a iron biler, he is; but
I'm a 'cutish chap, an' when I've left off carrying my pack, an' am at
a loose end, I've got more brains nor I know what to do wi', an' I'm
forced to busy myself wi' other folks's insides. An' it worrets me as
Mr. Tom'll sit by himself so glumpish, a-knittin' his brow, an'
a-lookin' at the fire of a night. He should be a bit livelier now, a
fine young fellow like him. My wife says, when she goes in sometimes,
an' he takes no notice of her, he sits lookin' into the fire, and
frownin' as if he was watchin' folks at work in it."

"He thinks so much about business," said Maggie.

"Ay," said Bob, speaking lower; "but do you think it's nothin' else,
Miss? He's close, Mr. Tom is; but I'm a 'cute chap, I am, an' I
thought tow'rt last Christmas as I'd found out a soft place in him. It
was about a little black spaniel--a rare bit o' breed--as he made a
fuss to get. But since then summat's come over him, as he's set his
teeth again' things more nor iver, for all he's had such good luck.
An' I wanted to tell _you_, Miss, 'cause I thought you might work it
out of him a bit, now you're come. He's a deal too lonely, and doesn't
go into company enough."

"I'm afraid I have very little power over him, Bob," said Maggie, a
good deal moved by Bob's suggestion. It was a totally new idea to her
mind that Tom could have his love troubles. Poor fellow!--and in love
with Lucy too! But it was perhaps a mere fancy of Bob's too officious
brain. The present of the dog meant nothing more than cousinship and
gratitude. But Bob had already said, "Here's Mr. Tom," and the outer
door was opening.

"There is no time to spare, Tom," said Maggie, as soon as Bob left the
room. "I must tell you at once what I came about, else I shall be
hindering you from taking your dinner."

Tom stood with his back against the chimney-piece, and Maggie was
seated opposite the light. He noticed that she was tremulous, and he
had a presentiment of the subject she was going to speak about. The
presentiment made his voice colder and harder as he said, "What is
it?"

This tone roused a spirit of resistance in Maggie, and she put her
request in quite a different form from the one she had predetermined
on. She rose from her seat, and looking straight at Tom, said,--

"I want you to absolve me from my promise about Philip Wakem. Or
rather, I promised you not to see him without telling you. I am come
to tell you that I wish to see him."

"Very well," said Tom, still more coldly.

But Maggie had hardly finished speaking in that chill, defiant manner,
before she repented, and felt the dread of alienation from her
brother.

"Not for myself, dear Tom. Don't be angry. I shouldn't have asked it,
only that Philip, you know, is a friend of Lucy's and she wishes him
to come, has invited him to come this evening; and I told her I
couldn't see him without telling you. I shall only see him in the
presence of other people. There will never be anything secret between
us again."

Tom looked away from Maggie, knitting his brow more strongly for a
little while. Then he turned to her and said, slowly and
emphatically,--

"You know what is my feeling on that subject, Maggie. There is no need
for my repeating anything I said a year ago. While my father was
living, I felt bound to use the utmost power over you, to prevent you
from disgracing him as well as yourself, and all of us. But now I must
leave you to your own choice. You wish to be independent; you told me
so after my father's death. My opinion is not changed. If you think of
Philip Wakem as a lover again, you must give up me."

"I don't wish it, dear Tom, at least as things are; I see that it
would lead to misery. But I shall soon go away to another situation,
and I should like to be friends with him again while I am here. Lucy
wishes it."

The severity of Tom's face relaxed a little.

"I shouldn't mind your seeing him occasionally at my uncle's--I don't
want you to make a fuss on the subject. But I have no confidence in
you, Maggie. You would be led away to do anything."

That was a cruel word. Maggie's lip began to tremble.

"Why will you say that, Tom? It is very hard of you. Have I not done
and borne everything as well as I could? And I kept my word to
you--when--when----My life has not been a happy one, any more than
yours."

She was obliged to be childish; the tears would come. When Maggie was
not angry, she was as dependent on kind or cold words as a daisy on
the sunshine or the cloud; the need of being loved would always subdue
her, as, in old days, it subdued her in the worm-eaten attic. The
brother's goodness came uppermost at this appeal, but it could only
show itself in Tom's fashion. He put his hand gently on her arm, and
said, in the tone of a kind pedagogue,--

"Now listen to me, Maggie. I'll tell you what I mean. You're always in
extremes; you have no judgment and self-command; and yet you think you
know best, and will not submit to be guided. You know I didn't wish
you to take a situation. My aunt Pullet was willing to give you a good
home, and you might have lived respectably amongst your relations,
until I could have provided a home for you with my mother. And that is
what I should like to do. I wished my sister to be a lady, and I
always have taken care of you, as my father desired, until you were
well married. But your ideas and mine never accord, and you will not
give way. Yet you might have sense enough to see that a brother, who
goes out into the world and mixes with men, necessarily knows better
what is right and respectable for his sister than she can know
herself. You think I am not kind; but my kindness can only be directed
by what I believe to be good for you."

"Yes, I know, dear Tom," said Maggie, still half-sobbing, but trying
to control her tears. "I know you would do a great deal for me; I know
how you work, and don't spare yourself. I am grateful to you. But,
indeed, you can't quite judge for me; our natures are very different.
You don't know how differently things affect me from what they do
you."

"Yes, I _do_ know; I know it too well. I know how differently you must
feel about all that affects our family, and your own dignity as a
young woman, before you could think of receiving secret addresses from
Philip Wakem. If it was not disgusting to me in every other way, I
should object to my sister's name being associated for a moment with
that of a young man whose father must hate the very thought of us all,
and would spurn you. With any one but you, I should think it quite
certain that what you witnessed just before my father's death would
secure you from ever thinking again of Philip Wakem as a lover. But I
don't feel certain of it with you; I never feel certain about anything
with _you_. At one time you take pleasure in a sort of perverse
self-denial, and at another you have not resolution to resist a thing
that you know to be wrong."

There was a terrible cutting truth in Tom's words,--that hard rind of
truth which is discerned by unimaginative, unsympathetic minds. Maggie
always writhed under this judgment of Tom's; she rebelled and was
humiliated in the same moment; it seemed as if he held a glass before
her to show her her own folly and weakness, as if he were a prophetic
voice predicting her future fallings; and yet, all the while, she
judged him in return; she said inwardly that he was narrow and unjust,
that he was below feeling those mental needs which were often the
source of the wrong-doing or absurdity that made her life a planless
riddle to him.

She did not answer directly; her heart was too full, and she sat down,
leaning her arm on the table. It was no use trying to make Tom feel
that she was near to him. He always repelled her. Her feeling under
his words was complicated by the allusion to the last scene between
her father and Wakem; and at length that painful, solemn memory
surmounted the immediate grievance. No! She did not think of such
things with frivolous indifference, and Tom must not accuse her of
that. She looked up at him with a grave, earnest gaze and said,--

"I can't make you think better of me, Tom, by anything I can say. But
I am not so shut out from all your feelings as you believe me to be. I
see as well as you do that from our position with regard to Philip's
father--not on other grounds--it would be unreasonable, it would be
wrong, for us to entertain the idea of marriage; and I have given up
thinking of him as a lover. I am telling you the truth, and you have
no right to disbelieve me; I have kept my word to you, and you have
never detected me in a falsehood. I should not only not encourage, I
should carefully avoid, any intercourse with Philip on any other
footing than of quiet friendship. You may think that I am unable to
keep my resolutions; but at least you ought not to treat me with hard
contempt on the ground of faults that I have not committed yet."

"Well, Maggie," said Tom, softening under this appeal, "I don't want
to overstrain matters. I think, all things considered, it will be best
for you to see Philip Wakem, if Lucy wishes him to come to the house.
I believe what you say,--at least you believe it yourself, I know; I
can only warn you. I wish to be as good a brother to you as you will
let me."

There was a little tremor in Tom's voice as he uttered the last words,
and Maggie's ready affection came back with as sudden a glow as when
they were children, and bit their cake together as a sacrament of
conciliation. She rose and laid her hand on Tom's shoulder.

"Dear Tom, I know you mean to be good. I know you have had a great
deal to bear, and have done a great deal. I should like to be a
comfort to you, not to vex you. You don't think I'm altogether
naughty, now, do you?"

Tom smiled at the eager face; his smiles were very pleasant to see
when they did come, for the gray eyes could be tender underneath the
frown.

"No, Maggie."

"I may turn out better than you expect."

"I hope you will."

"And may I come some day and make tea for you, and see this extremely
small wife of Bob's again?"

"Yes; but trot away now, for I've no more time to spare," said Tom,
looking at his watch.

"Not to give me a kiss?"

Tom bent to kiss her cheek, and then said,--

"There! Be a good girl. I've got a great deal to think of to-day. I'm
going to have a long consultation with my uncle Deane this afternoon."

"You'll come to aunt Glegg's to-morrow? We're going all to dine early,
that we may go there to tea. You _must_ come; Lucy told me to say so."

"Oh, pooh! I've plenty else to do," said Tom, pulling his bell
violently, and bringing down the small bell-rope.

"I'm frightened; I shall run away," said Maggie, making a laughing
retreat; while Tom, with masculine philosophy, flung the bell-rope to
the farther end of the room; not very far either,--a touch of human
experience which I flatter myself will come home to the bosoms of not
a few substantial or distinguished men who were once at an early stage
of their rise in the world, and were cherishing very large hopes in
very small lodgings.



Chapter V

Showing That Tom Had Opened the Oyster


"And now we've settled this Newcastle business, Tom," said Mr. Deane,
that same afternoon, as they were seated in the private room at the
Bank together, "there's another matter I want to talk to you about.
Since you're likely to have rather a smoky, unpleasant time of it at
Newcastle for the next few weeks, you'll want a good prospect of some
sort to keep up your spirits."

Tom waited less nervously than he had done on a former occasion in
this apartment, while his uncle took out his snuff-box and gratified
each nostril with deliberate impartiality.

"You see, Tom," said Mr. Deane at last, throwing himself backward,
"the world goes on at a smarter pace now than it did when I was a
young fellow. Why, sir, forty years ago, when I was much such a
strapping youngster as you, a man expected to pull between the shafts
the best part of his life, before he got the whip in his hand. The
looms went slowish, and fashions didn't alter quite so fast; I'd a
best suit that lasted me six years. Everything was on a lower scale,
sir,--in point of expenditure, I mean. It's this steam, you see, that
has made the difference; it drives on every wheel double pace, and the
wheel of fortune along with 'em, as our Mr. Stephen Guest said at the
anniversary dinner (he hits these things off wonderfully, considering
he's seen nothing of business). I don't find fault with the change, as
some people do. Trade, sir, opens a man's eyes; and if the population
is to get thicker upon the ground, as it's doing, the world must use
its wits at inventions of one sort or other. I know I've done my share
as an ordinary man of business. Somebody has said it's a fine thing to
make two ears of corn grow where only one grew before; but, sir, it's
a fine thing, too, to further the exchange of commodities, and bring
the grains of corn to the mouths that are hungry. And that's our line
of business; and I consider it as honorable a position as a man can
hold, to be connected with it."

Tom knew that the affair his uncle had to speak of was not urgent; Mr.
Deane was too shrewd and practical a man to allow either his
reminiscences or his snuff to impede the progress of trade. Indeed,
for the last month or two, there had been hints thrown out to Tom
which enabled him to guess that he was going to hear some proposition
for his own benefit. With the beginning of the last speech he had
stretched out his legs, thrust his hands in his pockets, and prepared
himself for some introductory diffuseness, tending to show that Mr.
Deane had succeeded by his own merit, and that what he had to say to
young men in general was, that if they didn't succeed too it was
because of their own demerit. He was rather surprised, then, when his
uncle put a direct question to him.

"Let me see,--it's going on for seven years now since you applied to
me for a situation, eh, Tom?"

"Yes, sir; I'm three-and-twenty now," said Tom.

"Ah, it's as well not to say that, though; for you'd pass for a good
deal older, and age tells well in business. I remember your coming
very well; I remember I saw there was some pluck in you, and that was
what made me give you encouragement. And I'm happy to say I was right;
I'm not often deceived. I was naturally a little shy at pushing my
nephew, but I'm happy to say you've done me credit, sir; and if I'd
had a son o' my own, I shouldn't have been sorry to see him like you."

Mr. Deane tapped his box and opened it again, repeating in a tone of
some feeling, "No, I shouldn't have been sorry to see him like you."

"I'm very glad I've given you satisfaction, sir; I've done my best,"
said Tom, in his proud, independent way.

"Yes, Tom, you've given me satisfaction. I don't speak of your conduct
as a son; though that weighs with me in my opinion of you. But what I
have to do with, as a partner in our firm, is the qualities you've
shown as a man o' business. Ours is a fine business,--a splendid
concern, sir,--and there's no reason why it shouldn't go on growing;
there's a growing capital, and growing outlets for it; but there's
another thing that's wanted for the prosperity of every concern, large
or small, and that's men to conduct it,--men of the right habits; none
o' your flashy fellows, but such as are to be depended on. Now this is
what Mr. Guest and I see clear enough. Three years ago we took Gell
into the concern; we gave him a share in the oil-mill. And why? Why,
because Gell was a fellow whose services were worth a premium. So it
will always be, sir. So it was with me. And though Gell is pretty near
ten years older than you, there are other points in your favor."

Tom was getting a little nervous as Mr. Deane went on speaking; he was
conscious of something he had in his mind to say, which might not be
agreeable to his uncle, simply because it was a new suggestion rather
than an acceptance of the proposition he foresaw.

"It stands to reason," Mr. Deane went on, when he had finished his new
pinch, "that your being my nephew weighs in your favor; but I don't
deny that if you'd been no relation of mine at all, your conduct in
that affair of Pelley's bank would have led Mr. Guest and myself to
make some acknowledgment of the service you've been to us; and, backed
by your general conduct and business ability, it has made us determine
on giving you a share in the business,--a share which we shall be glad
to increase as the years go on. We think that'll be better, on all
grounds, than raising your salary. It'll give you more importance, and
prepare you better for taking some of the anxiety off my shoulders by
and by. I'm equal to a good deal o' work at present, thank God; but
I'm getting older,--there's no denying that. I told Mr. Guest I would
open the subject to you; and when you come back from this northern
business, we can go into particulars. This is a great stride for a
young fellow of three-and-twenty, but I'm bound to say you've deserved
it."

"I'm very grateful to Mr. Guest and you, sir; of course I feel the
most indebted to _you_, who first took me into the business, and have
taken a good deal of pains with me since."

Tom spoke with a slight tremor, and paused after he had said this.

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Deane. "I don't spare pains when I see they'll be
of any use. I gave myself some trouble with Gell, else he wouldn't
have been what he is."

"But there's one thing I should like to mention to you uncle. I've
never spoken to you of it before. If you remember, at the time my
father's property was sold, there was some thought of your firm buying
the Mill; I know you thought it would be a very good investment,
especially if steam were applied."

"To be sure, to be sure. But Wakem outbid us; he'd made up his mind to
that. He's rather fond of carrying everything over other people's
heads."

"Perhaps it's of no use my mentioning it at present," Tom went on,
"but I wish you to know what I have in my mind about the Mill. I've a
strong feeling about it. It was my father's dying wish that I should
try and get it back again whenever I could; it was in his family for
five generations. I promised my father; and besides that, I'm attached
to the place. I shall never like any other so well. And if it should
ever suit your views to buy it for the firm, I should have a better
chance of fulfilling my father's wish. I shouldn't have liked to
mention the thing to you, only you've been kind enough to say my
services have been of some value. And I'd give up a much greater
chance in life for the sake of having the Mill again,--I mean having
it in my own hands, and gradually working off the price."

Mr. Deane had listened attentively, and now looked thoughtful.

"I see, I see," he said, after a while; "the thing would be possible
if there were any chance of Wakem's parting with the property. But
that I _don't_ see. He's put that young Jetsome in the place; and he
had his reasons when he bought it, I'll be bound."

"He's a loose fish, that young Jetsome," said Tom. "He's taking to
drinking, and they say he's letting the business go down. Luke told me
about it,--our old miller. He says he sha'n't stay unless there's an
alteration. I was thinking, if things went on that way, Wakem might be
more willing to part with the Mill. Luke says he's getting very sour
about the way things are going on."

"Well, I'll turn it over, Tom. I must inquire into the matter, and go
into it with Mr. Guest. But, you see, it's rather striking out a new
branch, and putting you to that, instead of keeping you where you are,
which was what we'd wanted."

"I should be able to manage more than the Mill when things were once
set properly going, sir. I want to have plenty of work. There's
nothing else I care about much."

There was something rather sad in that speech from a young man of
three-and-twenty, even in uncle Deane's business-loving ears.

"Pooh, pooh! you'll be having a wife to care about one of these days,
if you get on at this pace in the world. But as to this Mill, we
mustn't reckon on our chickens too early. However, I promise you to
bear it in mind, and when you come back we'll talk of it again. I am
going to dinner now. Come and breakfast with us to-morrow morning, and
say good-bye to your mother and sister before you start."



Chapter VI

Illustrating the Laws of Attraction

It is evident to you now that Maggie had arrived at a moment in her
life which must be considered by all prudent persons as a great
opportunity for a young woman. Launched into the higher society of St.
Ogg's, with a striking person, which had the advantage of being quite
unfamiliar to the majority of beholders, and with such moderate
assistance of costume as you have seen foreshadowed in Lucy's anxious
colloquy with aunt Pullet, Maggie was certainly at a new
starting-point in life. At Lucy's first evening party, young Torry
fatigued his facial muscles more than usual in order that "the
dark-eyed girl there in the corner" might see him in all the
additional style conferred by his eyeglass; and several young ladies
went home intending to have short sleeves with black lace, and to
plait their hair in a broad coronet at the back of their head,--"That
cousin of Miss Deane's looked so very well." In fact, poor Maggie,
with all her inward consciousness of a painful past and her
presentiment of a troublous future, was on the way to become an object
of some envy,--a topic of discussion in the newly established
billiard-room, and between fair friends who had no secrets from each
other on the subject of trimmings. The Miss Guests, who associated
chiefly on terms of condescension with the families of St. Ogg's, and
were the glass of fashion there, took some exception to Maggie's
manners. She had a way of not assenting at once to the observations
current in good society, and of saying that she didn't know whether
those observations were true or not, which gave her an air of
_gaucherie_, and impeded the even flow of conversation; but it is a
fact capable of an amiable interpretation that ladies are not the
worst disposed toward a new acquaintance of their own sex because she
has points of inferiority. And Maggie was so entirely without those
pretty airs of coquetry which have the traditional reputation of
driving gentlemen to despair that she won some feminine pity for being
so ineffective in spite of her beauty. She had not had many
advantages, poor thing! and it must be admitted there was no
pretension about her; her abruptness and unevenness of manner were
plainly the result of her secluded and lowly circumstances. It was
only a wonder that there was no tinge of vulgarity about her,
considering what the rest of poor Lucy's relations were--an allusion
which always made the Miss Guests shudder a little. It was not
agreeable to think of any connection by marriage with such people as
the Gleggs and the Pullets; but it was of no use to contradict Stephen
when once he had set his mind on anything, and certainly there was no
possible objection to Lucy in herself,--no one could help liking her.
She would naturally desire that the Miss Guests should behave kindly
to this cousin of whom she was so fond, and Stephen would make a great
fuss if they were deficient in civility. Under these circumstances the
invitations to Park House were not wanting; and elsewhere, also, Miss
Deane was too popular and too distinguished a member of society in St.
Ogg's for any attention toward her to be neglected.

Thus Maggie was introduced for the first time to the young lady's
life, and knew what it was to get up in the morning without any
imperative reason for doing one thing more than another. This new
sense of leisure and unchecked enjoyment amidst the soft-breathing
airs and garden-scents of advancing spring--amidst the new abundance
of music, and lingering strolls in the sunshine, and the delicious
dreaminess of gliding on the river--could hardly be without some
intoxicating effect on her, after her years of privation; and even in
the first week Maggie began to be less haunted by her sad memories and
anticipations. Life was certainly very pleasant just now; it was
becoming very pleasant to dress in the evening, and to feel that she
was one of the beautiful things of this spring-time. And there were
admiring eyes always awaiting her now; she was no longer an unheeded
person, liable to be chid, from whom attention was continually
claimed, and on whom no one felt bound to confer any. It was pleasant,
too, when Stephen and Lucy were gone out riding, to sit down at the
piano alone, and find that the old fitness between her fingers and the
keys remained, and revived, like a sympathetic kinship not to be worn
out by separation; to get the tunes she had heard the evening before,
and repeat them again and again until she had found out a way of
producing them so as to make them a more pregnant, passionate language
to her. The mere concord of octaves was a delight to Maggie, and she
would often take up a book of studies rather than any melody, that she
might taste more keenly by abstraction the more primitive sensation of
intervals. Not that her enjoyment of music was of the kind that
indicates a great specific talent; it was rather that her sensibility
to the supreme excitement of music was only one form of that
passionate sensibility which belonged to her whole nature, and made
her faults and virtues all merge in each other; made her affections
sometimes an impatient demand, but also prevented her vanity from
taking the form of mere feminine coquetry and device, and gave it the
poetry of ambition. But you have known Maggie a long while, and need
to be told, not her characteristics, but her history, which is a thing
hardly to be predicted even from the completest knowledge of
characteristics. For the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely
from within. "Character," says Novalis, in one of his questionable
aphorisms,--"character is destiny." But not the whole of our destiny.
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was speculative and irresolute, and we have
a great tragedy in consequence. But if his father had lived to a good
old age, and his uncle had died an early death, we can conceive
Hamlet's having married Ophelia, and got through life with a
reputation of sanity, notwithstanding many soliloquies, and some moody
sarcasms toward the fair daughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the
frankest incivility to his father-in-law.

Maggie's destiny, then, is at present hidden, and we must wait for it
to reveal itself like the course of an unmapped river; we only know
that the river is full and rapid, and that for all rivers there is the
same final home. Under the charm of her new pleasures, Maggie herself
was ceasing to think, with her eager prefiguring imagination, of her
future lot; and her anxiety about her first interview with Philip was
losing its predominance; perhaps, unconsciously to herself, she was
not sorry that the interview had been deferred.

For Philip had not come the evening he was expected, and Mr. Stephen
Guest brought word that he was gone to the coast,--probably, he
thought, on a sketching expedition; but it was not certain when he
would return. It was just like Philip, to go off in that way without
telling any one. It was not until the twelfth day that he returned, to
find both Lucy's notes awaiting him; he had left before he knew of
Maggie's arrival.

Perhaps one had need be nineteen again to be quite convinced of the
feelings that were crowded for Maggie into those twelve days; of the
length to which they were stretched for her by the novelty of her
experience in them, and the varying attitudes of her mind. The early
days of an acquaintance almost always have this importance for us, and
fill up a larger space in our memory than longer subsequent periods,
which have been less filled with discovery and new impressions. There
were not many hours in those ten days in which Mr. Stephen Guest was
not seated by Lucy's side, or standing near her at the piano, or
accompanying her on some outdoor excursion; his attentions were
clearly becoming more assiduous, and that was what every one had
expected. Lucy was very happy, all the happier because Stephen's
society seemed to have become much more interesting and amusing since
Maggie had been there. Playful discussions--sometimes serious
ones--were going forward, in which both Stephen and Maggie revealed
themselves, to the admiration of the gentle, unobtrusive Lucy; and it
more than once crossed her mind what a charming quartet they should
have through life when Maggie married Philip. Is it an inexplicable
thing that a girl should enjoy her lover's society the more for the
presence of a third person, and be without the slightest spasm of
jealousy that the third person had the conversation habitually
directed to her? Not when that girl is as tranquil-hearted as Lucy,
thoroughly possessed with a belief that she knows the state of her
companions' affections, and not prone to the feelings which shake such
a belief in the absence of positive evidence against it. Besides, it
was Lucy by whom Stephen sat, to whom he gave his arm, to whom he
appealed as the person sure to agree with him; and every day there was
the same tender politeness toward her, the same consciousness of her
wants and care to supply them. Was there really the same? It seemed to
Lucy that there was more; and it was no wonder that the real
significance of the change escaped her. It was a subtle act of
conscience in Stephen that even he himself was not aware of. His
personal attentions to Maggie were comparatively slight, and there had
even sprung up an apparent distance between them, that prevented the
renewal of that faint resemblance to gallantry into which he had
fallen the first day in the boat. If Stephen came in when Lucy was out
of the room, if Lucy left them together, they never spoke to each
other; Stephen, perhaps, seemed to be examining books or music, and
Maggie bent her head assiduously over her work. Each was oppressively
conscious of the other's presence, even to the finger-ends. Yet each
looked and longed for the same thing to happen the next day. Neither
of them had begun to reflect on the matter, or silently to ask, "To
what does all this tend?" Maggie only felt that life was revealing
something quite new to her; and she was absorbed in the direct,
immediate experience, without any energy left for taking account of it
and reasoning about it. Stephen wilfully abstained from
self-questioning, and would not admit to himself that he felt an
influence which was to have any determining effect on his conduct. And
when Lucy came into the room again, they were once more unconstrained;
Maggie could contradict Stephen, and laugh at him, and he could
recommend to her consideration the example of that most charming
heroine, Miss Sophia Western, who had a great "respect for the
understandings of men." Maggie could look at Stephen, which, for some
reason or other she always avoided when they were alone; and he could
even ask her to play his accompaniment for him, since Lucy's fingers
were so busy with that bazaar-work, and lecture her on hurrying the
tempo, which was certainly Maggie's weak point.

