The Mill on the Floss (46 page)

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 clamly
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."