The Mill on the Floss (73 page)

Maggie was paralyzed; it was easier to resist Stephen's pleading
than this picture he had called up of himself suffering while she
was vindicated; easier even to turn away from his look of
tenderness than from this look of angry misery, that seemed to
place her in selfish isolation from him. He had called up a state
of feeling in which the reasons which had acted on her conscience
seemed to be transmitted into mere self-regard. The indignant fire
in her eyes was quenched, and she began to look at him with timid
distress. She had reproached him for being hurried into irrevocable
trespass,–she, who had been so weak herself.

"As if I shouldn't feel what happened to you–just the same," she
said, with reproach of another kind,–the reproach of love, asking
for more trust. This yielding to the idea of Stephen's suffering
was more fatal than the other yielding, because it was less
distinguishable from that sense of others' claims which was the
moral basis of her resistance.

He felt all the relenting in her look and tone; it was heaven
opening again. He moved to her side, and took her hand, leaning his
elbow on the back of the boat, and saying nothing. He dreaded to
utter another word, he dreaded to make another movement, that might
provoke another reproach or denial from her. Life hung on her
consent; everything else was hopeless, confused, sickening misery.
They glided along in this way, both resting in that silence as in a
haven, both dreading lest their feelings should be divided
again,–till they became aware that the clouds had gathered, and
that the slightest perceptible freshening of the breeze was growing
and growing, so that the whole character of the day was
altered.

"You will be chill, Maggie, in this thin dress. Let me raise the
cloak over your shoulders. Get up an instant, dearest."

Maggie obeyed; there was an unspeakable charm in being told what
to do, and having everything decided for her. She sat down again
covered with the cloak, and Stephen took to his oars again, making
haste; for they must try to get to Torby as fast as they could.
Maggie was hardly conscious of having said or done anything
decisive. All yielding is attended with a less vivid consciousness
than resistance; it is the partial sleep of thought; it is the
submergence of our own personality by another. Every influence
tended to lull her into acquiescence. That dreamy gliding in the
boat which had lasted for four hours, and had brought some
weariness and exhaustion; the recoil of her fatigued sensations
from the impracticable difficulty of getting out of the boat at
this unknown distance from home, and walking for long miles,–all
helped to bring her into more complete subjection to that strong,
mysterious charm which made a last parting from Stephen seem the
death of all joy, and made the thought of wounding him like the
first touch of the torturing iron before which resolution shrank.
And then there was the present happiness of being with him, which
was enough to absorb all her languid energy.

Presently Stephen observed a vessel coming after them. Several
vessels, among them the steamer to Mudport, had passed them with
the early tide, but for the last hour they had seen none. He looked
more and more eagerly at this vessel, as if a new thought had come
into his mind along with it, and then he looked at Maggie
hesitatingly.

"Maggie, dearest," he said at last, "if this vessel should be
going to Mudport, or to any convenient place on the coast
northward, it would be our best plan to get them to take us on
board. You are fatigued, and it may soon rain; it may be a wretched
business, getting to Torby in this boat. It's only a trading
vessel, but I dare say you can be made tolerably comfortable. We'll
take the cushions out of the boat. It is really our best plan.
They'll be glad enough to take us. I've got plenty of money about
me. I can pay them well."

Maggie's heart began to beat with reawakened alarm at this new
proposition; but she was silent,–one course seemed as difficult as
another.

Stephen hailed the vessel. It was a Dutch vessel going to
Mudport, the English mate informed him, and, if this wind held,
would be there in less than two days.

"We had got out too far with our boat," said Stephen. "I was
trying to make for Torby. But I'm afraid of the weather; and this
lady–my wife–will be exhausted with fatigue and hunger. Take us on
board–will you?–and haul up the boat. I'll pay you well."

Maggie, now really faint and trembling with fear, was t aken on
board, making an interesting object of contemplation to admiring
Dutchmen. The mate feared the lady would have a poor time of it on
board, for they had no accommodation for such entirely unlooked-for
passengers,–no private cabin larger than an old-fashioned
church-pew. But at least they had Dutch cleanliness, which makes
all other inconveniences tolerable; and the boat cushions were
spread into a couch for Maggie on the poop with all alacrity. But
to pace up and down the deck leaning on Stephen–being upheld by his
strength–was the first change that she needed; then came food, and
then quiet reclining on the cushions, with the sense that no new
resolution
could
be taken that day. Everything must wait
till to-morrow. Stephen sat beside her with her hand in his; they
could only speak to each other in low tones; only look at each
other now and then, for it would take a long while to dull the
curiosity of the five men on board, and reduce these handsome young
strangers to that minor degree of interest which belongs, in a
sailor's regard, to all objects nearer than the horizon. But
Stephen was triumphantly happy. Every other thought or care was
thrown into unmarked perspective by the certainty that Maggie must
be his. The leap had been taken now; he had been tortured by
scruples, he had fought fiercely with overmastering inclination, he
had hesitated; but repentance was impossible. He murmured forth in
fragmentary sentences his happiness, his adoration, his tenderness,
his belief that their life together must be heaven, that her
presence with him would give rapture to every common day; that to
satisfy her lightest wish was dearer to him than all other bliss;
that everything was easy for her sake, except to part with her; and
now they never
would
part; he would belong to her forever,
and all that was his was hers,–had no value for him except as it
was hers. Such things, uttered in low, broken tones by the one
voice that has first stirred the fibre of young passion, have only
a feeble effect–on experienced minds at a distance from them. To
poor Maggie they were very near; they were like nectar held close
to thirsty lips; there was, there
must
be, then, a life
for mortals here below which was not hard and chill,–in which
affection would no longer be self-sacrifice. Stephen's passionate
words made the vision of such a life more fully present to her than
it had ever been before; and the vision for the time excluded all
realities,–all except the returning sun-gleams which broke out on
the waters as the evening approached, and mingled with the
visionary sunlight of promised happiness; all except the hand that
pressed hers, and the voice that spoke to her, and the eyes that
looked at her with grave, unspeakable love.