One day--it was the day of Philip's return--Lucy had formed a sudden
engagement to spend the evening with Mrs. Kenn, whose delicate state
of health, threatening to become confirmed illness through an attack
of bronchitis, obliged her to resign her functions at the coming
bazaar into the hands of other ladies, of whom she wished Lucy to be
one. The engagement had been formed in Stephen's presence, and he had
heard Lucy promise to dine early and call at six o'clock for Miss
Torry, who brought Mrs. Kenn's request.

"Here is another of the moral results of this idiotic bazaar," Stephen
burst forth, as soon as Miss Torry had left the room,--"taking young
ladies from the duties of the domestic hearth into scenes of
dissipation among urn-rugs and embroidered reticules! I should like to
know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make
reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for
bachelors to go out. If this goes on much longer, the bonds of society
will be dissolved."

"Well, it will not go on much longer," said Lucy, laughing, "for the
bazaar is to take place on Monday week."

"Thank Heaven!" said Stephen. "Kenn himself said the other day that he
didn't like this plan of making vanity do the work of charity; but
just as the British public is not reasonable enough to bear direct
taxation, so St. Ogg's has not got force of motive enough to build and
endow schools without calling in the force of folly."

"Did he say so?" said little Lucy, her hazel eyes opening wide with
anxiety. "I never heard him say anything of that kind; I thought he
approved of what we were doing."

"I'm sure he approves _you_," said Stephen, smiling at her
affectionately; "your conduct in going out to-night looks vicious, I
own, but I know there is benevolence at the bottom of it."

"Oh, you think too well of me," said Lucy, shaking her head, with a
pretty blush, and there the subject ended. But it was tacitly
understood that Stephen would not come in the evening; and on the
strength of that tacit understanding he made his morning visit the
longer, not saying good-bye until after four.

Maggie was seated in the drawing-room, alone, shortly after dinner,
with Minny on her lap, having left her uncle to his wine and his nap,
and her mother to the compromise between knitting and nodding, which,
when there was no company, she always carried on in the dining-room
till tea-time. Maggie was stooping to caress the tiny silken pet, and
comforting him for his mistress's absence, when the sound of a
footstep on the gravel made her look up, and she saw Mr. Stephen Guest
walking up the garden, as if he had come straight from the river. It
was very unusual to see him so soon after dinner! He often complained
that their dinner-hour was late at Park House. Nevertheless, there he
was, in his black dress; he had evidently been home, and must have
come again by the river. Maggie felt her cheeks glowing and her heart
beating; it was natural she should be nervous, for she was not
accustomed to receive visitors alone. He had seen her look up through
the open window, and raised his hat as he walked toward it, to enter
that way instead of by the door. He blushed too, and certainly looked
as foolish as a young man of some wit and self-possession can be
expected to look, as he walked in with a roll of music in his hand,
and said, with an air of hesitating improvisation,--

"You are surprised to see me again, Miss Tulliver; I ought to
apologize for coming upon you by surprise, but I wanted to come into
the town, and I got our man to row me; so I thought I would bring
these things from the 'Maid of Artois' for your cousin; I forgot them
this morning. Will you give them to her?"

"Yes," said Maggie, who had risen confusedly with Minny in her arms,
and now, not quite knowing what else to do, sat down again.

Stephen laid down his hat, with the music, which rolled on the floor,
and sat down in the chair close by her. He had never done so before,
and both he and Maggie were quite aware that it was an entirely new
position.

"Well, you pampered minion!" said Stephen, leaning to pull the long
curly ears that drooped over Maggie's arm. It was not a suggestive
remark, and as the speaker did not follow it up by further
development, it naturally left the conversation at a standstill. It
seemed to Stephen like some action in a dream that he was obliged to
do, and wonder at himself all the while,--to go on stroking Minny's
head. Yet it was very pleasant; he only wished he dared look at
Maggie, and that she would look at him,--let him have one long look
into those deep, strange eyes of hers, and then he would be satisfied
and quite reasonable after that. He thought it was becoming a sort of
monomania with him, to want that long look from Maggie; and he was
racking his invention continually to find out some means by which he
could have it without its appearing singular and entailing subsequent
embarrassment. As for Maggie, she had no distinct thought, only the
sense of a presence like that of a closely hovering broad-winged bird
in the darkness, for she was unable to look up, and saw nothing but
Minny's black wavy coat.

But this must end some time, perhaps it ended very soon, and only
_seemed_ long, as a minute's dream does. Stephen at last sat upright
sideways in his chair, leaning one hand and arm over the back and
looking at Maggie. What should he say?

"We shall have a splendid sunset, I think; sha'n't you go out and see
it?"

"I don't know," said Maggie. Then courageously raising her eyes and
looking out of the window, "if I'm not playing cribbage with my
uncle."

A pause; during which Minny is stroked again, but has sufficient
insight not to be grateful for it, to growl rather.

"Do you like sitting alone?"

A rather arch look came over Maggie's face, and, just glancing at
Stephen, she said, "Would it be quite civil to say 'yes'?"

"It _was_ rather a dangerous question for an intruder to ask," said
Stephen, delighted with that glance, and getting determined to stay
for another. "But you will have more than half an hour to yourself
after I am gone," he added, taking out his watch. "I know Mr. Deane
never comes in till half-past seven."

Another pause, during which Maggie looked steadily out of the window,
till by a great effort she moved her head to look down at Minny's back
again, and said,--

"I wish Lucy had not been obliged to go out. We lose our music."

"We shall have a new voice to-morrow night," said Stephen. "Will you
tell your cousin that our friend Philip Wakem is come back? I saw him
as I went home."

Maggie gave a little start,--it seemed hardly more than a vibration
that passed from head to foot in an instant. But the new images
summoned by Philip's name dispersed half the oppressive spell she had
been under. She rose from her chair with a sudden resolution, and
laying Minny on his cushion, went to reach Lucy's large work-basket
from its corner. Stephen was vexed and disappointed; he thought
perhaps Maggie didn't like the name of Wakem to be mentioned to her in
that abrupt way, for he now recalled what Lucy had told him of the
family quarrel. It was of no use to stay any longer. Maggie was
seating herself at the table with her work, and looking chill and
proud; and he--he looked like a simpleton for having come. A
gratuitous, entirely superfluous visit of that sort was sure to make a
man disagreeable and ridiculous. Of course it was palpable to Maggie's
thinking that he had dined hastily in his own room for the sake of
setting off again and finding her alone.

A boyish state of mind for an accomplished young gentleman of
five-and-twenty, not without legal knowledge! But a reference to
history, perhaps, may make it not incredible.

At this moment Maggie's ball of knitting-wool rolled along the ground,
and she started up to reach it. Stephen rose too, and picking up the
ball, met her with a vexed, complaining look that gave his eyes quite
a new expression to Maggie, whose own eyes met them as he presented
the ball to her.

"Good-bye," said Stephen, in a tone that had the same beseeching
discontent as his eyes. He dared not put out his hand; he thrust both
hands into his tail-pockets as he spoke. Maggie thought she had
perhaps been rude.

"Won't you stay?" she said timidly, not looking away, for that would
have seemed rude again.

"No, thank you," said Stephen, looking still into the half-unwilling,
half-fascinated eyes, as a thirsty man looks toward the track of the
distant brook. "The boat is waiting for me. You'll tell your cousin?"

"Yes."

"That I brought the music, I mean?"

"Yes."

"And that Philip is come back?"

"Yes." (Maggie did not notice Philip's name this time.)

"Won't you come out a little way into the garden?" said Stephen, in a
still gentler tone; but the next moment he was vexed that she did not
say "No," for she moved away now toward the open window, and he was
obliged to take his hat and walk by her side. But he thought of
something to make him amends.

"Do take my arm," he said, in a low tone, as if it were a secret.

There is something strangely winning to most women in that offer of
the firm arm; the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but
the sense of help, the presence of strength that is outside them and
yet theirs, meets a continual want of the imagination. Either on that
ground or some other, Maggie took the arm. And they walked together
round the grassplot and under the drooping green of the laburnums, in
the same dim, dreamy state as they had been in a quarter of an hour
before; only that Stephen had had the look he longed for, without yet
perceiving in himself the symptoms of returning reasonableness, and
Maggie had darting thoughts across the dimness,--how came he to be
there? Why had she come out? Not a word was spoken. If it had been,
each would have been less intensely conscious of the other.

"Take care of this step," said Stephen at last.

"Oh, I will go in now," said Maggie, feeling that the step had come
like a rescue. "Good-evening."

In an instant she had withdrawn her arm, and was running back to the
house. She did not reflect that this sudden action would only add to
the embarrassing recollections of the last half-hour. She had no
thought left for that. She only threw herself into the low arm-chair,
and burst into tears.

"Oh, Philip, Philip, I wish we were together again--so quietly--in the
Red Deeps."

Stephen looked after her a moment, then went on to the boat, and was
soon landed at the wharf. He spent the evening in the billiard-room,
smoking one cigar after another, and losing "lives" at pool. But he
would not leave off. He was determined not to think,--not to admit any
more distinct remembrance than was urged upon him by the perpetual
presence of Maggie. He was looking at her, and she was on his arm.

But there came the necessity of walking home in the cool starlight,
and with it the necessity of cursing his own folly, and bitterly
determining that he would never trust himself alone with Maggie again.
It was all madness; he was in love, thoroughly attached to Lucy, and
engaged,--engaged as strongly as an honorable man need be. He wished
he had never seen this Maggie Tulliver, to be thrown into a fever by
her in this way; she would make a sweet, strange, troublesome,
adorable wife to some man or other, but he would never have chosen her
himself. Did she feel as he did? He hoped she did--not. He ought not
to have gone. He would master himself in future. He would make himself
disagreeable to her, quarrel with her perhaps. Quarrel with her? Was
it possible to quarrel with a creature who had such eyes,--defying and
deprecating, contradicting and clinging, imperious and beseeching,--
full of delicious opposites? To see such a creature subdued by love
for one would be a lot worth having--to another man.

There was a muttered exclamation which ended this inward soliloquy, as
Stephen threw away the end of his last cigar, and thrusting his hands
into his pockets, stalked along at a quieter pace through the
shrubbery. It was not of a benedictory kind.



Chapter VII

Philip Re-enters


The next morning was very wet,--the sort of morning on which male
neighbors who have no imperative occupation at home are likely to pay
their fair friends an illimitable visit. The rain, which has been
endurable enough for the walk or ride one way, is sure to become so
heavy, and at the same time so certain to clear up by and by, that
nothing but an open quarrel can abbreviate the visit; latent
detestation will not do at all. And if people happen to be lovers,
what can be so delightful, in England, as a rainy morning? English
sunshine is dubious; bonnets are never quite secure; and if you sit
down on the grass, it may lead to catarrhs. But the rain is to be
depended on. You gallop through it in a mackintosh, and presently find
yourself in the seat you like best,--a little above or a little below
the one on which your goddess sits (it is the same thing to the
metaphysical mind, and that is the reason why women are at once
worshipped and looked down upon), with a satisfactory confidence that
there will be no lady-callers.

"Stephen will come earlier this morning, I know," said Lucy; "he
always does when it's rainy."

Maggie made no answer. She was angry with Stephen; she began to think
she should dislike him; and if it had not been for the rain, she would
have gone to her aunt Glegg's this morning, and so have avoided him
altogether. As it was, she must find some reason for remaining out of
the room with her mother.

But Stephen did not come earlier, and there was another visitor--a
nearer neighbor--who preceded him. When Philip entered the room, he
was going merely to bow to Maggie, feeling that their acquaintance was
a secret which he was bound not to betray; but when she advanced
toward him and put out her hand, he guessed at once that Lucy had been
taken into her confidence. It was a moment of some agitation to both,
though Philip had spent many hours in preparing for it; but like all
persons who have passed through life with little expectation of
sympathy, he seldom lost his self-control, and shrank with the most
sensitive pride from any noticeable betrayal of emotion. A little
extra paleness, a little tension of the nostril when he spoke, and the
voice pitched in rather a higher key, that to strangers would seem
expressive of cold indifference, were all the signs Philip usually
gave of an inward drama that was not without its fierceness. But
Maggie, who had little more power of concealing the impressions made
upon her than if she had been constructed of musical strings, felt her
eyes getting larger with tears as they took each other's hands in
silence. They were not painful tears; they had rather something of the
same origin as the tears women and children shed when they have found
some protection to cling to and look back on the threatened danger.
For Philip, who a little while ago was associated continually in
Maggie's mind with the sense that Tom might reproach her with some
justice, had now, in this short space, become a sort of outward
conscience to her, that she might fly to for rescue and strength. Her
tranquil, tender affection for Philip, with its root deep down in her
childhood, and its memories of long quiet talk confirming by distinct
successive impressions the first instinctive bias,--the fact that in
him the appeal was more strongly to her pity and womanly devotedness
than to her vanity or other egoistic excitability of her
nature,--seemed now to make a sort of sacred place, a sanctuary where
she could find refuge from an alluring influence which the best part
of herself must resist; which must bring horrible tumult within,
wretchedness without. This new sense of her relation to Philip
nullified the anxious scruples she would otherwise have felt, lest she
should overstep the limit of intercourse with him that Tom would
sanction; and she put out her hand to him, and felt the tears in her
eyes without any consciousness of an inward check. The scene was just
what Lucy expected, and her kind heart delighted in bringing Philip
and Maggie together again; though, even with all _her_ regard for
Philip, she could not resist the impression that her cousin Tom had
some excuse for feeling shocked at the physical incongruity between
the two,--a prosaic person like cousin Tom, who didn't like poetry and
fairy tales. But she began to speak as soon as possible, to set them
at ease.

"This was very good and virtuous of you," she said, in her pretty
treble, like the low conversational notes of little birds, "to come so
soon after your arrival. And as it is, I think I will pardon you for
running away in an inopportune manner, and giving your friends no
notice. Come and sit down here," she went on, placing the chair that
would suit him best, "and you shall find yourself treated mercifully."

"You will never govern well, Miss Deane," said Philip, as he seated
himself, "because no one will ever believe in your severity. People
will always encourage themselves in misdemeanors by the certainty that
you will be indulgent."

Lucy gave some playful contradiction, but Philip did not hear what it
was, for he had naturally turned toward Maggie, and she was looking at
him with that open, affectionate scrutiny which we give to a friend
from whom we have been long separated. What a moment their parting had
been! And Philip felt as if he were only in the morrow of it. He felt
this so keenly,--with such intense, detailed remembrance, with such
passionate revival of all that had been said and looked in their last
conversation,--that with that jealousy and distrust which in diffident
natures is almost inevitably linked with a strong feeling, he thought
he read in Maggie's glance and manner the evidence of a change. The
very fact that he feared and half expected it would be sure to make
this thought rush in, in the absence of positive proof to the
contrary.

"I am having a great holiday, am I not?" said Maggie. "Lucy is like a
fairy godmother; she has turned me from a drudge into a princess in no
time. I do nothing but indulge myself all day long, and she always
finds out what I want before I know it myself."

"I am sure she is the happier for having you, then," said Philip. "You
must be better than a whole menagerie of pets to her. And you look
well. You are benefiting by the change."

Artificial conversation of this sort went on a little while, till
Lucy, determined to put an end to it, exclaimed, with a good imitation
of annoyance, that she had forgotten something, and was quickly out of
the room.

In a moment Maggie and Philip leaned forward, and the hands were
clasped again, with a look of sad contentment, like that of friends
who meet in the memory of recent sorrow.

"I told my brother I wished to see you, Philip; I asked him to release
me from my promise, and he consented."

Maggie, in her impulsiveness, wanted Philip to know at once the
position they must hold toward each other; but she checked herself.
The things that had happened since he had spoken of his love for her
were so painful that she shrank from being the first to allude to them.
It seemed almost like an injury toward Philip even to mention her
brother,--her brother, who had insulted him. But he was thinking too
entirely of her to be sensitive on any other point at that moment.

"Then we can at least be friends, Maggie? There is nothing to hinder
that now?"

"Will not your father object?" said Maggie, withdrawing her hand.

"I should not give you up on any ground but your own wish, Maggie,"
said Philip, coloring. "There are points on which I should always
resist my father, as I used to tell you. _That_ is one."

"Then there is nothing to hinder our being friends, Philip,--seeing
each other and talking to each other while I am here; I shall soon go
away again. I mean to go very soon, to a new situation."

"Is that inevitable, Maggie?"

"Yes; I must not stay here long. It would unfit me for the life I must
begin again at last. I can't live in dependence,--I can't live with my
brother, though he is very good to me. He would like to provide for
me; but that would be intolerable to me."

Philip was silent a few moments, and then said, in that high, feeble
voice which with him indicated the resolute suppression of emotion,--

"Is there no other alternative, Maggie? Is that life, away from those
who love you, the only one you will allow yourself to look forward
to?"

"Yes, Philip," she said, looking at him pleadingly, as if she
entreated him to believe that she was compelled to this course. "At
least, as things are; I don't know what may be in years to come. But I
begin to think there can never come much happiness to me from loving;
I have always had so much pain mingled with it. I wish I could make
myself a world outside it, as men do."

"Now you are returning to your old thought in a new form, Maggie,--the
thought I used to combat," said Philip, with a slight tinge of
bitterness. "You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be
an escape from pain. I tell you again, there is no such escape
possible except by perverting or mutilating one's nature. What would
become of me, if I tried to escape from pain? Scorn and cynicism would
be my only opium; unless I could fall into some kind of conceited
madness, and fancy myself a favorite of Heaven because I am not a
favorite with men."

The bitterness had taken on some impetuosity as Philip went on
speaking; the words were evidently an outlet for some immediate
feeling of his own, as well as an answer to Maggie. There was a pain
pressing on him at that moment. He shrank with proud delicacy from the
faintest allusion to the words of love, of plighted love that had
passed between them. It would have seemed to him like reminding Maggie
of a promise; it would have had for him something of the baseness of
compulsion. He could not dwell on the fact that he himself had not
changed; for that too would have had the air of an appeal. His love
for Maggie was stamped, even more than the rest of his experience,
with the exaggerated sense that he was an exception,--that she, that
every one, saw him in the light of an exception.

But Maggie was conscience-stricken.

"Yes, Philip," she said, with her childish contrition when he used to
chide her, "you are right, I know. I do always think too much of my
own feelings, and not enough of others',--not enough of yours. I had
need have you always to find fault with me and teach me; so many
things have come true that you used to tell me."

Maggie was resting her elbow on the table, leaning her head on her
hand and looking at Philip with half-penitent dependent affection, as
she said this; while he was returning her gaze with an expression
that, to her consciousness, gradually became less vague,--became
charged with a specific recollection. Had his mind flown back to
something that _she_ now remembered,--something about a lover of
Lucy's? It was a thought that made her shudder; it gave new
definiteness to her present position, and to the tendency of what had
happened the evening before. She moved her arm from the table, urged
to change her position by that positive physical oppression at the
heart that sometimes accompanies a sudden mental pang.

"What is the matter, Maggie? Has something happened?" Philip said, in
inexpressible anxiety, his imagination being only too ready to weave
everything that was fatal to them both.

"No, nothing," said Maggie, rousing her latent will. Philip must not
have that odious thought in his mind; she would banish it from her
own. "Nothing," she repeated, "except in my own mind. You used to say
I should feel the effect of my starved life, as you called it; and I
do. I am too eager in my enjoyment of music and all luxuries, now they
are come to me."

She took up her work and occupied herself resolutely, while Philip
watched her, really in doubt whether she had anything more than this
general allusion in her mind. It was quite in Maggie's character to be
agitated by vague self-reproach. But soon there came a violent
well-known ring at the door-bell resounding through the house.

"Oh, what a startling announcement!" said Maggie, quite mistress of
herself, though not without some inward flutter. "I wonder where Lucy
is."

Lucy had not been deaf to the signal, and after an interval long
enough for a few solicitous but not hurried inquiries, she herself
ushered Stephen in.

"Well, old fellow," he said, going straight up to Philip and shaking
him heartily by the hand, bowing to Maggie in passing, "it's glorious
to have you back again; only I wish you'd conduct yourself a little
less like a sparrow with a residence on the house-top, and not go in
and out constantly without letting the servants know. This is about
the twentieth time I've had to scamper up those countless stairs to
that painting-room of yours, all to no purpose, because your people
thought you were at home. Such incidents embitter friendship."

"I've so few visitors, it seems hardly worth while to leave notice of
my exit and entrances," said Philip, feeling rather oppressed just
then by Stephen's bright strong presence and strong voice.

"Are you quite well this morning, Miss Tulliver?" said Stephen,
turning to Maggie with stiff politeness, and putting out his hand with
the air of fulfilling a social duty.

Maggie gave the tips of her fingers, and said, "Quite well, thank
you," in a tone of proud indifference. Philip's eyes were watching
them keenly; but Lucy was used to seeing variations in their manner to
each other, and only thought with regret that there was some natural
antipathy which every now and then surmounted their mutual good-will.
"Maggie is not the sort of woman Stephen admires, and she is irritated
by something in him which she interprets as conceit," was the silent
observation that accounted for everything to guileless Lucy. Stephen
and Maggie had no sooner completed this studied greeting than each
felt hurt by the other's coldness. And Stephen, while rattling on in
questions to Philip about his recent sketching expedition, was
thinking all the more about Maggie because he was not drawing her into
the conversation as he had invariably done before. "Maggie and Philip
are not looking happy," thought Lucy; "this first interview has been
saddening to them."

"I think we people who have not been galloping," she said to Stephen,
"are all a little damped by the rain. Let us have some music. We ought
to take advantage of having Philip and you together. Give us the duet
in 'Masaniello'; Maggie has not heard that, and I know it will suit
her."

"Come, then," said Stephen, going toward the piano, and giving a
foretaste of the tune in his deep "brum-brum," very pleasant to hear.

"You, please, Philip,--you play the accompaniment," said Lucy, "and
then I can go on with my work. You _will_ like to play, sha'n't you?"
she added, with a pretty, inquiring look, anxious, as usual, lest she
should have proposed what was not pleasant to another; but with
yearnings toward her unfinished embroidery.

Philip had brightened at the proposition, for there is no feeling,
perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find
relief in music,--that does not make a man sing or play the better;
and Philip had an abundance of pent-up feeling at this moment, as
complex as any trio or quartet that was ever meant to express love and
jealousy and resignation and fierce suspicion, all at the same time.

"Oh, yes," he said, seating himself at the piano, "it is a way of
eking out one's imperfect life and being three people at once,--to
sing and make the piano sing, and hear them both all the while,--or
else to sing and paint."

"Ah, there you are an enviable fellow. I can do nothing with my
hands," said Stephen. "That has generally been observed in men of
great administrative capacity, I believe,--a tendency to predominance
of the reflective powers in me! Haven't you observed that, Miss
Tulliver?"

