The Mill on the Floss (52 page)

"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.