The Mill on the Floss (44 page)

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.