Stephen had fallen by mistake into his habit of playful appeal to
Maggie, and she could not repress the answering flush and epigram.

"I _have_ observed a tendency to predominance," she said, smiling; and
Philip at that moment devoutly hoped that she found the tendency
disagreeable.

"Come, come," said Lucy; "music, music! We will discuss each other's
qualities another time."

Maggie always tried in vain to go on with her work when music began.
She tried harder than ever to-day; for the thought that Stephen knew
how much she cared for his singing was one that no longer roused a
merely playful resistance; and she knew, too, that it was his habit
always to stand so that he could look at her. But it was of no use;
she soon threw her work down, and all her intentions were lost in the
vague state of emotion produced by the inspiring duet,--emotion that
seemed to make her at once strong and weak; strong for all enjoyment,
weak for all resistance. When the strain passed into the minor, she
half started from her seat with the sudden thrill of that change. Poor
Maggie! She looked very beautiful when her soul was being played on in
this way by the inexorable power of sound. You might have seen the
slightest perceptible quivering through her whole frame as she leaned
a little forward, clasping her hands as if to steady herself; while
her eyes dilated and brightened into that wide-open, childish
expression of wondering delight which always came back in her happiest
moments. Lucy, who at other times had always been at the piano when
Maggie was looking in this way, could not resist the impulse to steal
up to her and kiss her. Philip, too, caught a glimpse of her now and
then round the open book on the desk, and felt that he had never
before seen her under so strong an influence.

"More, more!" said Lucy, when the duet had been encored. "Something
spirited again. Maggie always says she likes a great rush of sound."

"It must be 'Let us take the road,' then," said Stephen,--"so suitable
for a wet morning. But are you prepared to abandon the most sacred
duties of life, and come and sing with us?"

"Oh, yes," said Lucy, laughing. "If you will look out the 'Beggar's
Opera' from the large canterbury. It has a dingy cover."

"That is a great clue, considering there are about a score covers here
of rival dinginess," said Stephen, drawing out the canterbury.

"Oh, play something the while, Philip," said Lucy, noticing that his
fingers were wandering over the keys. "What is that you are falling
into?--something delicious that I don't know."

"Don't you know that?" said Philip, bringing out the tune more
definitely. "It's from the 'Sonnambula'--'Ah! perchè non posso
odiarti.' I don't know the opera, but it appears the tenor is telling
the heroine that he shall always love her though she may forsake him.
You've heard me sing it to the English words, 'I love thee still.'"

It was not quite unintentionally that Philip had wandered into this
song, which might be an indirect expression to Maggie of what he could
not prevail on himself to say to her directly. Her ears had been open
to what he was saying, and when he began to sing, she understood the
plaintive passion of the music. That pleading tenor had no very fine
qualities as a voice, but it was not quite new to her; it had sung to
her by snatches, in a subdued way, among the grassy walks and hollows,
and underneath the leaning ash-tree in the Red Deeps. There seemed to
be some reproach in the words; did Philip mean that? She wished she
had assured him more distinctly in their conversation that she desired
not to renew the hope of love between them, _only_ because it clashed
with her inevitable circumstances. She was touched, not thrilled by
the song; it suggested distinct memories and thoughts, and brought
quiet regret in the place of excitement.

"That's the way with you tenors," said Stephen, who was waiting with
music in his hand while Philip finished the song. "You demoralize the
fair sex by warbling your sentimental love and constancy under all
sorts of vile treatment. Nothing short of having your heads served up
in a dish like that mediæval tenor or troubadour, would prevent you
from expressing your entire resignation. I must administer an
antidote, while Miss Deane prepares to tear herself away from her
bobbins."

Stephen rolled out, with saucy energy,--

  "Shall I, wasting in despair,
  Die because a woman's fair?"

and seemed to make all the air in the room alive with a new influence.
Lucy, always proud of what Stephen did, went toward the piano with
laughing, admiring looks at him; and Maggie, in spite of her
resistance to the spirit of the song and to the singer, was taken hold
of and shaken by the invisible influence,--was borne along by a wave
too strong for her.

But, angrily resolved not to betray herself, she seized her work, and
went on making false stitches and pricking her fingers with much
perseverance, not looking up or taking notice of what was going
forward, until all the three voices united in "Let us take the road."

I am afraid there would have been a subtle, stealing gratification in
her mind if she had known how entirely this saucy, defiant Stephen was
occupied with her; how he was passing rapidly from a determination to
treat her with ostentatious indifference to an irritating desire for
some sign of inclination from her,--some interchange of subdued word
or look with her. It was not long before he found an opportunity, when
they had passed to the music of "The Tempest." Maggie, feeling the
need of a footstool, was walking across the room to get one, when
Stephen, who was not singing just then, and was conscious of all her
movements, guessed her want, and flew to anticipate her, lifting the
footstool with an entreating look at her, which made it impossible not
to return a glance of gratitude. And then, to have the footstool
placed carefully by a too self-confident personage,--not _any_
self-confident personage, but one in particular, who suddenly looks
humble and anxious, and lingers, bending still, to ask if there is not
some draught in that position between the window and the fireplace,
and if he may not be allowed to move the work-table for her,--these
things will summon a little of the too ready, traitorous tenderness
into a woman's eyes, compelled as she is in her girlish time to learn
her life-lessons in very trivial language. And to Maggie such things
had not been every-day incidents, but were a new element in her life,
and found her keen appetite for homage quite fresh. That tone of
gentle solicitude obliged her to look at the face that was bent toward
her, and to say, "No, thank you"; and nothing could prevent that
mutual glance from being delicious to both, as it had been the evening
before.

It was but an ordinary act of politeness in Stephen; it had hardly
taken two minutes; and Lucy, who was singing, scarcely noticed it. But
to Philip's mind, filled already with a vague anxiety that was likely
to find a definite ground for itself in any trivial incident, this
sudden eagerness in Stephen, and the change in Maggie's face, which
was plainly reflecting a beam from his, seemed so strong a contrast
with the previous overwrought signs of indifference, as to be charged
with painful meaning. Stephen's voice, pouring in again, jarred upon
his nervous susceptibility as if it had been the clang of sheet-iron,
and he felt inclined to make the piano shriek in utter discord. He had
really seen no communicable ground for suspecting any ususual feeling
between Stephen and Maggie; his own reason told him so, and he wanted
to go home at once that he might reflect coolly on these false images,
till he had convinced himself of their nullity. But then, again, he
wanted to stay as long as Stephen stayed,--always to be present when
Stephen was present with Maggie. It seemed to poor Philip so natural,
nay, inevitable, that any man who was near Maggie should fall in love
with her! There was no promise of happiness for her if she were
beguiled into loving Stephen Guest; and this thought emboldened Philip
to view his own love for her in the light of a less unequal offering.
He was beginning to play very falsely under this deafening inward
tumult, and Lucy was looking at him in astonishment, when Mrs.
Tulliver's entrance to summon them to lunch came as an excuse for
abruptly breaking off the music.

"Ah, Mr. Philip!" said Mr. Deane, when they entered the dining-room,
"I've not seen you for a long while. Your father's not at home, I
think, is he? I went after him to the office the other day, and they
said he was out of town."

"He's been to Mudport on business for several days," said Philip; "but
he's come back now."

"As fond of his farming hobby as ever, eh?"

"I believe so," said Philip, rather wondering at this sudden interest
in his father's pursuits.

"Ah!" said Mr. Deane, "he's got some land in his own hands on this
side the river as well as the other, I think?"

"Yes, he has."

"Ah!" continued Mr. Deane, as he dispensed the pigeonpie, "he must
find farming a heavy item,--an expensive hobby. I never had a hobby
myself, never would give in to that. And the worst of all hobbies are
those that people think they can get money at. They shoot their money
down like corn out of a sack then."

Lucy felt a little nervous under her father's apparently gratuitous
criticism of Mr. Wakem's expenditure. But it ceased there, and Mr.
Deane became unusually silent and meditative during his luncheon.
Lucy, accustomed to watch all indications in her father, and having
reasons, which had recently become strong, for an extra interest in
what referred to the Wakems, felt an unusual curiosity to know what had
prompted her father's questions. His subsequent silence made her
suspect there had been some special reason for them in his mind.

With this idea in her head, she resorted to her usual plan when she
wanted to tell or ask her father anything particular: she found a
reason for her aunt Tulliver to leaving the dining-room after dinner,
and seated herself on a small stool at her father's knee. Mr. Deane,
under those circumstances, considered that he tasted some of the most
agreeable moments his merits had purchased him in life,
notwithstanding that Lucy, disliking to have her hair powdered with
snuff, usually began by mastering his snuff-box on such occasions.

"You don't want to go to sleep yet, papa, _do_ you?" she said, as she
brought up her stool and opened the large fingers that clutched the
snuff-box.

"Not yet," said Mr. Deane, glancing at the reward of merit in the
decanter. "But what do _you_ want?" he added, pinching the dimpled
chin fondly,--"to coax some more sovereigns out of my pocket for your
bazaar? Eh?"

"No, I have no base motives at all to-day. I only want to talk, not to
beg. I want to know what made you ask Philip Wakem about his father's
farming to-day, papa? It seemed rather odd, because you never hardly
say anything to him about his father; and why should you care about
Mr. Wakem's losing money by his hobby?"

"Something to do with business," said Mr. Deane, waving his hands, as
if to repel intrusion into that mystery.

"But, papa, you always say Mr. Wakem has brought Philip up like a
girl; how came you to think you should get any business knowledge out
of him? Those abrupt questions sounded rather oddly. Philip thought
them queer."

"Nonsense, child!" said Mr. Deane, willing to justify his social
demeanor, with which he had taken some pains in his upward progress.
"There's a report that Wakem's mill and farm on the other side of the
river--Dorlcote Mill, your uncle Tulliver's, you know--isn't answering
so well as it did. I wanted to see if your friend Philip would let
anything out about his father's being tired of farming."

"Why? Would you buy the mill, papa, if he would part with it?" said
Lucy, eagerly. "Oh, tell me everything; here, you shall have your
snuff-box if you'll tell me. Because Maggie says all their hearts are
set on Tom's getting back the mill some time. It was one of the last
things her father said to Tom, that he must get back the mill."

"Hush, you little puss," said Mr. Deane, availing himself of the
restored snuff-box. "You must not say a word about this thing; do you
hear? There's very little chance of their getting the mill or of
anybody's getting it out of Wakem's hands. And if he knew that we
wanted it with a view to the Tulliver's getting it again, he'd be the
less likely to part with it. It's natural, after what happened. He
behaved well enough to Tulliver before; but a horsewhipping is not
likely to be paid for with sugar-plums."

"Now, papa," said Lucy, with a little air of solemnity, "will you
trust me? You must not ask me all my reasons for what I'm going to
say, but I have very strong reasons. And I'm very cautious; I am,
indeed."

"Well, let us hear."

"Why, I believe, if you will let me take Philip Wakem into our
confidence,--let me tell him all about your wish to buy, and what it's
for; that my cousins wish to have it, and why they wish to have it,--I
believe Philip would help to bring it about. I know he would desire to
do it."

"I don't see how that can be, child," said Mr. Deane, looking puzzled.
"Why should _he_ care?"--then, with a sudden penetrating look at his
daughter, "You don't think the poor lad's fond of you, and so you can
make him do what you like?" (Mr. Deane felt quite safe about his
daughter's affections.)

"No, papa; he cares very little about me,--not so much as I care about
him. But I have a reason for being quite sure of what I say. Don't you
ask me. And if you ever guess, don't tell me. Only give me leave to do
as I think fit about it."

Lucy rose from her stool to seat herself on her father's knee, and
kissed him with that last request.

"Are you sure you won't do mischief, now?" he said, looking at her
with delight.

"Yes, papa, quite sure. I'm very wise; I've got all your business
talents. Didn't you admire my accompt-book, now, when I showed it
you?"

"Well, well, if this youngster will keep his counsel, there won't be
much harm done. And to tell the truth, I think there's not much chance
for us any other way. Now, let me go off to sleep."



Chapter VIII

Wakem in a New Light


Before three days had passed after the conversation you have just
overheard between Lucy and her father she had contrived to have a
private interview with Philip during a visit of Maggie's to her aunt
Glegg. For a day and a night Philip turned over in his mind with
restless agitation all that Lucy had told him in that interview, till
he had thoroughly resolved on a course of action. He thought he saw
before him now a possibility of altering his position with respect to
Maggie, and removing at least one obstacle between them. He laid his
plan and calculated all his moves with the fervid deliberation of a
chess-player in the days of his first ardor, and was amazed himself at
his sudden genius as a tactician. His plan was as bold as it was
thoroughly calculated. Having watched for a moment when his father had
nothing more urgent on his hands than the newspaper, he went behind
him, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said,--

"Father, will you come up into my sanctum, and look at my new
sketches? I've arranged them now."

"I'm getting terrible stiff in the joints, Phil, for climbing those
stairs of yours," said Wakem, looking kindly at his son as he laid
down his paper. "But come along, then."

"This is a nice place for you, isn't it, Phil?--a capital light that
from the roof, eh?" was, as usual, the first thing he said on entering
the painting-room. He liked to remind himself and his son too that his
fatherly indulgence had provided the accommodation. He had been a good
father. Emily would have nothing to reproach him with there, if she
came back again from her grave.

"Come, come," he said, putting his double eye-glass over his nose, and
seating himself to take a general view while he rested, "you've got a
famous show here. Upon my word, I don't see that your things aren't as
good as that London artist's--what's his name--that Leyburn gave so
much money for."

Philip shook his head and smiled. He had seated himself on his
painting-stool, and had taken a lead pencil in his hand, with which he
was making strong marks to counteract the sense of tremulousness. He
watched his father get up, and walk slowly round, good-naturedly
dwelling on the pictures much longer than his amount of genuine taste
for landscape would have prompted, till he stopped before a stand on
which two pictures were placed,--one much larger than the other, the
smaller one in a leather case.

"Bless me! what have you here?" said Wakem, startled by a sudden
transition from landscape to portrait. "I thought you'd left off
figures. Who are these?"

"They are the same person," said Philip, with calm promptness, "at
different ages."

"And what person?" said Wakem, sharply fixing his eyes with a growing
look of suspicion on the larger picture.

"Miss Tulliver. The small one is something like what she was when I
was at school with her brother at King's Lorton; the larger one is not
quite so good a likeness of what she was when I came from abroad."

Wakem turned round fiercely, with a flushed face, letting his
eye-glass fall, and looking at his son with a savage expression for a
moment, as if he was ready to strike that daring feebleness from the
stool. But he threw himself into the armchair again, and thrust his
hands into his trouser-pockets, still looking angrily at his son,
however. Philip did not return the look, but sat quietly watching the
point of his pencil.

"And do you mean to say, then, that you have had any acquaintance with
her since you came from abroad?" said Wakem, at last, with that vain
effort which rage always makes to throw as much punishment as it
desires to inflict into words and tones, since blows are forbidden.

"Yes; I saw a great deal of her for a whole year before her father's
death. We met often in that thicket--the Red Deeps--near Dorlcote
Mill. I love her dearly; I shall never love any other woman. I have
thought of her ever since she was a little girl."

"Go on, sir! And you have corresponded with her all this while?"

"No. I never told her I loved her till just before we parted, and she
promised her brother not to see me again or to correspond with me. I
am not sure that she loves me or would consent to marry me. But if she
would consent,--if she _did_ love me well enough,--I should marry
her."

"And this is the return you make me for all the indulgences I've
heaped on you?" said Wakem, getting white, and beginning to tremble
under an enraged sense of impotence before Philip's calm defiance and
concentration of purpose.

"No, father," said Philip, looking up at him for the first time; "I
don't regard it as a return. You have been an indulgent father to me;
but I have always felt that it was because you had an affectionate
wish to give me as much happiness as my unfortunate lot would admit,
not that it was a debt you expected me to pay by sacrificing all my
chances of happiness to satisfy feelings of yours which I can never
share."

"I think most sons would share their father's feelings in this case,"
said Wakem, bitterly. "The girl's father was an ignorant mad brute,
who was within an inch of murdering me. The whole town knows it. And
the brother is just as insolent, only in a cooler way. He forbade her
seeing you, you say; he'll break every bone in your body, for your
greater happiness, if you don't take care. But you seem to have made
up your mind; you have counted the consequences, I suppose. Of course
you are independent of me; you can marry this girl to-morrow, if you
like; you are a man of five-and-twenty,--you can go your way, and I
can go mine. We need have no more to do with each other."

Wakem rose and walked toward the door, but something held him back,
and instead of leaving the room, he walked up and down it. Philip was
slow to reply, and when he spoke, his tone had a more incisive
quietness and clearness than ever.

"No; I can't marry Miss Tulliver, even if she would have me, if I have
only my own resources to maintain her with. I have been brought up to
no profession. I can't offer her poverty as well as deformity."

"Ah, _there_ is a reason for your clinging to me, doubtless," said
Wakem, still bitterly, though Philip's last words had given him a
pang; they had stirred a feeling which had been a habit for a quarter
of a century. He threw himself into the chair again.

"I expected all this," said Philip. "I know these scenes are often
happening between father and son. If I were like other men of my age,
I might answer your angry words by still angrier; we might part; I
should marry the woman I love, and have a chance of being as happy as
the rest. But if it will be a satisfaction to you to annihilate the
very object of everything you've done for me, you have an advantage
over most fathers; you can completely deprive me of the only thing
that would make my life worth having."

Philip paused, but his father was silent.

"You know best what satisfaction you would have, beyond that of
gratifying a ridiculous rancor worthy only of wandering savages."

"Ridiculous rancor!" Wakem burst out. "What do you mean? Damn it! is a
man to be horsewhipped by a boor and love him for it? Besides, there's
that cold, proud devil of a son, who said a word to me I shall not
forget when we had the settling. He would be as pleasant a mark for a
bullet as I know, if he were worth the expense."

"I don't mean your resentment toward them," said Philip, who had his
reasons for some sympathy with this view of Tom, "though a feeling of
revenge is not worth much, that you should care to keep it. I mean
your extending the enmity to a helpless girl, who has too much sense
and goodness to share their narrow prejudices. _She_ has never entered
into the family quarrels."

"What does that signify? We don't ask what a woman does; we ask whom
she belongs to. It's altogether a degrading thing to you, to think of
marrying old Tulliver's daughter."

For the first time in the dialogue, Philip lost some of his
self-control, and colored with anger.

"Miss Tulliver," he said, with bitter incisiveness, "has the only
grounds of rank that anything but vulgar folly can suppose to belong
to the middle class; she is thoroughly refined, and her friends,
whatever else they may be, are respected for irreproachable honor and
integrity. All St. Ogg's, I fancy, would pronounce her to be more than
my equal."

Wakem darted a glance of fierce question at his son; but Philip was
not looking at him, and with a certain penitent consciousness went on,
in a few moments, as if in amplification of his last words,--

"Find a single person in St. Ogg's who will not tell you that a
beautiful creature like her would be throwing herself away on a
pitiable object like me."

"Not she!" said Wakem, rising again, and forgetting everything else in
a burst of resentful pride, half fatherly, half personal. "It would be
a deuced fine match for her. It's all stuff about an accidental
deformity, when a girl's really attached to a man."

"But girls are not apt to get attached under those circumstances,"
said Philip.

"Well, then," said Wakem, rather brutally, trying to recover his
previous position, "if she doesn't care for you, you might have spared
yourself the trouble of talking to me about her, and you might have
spared me the trouble of refusing my consent to what was never likely
to happen."

Wakem strode to the door, and without looking round again, banged it
after him.

Philip was not without confidence that his father would be ultimately
wrought upon as he had expected, by what had passed; but the scene had
jarred upon his nerves, which were as sensitive as a woman's. He
determined not to go down to dinner; he couldn't meet his father again
that day. It was Wakem's habit, when he had no company at home, to go
out in the evening, often as early as half-past seven; and as it was
far on in the afternoon now, Philip locked up his room and went out
for a long ramble, thinking he would not return until his father was
out of the house again. He got into a boat, and went down the river to
a favorite village, where he dined, and lingered till it was late
enough for him to return. He had never had any sort of quarrel with
his father before, and had a sickening fear that this contest, just
begun, might go on for weeks; and what might not happen in that time?
He would not allow himself to define what that involuntary question
meant. But if he could once be in the position of Maggie's accepted,
acknowledged lover, there would be less room for vague dread. He went
up to his painting-room again, and threw himself with a sense of
fatigue into the armchair, looking round absently at the views of
water and rock that were ranged around, till he fell into a doze, in
which he fancied Maggie was slipping down a glistening, green, slimy
channel of a waterfall, and he was looking on helpless, till he was
awakened by what seemed a sudden, awful crash.

It was the opening of the door, and he could hardly have dozed more
than a few moments, for there was no perceptible change in the evening
light. It was his father who entered; and when Philip moved to vacate
the chair for him, he said,--

"Sit still. I'd rather walk about."

He stalked up and down the room once or twice, and then, standing
opposite Philip with his hands thrust in his side pockets, he said, as
if continuing a conversation that had not been broken off,--

"But this girl seems to have been fond of you, Phil, else she wouldn't
have met you in that way."

Philip's heart was beating rapidly, and a transient flush passed over
his face like a gleam. It was not quite easy to speak at once.

"She liked me at King's Lorton, when she was a little girl, because I
used to sit with her brother a great deal when he had hurt his foot.
She had kept that in her memory, and thought of me as a friend of a
long while ago. She didn't think of me as a lover when she met me."

"Well, but you made love to her at last. What did she say then?" said
Wakem, walking about again.

"She said she _did_ love me then."

"Confound it, then; what else do you want? Is she a jilt?"

"She was very young then," said Philip, hesitatingly. "I'm afraid she
hardly knew what she felt. I'm afraid our long separation, and the
idea that events must always divide us, may have made a difference."

"But she's in the town. I've seen her at church. Haven't you spoken to
her since you came back?"

"Yes, at Mr. Deane's. But I couldn't renew my proposals to her on
several grounds. One obstacle would be removed if you would give your
consent,--if you would be willing to think of her as a daughter-in-law."

Wakem was silent a little while, pausing before Maggie's picture.

"She's not the sort of woman your mother was, though, Phil," he said,
at last. "I saw her at church,--she's handsomer than this,--deuced
fine eyes and fine figure, I saw; but rather dangerous and
unmanageable, eh?"

"She's very tender and affectionate, and so simple,--without the airs
and petty contrivances other women have."

"Ah?" said Wakem. Then looking round at his son, "But your mother
looked gentler; she had that brown wavy hair and gray eyes, like
yours. You can't remember her very well. It was a thousand pities I'd
no likeness of her."

"Then, shouldn't you be glad for me to have the same sort of
happiness, father, to sweeten my life for me? There can never be
another tie so strong to you as that which began eight-and-twenty
years ago, when you married my mother, and you have been tightening it
ever since."

"Ah, Phil, you're the only fellow that knows the best of me," said
Wakem, giving his hand to his son. "We must keep together if we can.
And now, what am I to do? You must come downstairs and tell me. Am I
to go and call on this dark-eyed damsel?"

The barrier once thrown down in this way, Philip could talk freely to
his father of their entire relation with the Tullivers,--of the desire
to get the mill and land back into the family, and of its transfer to
Guest & Co. as an intermediate step. He could venture now to be
persuasive and urgent, and his father yielded with more readiness than
he had calculated on.

"_I_ don't care about the mill," he said at last, with a sort of angry
compliance. "I've had an infernal deal of bother lately about the
mill. Let them pay me for my improvements, that's all. But there's one
thing you needn't ask me. I shall have no direct transactions with
young Tulliver. If you like to swallow him for his sister's sake, you
may; but I've no sauce that will make him go down."

I leave you to imagine the agreeable feelings with which Philip went
to Mr. Deane the next day, to say that Mr. Wakem was ready to open the
negotiations, and Lucy's pretty triumph as she appealed to her father
whether she had not proved her great business abilities. Mr. Deane was
rather puzzled, and suspected that there had been something "going on"
among the young people to which he wanted a clew. But to men of Mr.
Deane's stamp, what goes on among the young people is as extraneous to
the real business of life as what goes on among the birds and
butterflies, until it can be shown to have a malign bearing on
monetary affairs. And in this case the bearing appeared to be entirely
propitious.



