The Mill on the Floss (45 page)

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 gril 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.