The Mill on the Floss (66 page)

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 dozen
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.