Chapter IX

Charity in Full-Dress


The culmination of Maggie's career as an admired member of society in
St. Ogg's was certainly the day of the bazaar, when her simple noble
beauty, clad in a white muslin of some soft-floating kind, which I
suspect must have come from the stores of aunt Pullet's wardrobe,
appeared with marked distinction among the more adorned and
conventional women around her. We perhaps never detect how much of our
social demeanor is made up of artificial airs until we see a person
who is at once beautiful and simple; without the beauty, we are apt to
call simplicity awkwardness. The Miss Guests were much too well-bred
to have any of the grimaces and affected tones that belong to
pretentious vulgarity; but their stall being next to the one where
Maggie sat, it seemed newly obvious to-day that Miss Guest held her
chin too high, and that Miss Laura spoke and moved continually with a
view to effect.

All well-dressed St. Ogg's and its neighborhood were there; and it
would have been worth while to come even from a distance, to see the
fine old hall, with its open roof and carved oaken rafters, and great
oaken folding-doors, and light shed down from a height on the
many-colored show beneath; a very quaint place, with broad faded
stripes painted on the walls, and here and there a show of heraldic
animals of a bristly, long-snouted character, the cherished emblems of
a noble family once the seigniors of this now civic hall. A grand
arch, cut in the upper wall at one end, surmounted an oaken orchestra,
with an open room behind it, where hothouse plants and stalls for
refreshments were disposed; an agreeable resort for gentlemen disposed
to loiter, and yet to exchange the occasional crush down below for a
more commodious point of view. In fact, the perfect fitness of this
ancient building for an admirable modern purpose, that made charity
truly elegant, and led through vanity up to the supply of a deficit,
was so striking that hardly a person entered the room without
exchanging the remark more than once. Near the great arch over the
orchestra was the stone oriel with painted glass, which was one of the
venerable inconsistencies of the old hall; and it was close by this
that Lucy had her stall, for the convenience of certain large plain
articles which she had taken charge of for Mrs. Kenn. Maggie had
begged to sit at the open end of the stall, and to have the sale of
these articles rather than of bead-mats and other elaborate products
of which she had but a dim understanding. But it soon appeared that
the gentlemen's dressing-gowns, which were among her commodities, were
objects of such general attention and inquiry, and excited so
troublesome a curiosity as to their lining and comparative merits,
together with a determination to test them by trying on, as to make
her post a very conspicuous one. The ladies who had commodities of
their own to sell, and did not want dressing-gowns, saw at once the
frivolity and bad taste of this masculine preference for goods which
any tailor could furnish; and it is possible that the emphatic notice
of various kinds which was drawn toward Miss Tulliver on this public
occasion, threw a very strong and unmistakable light on her subsequent
conduct in many minds then present. Not that anger, on account of
spurned beauty can dwell in the celestial breasts of charitable
ladies, but rather that the errors of persons who have once been much
admired necessarily take a deeper tinge from the mere force of
contrast; and also, that to-day Maggie's conspicuous position, for the
first time, made evident certain characteristics which were
subsequently felt to have an explanatory bearing. There was something
rather bold in Miss Tulliver's direct gaze, and something undefinably
coarse in the style of her beauty, which placed her, in the opinion of
all feminine judges, far below her cousin Miss Deane; for the ladies
of St. Ogg's had now completely ceded to Lucy their hypothetic claims
on the admiration of Mr. Stephen Guest.

As for dear little Lucy herself, her late benevolent triumph about the
Mill, and all the affectionate projects she was cherishing for Maggie
and Philip, helped to give her the highest spirits to-day, and she
felt nothing but pleasure in the evidence of Maggie's attractiveness.
It is true, she was looking very charming herself, and Stephen was
paying her the utmost attention on this public occasion; jealously
buying up the articles he had seen under her fingers in the process of
making, and gayly helping her to cajole the male customers into the
purchase of the most effeminate futilities. He chose to lay aside his
hat and wear a scarlet fez of her embroidering; but by superficial
observers this was necessarily liable to be interpreted less as a
compliment to Lucy than as a mark of coxcombry. "Guest is a great
coxcomb," young Torry observed; "but then he is a privileged person in
St. Ogg's--he carries all before him; if another fellow did such
things, everybody would say he made a fool of himself."

And Stephen purchased absolutely nothing from Maggie, until Lucy said,
in rather a vexed undertone,--

"See, now; all the things of Maggie's knitting will be gone, and you
will not have bought one. There are those deliciously soft warm things
for the wrists,--do buy them."

"Oh no," said Stephen, "they must be intended for imaginative persons,
who can chill themselves on this warm day by thinking of the frosty
Caucasus. Stern reason is my forte, you know. You must get Philip to
buy those. By the way, why doesn't he come?"

"He never likes going where there are many people, though I enjoined
him to come. He said he would buy up any of my goods that the rest of
the world rejected. But now, do go and buy something of Maggie."

"No, no; see, she has got a customer; there is old Wakem himself just
coming up."

Lucy's eyes turned with anxious interest toward Maggie to see how she
went through this first interview, since a sadly memorable time, with
a man toward whom she must have so strange a mixture of feelings; but
she was pleased to notice that Wakem had tact enough to enter at once
into talk about the bazaar wares, and appear interested in purchasing,
smiling now and then kindly at Maggie, and not calling on her to speak
much, as if he observed that she was rather pale and tremulous.

"Why, Wakem is making himself particularly amiable to your cousin,"
said Stephen, in an undertone to Lucy; "is it pure magnanimity? You
talked of a family quarrel."

"Oh, that will soon be quite healed, I hope," said Lucy, becoming a
little indiscreet in her satisfaction, and speaking with an air of
significance. But Stephen did not appear to notice this, and as some
lady-purchasers came up, he lounged on toward Maggie's end, handling
trifles and standing aloof until Wakem, who had taken out his purse,
had finished his transactions.

"My son came with me," he overheard Wakem saying, "but he has vanished
into some other part of the building, and has left all these
charitable gallantries to me. I hope you'll reproach him for his
shabby conduct."

She returned his smile and bow without speaking, and he turned away,
only then observing Stephen and nodding to him. Maggie, conscious that
Stephen was still there, busied herself with counting money, and
avoided looking up. She had been well pleased that he had devoted
himself to Lucy to-day, and had not come near her. They had begun the
morning with an indifferent salutation, and both had rejoiced in being
aloof from each other, like a patient who has actually done without
his opium, in spite of former failures in resolution. And during the
last few days they had even been making up their minds to failures,
looking to the outward events that must soon come to separate them, as
a reason for dispensing with self-conquest in detail.

Stephen moved step by step as if he were being unwillingly dragged,
until he had got round the open end of the stall, and was half hidden
by a screen of draperies. Maggie went on counting her money till she
suddenly heard a deep gentle voice saying, "Aren't you very tried? Do
let me bring you something,--some fruit or jelly, mayn't I?"

The unexpected tones shook her like a sudden accidental vibration of a
harp close by her.

"Oh no, thank you," she said faintly, and only half looking up for an
instant.

"You look so pale," Stephen insisted, in a more entreating tone. "I'm
sure you're exhausted. I must disobey you, and bring something."

"No, indeed, I couldn't take it."

"Are you angry with me? What have I done? _Do_ look at me."

"Pray, go away," said Maggie, looking at him helplessly, her eyes
glancing immediately from him to the opposite corner of the orchestra,
which was half hidden by the folds of the old faded green curtain.
Maggie had no sooner uttered this entreaty than she was wretched at
the admission it implied; but Stephen turned away at once, and
following her upward glance, he saw Philip Wakem sealed in the
half-hidden corner, so that he could command little more than that
angle of the hall in which Maggie sat. An entirely new though occurred
to Stephen, and linking itself with what he had observed of Wakem's
manner, and with Lucy's reply to his observation, it convinced him
that there had been some former relation between Philip and Maggie
beyond that childish one of which he had heard. More than one impulse
made him immediately leave the hall and go upstairs to the
refreshment-room, where, walking up to Philip, he sat down behind him,
and put his hand on his shoulder.

"Are you studying for a portrait, Phil," he said, "or for a sketch of
that oriel window? By George, it makes a capital bit from this dark
corner, with the curtain just marking it off."

"I have been studying expression," said Philip, curtly.

"What! Miss Tulliver's? It's rather of the savage-moody order to-day,
I think,--something of the fallen princess serving behind a counter.
Her cousin sent me to her with a civil offer to get her some
refreshment, but I have been snubbed, as usual. There's natural
antipathy between us, I suppose; I have seldom the honor to please
her."

"What a hypocrite you are!" said Philip, flushing angrily.

"What! because experience must have told me that I'm universally
pleasing? I admit the law, but there's some disturbing force here."

"I am going," said Philip, rising abruptly.

"So am I--to get a breath of fresh air; this place gets oppressive. I
think I have done suit and service long enough."

The two friends walked downstairs together without speaking. Philip
turned through the outer door into the court-yard; but Stephen,
saying, "Oh, by the by, I must call in here," went on along the
passage to one of the rooms at the other end of the building, which
were appropriated to the town library. He had the room all to himself,
and a man requires nothing less than this when he wants to dash his
cap on the table, throw himself astride a chair, and stare at a high
brick wall with a frown which would not have been beneath the occasion
if he had been slaying "the giant Python." The conduct that issues
from a moral conflict has often so close a resemblance to vice that
the distinction escapes all outward judgments founded on a mere
comparison of actions. It is clear to you, I hope, that Stephen was
not a hypocrite,--capable of deliberate doubleness for a selfish end;
and yet his fluctuations between the indulgence of a feeling and the
systematic concealment of it might have made a good case in support of
Philip's accusation.

Meanwhile, Maggie sat at her stall cold and trembling, with that
painful sensation in the eyes which comes from resolutely repressed
tears. Was her life to be always like this,--always bringing some new
source of inward strife? She heard confusedly the busy, indifferent
voices around her, and wished her mind could flow into that easy
babbling current. It was at this moment that Dr. Kenn, who had quite
lately come into the hall, and was now walking down the middle with
his hands behind him, taking a general view, fixed his eyes on Maggie
for the first time, and was struck with the expression of pain on her
beautiful face. She was sitting quite still, for the stream of
customers had lessened at this late hour in the afternoon; the
gentlemen had chiefly chosen the middle of the day, and Maggie's stall
was looking rather bare. This, with her absent, pained expression,
finished the contrast between her and her companions, who were all
bright, eager, and busy. He was strongly arrested. Her face had
naturally drawn his attention as a new and striking one at church, and
he had been introduced to her during a short call on business at Mr.
Deane's, but he had never spoken more than three words to her. He
walked toward her now, and Maggie, perceiving some one approaching,
roused herself to look up and be prepared to speak. She felt a
childlike, instinctive relief from the sense of uneasiness in this
exertion, when she saw it was Dr. Kenn's face that was looking at her;
that plain, middle-aged face, with a grave, penetrating kindness in
it, seeming to tell of a human being who had reached a firm, safe
strand, but was looking with helpful pity toward the strugglers still
tossed by the waves, had an effect on Maggie at this moment which was
afterward remembered by her as if it had been a promise. The
middle-aged, who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are
yet in the time when memory is still half passionate and not merely
contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood, whom
life has disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of
early stumblers and victims of self-despair. Most of us, at some
moment in our young lives, would have welcomed a priest of that
natural order in any sort of canonicals or uncanonicals, but had to
scramble upward into all the difficulties of nineteen entirely without
such aid, as Maggie did.

"You find your office rather a fatiguing one, I fear, Miss Tulliver,"
said Dr. Kenn.

"It is, rather," said Maggie, simply, not being accustomed to simpler
amiable denials of obvious facts.

"But I can tell Mrs. Kenn that you have disposed of her goods very
quickly," he added; "she will be very much obliged to you."

"Oh, I have done nothing; the gentlemen came very fast to buy the
dressing-gowns and embroidered waistcoats, but I think any of the
other ladies would have sold more; I didn't know what to say about
them."

Dr. Kenn smiled. "I hope I'm going to have you as a permanent
parishioner now, Miss Tulliver; am I? You have been at a distance from
us hitherto."

"I have been a teacher in a school, and I'm going into another
situation of the same kind very soon."

"Ah? I was hoping you would remain among your friends, who are all in
this neighborhood, I believe."

"Oh, _I must go_," said Maggie, earnestly, looking at Dr. Kenn with an
expression of reliance, as if she had told him her history in those
three words. It was one of those moments of implicit revelation which
will sometimes happen even between people who meet quite
transiently,--on a mile's journey, perhaps, or when resting by the
wayside. There is always this possibility of a word or look from a
stranger to keep alive the sense of human brotherhood.

Dr. Kenn's ear and eye took in all the signs that this brief
confidence of Maggie's was charged with meaning.

"I understand," he said; "you feel it right to go. But that will not
prevent our meeting again, I hope; it will not prevent my knowing you
better, if I can be of any service to you."

He put out his hand and pressed hers kindly before he turned away.

"She has some trouble or other at heart," he thought. "Poor child! she
looks as if she might turn out to be one of

  'The souls by nature pitched too high,
  By suffering plunged too low.'

"There's something wonderfully honest in those beautiful eyes."

It may be surprising that Maggie, among whose many imperfections an
excessive delight in admiration and acknowledged supremacy were not
absent now, any more than when she was instructing the gypsies with a
view toward achieving a royal position among them, was not more elated
on a day when she had had the tribute of so many looks and smiles,
together with that satisfactory consciousness which had necessarily
come from being taken before Lucy's chevalglass, and made to look at
the full length of her tall beauty, crowned by the night of her massy
hair. Maggie had smiled at herself then, and for the moment had
forgotten everything in the sense of her own beauty. If that state of
mind could have lasted, her choice would have been to have Stephen
Guest at her feet, offering her a life filled with all luxuries, with
daily incense of adoration near and distant, and with all
possibilities of culture at her command. But there were things in her
stronger than vanity,--passion and affection, and long, deep memories
of early discipline and effort, of early claims on her love and pity;
and the stream of vanity was soon swept along and mingled
imperceptibly with that wider current which was at its highest force
today, under the double urgency of the events and inward impulses
brought by the last week.

Philip had not spoken to her himself about the removal of obstacles
between them on his father's side,--he shrank from that; but he had
told everything to Lucy, with the hope that Maggie, being informed
through her, might give him some encouraging sign that their being
brought thus much nearer to each other was a happiness to her. The
rush of conflicting feelings was too great for Maggie to say much when
Lucy, with a face breathing playful joy, like one of Correggio's
cherubs, poured forth her triumphant revelation; and Lucy could hardly
be surprised that she could do little more than cry with gladness at
the thought of her father's wish being fulfilled, and of Tom's getting
the Mill again in reward for all his hard striving. The details of
preparation for the bazaar had then come to usurp Lucy's attention for
the next few days, and nothing had been said by the cousins on
subjects that were likely to rouse deeper feelings. Philip had been to
the house more than once, but Maggie had had no private conversation
with him, and thus she had been left to fight her inward battle
without interference.

But when the bazaar was fairly ended, and the cousins were alone
again, resting together at home, Lucy said,--

"You must give up going to stay with your aunt Moss the day after
to-morrow, Maggie; write a note to her, and tell her you have put it
off at my request, and I'll send the man with it. She won't be
displeased; you'll have plenty of time to go by-and-by; and I don't
want you to go out of the way just now."

"Yes, indeed I must go, dear; I can't put it off. I wouldn't leave
aunt Gritty out for the world. And I shall have very little time, for
I'm going away to a new situation on the 25th of June."

"Maggie!" said Lucy, almost white with astonishment.

"I didn't tell you, dear," said Maggie, making a great effort to
command herself, "because you've been so busy. But some time ago I
wrote to our old governess, Miss Firniss, to ask her to let me know if
she met with any situation that I could fill, and the other day I had
a letter from her telling me that I could take three orphan pupils of
hers to the coast during the holidays, and then make trial of a
situation with her as teacher. I wrote yesterday to accept the offer."

Lucy felt so hurt that for some moments she was unable to speak.

"Maggie," she said at last, "how could you be so unkind to me--not to
tell me--to take _such_ a step--and now!" She hesitated a little, and
then added, "And Philip? I thought everything was going to be so
happy. Oh, Maggie, what is the reason? Give it up; let me write. There
is nothing now to keep you and Philip apart."

"Yes," said Maggie, faintly. "There is Tom's feeling. He said I must
give him up if I married Philip. And I know he will not change--at
least not for a long while--unless something happened to soften him."

"But I will talk to him; he's coming back this week. And this good
news about the Mill will soften him. And I'll talk to him about
Philip. Tom's always very compliant to me; I don't think he's so
obstinate."

"But I must go," said Maggie, in a distressed voice. "I must leave
some time to pack. Don't press me to stay, dear Lucy."

Lucy was silent for two or three minutes, looking away and ruminating.
At length she knelt down by her cousin, and looking up in her face
with anxious seriousness, said,--

"Maggie, is it that you don't love Philip well enough to marry him?
Tell me--trust me."

Maggie held Lucy's hands tightly in silence a little while. Her own
hands were quite cold. But when she spoke, her voice was quite clear
and distinct.

"Yes, Lucy, I would choose to marry him. I think it would be the best
and highest lot for me,--to make his life happy. He loved me first. No
one else could be quite what he is to me. But I can't divide myself
from my brother for life. I must go away, and wait. Pray don't speak
to me again about it."

Lucy obeyed in pain and wonder. The next word she said was,--

"Well, dear Maggie, at least you will go to the dance at Park House
to-morrow, and have some music and brightness, before you go to pay
these dull dutiful visits. Ah! here come aunty and the tea."



Chapter X

The Spell Seems Broken


The suite of rooms opening into each other at Park House looked duly
brilliant with lights and flowers and the personal splendors of
sixteen couples, with attendant parents and guardians. The focus of
brilliancy was the long drawing-room, where the dancing went forward,
under the inspiration of the grand piano; the library, into which it
opened at one end, had the more sober illumination of maturity, with
caps and cards; and at the other end the pretty sitting-room, with a
conservatory attached, was left as an occasional cool retreat. Lucy,
who had laid aside her black for the first time, and had her pretty
slimness set off by an abundant dress of white crape, was the
acknowledged queen of the occasion; for this was one of the Miss
Guests' thoroughly condescending parties, including no member of any
aristocracy higher than that of St. Ogg's, and stretching to the
extreme limits of commercial and professional gentility.

Maggie at first refused to dance, saying that she had forgotten all
the figures--it was so many years since she had danced at school; and
she was glad to have that excuse, for it is ill dancing with a heavy
heart. But at length the music wrought in her young limbs, and the
longing came; even though it was the horrible young Torry, who walked
up a second time to try and persuade her. She warned him that she
could not dance anything but a country-dance; but he, of course, was
willing to wait for that high felicity, meaning only to be
complimentary when he assured her at several intervals that it was a
"great bore" that she couldn't waltz, he would have liked so much to
waltz with her. But at last it was the turn of the good old-fashioned
dance which has the least of vanity and the most of merriment in it,
and Maggie quite forgot her troublous life in a childlike enjoyment of
that half-rustic rhythm which seems to banish pretentious etiquette.
She felt quite charitably toward young Torry, as his hand bore her
along and held her up in the dance; her eyes and cheeks had that fire
of young joy in them which will flame out if it can find the least
breath to fan it; and her simple black dress, with its bit of black
lace, seemed like the dim setting of a jewel.

Stephen had not yet asked her to dance; had not yet paid her more than
a passing civility. Since yesterday, that inward vision of her which
perpetually made part of his consciousness, had been half screened by
the image of Philip Wakem, which came across it like a blot; there was
some attachment between her and Philip; at least there was an
attachment on his side, which made her feel in some bondage. Here,
then, Stephen told himself, was another claim of honor which called on
him to resist the attraction that was continually threatening to
overpower him. He told himself so; and yet he had once or twice felt a
certain savage resistance, and at another moment a shuddering
repugnance, to this intrusion of Philip's image, which almost made it
a new incitement to rush toward Maggie and claim her for himself.
Nevertheless, he had done what he meant to do this evening,--he had
kept aloof from her; he had hardly looked at her; and he had been
gayly assiduous to Lucy. But now his eyes were devouring Maggie; he
felt inclined to kick young Torry out of the dance, and take his
place. Then he wanted the dance to end that he might get rid of his
partner. The possibility that he too should dance with Maggie, and
have her hand in his so long, was beginning to possess him like a
thirst. But even now their hands were meeting in the dance,--were
meeting still to the very end of it, though they were far off each
other.

Stephen hardly knew what happened, or in what automatic way he got
through the duties of politeness in the interval, until he was free
and saw Maggie seated alone again, at the farther end of the room. He
made his way toward her round the couples that were forming for the
waltz; and when Maggie became conscious that she was the person he
sought, she felt, in spite of all the thoughts that had gone before, a
glowing gladness at heart. Her eyes and cheeks were still brightened
with her childlike enthusiasm in the dance; her whole frame was set to
joy and tenderness; even the coming pain could not seem bitter,--she
was ready to welcome it as a part of life, for life at this moment
seemed a keen, vibrating consciousness poised above pleasure or pain.
This one, this last night, she might expand unrestrainedly in the
warmth of the present, without those chill, eating thoughts of the
past and the future.

"They're going to waltz again," said Stephen, bending to speak to her,
with that glance and tone of subdued tenderness which young dreams
create to themselves in the summer woods when low, cooing voices fill
the air. Such glances and tones bring the breath of poetry with them
into a room that is half stifling with glaring gas and hard
flirtation.

"They are going to waltz again. It is rather dizzy work to look on,
and the room is very warm; shall we walk about a little?"

He took her hand and placed it within his arm, and they walked on into
the sitting-room, where the tables were strewn with engravings for the
accommodation of visitors who would not want to look at them. But no
visitors were here at this moment. They passed on into the
conservatory.

"How strange and unreal the trees and flowers look with the lights
among them!" said Maggie, in a low voice. "They look as if they
belonged to an enchanted land, and would never fade away; I could
fancy they were all made of jewels."

She was looking at the tier of geraniums as she spoke, and Stephen
made no answer; but he was looking at her; and does not a supreme poet
blend light and sound into one, calling darkness mute, and light
eloquent? Something strangely powerful there was in the light of
Stephen's long gaze, for it made Maggie's face turn toward it and look
upward at it, slowly, like a flower at the ascending brightness. And
they walked unsteadily on, without feeling that they were walking;
without feeling anything but that long, grave, mutual gaze which has
the solemnity belonging to all deep human passion. The hovering
thought that they must and would renounce each other made this moment
of mute confession more intense in its rapture.

But they had reached the end of the conservatory, and were obliged to
pause and turn. The change of movement brought a new consciousness to
Maggie; she blushed deeply, turned away her head, and drew her arm
from Stephen's, going up to some flowers to smell them. Stephen stood
motionless, and still pale.

"Oh, may I get this rose?" said Maggie, making a great effort to say
something, and dissipate the burning sense of irretrievable
confession. "I think I am quite wicked with roses; I like to gather
them and smell them till they have no scent left."

Stephen was mute; he was incapable of putting a sentence together, and
Maggie bent her arm a little upward toward the large half-opened rose
that had attracted her. Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm?
The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled
elbow, and all the varied gently lessening curves, down to the
delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the
firm softness. A woman's arm touched the soul of a great sculptor two
thousand years ago, so that he wrought an image of it for the
Parthenon which moves us still as it clasps lovingly the timeworn
marble of a headless trunk. Maggie's was such an arm as that, and it
had the warm tints of life.

A mad impulse seized on Stephen; he darted toward the arm, and
showered kisses on it, clasping the wrist.

But the next moment Maggie snatched it from him, and glared at him
like a wounded war-goddess, quivering with rage and humiliation.

"How dare you?" She spoke in a deeply shaken, half-smothered voice.
"What right have I given you to insult me?"

She darted from him into the adjoining room, and threw herself on the
sofa, panting and trembling.

A horrible punishment was come upon her for the sin of allowing a
moment's happiness that was treachery to Lucy, to Philip, to her own
better soul. That momentary happiness had been smitten with a blight,
a leprosy; Stephen thought more lightly of _her_ than he did of Lucy.

As for Stephen, he leaned back against the framework of the
conservatory, dizzy with the conflict of passions,--love, rage, and
confused despair; despair at his want of self-mastery, and despair
that he had offended Maggie.

The last feeling surmounted every other; to be by her side again and
entreat forgiveness was the only thing that had the force of a motive
for him, and she had not been seated more than a few minutes when he
came and stood humbly before her. But Maggie's bitter rage was
unspent.

"Leave me to myself, if you please," she said, with impetuous
haughtiness, "and for the future avoid me."

Stephen turned away, and walked backward and forward at the other end
of the room. There was the dire necessity of going back into the
dancing-room again, and he was beginning to be conscious of that. They
had been absent so short a time, that when he went in again the waltz
was not ended.

Maggie, too, was not long before she re-entered. All the pride of her
nature was stung into activity; the hateful weakness which had dragged
her within reach of this wound to her self-respect had at least
wrought its own cure. The thoughts and temptations of the last month
should all be flung away into an unvisited chamber of memory. There
was nothing to allure her now; duty would be easy, and all the old
calm purposes would reign peacefully once more. She re-entered the
drawing-room still with some excited brightness in her face, but with
a sense of proud self-command that defied anything to agitate her. She
refused to dance again, but she talked quite readily and calmly with
every one who addressed her. And when they got home that night, she
kissed Lucy with a free heart, almost exulting in this scorching
moment, which had delivered her from the possibility of another word
or look that would have the stamp of treachery toward that gentle,
unsuspicious sister.

The next morning Maggie did not set off to Basset quite so soon as she
had expected. Her mother was to accompany her in the carriage, and
household business could not be dispatched hastily by Mrs. Tulliver.
So Maggie, who had been in a hurry to prepare herself, had to sit
waiting, equipped for the drive, in the garden. Lucy was busy in the
house wrapping up some bazaar presents for the younger ones at Basset,
and when there was a loud ring at the door-bell, Maggie felt some
alarm lest Lucy should bring out Stephen to her; it was sure to be
Stephen.

But presently the visitor came out into the garden alone, and seated
himself by her on the garden-chair. It was not Stephen.

"We can just catch the tips of the Scotch firs, Maggie, from this
seat," said Philip.

They had taken each other's hands in silence, but Maggie had looked at
him with a more complete revival of the old childlike affectionate
smile than he had seen before, and he felt encouraged.

"Yes," she said, "I often look at them, and wish I could see the low
sunlight on the stems again. But I have never been that way but
once,--to the churchyard with my mother."

"I have been there, I go there, continually," said Philip. "I have
nothing but the past to live upon."

A keen remembrance and keen pity impelled Maggie to put her hand in
Philip's. They had so often walked hand in hand!

"I remember all the spots," she said,--"just where you told me of
particular things, beautiful stories that I had never heard of
before."

"You will go there again soon, won't you, Maggie?" said Philip,
getting timid. "The Mill will soon be your brother's home again."

"Yes; but I shall not be there," said Maggie. "I shall only hear of
that happiness. I am going away again; Lucy has not told you,
perhaps?"

"Then the future will never join on to the past again, Maggie? That
book is quite closed?"

The gray eyes that had so often looked up at her with entreating
worship, looked up at her now, with a last struggling ray of hope in
them, and Maggie met them with her large sincere gaze.

"That book never will be closed, Philip," she said, with grave
sadness; "I desire no future that will break the ties of the past. But
the tie to my brother is one of the strongest. I can do nothing
willingly that will divide me always from him."

"Is that the only reason that would keep us apart forever, Maggie?"
said Philip, with a desperate determination to have a definite answer.

"The only reason," said Maggie, with calm decision. And she believed
it. At that moment she felt as if the enchanted cup had been dashed to
the ground. The reactionary excitement that gave her a proud
self-mastery had not subsided, and she looked at the future with a
sense of calm choice.

They sat hand in hand without looking at each other or speaking for a
few minutes; in Maggie's mind the first scenes of love and parting
were more present than the actual moment, and she was looking at
Philip in the Red Deeps.

Philip felt that he ought to have been thoroughly happy in that answer
of hers; she was as open and transparent as a rock-pool. Why was he
not thoroughly happy? Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short
of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.



Chapter XI

In the Lane


Maggie had been four days at her aunt Moss's giving the early June
sunshine quite a new brightness in the care-dimmed eyes of that
affectionate woman, and making an epoch for her cousins great and
small, who were learning her words and actions by heart, as if she had
been a transient avatar of perfect wisdom and beauty.

She was standing on the causeway with her aunt and a group of cousins
feeding the chickens, at that quiet moment in the life of the
farmyards before the afternoon milking-time. The great buildings round
the hollow yard were as dreary and tumbledown as ever, but over the
old garden-wall the straggling rose-bushes were beginning to toss
their summer weight, and the gray wood and old bricks of the house, on
its higher level, had a look of sleepy age in the broad afternoon
sunlight, that suited the quiescent time. Maggie, with her bonnet over
her arm, was smiling down at the hatch of small fluffy chickens, when
her aunt exclaimed,--

"Goodness me! who is that gentleman coming in at the gate?"

It was a gentleman on a tall bay horse; and the flanks and neck of the
horse were streaked black with fast riding. Maggie felt a beating at
head and heart, horrible as the sudden leaping to life of a savage
enemy who had feigned death.

"Who is it, my dear?" said Mrs. Moss, seeing in Maggie's face the
evidence that she knew.

"It is Mr. Stephen Guest," said Maggie, rather faintly. "My cousin
Lucy's--a gentleman who is very intimate at my cousin's."

Stephen was already close to them, had jumped off his horse, and now
raised his hat as he advanced.

"Hold the horse, Willy," said Mrs. Moss to the twelve-year-old boy.

"No, thank you," said Stephen, pulling at the horse's impatiently
tossing head. "I must be going again immediately. I have a message to
deliver to you, Miss Tulliver, on private business. May I take the
liberty of asking you to walk a few yards with me?"

He had a half-jaded, half-irritated look, such as a man gets when he
has been dogged by some care or annoyance that makes his bed and his
dinner of little use to him. He spoke almost abruptly, as if his
errand were too pressing for him to trouble himself about what would
be thought by Mrs. Moss of his visit and request. Good Mrs. Moss,
rather nervous in the presence of this apparently haughty gentleman,
was inwardly wondering whether she would be doing right or wrong to
invite him again to leave his horse and walk in, when Maggie, feeling
all the embarrassment of the situation, and unable to say anything,
put on her bonnet, and turned to walk toward the gate.

Stephen turned too, and walked by her side, leading his horse.

Not a word was spoken till they were out in the lane, and had walked
four or five yards, when Maggie, who had been looking straight before
her all the while, turned again to walk back, saying, with haughty
resentment,--

"There is no need for me to go any farther. I don't know whether you
consider it gentlemanly and delicate conduct to place me in a position
that forced me to come out with you, or whether you wished to insult
me still further by thrusting an interview upon me in this way."

"Of course you are angry with me for coming," said Stephen, bitterly.
"Of course it is of no consequence what a man has to suffer; it is
only your woman's dignity that you care about."

Maggie gave a slight start, such as might have come from the slightest
possible electric shock.

"As if it were not enough that I'm entangled in this way; that I'm mad
with love for you; that I resist the strongest passion a man can feel,
because I try to be true to other claims; but you must treat me as if
I were a coarse brute, who would willingly offend you. And when, if I
had my own choice, I should ask you to take my hand and my fortune and
my whole life, and do what you liked with them! I know I forgot
myself. I took an unwarrantable liberty. I hate myself for having done
it. But I repented immediately; I've been repenting ever since. You
ought not to think it unpardonable; a man who loves with his whole
soul, as I do you, is liable to be mastered by his feelings for a
moment; but you know--you must believe--that the worst pain I could
have is to have pained you; that I would give the world to recall the
error."

Maggie dared not speak, dared not turn her head. The strength that had
come from resentment was all gone, and her lips were quivering
visibly. She could not trust herself to utter the full forgiveness
that rose in answer to that confession.

They were come nearly in front of the gate again, and she paused,
trembling.

"You must not say these things; I must not hear them," she said,
looking down in misery, as Stephen came in front of her, to prevent
her from going farther toward the gate. "I'm very sorry for any pain
you have to go through; but it is of no use to speak."

"Yes, it _is_ of use," said Stephen, impetuously. "It would be of use
if you would treat me with some sort of pity and consideration,
instead of doing me vile injustice in your mind. I could bear
everything more quietly if I knew you didn't hate me for an insolent
coxcomb. Look at me; see what a hunted devil I am; I've been riding
thirty miles every day to get away from the thought of you."

Maggie did not--dared not--look. She had already seen the harassed
face. But she said gently,--

"I don't think any evil of you."

"Then, dearest, look at me," said Stephen, in deepest, tenderest tones
of entreaty. "Don't go away from me yet. Give me a moment's happiness;
make me feel you've forgiven me."

"Yes, I do forgive you," said Maggie, shaken by those tones, and all
the more frightened at herself. "But pray let me go in again. Pray go
away."

A great tear fell from under her lowered eyelids.

"I can't go away from you; I can't leave you," said Stephen, with
still more passionate pleading. "I shall come back again if you send
me away with this coldness; I can't answer for myself. But if you will
go with me only a little way I can live on that. You see plainly
enough that your anger has only made me ten times more unreasonable."

Maggie turned. But Tancred, the bay horse, began to make such spirited
remonstrances against this frequent change of direction, that Stephen,
catching sight of Willy Moss peeping through the gate, called out,
"Here! just come and hold my horse for five minutes."

"Oh, no," said Maggie, hurriedly, "my aunt will think it so strange."

"Never mind," Stephen answered impatiently; "they don't know the
people at St. Ogg's. Lead him up and down just here for five minutes,"
he added to Willy, who was now close to them; and then he turned to
Maggie's side, and they walked on. It was clear that she _must_ go on
now.

"Take my arm," said Stephen, entreatingly; and she took it, feeling
all the while as if she were sliding downward in a nightmare.

"There is no end to this misery," she began, struggling to repel the
influence by speech. "It is wicked--base--ever allowing a word or look
that Lucy--that others might not have seen. Think of Lucy."

"I do think of her--bless her. If I didn't----" Stephen had laid his
hand on Maggie's that rested on his arm, and they both felt it
difficult to speak.

"And I have other ties," Maggie went on, at last, with a desperate
effort, "even if Lucy did not exist."

"You are engaged to Philip Wakem?" said Stephen, hastily. "Is it so?"

"I consider myself engaged to him; I don't mean to marry any one
else."

Stephen was silent again until they had turned out of the sun into a
side lane, all grassy and sheltered. Then he burst out impetuously,--

"It is unnatural, it is horrible. Maggie, if you loved me as I love
you, we should throw everything else to the winds for the sake of
belonging to each other. We should break all these mistaken ties that
were made in blindness, and determine to marry each other."

"I would rather die than fall into that temptation," said Maggie, with
deep, slow distinctness, all the gathered spiritual force of painful
years coming to her aid in this extremity. She drew her arm from his
as she spoke.

"Tell me, then, that you don't care for me," he said, almost
violently. "Tell me that you love some one else better."

It darted through Maggie's mind that here was a mode of releasing
herself from outward struggle,--to tell Stephen that her whole heart
was Philip's. But her lips would not utter that, and she was silent.

"If you do love me, dearest," said Stephen, gently, taking her hand
again and laying it within his arm, "it is better--it is right that we
should marry each other. We can't help the pain it will give. It is
come upon us without our seeking; it is natural; it has taken hold of
me in spite of every effort I have made to resist it. God knows, I've
been trying to be faithful to tacit engagements, and I've only made
things worse; I'd better have given way at first."

Maggie was silent. If it were _not_ wrong--if she were once convinced
of that, and need no longer beat and struggle against this current,
soft and yet strong as the summer stream!

"Say 'yes,' dearest," said Stephen, leaning to look entreatingly in
her face. "What could we care about in the whole world beside, if we
belonged to each other?"

Her breath was on his face, his lips were very near hers, but there
was a great dread dwelling in his love for her.

Her lips and eyelids quivered; she opened her eyes full on his for an
instant, like a lovely wild animal timid and struggling under
caresses, and then turned sharp round toward home again.

"And after all," he went on, in an impatient tone, trying to defeat
his own scruples as well as hers, "I am breaking no positive
engagement; if Lucy's affections had been withdrawn from me and given
to some one else, I should have felt no right to assert a claim on
her. If you are not absolutely pledged to Philip, we are neither of us
bound."

"You don't believe that; it is not your real feeling," said Maggie,
earnestly. "You feel, as I do, that the real tie lies in the feelings
and expectations we have raised in other minds. Else all pledges might
be broken, when there was no outward penalty. There would be no such
thing as faithfulness."

Stephen was silent; he could not pursue that argument; the opposite
conviction had wrought in him too strongly through his previous time
of struggle. But it soon presented itself in a new form.

"The pledge _can't_ be fulfilled," he said, with impetuous insistence.
"It is unnatural; we can only pretend to give ourselves to any one
else. There is wrong in that too; there may be misery in it for _them_
as well as for us. Maggie, you must see that; you do see that."

He was looking eagerly at her face for the least sign of compliance;
his large, firm, gentle grasp was on her hand. She was silent for a
few moments, with her eyes fixed on the ground; then she drew a deep
breath, and said, looking up at him with solemn sadness,--

"Oh, it is difficult,--life is very difficult! It seems right to me
sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but then, such
feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has
made for us,--the ties that have made others dependent on us,--and
would cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might
have been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first
toward whom--I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love
comes, love would be a sign that two people ought to belong to each
other. But I see--I feel it is not so now; there are things we must
renounce in life; some of us must resign love. Many things are
difficult and dark to me; but I see one thing quite clearly,--that I
must not, cannot, seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is
natural; but surely pity and faithfulness and memory are natural too.
And they would live in me still, and punish me if I did not obey them.
I should be haunted by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be
poisoned. Don't urge me; help me,--help me, _because_ I love you."

Maggie had become more and more earnest as she went on; her face had
become flushed, and her eyes fuller and fuller of appealing love.
Stephen had the fibre of nobleness in him that vibrated to her appeal;
but in the same moment--how could it be otherwise?--that pleading
beauty gained new power over him.

"Dearest," he said, in scarcely more than a whisper, while his arm
stole round her, "I'll do, I'll bear anything you wish. But--one
kiss--one--the last--before we part."

One kiss, and then a long look, until Maggie said tremulously, "Let me
go,--let me make haste back."

She hurried along, and not another word was spoken. Stephen stood
still and beckoned when they came within sight of Willy and the horse,
and Maggie went on through the gate. Mrs. Moss was standing alone at
the door of the old porch; she had sent all the cousins in, with kind
thoughtfulness. It might be a joyful thing that Maggie had a rich and
handsome lover, but she would naturally feel embarrassed at coming in
again; and it might _not_ be joyful. In either case Mrs. Moss waited
anxiously to receive Maggie by herself. The speaking face told plainly
enough that, if there was joy, it was of a very agitating, dubious
sort.

"Sit down here a bit, my dear." She drew Maggie into the porch, and
sat down on the bench by her; there was no privacy in the house.

"Oh, aunt Gritty, I'm very wretched! I wish I could have died when I
was fifteen. It seemed so easy to give things up then; it is so hard
now."

The poor child threw her arms round her aunt's neck, and fell into
long, deep sobs.



Chapter XII

A Family Party


Maggie left her good aunt Gritty at the end of the week, and went to
Garum Firs to pay her visit to aunt Pullet according to agreement. In
the mean time very unexpected things had happened, and there was to be
a family party at Garum to discuss and celebrate a change in the
fortunes of the Tullivers, which was likely finally to carry away the
shadow of their demerits like the last limb of an eclipse, and cause
their hitherto obscured virtues to shine forth in full-rounded
splendor. It is pleasant to know that a new ministry just come into
office are not the only fellow-men who enjoy a period of high
appreciation and full-blown eulogy; in many respectable families
throughout this realm, relatives becoming creditable meet with a
similar cordiality of recognition, which in its fine freedom from the
coercion of any antecedents, suggests the hopeful possibility that we
may some day without any notice find ourselves in full millennium,
with cockatrices who have ceased to bite, and wolves that no longer
show their teeth with any but the blandest intentions.

Lucy came so early as to have the start even of aunt Glegg; for she
longed to have some undisturbed talk with Maggie about the wonderful
news. It seemed, did it not? said Lucy, with her prettiest air of
wisdom, as if everything, even other people's misfortunes (poor
creatures!) were conspiring now to make poor dear aunt Tulliver, and
cousin Tom, and naughty Maggie too, if she were not obstinately bent
on the contrary, as happy as they deserved to be after all their
troubles. To think that the very day--the _very day_--after Tom had
come back from Newcastle, that unfortunate young Jetsome, whom Mr.
Wakem had placed at the Mill, had been pitched off his horse in a
drunken fit, and was lying at St. Ogg's in a dangerous state, so that
Wakem had signified his wish that the new purchasers should enter on
the premises at once!

It was very dreadful for that unhappy young man, but it did seem as if
the misfortune had happened then, rather than at any other time, in
order that cousin Tom might all the sooner have the fit reward of his
exemplary conduct,--papa thought so very highly of him. Aunt Tulliver
must certainly go to the Mill now, and keep house for Tom; that was
rather a loss to Lucy in the matter of household comfort; but then, to
think of poor aunty being in her old place again, and gradually
getting comforts about her there!

On this last point Lucy had her cunning projects, and when she and
Maggie had made their dangerous way down the bright stairs into the
handsome parlor, where the very sunbeams seemed cleaner than
elsewhere, she directed her manœuvres, as any other great tactician
would have done, against the weaker side of the enemy.

"Aunt Pullet," she said, seating herself on the sofa, and caressingly
adjusting that lady's floating cap-string, "I want you to make up your
mind what linen and things you will give Tom toward housekeeping;
because you are always so generous,--you give such nice things, you
know; and if you set the example, aunt Glegg will follow."

"That she never can, my dear," said Mrs. Pullet, with unusual vigor,
"for she hasn't got the linen to follow suit wi' mine, I can tell you.
She'd niver the taste, not if she'd spend the money. Big checks and
live things, like stags and foxes, all her table-linen is,--not a spot
nor a diamond among 'em. But it's poor work dividing one's linen
before one dies,--I niver thought to ha' done that, Bessy," Mrs.
Pullet continued, shaking her head and looking at her sister Tulliver,
"when you and me chose the double diamont, the first flax iver we'd
spun, and the Lord knows where yours is gone."

"I'd no choice, I'm sure, sister," said poor Mrs. Tulliver, accustomed
to consider herself in the light of an accused person. "I'm sure it
was no wish o' mine, iver, as I should lie awake o' nights thinking o'
my best bleached linen all over the country."

"Take a peppermint, Mrs. Tulliver," said uncle Pullet, feeling that he
was offering a cheap and wholesome form of comfort, which he was
recommending by example.

"Oh, but, aunt Pullet," said Lucy, "you've so much beautiful linen.
And suppose you had had daughters! Then you must have divided it when
they were married."

"Well, I don't say as I won't do it," said Mrs. Pullet, "for now Tom's
so lucky, it's nothing but right his friends should look on him and
help him. There's the tablecloths I bought at your sale, Bessy; it was
nothing but good natur' o' me to buy 'em, for they've been lying in
the chest ever since. But I'm not going to give Maggie any more o' my
Indy muslin and things, if she's to go into service again, when she
might stay and keep me company, and do my sewing for me, if she wasn't
wanted at her brother's."

"Going into service" was the expression by which the Dodson mind
represented to itself the position of teacher or governess; and
Maggie's return to that menial condition, now circumstances offered
her more eligible prospects, was likely to be a sore point with all
her relatives, besides Lucy. Maggie in her crude form, with her hair
down her back, and altogether in a state of dubious promise, was a
most undesirable niece; but now she was capable of being at once
ornamental and useful. The subject was revived in aunt and uncle
Glegg's presence, over the tea and muffins.

"Hegh, hegh!" said Mr. Glegg, good-naturedly patting Maggie on the
back, "nonsense, nonsense! Don't let us hear of you taking a place
again, Maggie. Why, you must ha' picked up half-a-dozen sweethearts at
the bazaar; isn't there one of 'em the right sort of article? Come,
now?"

"Mr. Glegg," said his wife, with that shade of increased politeness in
her severity which she always put on with her crisper fronts, "you'll
excuse me, but you're far too light for a man of your years. It's
respect and duty to her aunts, and the rest of her kin as are so good
to her, should have kept my niece from fixing about going away again
without consulting us; not sweethearts, if I'm to use such a word,
though it was never heared in _my_ family."

"Why, what did they call us, when we went to see 'em, then, eh,
neighbor Pullet? They thought us sweet enough then," said Mr. Glegg,
winking pleasantly; while Mr. Pullet, at the suggestion of sweetness,
took a little more sugar.

"Mr. Glegg," said Mrs. G., "if you're going to be undelicate, let me
know."

"La, Jane, your husband's only joking," said Mrs. Pullet; "let him
joke while he's got health and strength. There's poor Mr. Tilt got his
mouth drawn all o' one side, and couldn't laugh if he was to try."

"I'll trouble you for the muffineer, then, Mr. Glegg," said Mrs. G.,
"if I may be so bold to interrupt your joking. Though it's other
people must see the joke in a niece's putting a slight on her mother's
eldest sister, as is the head o' the family; and only coming in and
out on short visits, all the time she's been in the town, and then
settling to go away without my knowledge,--as I'd laid caps out on
purpose for her to make 'em up for me,--and me as have divided my
money so equal----"

"Sister," Mrs. Tulliver broke in anxiously, "I'm sure Maggie never
thought o' going away without staying at your house as well as the
others. Not as it's my wish she should go away at all, but quite
contrairy. I'm sure I'm innocent. I've said over and over again, 'My
dear, you've no call to go away.' But there's ten days or a fortnight
Maggie'll have before she's fixed to go; she can stay at your house
just as well, and I'll step in when I can, and so will Lucy."

"Bessy," said Mrs. Glegg, "if you'd exercise a little more thought,
you might know I should hardly think it was worth while to unpin a
bed, and go to all that trouble now, just at the end o' the time, when
our house isn't above a quarter of an hour's walk from Mr. Deane's.
She can come the first thing in the morning, and go back the last at
night, and be thankful she's got a good aunt so close to her to come
and sit with. I know _I_ should, when I was her age."

"La, Jane," said Mrs. Pullet, "it 'ud do your beds good to have
somebody to sleep in 'em. There's that striped room smells dreadful
mouldy, and the glass mildewed like anything. I'm sure I thought I
should be struck with death when you took me in."

"Oh, there is Tom!" exclaimed Lucy, clapping her hands. "He's come on
Sindbad, as I told him. I was afraid he was not going to keep his
promise."

Maggie jumped up to kiss Tom as he entered, with strong feeling, at
this first meeting since the prospect of returning to the Mill had
been opened to him; and she kept his hand, leading him to the chair by
her side. To have no cloud between herself and Tom was still a
perpetual yearning in her, that had its root deeper than all change.
He smiled at her very kindly this evening, and said, "Well, Magsie,
how's aunt Moss?"

"Come, come, sir," said Mr. Glegg putting out his hand. "Why, you're
such a big man, you carry all before you, it, seems. You're come into
your luck a good deal earlier than us old folks did; but I wish you
joy, I wish you joy. You'll get the Mill all for your own again some
day, I'll be bound. You won't stop half-way up the hill."

"But I hope he'll bear in mind as it's his mother's family as he owes
it to," said Mrs. Glegg. "If he hadn't had them to take after, he'd
ha' been poorly off. There was never any failures, nor lawing, nor
wastefulness in our family, nor dying without wills----"

"No, nor sudden deaths," said aunt Pullet; "allays the doctor called
in. But Tom had the Dodson skin; I said that from the first. And I
don't know what _you_ mean to do, sister Glegg, but I mean to give him
a tablecloth of all my three biggest sizes but one, besides sheets. I
don't say what more I shall do; but _that_ I shall do, and if I should
die to-morrow, Mr. Pullet, you'll bear it in mind,--though you'll be
blundering with the keys, and never remember as that on the third
shelf o' the left-hand wardrobe, behind the night-caps with the broad
ties,--not the narrow-frilled uns,--is the key of the drawer in the
Blue Room, where the key o' the Blue Closet is. You'll make a mistake,
and I shall niver be worthy to know it. You've a memory for my pills
and draughts, wonderful,--I'll allays say that of you,--but you're
lost among the keys." This gloomy prospect of the confusion that would
ensue on her decease was very affecting to Mrs. Pullet.

"You carry it too far, Sophy,--that locking in and out," said Mrs.
Glegg, in a tone of some disgust at this folly. "You go beyond your
own family. There's nobody can say I don't lock up; but I do what's
reasonable, and no more. And as for the linen, I shall look out what's
serviceable, to make a present of to my nephey; I've got cloth as has
never been whitened, better worth having than other people's fine
holland; and I hope he'll lie down in it and think of his aunt."

Tom thanked Mrs. Glegg, but evaded any promise to meditate nightly on
her virtues; and Mrs. Glegg effected a diversion for him by asking
about Mr. Deane's intentions concerning steam.

Lucy had had her far-sighted views in begging Tom to come on Sindbad.
It appeared, when it was time to go home, that the man-servant was to
ride the horse, and cousin Tom was to drive home his mother and Lucy.
"You must sit by yourself, aunty," said that contriving young lady,
"because I must sit by Tom; I've a great deal to say to him."

In the eagerness of her affectionate anxiety for Maggie, Lucy could
not persuade herself to defer a conversation about her with Tom, who,
she thought, with such a cup of joy before him as this rapid
fulfilment of his wish about the Mill, must become pliant and
flexible. Her nature supplied her with no key to Tom's; and she was
puzzled as well as pained to notice the unpleasant change on his
countenance when she gave him the history of the way in which Philip
had used his influence with his father. She had counted on this
revelation as a great stroke of policy, which was to turn Tom's heart
toward Philip at once, and, besides that, prove that the elder Wakem
was ready to receive Maggie with all the honors of a daughter-in-law.
Nothing was wanted, then, but for dear Tom, who always had that
pleasant smile when he looked at cousin Lucy, to turn completely
round, say the opposite of what he had always said before, and declare
that he, for his part, was delighted that all the old grievances
should be healed, and that Maggie should have Philip with all suitable
despatch; in cousin Lucy's opinion nothing could be easier.

But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities
that create severity,--strength of will, conscious rectitude of
purpose, narrowness of imagination and intellect, great power of
self-control, and a disposition to exert control over others,--prejudices
come as the natural food of tendencies which can get no sustenance
out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking knowledge which
we call truth. Let a prejudice be bequeathed, carried in the air,
adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye,--however it may come,
these minds will give it a habitation; it is something to assert
strongly and bravely, something to fill up the void of spontaneous
ideas, something to impose on others with the authority of conscious
right; it is at once a staff and a baton. Every prejudice that will
answer these purposes is self-evident. Our good, upright Tom Tulliver's
mind was of this class; his inward criticism of his father's faults
did not prevent him from adopting his father's prejudice; it was a
prejudice against a man of lax principle and lax life, and it was a
meeting-point for all the disappointed feelings of family and personal
pride. Other feelings added their force to produce Tom's bitter
repugnance to Philip, and to Maggie's union with him; and
notwithstanding Lucy's power over her strong-willed cousin, she got
nothing but a cold refusal ever to sanction such a marriage; "but of
course Maggie could do as she liked,--she had declared her
determination to be independent. For Tom's part, he held himself bound
by his duty to his father's memory, and by every manly feeling, never
to consent to any relation with the Wakems."

Thus, all that Lucy had effected by her zealous mediation was to fill
Tom's mind with the expectation that Maggie's perverse resolve to go
into a situation again would presently metamorphose itself, as her
resolves were apt to do, into something equally perverse, but entirely
different,--a marriage with Philip Wakem.



Chapter XIII

Borne Along by the Tide


In less than a week Maggie was at St. Ogg's again,--outwardly in much
the same position as when her visit there had just begun. It was easy
for her to fill her mornings apart from Lucy without any obvious
effort; for she had her promised visits to pay to her aunt Glegg, and
it was natural that she should give her mother more than usual of her
companionship in these last weeks, especially as there were
preparations to be thought of for Tom's housekeeping. But Lucy would
hear of no pretext for her remaining away in the evenings; she must
always come from aunt Glegg's before dinner,--"else what shall I have
of you?" said Lucy, with a tearful pout that could not be resisted.

And Mr. Stephen Guest had unaccountably taken to dining at Mr. Deane's
as often as possible, instead of avoiding that, as he used to do. At
first he began his mornings with a resolution that he would not dine
there, not even go in the evening, till Maggie was away. He had even
devised a plan of starting off on a journey in this agreeable June
weather; the headaches which he had constantly been alleging as a
ground for stupidity and silence were a sufficient ostensible motive.
But the journey was not taken, and by the fourth morning no distinct
resolution was formed about the evenings; they were only foreseen as
times when 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.
Honor 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 colored, 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 colored 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,
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 it 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 at 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 eagerly at this vessel, as if a new thought had come into his
mind along with it, and then he looked at Maggie hesitatingly.

"Maggie, dearest," he said at last, "if this vessel should be going to
Mudport, or to any convenient place on the coast northward, it would
be our best plan to get them to take us on board. You are fatigued,
and it may soon rain; it may be a wretched business, getting to Torby
in this boat. It's only a trading vessel, but I dare say you can be
made tolerably comfortable. We'll take the cushions out of the boat.
It is really our best plan. They'll be glad enough to take us. I've
got plenty of money about me. I can pay them well."

Maggie's heart began to beat with reawakened alarm at this new
proposition; but she was silent,--one course seemed as difficult as
another.

Stephen hailed the vessel. It was a Dutch vessel going to Mudport, the
English mate informed him, and, if this wind held, would be there in
less than two days.

"We had got out too far with our boat," said Stephen. "I was trying to
make for Torby. But I'm afraid of the weather; and this lady--my
wife--will be exhausted with fatigue and hunger. Take us on
board--will you?--and haul up the boat. I'll pay you well."

Maggie, now really faint and trembling with fear, was taken on board,
making an interesting object of contemplation to admiring Dutchmen.
The mate feared the lady would have a poor time of it on board, for
they had no accommodation for such entirely unlooked-for
passengers,--no private cabin larger than an old-fashioned church-pew.
But at least they had Dutch cleanliness, which makes all other
inconveniences tolerable; and the boat cushions were spread into a
couch for Maggie on the poop with all alacrity. But to pace up and
down the deck leaning on Stephen--being upheld by his strength--was
the first change that she needed; then came food, and then quiet
reclining on the cushions, with the sense that no new resolution
_could_ be taken that day. Everything must wait till to-morrow.
Stephen sat beside her with her hand in his; they could only speak to
each other in low tones; only look at each other now and then, for it
would take a long while to dull the curiosity of the five men on
board, and reduce these handsome young strangers to that minor degree
of interest which belongs, in a sailor's regard, to all objects nearer
than the horizon. But Stephen was triumphantly happy. Every other
thought or care was thrown into unmarked perspective by the certainty
that Maggie must be his. The leap had been taken now; he had been
tortured by scruples, he had fought fiercely with overmastering
inclination, he had hesitated; but repentance was impossible. He
murmured forth in fragmentary sentences his happiness, his adoration,
his tenderness, his belief that their life together must be heaven,
that her presence with him would give rapture to every common day;
that to satisfy her lightest wish was dearer to him than all other
bliss; that everything was easy for her sake, except to part with her;
and now they never _would_ part; he would belong to her forever, and
all that was his was hers,--had no value for him except as it was
hers. Such things, uttered in low, broken tones by the one voice that
has first stirred the fibre of young passion, have only a feeble
effect--on experienced minds at a distance from them. To poor Maggie
they were very near; they were like nectar held close to thirsty lips;
there was, there _must_ be, then, a life for mortals here below which
was not hard and chill,--in which affection would no longer be
self-sacrifice. Stephen's passionate words made the vision of such a
life more fully present to her than it had ever been before; and the
vision for the time excluded all realities,--all except the returning
sun-gleams which broke out on the waters as the evening approached,
and mingled with the visionary sunlight of promised happiness; all
except the hand that pressed hers, and the voice that spoke to her,
and the eyes that looked at her with grave, unspeakable love.

There was to be no rain, after all; the clouds rolled off to the
horizon again, making the great purple rampart and long purple isles
of that wondrous land which reveals itself to us when the sun goes
down,--the land that the evening star watches over. Maggie was to
sleep all night on the poop; it was better than going below; and she
was covered with the warmest wrappings the ship could furnish. It was
still early, when the fatigues of the day brought on a drowsy longing
for perfect rest, and she laid down her head, looking at the faint,
dying flush in the west, where the one golden lamp was getting
brighter and brighter. Then she looked up at Stephen, who was still
seated by her, hanging over her as he leaned his arm against the
vessel's side. Behind all the delicious visions of these last hours,
which had flowed over her like a soft stream, and made her entirely
passive, there was the dim consciousness that the condition was a
transient one, and that the morrow must bring back the old life of
struggle; that there were thoughts which would presently avenge
themselves for this oblivion. But now nothing was distinct to her; she
was being lulled to sleep with that soft stream still flowing over
her, with those delicious visions melting and fading like the wondrous
aerial land of the west.



Chapter XIV

Waking


When Maggie was gone to sleep, Stephen, weary too with his
unaccustomed amount of rowing, and with the intense inward life of the
last twelve hours, but too restless to sleep, walked and lounged about
the deck with his cigar far on into midnight, not seeing the dark
water, hardly conscious there were stars, living only in the near and
distant future. At last fatigue conquered restlessness, and he rolled
himself up in a piece of tarpaulin on the deck near Maggie's feet.

She had fallen asleep before nine, and had been sleeping for six hours
before the faintest hint of a midsummer daybreak was discernible. She
awoke from that vivid dreaming which makes the margin of our deeper
rest. She was in a boat on the wide water with Stephen, and in the
gathering darkness something like a star appeared, that grew and grew
till they saw it was the Virgin seated in St. Ogg's boat, and it came
nearer and nearer, till they saw the Virgin was Lucy and the boatman
was Philip,--no, not Philip, but her brother, who rowed past without
looking at her; and she rose to stretch out her arms and call to him,
and their own boat turned over with the movement, and they began to
sink, till with one spasm of dread she seemed to awake, and find she
was a child again in the parlor at evening twilight, and Tom was not
really angry. From the soothed sense of that false waking she passed
to the real waking,--to the plash of water against the vessel, and the
sound of a footstep on the deck, and the awful starlit sky. There was
a moment of utter bewilderment before her mind could get disentangled
from the confused web of dreams; but soon the whole terrible truth
urged itself upon her. Stephen was not by her now; she was alone with
her own memory and her own dread. The irrevocable wrong that must blot
her life had been committed; she had brought sorrow into the lives of
others,--into the lives that were knit up with hers by trust and love.
The feeling of a few short weeks had hurried her into the sins her
nature had most recoiled from,--breach of faith and cruel selfishness;
she had rent the ties that had given meaning to duty, and had made
herself an outlawed soul, with no guide but the wayward choice of her
own passion. And where would that lead her? Where had it led her now?
She had said she would rather die than fall into that temptation. She
felt it now,--now that the consequences of such a fall had come before
the outward act was completed. There was at least this fruit from all
her years of striving after the highest and best,--that her soul
though betrayed, beguiled, ensnared, could never deliberately consent
to a choice of the lower. And a choice of what? O God! not a choice of
joy, but of conscious cruelty and hardness; for could she ever cease
to see before her Lucy and Philip, with their murdered trust and
hopes? Her life with Stephen could have no sacredness; she must
forever sink and wander vaguely, driven by uncertain impulse; for she
had let go the clue of life,--that clue which once in the far-off
years her young need had clutched so strongly. She had renounced all
delights then, before she knew them, before they had come within her
reach. Philip had been right when he told her that she knew nothing of
renunciation; she had thought it was quiet ecstasy; she saw it face to
face now,--that sad, patient, loving strength which holds the clue of
life,--and saw that the thorns were forever pressing on its brow. The
yesterday, which could never be revoked,--if she could have changed it
now for any length of inward silent endurance, she would have bowed
beneath that cross with a sense of rest.

Day break came and the reddening eastern light, while her past life
was grasping her in this way, with that tightening clutch which comes
in the last moments of possible rescue. She could see Stephen now
lying on the deck still fast asleep, and with the sight of him there
came a wave of anguish that found its way in a long-suppressed sob.
The worst bitterness of parting--the thought that urged the sharpest
inward cry for help--was the pain it must give to _him_. But
surmounting everything was the horror at her own possible failure, the
dread lest her conscience should be benumbed again, and not rise to
energy till it was too late. Too late! it was too late already not to
have caused misery; too late for everything, perhaps, but to rush away
from the last act of baseness,--the tasting of joys that were wrung
from crushed hearts.

The sun was rising now, and Maggie started up with the sense that a
day of resistance was beginning for her. Her eyelashes were still wet
with tears, as, with her shawl over her head, she sat looking at the
slowly rounding sun. Something roused Stephen too, and getting up from
his hard bed, he came to sit beside her. The sharp instinct of anxious
love saw something to give him alarm in the very first glance. He had
a hovering dread of some resistance in Maggie's nature that he would
be unable to overcome. He had the uneasy consciousness that he had
robbed her of perfect freedom yesterday; there was too much native
honor in him, for him not to feel that, if her will should recoil, his
conduct would have been odious, and she would have a right to reproach
him.

But Maggie did not feel that right; she was too conscious of fatal
weakness in herself, too full of the tenderness that comes with the
foreseen need for inflicting a wound. She let him take her hand when
he came to sit down beside her, and smiled at him, only with rather a
sad glance; she could say nothing to pain him till the moment of
possible parting was nearer. And so they drank their cup of coffee
together, and walked about the deck, and heard the captain's assurance
that they should be in at Mudport by five o'clock, each with an inward
burthen; but in him it was an undefined fear, which he trusted to the
coming hours to dissipate; in her it was a definite resolve on which
she was trying silently to tighten her hold. Stephen was continually,
through the morning, expressing his anxiety at the fatigue and
discomfort she was suffering, and alluded to landing and to the change
of motion and repose she would have in a carriage, wanting to assure
himself more completely by presupposing that everything would be as he
had arranged it. For a long while Maggie contented herself with
assuring him that she had had a good night's rest, and that she didn't
mind about being 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
difference to ourselves," Stephen added bitterly, "that you might have
acknowledged then that your tie to me was stronger than to others."

Again a deep flush came over Maggie's face, and she was silent.
Stephen thought again that he was beginning to prevail,--he had never
yet believed that he should _not_ prevail; there are possibilities
which our minds shrink from too completely for us to fear them.

"Dearest," he said, in his deepest, tenderest tone, leaning toward
her, and putting his arm round her, "you _are_ mine now,--the world
believes it; duty must spring out of that now.

"In a few hours you will be legally mine, and those who had claims on
us will submit,--they will see that there was a force which declared
against their claims."

Maggie's eyes opened wide in one terrified look at the face that was
close to hers, and she started up, pale again.

"Oh, I can't do it," she said, in a voice almost of agony; "Stephen,
don't ask me--don't urge me. I can't argue any longer,--I don't know
what is wise; but my heart will not let me do it. I see,--I feel their
trouble now; it is as if it were branded on my mind. _I_ have
suffered, and had no one to pity me; and now I have made others
suffer. It would never leave me; it would embitter your love to me. I
_do_ care for Philip--in a different way; I remember all we said to
each other; I know how he thought of me as the one promise of his
life. He was given to me that I might make his lot less hard; and I
have forsaken him. And Lucy--she has been deceived; she who trusted me
more than any one. I cannot marry you; I cannot take a good for myself
that has been wrung out of their misery. It is not the force that
ought to rule us,--this that we feel for each other; it would rend me
away from all that my past life has made dear and holy to me. I can't
set out on a fresh life, and forget that; I must go back to it, and
cling to it, else I shall feel as if there were nothing firm beneath
my feet."

"Good God, Maggie!" said Stephen, rising too and grasping her arm,
"you rave. How can you go back without marrying me? You don't know
what will be said, dearest. You see nothing as it really is."

"Yes, I do. But they will believe me. I will confess everything. Lucy
will believe me--she will forgive you, and--and--oh, _some_ good will
come by clinging to the right. Dear, dear Stephen, let me go!--don't
drag me into deeper remorse. My whole soul has never consented; it
does not consent now."

Stephen let go her arm, and sank back on his chair, half-stunned by
despairing rage. He was silent a few moments, not looking at her;
while her eyes were turned toward him yearningly, in alarm at this
sudden change. At last he said, still without looking at her,--

"Go, then,--leave me; don't torture me any longer,--I can't bear it."

Involuntarily she leaned toward him and put out her hand to touch his.
But he shrank from it as if it had been burning iron, and said
again,--

"Leave me."

Maggie was not conscious of a decision as she turned away from that
gloomy averted face, and walked out of the room; it was like an
automatic action that fulfils a forgotten intention. What came after?
A sense of stairs descended as if in a dream, of flagstones, of a
chaise and horses standing, then a street, and a turning into another
street where a stage-coach was standing, taking in passengers, and the
darting thought that that coach would take her away, perhaps toward
home. But she could ask nothing yet; she only got into the coach.

Home--where her mother and brother were, Philip, Lucy, the scene of
her very cares and trials--was the haven toward which her mind tended;
the sanctuary where sacred relics lay, where she would be rescued from
more falling. The thought of Stephen was like a horrible throbbing
pain, which yet, as such pains do, seemed to urge all other thoughts
into activity. But among her thoughts, what others would say and think
of her conduct was hardly present. Love and deep pity and remorseful
anguish left no room for that.

The coach was taking her to York, farther away from home; but she did
not learn that until she was set down in the old city at midnight. It
was no matter; she could sleep there, and start home the next day. She
had her purse in her pocket, with all her money in it,--a bank-note
and a sovereign; she had kept it in her pocket from forgetfulness,
after going out to make purchases the day before yesterday.

Did she lie down in the gloomy bedroom of the old inn that night with
her will bent unwaveringly on the path of penitent sacrifice? The
great struggles of life are not so easy as that; the great problems of
life are not so clear. In the darkness of that night she saw Stephen's
face turned toward her in passionate, reproachful misery; she lived
through again all the tremulous delights of his presence with her that
made existence an easy floating in a stream of joy, instead of a quiet
resolved endurance and effort. The love she had renounced came back
upon her with a cruel charm; she felt herself opening her arms to
receive it once more; and then it seemed to slip away and fade and
vanish, leaving only the dying sound of a deep, thrilling voice that
said, "Gone, forever gone."




Book VII

_The Final Rescue_



Chapter I

The Return to the Mill


Between four and five o'clock on the afternoon of the fifth day from
that on which Stephen and Maggie had left St. Ogg's, Tom Tulliver was
standing on the gravel walk outside the old house at Dorlcote Mill. He
was master there now; he had half fulfilled his father's dying wish,
and by years of steady self-government and energetic work he had
brought himself near to the attainment of more than the old
respectability which had been the proud inheritance of the Dodsons and
Tullivers.

But Tom's face, as he stood in the hot, still sunshine of that summer
afternoon, had no gladness, no triumph in it. His mouth wore its
bitterest expression, his severe brow its hardest and deepest fold, as
he drew down his hat farther over his eyes to shelter them from the
sun, and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, began to walk up
and down the gravel. No news of his sister had been heard since Bob
Jakin had come back in the steamer from Mudport, and put an end to all
improbable suppositions of an accident on the water by stating that he
had seen her land from a vessel with Mr. Stephen Guest. Would the next
news be that she was married,--or what? Probably that she was not
married; Tom's mind was set to the expectation of the worst that could
happen,--not death, but disgrace.

As he was walking with his back toward the entrance gate, and his face
toward the rushing mill-stream, a tall, dark-eyed figure, that we know
well, approached the gate, and paused to look at him with a
fast-beating heart. Her brother was the human being of whom she had
been most afraid from her childhood upward; afraid with that fear
which springs in us when we love one who is inexorable, unbending,
unmodifiable, with a mind that we can never mould ourselves upon, and
yet that we cannot endure to alienate from us.

That deep-rooted fear was shaking Maggie now; but her mind was
unswervingly bent on returning to her brother, as the natural refuge
that had been given her. In her deep humiliation under the retrospect
of her own weakness,--in her anguish at the injury she had
inflicted,--she almost desired to endure the severity of Tom's
reproof, to submit in patient silence to that harsh, disapproving
judgment against which she had so often rebelled; it seemed no more
than just to her now,--who was weaker than she was? She craved that
outward help to her better purpose which would come from complete,
submissive confession; from being in the presence of those whose looks
and words would be a reflection of her own conscience.

Maggie had been kept on her bed at York for a day with that
prostrating headache which was likely to follow on the terrible strain
of the previous day and night. There was an expression of physical
pain still about her brow and eyes, and her whole appearance, with her
dress so long unchanged, was worn and distressed. She lifted the latch
of the gate and walked in slowly. Tom did not hear the gate; he was
just then close upon the roaring dam; but he presently turned, and
lifting up his eyes, saw the figure whose worn look and loneliness
seemed to him a confirmation of his worst conjectures. He paused,
trembling and white with disgust and indignation.

Maggie paused too, three yards before him. She felt the hatred in his
face, felt it rushing through her fibres; but she must speak.

"Tom," she began faintly, "I am come back to you,--I am come back
home--for refuge--to tell you everything."

"You will find no home with me," he answered, with tremulous rage.
"You have disgraced us all. You have disgraced my father's name. You
have been a curse to your best friends. You have been base, deceitful;
no motives are strong enough to restrain you. I wash my hands of you
forever. You don't belong to me."

Their mother had come to the door now. She stood paralyzed by the
double shock of seeing Maggie and hearing Tom's words.

"Tom," said Maggie, with more courage, "I am perhaps not so guilty as
you believe me to be. I never meant to give way to my feelings. I
struggled against them. I was carried too far in the boat to come back
on Tuesday. I came back as soon as I could."

"I can't believe in you any more," said Tom, gradually passing from
the tremulous excitement of the first moment to cold inflexibility.
"You have been carrying on a clandestine relation with Stephen
Guest,--as you did before with another. He went to see you at my aunt
Moss's; you walked alone with him in the lanes; you must have behaved
as no modest girl would have done to her cousin's lover, else that
could never have happened. The people at Luckreth saw you pass; you
passed all the other places; you knew what you were doing. You have
been using Philip Wakem as a screen to deceive Lucy,--the kindest
friend you ever had. Go and see the return you have made her. She's
ill; unable to speak. My mother can't go near her, lest she should
remind her of you."

Maggie was half stunned,--too heavily pressed upon by her anguish even
to discern any difference between her actual guilt and her brother's
accusations, still less to vindicate herself.

"Tom," she said, crushing her hands together under her cloak, in the
effort to speak again, "whatever I have done, I repent it bitterly. I
want to make amends. I will endure anything. I want to be kept from
doing wrong again."

"What _will_ keep you?" said Tom, with cruel bitterness. "Not
religion; not your natural feelings of gratitude and honor. And he--he
would deserve to be shot, if it were not----But you are ten times
worse than he is. I loathe your character and your conduct. You
struggled with your feelings, you say. Yes! _I_ have had feelings to
struggle with; but I conquered them. I have had a harder life than you
have had; but I have found _my_ comfort in doing my duty. But I will
sanction no such character as yours; the world shall know that _I_
feel the difference between right and wrong. If you are in want, I
will provide for you; let my mother know. But you shall not come under
my roof. It is enough that I have to bear the thought of your
disgrace; the sight of you is hateful to me."

Slowly Maggie was turning away with despair in her heart. But the poor
frightened mother's love leaped out now, stronger than all dread.

"My child! I'll go with you. You've got a mother."

Oh, the sweet rest of that embrace to the heart-stricken Maggie! More
helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will
not forsake us.

Tom turned and walked into the house.

"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 favor 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-colored 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
instinct which is given her for the preservation of Society, saw at
once that Miss Tulliver's conduct had been of the most aggravated
kind. Could anything be more detestable? A girl so much indebted to
her friends--whose mother as well as herself had received so much
kindness from the Deanes--to lay the design of winning a young man's
affections away from her own cousin, who had behaved like a sister to
her! Winning his affections? That was not the phrase for such a girl
as Miss Tulliver; it would have been more correct to say that she had
been actuated by mere unwomanly boldness and unbridled passion. There
was always something questionable about her. That connection with
young Wakem, which, they said, had been carried on for years, looked
very ill,--disgusting, in fact! But with a girl of that disposition!
To the world's wife there had always been something in Miss Tulliver's
very _physique_ that a refined instinct felt to be prophetic of harm.
As for poor Mr. Stephen Guest, he was rather pitiable than otherwise;
a young man of five-and-twenty is not to be too severely judged in
these cases,--he is really very much at the mercy of a designing, bold
girl. And it was clear that he had given way in spite of himself: he
had shaken her off as soon as he could; indeed, their having parted so
soon looked very black indeed--_for her_. To be sure, he had written a
letter, laying all the blame on himself, and telling the story in a
romantic fashion so as to try and make her appear quite innocent; of
course he would do that! But the refined instinct of the world's wife
was not to be deceived; providentially!--else what would become of
Society? Why, her own brother had turned her from his door; he had
seen enough, you might be sure, before he would do that. A truly
respectable young man, Mr. Tom Tulliver; quite likely to rise in the
world! His sister's disgrace was naturally a heavy blow to him. It was
to be hoped that she would go out of the neighborhood,--to America, or
anywhere,--so as to purify the air of St. Ogg's from the stain of her
presence, extremely dangerous to daughters there! No good could happen
to her; it was only to be hoped she would repent, and that God would
have mercy on her: He had not the care of society on His hands, as the
world's wife had.

It required nearly a fortnight for fine instinct to assure itself of
these inspirations; indeed, it was a whole week before Stephen's
letter came, telling his father the facts, and adding that he was gone
across to Holland,--had drawn upon the agent at Mudport for
money,--was incapable of any resolution at present.

Maggie, all this while, was too entirely filled with a more agonizing
anxiety to spend any thought on the view that was being taken of her
conduct by the world of St. Ogg's; anxiety about Stephen, Lucy,
Philip, beat on her poor heart in a hard, driving, ceaseless storm of
mingled love, remorse, and pity. If she had thought of rejection and
injustice at all, it would have seemed to her that they had done their
worst; that she could hardly feel any stroke from them intolerable
since the words she had heard from her brother's lips. Across all her
anxiety for the loved and the injured, those words shot again and
again, like a horrible pang that would have brought misery and dread
even into a heaven of delights. The idea of ever recovering happiness
never glimmered in her mind for a moment; it seemed as if every
sensitive fibre in her were too entirely preoccupied by pain ever to
vibrate again to another influence. Life stretched before her as one
act of penitence; and all she craved, as she dwelt on her future lot,
was something to guarantee her from more falling; her own weakness
haunted her like a vision of hideous possibilities, that made no peace
conceivable except such as lay in the sense of a sure refuge.

But she was not without practical intentions; the love of independence
was too strong an inheritance and a habit for her not to remember that
she must get her bread; and when other projects looked vague, she fell
back on that of returning to her plain sewing, and so getting enough
to pay for her lodging at Bob's. She meant to persuade her mother to
return to the Mill by and by, and live with Tom again; and somehow or
other she would maintain herself at St. Ogg's. Dr. Kenn would perhaps
help her and advise her. She remembered his parting words at the
bazaar. She remembered the momentary feeling of reliance that had
sprung in her when he was talking with her, and she waited with
yearning expectation for the opportunity of confiding everything to
him. Her mother called every day at Mr. Deane's to learn how Lucy was;
the report was always sad,--nothing had yet roused her from the feeble
passivity which had come on with the first shock. But of Philip, Mrs.
Tulliver had learned nothing; naturally, no one whom she met would
speak to her about what related to her daughter. But at last she
summoned courage to go and see sister Glegg, who of course would know
everything, and had been even to see Tom at the Mill in Mrs.
Tulliver's absence, though he had said nothing of what had passed on
the occasion.

As soon as her mother was gone, Maggie put on her bonnet. She had
resolved on walking to the Rectory and asking to see Dr. Kenn; he was
in deep grief, but the grief of another does not jar upon us in such
circumstances. It was the first time she had been beyond the door
since her return; nevertheless her mind was so bent on the purpose of
her walk, that the unpleasantness of meeting people on the way, and
being stared at, did not occur to her. But she had no sooner passed
beyond the narrower streets which she had to thread from Bob's
dwelling, than she became aware of unusual glances cast at her; and
this consciousness made her hurry along nervously, afraid to look to
right or left. Presently, however, she came full on Mrs. and Miss
Turnbull, old acquaintances of her family; they both looked at her
strangely, and turned a little aside without speaking. All hard looks
were pain to Maggie, but her self-reproach was too strong for
resentment. No wonder they will not speak to me, she thought; they are
very fond of Lucy. But now she knew that she was about to pass a group
of gentlemen, who were standing at the door of the billiard-rooms, and
she could not help seeing young Torry step out a little with his glass
at his eye, and bow to her with that air of _nonchalance_ which he
might have bestowed on a friendly barmaid.

Maggie's pride was too intense for her not to feel that sting, even in
the midst of her sorrow; and for the first time the thought took
strong hold of her that she would have other obloquy cast on her
besides that which was felt to be due to her breach of faith toward
Lucy. But she was at the Rectory now; there, perhaps, she would find
something else than retribution. Retribution may come from any voice;
the hardest, cruelest, most imbruted urchin at the street-corner can
inflict it; surely help and pity are rarer things, more needful for
the righteous to bestow.

She was shown up at once, after being announced, into Dr. Kenn's
study, where he sat amongst piled-up books, for which he had little
appetite, leaning his cheek against the head of his youngest child, a
girl of three. The child was sent away with the servant, and when the
door was closed, Dr. Kenn said, placing a chair for Maggie,--

"I was coming to see you, Miss Tulliver; you have anticipated me; I am
glad you did."

Maggie looked at him with her childlike directness as she had done at
the bazaar, and said, "I want to tell you everything." But her eyes
filled fast with tears as she said it, and all the pent-up excitement
of her humiliating walk would have its vent before she could say more.

"Do tell me everything," Dr. Kenn said, with quiet kindness in his
grave, firm voice. "Think of me as one to whom a long experience has
been granted, which may enable him to help you."

In rather broken sentences, and with some effort at first, but soon
with the greater ease that came from a sense of relief in the
confidence, Maggie told the brief story of a struggle that must be the
beginning of a long sorrow. Only the day before, Dr. Kenn had been
made acquainted with the contents of Stephen's letter, and he had
believed them at once, without the confirmation of Maggie's statement.
That involuntary plaint of hers, "_Oh, I must go_," had remained with
him as the sign that she was undergoing some inward conflict.

Maggie dwelt the longest on the feeling which had made her come back
to her mother and brother, which made her cling to all the memories of
the past. When she had ended, Dr. Kenn was silent for some minutes;
there was a difficulty on his mind. He rose, and walked up and down
the hearth with his hands behind him. At last he seated himself again,
and said, looking at Maggie,--

"Your prompting to go to your nearest friends,--to remain where all
the ties of your life have been formed,--is a true prompting, to which
the Church in its original constitution and discipline responds,
opening its arms to the penitent, watching over its children to the
last; never abandoning them until they are hopelessly reprobate. And
the Church ought to represent the feeling of the community, so that
every parish should be a family knit together by Christian brotherhood
under a spiritual father. But the ideas of discipline and Christian
fraternity are entirely relaxed,--they can hardly be said to exist in
the public mind; they hardly survive except in the partial,
contradictory form they have taken in the narrow communities of
schismatics; and if I were not supported by the firm faith that the
Church must ultimately recover the full force of that constitution
which is alone fitted to human needs, I should often lose heart at
observing the want of fellowship and sense of mutual responsibility
among my own flock. At present everything seems tending toward the
relaxation of ties,--toward the substitution of wayward choice for the
adherence to obligation, which has its roots in the past. Your
conscience and your heart have given you true light on this point,
Miss Tulliver; and I have said all this that you may know what my wish
about you--what my advice to you--would be, if they sprang from my own
feeling and opinion unmodified by counteracting circumstances."

Dr. Kenn paused a little while. There was an entire absence of
effusive benevolence in his manner; there was something almost cold in
the gravity of his look and voice. If Maggie had not known that his
benevolence was persevering in proportion to its reserve, she might
have been chilled and frightened. As it was, she listened expectantly,
quite sure that there would be some effective help in his words. He
went on.

"Your inexperience of the world, Miss Tulliver, prevents you from
anticipating fully the very unjust conceptions that will probably be
formed concerning your conduct,--conceptions which will have a baneful
effect, even in spite of known evidence to disprove them."

"Oh, I do,--I begin to see," said Maggie, unable to repress this
utterance of her recent pain. "I know I shall be insulted. I shall be
thought worse than I am."

"You perhaps do not yet know," said Dr. Kenn, with a touch of more
personal pity, "that a letter is come which ought to satisfy every one
who has known anything of you, that you chose the steep and difficult
path of a return to the right, at the moment when that return was most
of all difficult."

"Oh, where is he?" said poor Maggie, with a flush and tremor that no
presence could have hindered.

"He is gone abroad; he has written of all that passed to his father.
He has vindicated you to the utmost; and I hope the communication of
that letter to your cousin will have a beneficial effect on her."

Dr. Kenn waited for her to get calm again before he went on.

"That letter, as I said, ought to suffice to prevent false impressions
concerning you. But I am bound to tell you, Miss Tulliver, that not
only the experience of my whole life, but my observation within the
last three days, makes me fear that there is hardly any evidence which
will save you from the painful effect of false imputations. The
persons who are the most incapable of a conscientious struggle such as
yours are precisely those who will be likely to shrink from you,
because they will not believe in your struggle. I fear your life here
will be attended not only with much pain, but with many obstructions.
For this reason--and for this only--I ask you to consider whether it
will not perhaps be better for you to take a situation at a distance,
according to your former intention. I will exert myself at once to
obtain one for you."

"Oh, if I could but stop here!" said Maggie. "I have no heart to begin
a strange life again. I should have no stay. I should feel like a
lonely wanderer, cut off from the past. I have written to the lady who
offered me a situation to excuse myself. If I remained here, I could
perhaps atone in some way to Lucy--to others; I could convince them
that I'm sorry. And," she added, with some of the old proud fire
flashing out, "I will not go away because people say false things of
me. They shall learn to retract them. If I must go away at last,
because--because others wish it, I will not go now."

"Well," said Dr. Kenn, after some consideration, "if you determine on
that, Miss Tulliver, you may rely on all the influence my position
gives me. I am bound to aid and countenance you by the very duties of
my office as a parish priest. I will add, that personally I have a
deep interest in your peace of mind and welfare."

"The only thing I want is some occupation that will enable me to get
my bread and be independent," said Maggie. "I shall not want much. I
can go on lodging where I am."

"I must think over the subject maturely," said Dr. Kenn, "and in a few
days I shall be better able to ascertain the general feeling. I shall
come to see you; I shall bear you constantly in mind."

When Maggie had left him, Dr. Kenn stood ruminating with his hands
behind him, and his eyes fixed on the carpet, under a painful sense of
doubt and difficulty. The tone of Stephen's letter, which he had read,
and the actual relations of all the persons concerned, forced upon him
powerfully the idea of an ultimate marriage between Stephen and Maggie
as the least evil; and the impossibility of their proximity in St.
Ogg's on any other supposition, until after years of separation, threw
an insurmountable prospective difficulty over Maggie's stay there. On
the other hand, he entered with all the comprehension of a man who had
known spiritual conflict, and lived through years of devoted service
to his fellow-men, into that state of Maggie's heart and conscience
which made the consent to the marriage a desecration to her; her
conscience must not be tampered with; the principle on which she had
acted was a safer guide than any balancing of consequences. His
experience told him that intervention was too dubious a responsibility
to be lightly incurred; the possible issue either of an endeavor to
restore the former relations with Lucy and Philip, or of counselling
submission to this irruption of a new feeling, was hidden in a
darkness all the more impenetrable because each immediate step was
clogged with evil.

The great problem of the shifting relation between passion and duty is
clear to no man who is capable of apprehending it; the question
whether the moment has come in which a man has fallen below the
possibility of a renunciation that will carry any efficacy, and must
accept the sway of a passion against which he had struggled as a
trespass, is one for which we have no master-key that will fit all
cases. The casuists have become a byword of reproach; but their
perverted spirit of minute discrimination was the shadow of a truth to
which eyes and hearts are too often fatally sealed,--the truth, that
moral judgments must remain false and hollow, unless they are checked
and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special circumstances
that mark the individual lot.

All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to
the men of maxims; because such people early discern that the
mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and
that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all
the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing
insight and sympathy. And the man of maxims is the popular
representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment
solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice
by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting
patience, discrimination, impartiality,--without any care to assure
themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly
earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough
to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human.



Chapter III

Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us


When Maggie was at home again, her mother brought her news of an
unexpected line of conduct in aunt Glegg. As long as Maggie had not
been heard of, Mrs. Glegg had half closed her shutters and drawn down
her blinds. She felt assured that Maggie was drowned; that was far
more probable than that her niece and legatee should have done
anything to wound the family honor in the tenderest point. When at
last she learned from Tom that Maggie had come home, and gathered from
him what was her explanation of her absence, she burst forth in severe
reproof of Tom for admitting the worst of his sister until he was
compelled. If you were not to stand by your "kin" as long as there was
a shred of honor attributable to them, pray what were you to stand by?
Lightly to admit conduct in one of your own family that would force
you to alter your will, had never been the way of the Dodsons; and
though Mrs. Glegg had always augured ill of Maggie's future at a time
when other people were perhaps less clear-sighted, yet fair play was a
jewel, and it was not for her own friends to help to rob the girl of
her fair fame, and to cast her out from family shelter to the scorn of
the outer world, until she had become unequivocally a family disgrace.
The circumstances were unprecedented in Mrs. Glegg's experience;
nothing of that kind had happened among the Dodsons before; but it was
a case in which her hereditary rectitude and personal strength of
character found a common channel along with her fundamental ideas of
clanship, as they did in her lifelong regard to equity in money
matters. She quarrelled with Mr. Glegg, whose kindness, flowing
entirely into compassion for Lucy, made him as hard in his judgment of
Maggie as Mr. Deane himself was; and fuming against her sister
Tulliver because she did not at once come to her for advice and help,
shut herself up in her own room with Baxter's "Saints' Rest" from
morning till night, denying herself to all visitors, till Mr. Glegg
brought from Mr. Deane the news of Stephen's letter. Then Mrs. Glegg
felt that she had adequate fighting-ground; then she laid aside
Baxter, and was ready to meet all comers. While Mrs. Pullet could do
nothing but shake her head and cry, and wish that cousin Abbot had
died, or any number of funerals had happened rather than this, which
had never happened before, so that there was no knowing how to act,
and Mrs. Pullet could never enter St. Ogg's again, because
"acquaintances" knew of it all, Mrs. Glegg only hoped that Mrs. Wooll,
or any one else, would come to her with their false tales about her
own niece, and she would know what to say to that ill-advised person!

Again she had a scene of remonstrance with Tom, all the more severe in
proportion to the greater strength of her present position. But Tom,
like other immovable things, seemed only the more rigidly fixed under
that attempt to shake him. Poor Tom! he judged by what he had been
able to see; and the judgment was painful enough to himself. He
thought he had the demonstration of facts observed through years by
his own eyes, which gave no warning of their imperfection, that
Maggie's nature was utterly untrustworthy, and too strongly marked
with evil tendencies to be safely treated with leniency. He would act
on that demonstration at any cost; but the thought of it made his days
bitter to him. Tom, like every one of us, was imprisoned within the
limits of his own nature, and his education had simply glided over
him, leaving a slight deposit of polish; if you are inclined to be
severe on his severity, remember that the responsibility of tolerance
lies with those who have the wider vision. There had arisen in Tom a
repulsion toward Maggie that derived its very intensity from their
early childish love in the time when they had clasped tiny fingers
together, and their later sense of nearness in a common duty and a
common sorrow; the sight of her, as he had told her, was hateful to
him. In this branch of the Dodson family aunt Glegg found a stronger
nature than her own; a nature in which family feeling had lost the
character of clanship by taking on a doubly deep dye of personal
pride.

Mrs. Glegg allowed that Maggie ought to be punished,--she was not a
woman to deny that; she knew what conduct was,--but punished in
proportion to the misdeeds proved against her, not to those which were
cast upon her by people outside her own family who might wish to show
that their own kin were better.

"Your aunt Glegg scolded me so as niver was, my dear," said poor Mrs.
Tulliver, when she came back to Maggie, "as I didn't go to her before;
she said it wasn't for her to come to me first. But she spoke like a
sister, too; _having_ she allays was, and hard to please,--oh
dear!--but she's said the kindest word as has ever been spoke by you
yet, my child. For she says, for all she's been so set again' having
one extry in the house, and making extry spoons and things, and
putting her about in her ways, you shall have a shelter in her house,
if you'll go to her dutiful, and she'll uphold you against folks as
say harm of you when they've no call. And I told her I thought you
couldn't bear to see anybody but me, you were so beat down with
trouble; but she said, '_I_ won't throw ill words at her; there's them
out o' th' family 'ull be ready enough to do that. But I'll give her
good advice; an' she must be humble.' It's wonderful o' Jane; for I'm
sure she used to throw everything I did wrong at me,--if it was the
raisin-wine as turned out bad, or the pies too hot, or whativer it
was."

"Oh, mother," said poor Maggie, shrinking from the thought of all the
contact her bruised mind would have to bear, "tell her I'm very
grateful; I'll go to see her as soon as I can; but I can't see any one
just yet, except Dr. Kenn. I've been to him,--he will advise me, and
help me to get some occupation. I can't live with any one, or be
dependent on them, tell aunt Glegg; I must get my own bread. But did
you hear nothing of Philip--Philip Wakem? Have you never seen any one
that has mentioned him?"

"No, my dear; but I've been to Lucy's, and I saw your uncle, and he
says they got her to listen to the letter, and she took notice o' Miss
Guest, and asked questions, and the doctor thinks she's on the turn to
be better. What a world this is,--what trouble, oh dear! The law was
the first beginning, and it's gone from bad to worse, all of a sudden,
just when the luck seemed on the turn?" This was the first lamentation
that Mrs. Tulliver had let slip to Maggie, but old habit had been
revived by the interview with sister Glegg.

"My poor, poor mother!" Maggie burst out, cut to the heart with pity
and compunction, and throwing her arms round her mother's neck; "I was
always naughty and troublesome to you. And now you might have been
happy if it hadn't been for me."

"Eh, my dear," said Mrs. Tulliver, leaning toward the warm young
cheek; "I must put up wi' my children,--I shall never have no more;
and if they bring me bad luck, I must be fond on it. There's nothing
else much to be fond on, for my furnitur' went long ago. And you'd got
to be very good once; I can't think how it's turned out the wrong way
so!"

Still two or three more days passed, and Maggie heard nothing of
Philip; anxiety about him was becoming her predominant trouble, and
she summoned courage at last to inquire about him of Dr. Kenn, on his
next visit to her. He did not even know if Philip was at home. The
elder Wakem was made moody by an accumulation of annoyance; the
disappointment in this young Jetsome, to whom, apparently, he was a
good deal attached, had been followed close by the catastrophe to his
son's hopes after he had done violence to his own strong feeling by
conceding to them, and had incautiously mentioned this concession in
St. Ogg's; and he was almost fierce in his brusqueness when any one
asked him a question about his son.

But Philip could hardly have been ill, or it would have been known
through the calling in of the medical man; it was probable that he was
gone out of the town for a little while. Maggie sickened under this
suspense, and her imagination began to live more and more persistently
in what Philip was enduring. What did he believe about her?

At last Bob brought her a letter, without a postmark, directed in a
hand which she knew familiarly in the letters of her own name,--a hand
in which her name had been written long ago, in a pocket Shakespeare
which she possessed. Her mother was in the room, and Maggie, in
violent agitation, hurried upstairs that she might read the letter in
solitude. She read it with a throbbing brow.

  "Maggie,--I believe in you; I know you never meant to deceive me; I
  know you tried to keep faith to me and to all. I believed this
  before I had any other evidence of it than your own nature. The
  night after I last parted from you I suffered torments. I had seen
  what convinced me that you were not free; that there was another
  whose presence had a power over you which mine never possessed; but
  through all the suggestions--almost murderous suggestions--of rage
  and jealousy, my mind made its way to believe in your truthfulness.
  I was sure that you meant to cleave to me, as you had said; that
  you had rejected him; that you struggled to renounce him, for
  Lucy's sake and for mine. But I could see no issue that was not
  fatal for _you;_ and that dread shut out the very thought of
  resignation. I foresaw that he would not relinquish you, and I
  believed then, as I believe now, that the strong attraction which
  drew you together proceeded only from one side of your characters,
  and belonged to that partial, divided action of our nature which
  makes half the tragedy of the human lot. I have felt the vibration
  of chords in your nature that I have continually felt the want of
  in his. But perhaps I am wrong; perhaps I feel about you as the
  artist does about the scene over which his soul has brooded with
  love; he would tremble to see it confided to other hands; he would
  never believe that it could bear for another all the meaning and
  the beauty it bears for him.

  "I dared not trust myself to see you that morning; I was filled
  with selfish passion; I was shattered by a night of conscious
  delirium. I told you long ago that I had never been resigned even
  to the mediocrity of my powers; how could I be resigned to the loss
  of the one thing which had ever come to me on earth with the
  promise of such deep joy as would give a new and blessed meaning to
  the foregoing pain,--the promise of another self that would lift my
  aching affection into the divine rapture of an ever-springing,
  ever-satisfied want?

  "But the miseries of that night had prepared me for what came
  before the next. It was no surprise to me. I was certain that he
  had prevailed on you to sacrifice everything to him, and I waited
  with equal certainty to hear of your marriage. I measured your love
  and his by my own. But I was wrong, Maggie. There is something
  stronger in you than your love for him.

  "I will not tell you what I went through in that interval. But even
  in its utmost agony--even in those terrible throes that love must
  suffer before it can be disembodied of selfish desire--my love for
  you sufficed to withhold me from suicide, without the aid of any
  other motive. In the midst of my egoism, I yet could not bear to
  come like a death-shadow across the feast of your joy. I could not
  bear to forsake the world in which you still lived and might need
  me; it was part of the faith I had vowed to you,--to wait and
  endure. Maggie, that is a proof of what I write now to assure you
  of,--that no anguish I have had to bear on your account has been
  too heavy a price to pay for the new life into which I have entered
  in loving you. I want you to put aside all grief because of the
  grief you have caused me. I was nurtured in the sense of privation;
  I never expected happiness; and in knowing you, in loving you, I
  have had, and still have, what reconciles me to life. You have been
  to my affections what light, what color is to my eyes, what music
  is to the inward ear, you have raised a dim unrest into a vivid
  consciousness. The new life I have found in caring for your joy and
  sorrow more than for what is directly my own, has transformed the
  spirit of rebellious murmuring into that willing endurance which is
  the birth of strong sympathy. I think nothing but such complete and
  intense love could have initiated me into that enlarged life which
  grows and grows by appropriating the life of others; for before, I
  was always dragged back from it by ever-present painful
  self-consciousness. I even think sometimes that this gift of
  transferred life which has come to me in loving you, may be a new
  power to me.

  "Then, dear one, in spite of all, you have been the blessing of my
  life. Let no self-reproach weigh on you because of me. It is I who
  should rather reproach myself for having urged my feelings upon
  you, and hurried you into words that you have felt as fetters. You
  meant to be true to those words; you _have_ been true. I can
  measure your sacrifice by what I have known in only one half-hour
  of your presence with me, when I dreamed that you might love me
  best. But, Maggie, I have no just claim on you for more than
  affectionate remembrance.

  "For some time I have shrunk from writing to you, because I have
  shrunk even from the appearance of wishing to thrust myself before
  you, and so repeating my original error. But you will not
  misconstrue me. I know that we must keep apart for a long while;
  cruel tongues would force us apart, if nothing else did. But I
  shall not go away. The place where you are is the one where my mind
  must live, wherever I might travel. And remember that I am
  unchangeably yours,--yours not with selfish wishes, but with a
  devotion that excludes such wishes.

  "God comfort you, my loving, large-souled Maggie. If every one else
  has misconceived you, remember that you have never been doubted by
  him whose heart recognized you ten years ago.

  "Do not believe any one who says I am ill, because I am not seen
  out of doors. I have only had nervous headaches,--no worse than I
  have sometimes had them before. But the overpowering heat inclines
  me to be perfectly quiescent in the daytime. I am strong enough to
  obey any word which shall tell me that I can serve you by word or
  deed.

                          "Yours to the last,
                           "_Philip Wakem_."

As Maggie knelt by the bed sobbing, with that letter pressed under
her, her feelings again and again gathered themselves in a whispered
cry, always in the same words,--

"O God, is there any happiness in love that could make me forget
_their_ pain?"



Chapter IV

Maggie and Lucy


By the end of the week Dr. Kenn had made up his mind that there was
only one way in which he could secure to Maggie a suitable living at
St. Ogg's. Even with his twenty years' experience as a parish priest,
he was aghast at the obstinate continuance of imputations against her
in the face of evidence. Hitherto he had been rather more adored and
appealed to than was quite agreeable to him; but now, in attempting to
open the ears of women to reason, and their consciences to justice, on
behalf of Maggie Tulliver, he suddenly found himself as powerless as
he was aware he would have been if he had attempted to influence the
shape of bonnets. Dr. Kenn could not be contradicted; he was listened
to in silence; but when he left the room, a comparison of opinions
among his hearers yielded much the same result as before. Miss
Tulliver had undeniably acted in a blamable manner, even Dr. Kenn did
not deny that; how, then, could he think so lightly of her as to put
that favorable interpretation on everything she had done? Even on the
supposition that required the utmost stretch of belief,--namely, that
none of the things said about Miss Tulliver were true,--still, since
they _had_ been said about her, they had cast an odor round her which
must cause her to be shrunk from by every woman who had to take care
of her own reputation--and of Society. To have taken Maggie by the
hand and said, "I will not believe unproved evil of you; my lips shall
not utter it; my ears shall be closed against it; I, too, am an erring
mortal, liable to stumble, apt to come short of my most earnest
efforts; your lot has been harder than mine, your temptation greater;
let us help each other to stand and walk without more falling,"--to
have done this would have demanded courage, deep pity, self-knowledge,
generous trust; would have demanded a mind that tasted no piquancy in
evil-speaking, that felt no self-exaltation in condemning, that
cheated itself with no large words into the belief that life can have
any moral end, any high religion, which excludes the striving after
perfect truth, justice, and love toward the individual men and women
who come across our own path. The ladies of St. Ogg's were not
beguiled by any wide speculative conceptions; but they had their
favorite abstraction, called Society, which served to make their
consciences perfectly easy in doing what satisfied their own
egoism,--thinking and speaking the worst of Maggie Tulliver, and
turning their backs upon her. It was naturally disappointing to Dr.
Kenn, after two years of superfluous incense from his feminine
parishioners, to find them suddenly maintaining their views in
opposition to his; but then they maintained them in opposition to a
higher Authority, which they had venerated longer. That Authority had
furnished a very explicit answer to persons who might inquire where
their social duties began, and might be inclined to take wide views as
to the starting-point. The answer had not turned on the ultimate good
of Society, but on "a certain man" who was found in trouble by the
wayside.

Not that St. Ogg's was empty of women with some tenderness of heart
and conscience; probably it had as fair a proportion of human goodness
in it as any other small trading town of that day. But until every
good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid,--too
timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings,
when these would place them in a minority. And the men at St. Ogg's
were not all brave, by any means; some of them were even fond of
scandal, and to an extent that might have given their conversation an
effeminate character, if it had not been distinguished by masculine
jokes, and by an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual
hatred of women. It was the general feeling of the masculine mind at
St. Ogg's that women were not to be interfered with in their treatment
of each other.

And thus every direction in which Dr. Kenn had turned, in the hope of
procuring some kind recognition and some employment for Maggie, proved
a disappointment to him. Mrs. James Torry could not think of taking
Maggie as a nursery governess, even temporarily,--a young woman about
whom "such things had been said," and about whom "gentlemen joked";
and Miss Kirke, who had a spinal complaint, and wanted a reader and
companion, felt quite sure that Maggie's mind must be of a quality
with which she, for her part, could not risk _any_ contact. Why did
not Miss Tulliver accept the shelter offered her by her aunt Glegg? It
did not become a girl like her to refuse it. Or else, why did she not
go out of the neighborhood, and get a situation where she was not
known? (It was not, apparently, of so much importance that she should
carry her dangerous tendencies into strange families unknown at St.
Ogg's.) She must be very bold and hardened to wish to stay in a parish
where she was so much stared at and whispered about.

Dr. Kenn, having great natural firmness, began, in the presence of
this opposition, as every firm man would have done, to contract a
certain strength of determination over and above what would have been
called forth by the end in view. He himself wanted a daily governess
for his younger children; and though he had hesitated in the first
instance to offer this position to Maggie, the resolution to protest
with the utmost force of his personal and priestly character against
her being crushed and driven away by slander, was now decisive. Maggie
gratefully accepted an employment that gave her duties as well as a
support; her days would be filled now, and solitary evenings would be
a welcome rest. She no longer needed the sacrifice her mother made in
staying with her, and Mrs. Tulliver was persuaded to go back to the
Mill.

But now it began to be discovered that Dr. Kenn, exemplary as he had
hitherto appeared, had his crotchets, possibly his weaknesses. The
masculine mind of St. Ogg's smiled pleasantly, and did not wonder that
Kenn liked to see a fine pair of eyes daily, or that he was inclined
to take so lenient a view of the past; the feminine mind, regarded at
that period as less powerful, took a more melancholy view of the case.
If Dr. Kenn should be beguiled into marrying that Miss Tulliver! It
was not safe to be too confident, even about the best of men; an
apostle had fallen, and wept bitterly afterwards; and though Peter's
denial was not a close precedent, his repentance was likely to be.

Maggie had not taken her daily walks to the Rectory for many weeks,
before the dreadful possibility of her some time or other becoming the
Rector's wife had been talked of so often in confidence, that ladies
were beginning to discuss how they should behave to her in that
position. For Dr. Kenn, it had been understood, had sat in the
schoolroom half an hour one morning, when Miss Tulliver was giving her
lessons,--nay, he had sat there every morning; he had once walked home
with her,--he almost _always_ walked home with her,--and if not, he
went to see her in the evening. What an artful creature she was! What
a _mother_ for those children! It was enough to make poor Mrs. Kenn
turn in her grave, that they should be put under the care of this girl
only a few weeks after her death. Would he be so lost to propriety as
to marry her before the year was out? The masculine mind was
sarcastic, and thought _not_.

The Miss Guests saw an alleviation to the sorrow of witnessing a folly
in their Rector; at least their brother would be safe; and their
knowledge of Stephen's tenacity was a constant ground of alarm to
them, lest he should come back and marry Maggie. They were not among
those who disbelieved their brother's letter; but they had no
confidence in Maggie's adherence to her renunciation of him; they
suspected that she had shrunk rather from the elopement than from the
marriage, and that she lingered in St. Ogg's, relying on his return to
her. They had always thought her disagreeable; they now thought her
artful and proud; having quite as good grounds for that judgment as
you and I probably have for many strong opinions of the same kind.
Formerly they had not altogether delighted in the contemplated match
with Lucy, but now their dread of a marriage between Stephen and
Maggie added its momentum to their genuine pity and indignation on
behalf of the gentle forsaken girl, in making them desire that he
should return to her. As soon as Lucy was able to leave home, she was
to seek relief from the oppressive heat of this August by going to the
coast with the Miss Guests; and it was in their plans that Stephen
should be induced to join them. On the very first hint of gossip
concerning Maggie and Dr. Kenn, the report was conveyed in Miss
Guest's letter to her brother.

Maggie had frequent tidings through her mother, or aunt Glegg, or Dr.
Kenn, of Lucy's gradual progress toward recovery, and her thoughts
tended continually toward her uncle Deane's house; she hungered for an
interview with Lucy, if it were only for five minutes, to utter a word
of penitence, to be assured by Lucy's own eyes and lips that she did
not believe in the willing treachery of those whom she had loved and
trusted. But she knew that even if her uncle's indignation had not
closed his house against her, the agitation of such an interview would
have been forbidden to Lucy. Only to have seen her without speaking
would have been some relief; for Maggie was haunted by a face cruel in
its very gentleness; a face that had been turned on hers with glad,
sweet looks of trust and love from the twilight time of memory;
changed now to a sad and weary face by a first heart-stroke. And as
the days passed on, that pale image became more and more distinct; the
picture grew and grew into more speaking definiteness under the
avenging hand of remorse; the soft hazel eyes, in their look of pain,
were bent forever on Maggie, and pierced her the more because she
could see no anger in them. But Lucy was not yet able to go to church,
or any place where Maggie could see her; and even the hope of that
departed, when the news was told her by aunt Glegg, that Lucy was
really going away in a few days to Scarborough with the Miss Guests,
who had been heard to say that they expected their brother to meet
them there.

Only those who have known what hardest inward conflict is, can know
what Maggie felt as she sat in her loneliness the evening after
hearing that news from Mrs. Glegg,--only those who have known what it
is to dread their own selfish desires as the watching mother would
dread the sleeping-potion that was to still her own pain.

She sat without candle in the twilight, with the window wide open
toward the river; the sense of oppressive heat adding itself
undistinguishably to the burthen of her lot. Seated on a chair against
the window, with her arm on the windowsill she was looking blankly at
the flowing river, swift with the backward-rushing tide, struggling to
see still the sweet face in its unreproaching sadness, that seemed now
from moment to moment to sink away and be hidden behind a form that
thrust itself between, and made darkness. Hearing the door open, she
thought Mrs. Jakin was coming in with her supper, as usual; and with
that repugnance to trivial speech which comes with languor and
wretchedness, she shrank from turning round and saying she wanted
nothing; good little Mrs. Jakin would be sure to make some well-meant
remarks. But the next moment, without her having discerned the sound
of a footstep, she felt a light hand on her shoulder, and heard a
voice close to her saying, "Maggie!"

The face was there,--changed, but all the sweeter; the hazel eyes were
there, with their heart-piercing tenderness.

"Maggie!" the soft voice said. "Lucy!" answered a voice with a sharp
ring of anguish in it; and Lucy threw her arms round Maggie's neck,
and leaned her pale cheek against the burning brow.

"I stole out," said Lucy, almost in a whisper, while she sat down
close to Maggie and held her hand, "when papa and the rest were away.
Alice is come with me. I asked her to help me. But I must only stay a
little while, because it is so late."

It was easier to say that at first than to say anything else. They sat
looking at each other. It seemed as if the interview must end without
more speech, for speech was very difficult. Each felt that there would
be something scorching in the words that would recall the
irretrievable wrong. But soon, as Maggie looked, every distinct
thought began to be overflowed by a wave of loving penitence, and
words burst forth with a sob.

"God bless you for coming, Lucy."

The sobs came thick on each other after that.

"Maggie, dear, be comforted," said Lucy now, putting her cheek against
Maggie's again. "Don't grieve." And she sat still, hoping to soothe
Maggie with that gentle caress.

"I didn't mean to deceive you, Lucy," said Maggie, as soon as she
could speak. "It always made me wretched that I felt what I didn't
like you to know. It was because I thought it would all be conquered,
and you might never see anything to wound you."

"I know, dear," said Lucy. "I know you never meant to make me unhappy.
It is a trouble that has come on us all; you have more to bear than I
have--and you gave him up, when--you did what it must have been very
hard to do."

They were silent again a little while, sitting with clasped hands, and
cheeks leaned together.

"Lucy," Maggie began again, "_he_ struggled too. He wanted to be true
to you. He will come back to you. Forgive him--he will be happy
then----"

These words were wrung forth from Maggie's deepest soul, with an
effort like the convulsed clutch of a drowning man. Lucy trembled and
was silent.

A gentle knock came at the door. It was Alice, the maid, who entered
and said,--

"I daren't stay any longer, Miss Deane. They'll find it out, and
there'll be such anger at your coming out so late."

Lucy rose and said, "Very well, Alice,--in a minute."

"I'm to go away on Friday, Maggie," she added, when Alice had closed
the door again. "When I come back, and am strong, they will let me do
as I like. I shall come to you when I please then."

"Lucy," said Maggie, with another great effort, "I pray to God
continually that I may never be the cause of sorrow to you any more."

She pressed the little hand that she held between hers, and looked up
into the face that was bent over hers. Lucy never forgot that look.

"Maggie," she said, in a low voice, that had the solemnity of
confession in it, "you are better than I am. I can't----"

She broke off there, and said no more. But they clasped each other
again in a last embrace.



Chapter V

The Last Conflict


In the second week of September, Maggie was again sitting in her
lonely room, battling with the old shadowy enemies that were forever
slain and rising again. It was past midnight, and the rain was beating
heavily against the window, driven with fitful force by the rushing,
loud-moaning wind. For the day after Lucy's visit there had been a
sudden change in the weather; the heat and drought had given way to
cold variable winds, and heavy falls of rain at intervals; and she had
been forbidden to risk the contemplated journey until the weather
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 parlor
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.

"It is the boat!" cried Maggie. "Bob, come down to get the boats!"

And without a moment's shudder of fear, she plunged through the water,
which was rising fast to her knees, and by the glimmering light of the
candle she had left on the stairs, she mounted on to the window-sill,
and crept into the boat, which was left with the prow lodging and
protruding through the window. Bob was not long after her, hurrying
without shoes or stockings, but with the lanthorn in his hand.

"Why, they're both here,--both the boats," said Bob, as he got into
the one where Maggie was. "It's wonderful this fastening isn't broke
too, as well as the mooring."

In the excitement of getting into the other boat, unfastening it, and
mastering an oar, Bob was not struck with the danger Maggie incurred.
We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in
their danger, and Bob's mind was absorbed in possible expedients for
the safety of the helpless indoors. The fact that Maggie had been up,
had waked him, and had taken the lead in activity, gave Bob a vague
impression of her as one who would help to protect, not need to be
protected. She too had got possession of an oar, and had pushed off,
so as to release the boat from the overhanging window-frame.

"The water's rising so fast," said Bob, "I doubt it'll be in at the
chambers before long,--th' house is so low. I've more mind to get
Prissy and the child and the mother into the boat, if I could, and
trusten to the water,--for th' old house is none so safe. And if I let
go the boat--but _you_," he exclaimed, suddenly lifting the light of
his lanthorn on Maggie, as she stood in the rain with the oar in her
hand and her black hair streaming.

Maggie had no time to answer, for a new tidal current swept along the
line of the houses, and drove both the boats out on to the wide water,
with a force that carried them far past the meeting current of the
river.

In the first moments Maggie felt nothing, thought of nothing, but that
she had suddenly passed away from that life which she had been
dreading; it was the transition of death, without its agony,--and she
was alone in the darkness with God.

The whole thing had been so rapid, so dreamlike, that the threads of
ordinary association were broken; she sank down on the seat clutching
the oar mechanically, and for a long while had no distinct conception
of her position. The first thing that waked her to fuller
consciousness was the cessation of the rain, and a perception that the
darkness was divided by the faintest light, which parted the
overhanging gloom from the immeasurable watery level below. She was
driven out upon the flood,--that awful visitation of God which her
father used to talk of; which had made the nightmare of her childish
dreams. And with that thought there rushed in the vision of the old
home, and Tom, and her mother,--they had all listened together.

"O God, where am I? Which is the way home?" she cried out, in the dim
loneliness.

What was happening to them at the Mill? The flood had once nearly
destroyed it. They might be in danger, in distress,--her mother and
her brother, alone there, beyond reach of help! Her whole soul was
strained now on that thought; and she saw the long-loved faces looking
for help into the darkness, and finding none.

She was floating in smooth water now,--perhaps far on the overflooded
fields. There was no sense of present danger to check the outgoing of
her mind to the old home; and she strained her eyes against the
curtain of gloom that she might seize the first sight of her
whereabout,--that she might catch some faint suggestion of the spot
toward which all her anxieties tended.

Oh, how welcome, the widening of that dismal watery level, the gradual
uplifting of the cloudy firmament, the slowly defining blackness of
objects above the glassy dark! Yes, she must be out on the fields;
those were the tops of hedgerow trees. Which way did the river lie?
Looking behind her, she saw the lines of black trees; looking before
her, there were none; then the river lay before her. She seized an oar
and began to paddle the boat forward with the energy of wakening hope;
the dawning seemed to advance more swiftly, now she was in action; and
she could soon see the poor dumb beasts crowding piteously on a mound
where they had taken refuge. Onward she paddled and rowed by turns in
the growing twilight; her wet clothes clung round her, and her
streaming hair was dashed about by the wind, but she was hardly
conscious of any bodily sensations,--except a sensation of strength,
inspired by mighty emotion. Along with the sense of danger and
possible rescue for those long-remembered beings at the old home,
there was an undefined sense of reconcilement with her brother; what
quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in
the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of
our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive
mortal needs? Vaguely Maggie felt this, in the strong resurgent love
toward her brother that swept away all the later impressions of hard,
cruel offence and misunderstanding, and left only the deep,
underlying, unshakable memories of early union.

But now there was a large dark mass in the distance, and near to her
Maggie could discern the current of the river. The dark mass must
be--yes, it was--St. Ogg's. Ah, now she knew which way to look for the
first glimpse of the well-known trees--the gray willows, the now
yellowing chestnuts--and above them the old roof! But there was no
color, no shape yet; all was faint and dim. More and more strongly the
energies seemed to come and put themselves forth, as if her life were
a stored-up force that was being spent in this hour, unneeded for any
future.

She must get her boat into the current of the Floss, else she would
never be able to pass the Ripple and approach the house; this was the
thought that occurred to her, as she imagined with more and more
vividness the state of things round the old home. But then she might
be carried very far down, and be unable to guide her boat out of the
current again. For the first time distinct ideas of danger began to
press upon her; but there was no choice of courses, no room for
hesitation, and she floated into the current. Swiftly she went now
without effort; more and more clearly in the lessening distance and
the growing light she began to discern the objects that she knew must
be the well-known trees and roofs; nay, she was not far off a rushing,
muddy current that must be the strangely altered Ripple.

Great God! there were floating masses in it, that might dash against
her boat as she passed, and cause her to perish too soon. What were
those masses?

For the first time Maggie's heart began to beat in an agony of dread.
She sat helpless, dimly conscious that she was being floated along,
more intensely conscious of the anticipated clash. But the horror was
transient; it passed away before the oncoming warehouses of St. Ogg's.
She had passed the mouth of the Ripple, then; _now_, she must use all
her skill and power to manage the boat and get it if possible out of
the current. She could see now that the bridge was broken down; she
could see the masts of a stranded vessel far out over the watery
field. But no boats were to be seen moving on the river,--such as had
been laid hands on were employed in the flooded streets.

With new resolution, Maggie seized her oar, and stood up again to
paddle; but the now ebbing tide added to the swiftness of the river,
and she was carried along beyond the bridge. She could hear shouts
from the windows overlooking the river, as if the people there were
calling to her. It was not till she had passed on nearly to Tofton
that she could get the boat clear of the current. Then with one
yearning look toward her uncle Deane's house that lay farther down the
river, she took to both her oars and rowed with all her might across
the watery fields, back toward the Mill. Color was beginning to awake
now, and as she approached the Dorlcote fields, she could discern the
tints of the trees, could see the old Scotch firs far to the right,
and the home chestnuts,--oh, how deep they lay in the water,--deeper
than the trees on this side the hill! And the roof of the Mill--where
was it? Those heavy fragments hurrying down the Ripple,--what had they
meant? But it was not the house,--the house stood firm; drowned up to
the first story, but still firm,--or was it broken in at the end
toward the Mill?

With panting joy that she was there at last,--joy that overcame all
distress,--Maggie neared the front of the house. At first she heard no
sound; she saw no object moving. Her boat was on a level with the
upstairs window. She called out in a loud, piercing voice,--

"Tom, where are you? Mother, where are you? Here is Maggie!"

Soon, from the window of the attic in the central gable, she heard
Tom's voice,--

"Who is it? Have you brought a boat?"

"It is I, Tom,--Maggie. Where is mother?"

"She is not here; she went to Garum the day before yesterday. I'll
come down to the lower window."

"Alone, Maggie?" said Tom, in a voice of deep astonishment, as he
opened the middle window, on a level with the boat.

"Yes, Tom; God has taken care of me, to bring me to you. Get in
quickly. Is there no one else?"

"No," said Tom, stepping into the boat; "I fear the man is drowned; he
was carried down the Ripple, I think, when part of the Mill fell with
the crash of trees and stones against it; I've shouted again and
again, and there has been no answer. Give me the oars, Maggie."

It was not till Tom had pushed off and they were on the wide
water,--he face to face with Maggie,--that the full meaning of what
had happened rushed upon his mind. It came with so overpowering a
force,--it was such a new revelation to his spirit, of the depths in
life that had lain beyond his vision, which he had fancied so keen and
clear,--that he was unable to ask a question. They sat mutely gazing
at each other,--Maggie with eyes of intense life looking out from a
weary, beaten face; Tom pale, with a certain awe and humiliation.
Thought was busy though the lips were silent; and though he could ask
no question, he guessed a story of almost miraculous, divinely
protected effort. But at last a mist gathered over the blue-gray eyes,
and the lips found a word they could utter,--the old childish
"Magsie!"

Maggie could make no answer but a long, deep sob of that mysterious,
wondrous happiness that is one with pain.

As soon as she could speak, she said, "We will go to Lucy, Tom; we'll
go and see if she is safe, and then we can help the rest."

Tom rowed with untired vigor, and with a different speed from poor
Maggie's. The boat was soon in the current of the river again, and
soon they would be at Tofton.

"Park House stands high up out of the flood," said Maggie. "Perhaps
they have got Lucy there."

Nothing else was said; a new danger was being carried toward them by
the river. Some wooden machinery had just given way on one of the
wharves, and huge fragments were being floated along. The sun was
rising now, and the wide area of watery desolation was spread out in
dreadful clearness around them; in dreadful clearness floated onward
the hurrying, threatening masses. A large company in a boat that was
working its way along under the Tofton houses observed their danger,
and shouted, "Get out of the current!"

But that could not be done at once; and Tom, looking before him, saw
death rushing on them. Huge fragments, clinging together in fatal
fellowship, made one wide mass across the stream.

"It is coming, Maggie!" Tom said, in a deep, hoarse voice, loosing the
oars, and clasping her.

The next instant the boat was no longer seen upon the water, and the
huge mass was hurrying on in hideous triumph.

But soon the keel of the boat reappeared, a black speck on the golden
water.

The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down in an
embrace never to be parted; living through again in one supreme moment
the days when they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed
the daisied fields together.

Conclusion

Nature repairs her ravages,--repairs them with her sunshine, and with
human labor. The desolation wrought by that flood had left little
visible trace on the face of the earth, five years after. The fifth
autumn was rich in golden cornstacks, rising in thick clusters among
the distant hedgerows; the wharves and warehouses on the Floss were
busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopeful lading and
unlading.

And every man and woman mentioned in this history was still living,
except those whose end we know.

Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not
rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new
growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills
underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To
the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.

Dorlcote Mill was rebuilt. And Dorlcote churchyard--where the brick
grave that held a father whom we know, was found with the stone laid
prostrate upon it after the flood--had recovered all its grassy order
and decent quiet.

Near that brick grave there was a tomb erected, very soon after the
flood, for two bodies that were found in close embrace; and it was
visited at different moments by two men who both felt that their
keenest joy and keenest sorrow were forever buried there.

One of them visited the tomb again with a sweet face beside him; but
that was years after.

The other was always solitary. His great companionship was among the
trees of the Red Deeps, where the buried joy seemed still to hover,
like a revisiting spirit.

The tomb bore the names of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, and below the
names it was written,--

               "In their death they were not divided."
The Mill on the Floss - Part 2