There was to be no rain, after all; the clouds rolled off to the
horizon again, making the great purple rampart and long purple
isles of that wondrous land which reveals itself to us when the sun
goes down,–the land that the evening star watches over. Maggie was
to sleep all night on the poop; it was better than going below; and
she was covered with the warmest wrappings the ship could furnish.
It was still early, when the fatigues of the day brought on a
drowsy longing for perfect rest, and she laid down her head,
looking at the faint, dying flush in the west, where the one golden
lamp was getting brighter and brighter. Then she looked up at
Stephen, who was still seated by her, hanging over her as he leaned
his arm against the vessel's side. Behind all the delicious visions
of these last hours, which had flowed over her like a soft stream,
and made her entirely passive, there was the dim consciousness that
the condition was a transient one, and that the morrow must bring
back the old life of struggle; that there were thoughts which would
presently avenge themselves for this oblivion. But now nothing was
distinct to her; she was being lulled to sleep with that soft
stream still flowing over her, with those delicious visions melting
and fading like the wondrous aerial land of the west.

Chapter XIV
Waking

When Maggie was gone to sleep, Stephen, weary too with his
unaccustomed amount of rowing, and with the intense inward life of
the last twelve hours, but too restless to sleep, walked and
lounged about the deck with his cigar far on into midnight, not
seeing the dark water, hardly conscious there were stars, living
only in the near and distant future. At last fatigue conquered
restlessness, and he rolled himself up in a piece of tarpaulin on
the deck near Maggie's feet.

She had fallen asleep before nine, and had been sleeping for six
hours before the faintest hint of a midsummer daybreak was
discernible. She awoke from that vivid dreaming which makes the
margin of our deeper rest. She was in a boat on the wide water with
Stephen, and in the gathering darkness something like a star
appeared, that grew and grew till they saw it was the Virgin seated
in St. Ogg's boat, and it came nearer and nearer, till they saw the
Virgin was Lucy and the boatman was Philip,–no, not Philip, but her
brother, who rowed past without looking at her; and she rose to
stretch out her arms and call to him, and their own boat turned
over with the movement, and they began to sink, till with one spasm
of dread she seemed to awake, and find she was a child again in the
parlor at evening twilight, and Tom was not really angry. From the
soothed sense of that false waking she passed to the real
waking,–to the plash of water against the vessel, and the sound of
a footstep on the deck, and the awful starlit sky. There was a
moment of utter bewilderment before her mind could get disentangled
from the confused web of dreams; but soon the whole terrible truth
urged itself upon her. Stephen was not by her now; she was alone
with her own memory and her own dread. The irrevocable wrong that
must blot her life had been committed; she had brought sorrow into
the lives of others,–into the lives that were knit up with hers by
trust and love. The feeling of a few short weeks had hurried her
into the sins her nature had most recoiled from,–breach of faith
and cruel selfishness; she had rent the ties that had given meaning
to duty, and had made herself an outlawed soul, with no guide but
the wayward choice of her own passion. And where would that lead
her? Where had it led her now? She had said she would rather die
than fall into that temptation. She felt it now,–now that the
consequences of such a fall had come before the outward act was
completed. There was at least this fruit from all her years of
striving after the highest and best,–that her soul though betrayed,
beguiled, ensnared, could never deliberately consent to a choice of
the lower. And a choice of what? O God! not a choice of joy, but of
conscious cruelty and hardness; for could she ever cease to see
before her Lucy and Philip, with their murdered trust and hopes?
Her life with Stephen could have no sacredness; she must forever
sink and wander vaguely, driven by uncertain impulse; for she had
let go the clue of life,–that clue which once in the far-off years
her young need had clutched so strongly. She had renounced all
delights then, before she knew them, before they had come within
her reach. Philip had been right when he told her that she knew
nothing of renunciation; she had thought it was quiet ecstasy; she
saw it face to face now,–that sad, patient, loving strength which
holds the clue of life,–and saw that the thorns were forever
pressing on its brow. The yesterday, which could never be
revoked,–if she could have changed it now for any length of inward
silent endurance, she would have bowed beneath that cross with a
sense of rest.

Day break came and the reddening eastern light, while her past
life was grasping her in this way, with that tightening clutch
which comes in the last moments of possible rescue. She could see
Stephen now lying on the deck still fast asleep, and with the sight
of him there came a wave of anguish that found its way in a
long-suppressed sob. The worst bitterness of parting–the thought
that urged the sharpest inward cry for help–was the pain it must
give to
him
. But surmounting everything was the horror at
her own possible failure, the dread lest her conscience should be
benumbed again, and not rise to energy till it was too late. Too
late! it was too late already not to have caused misery; too late
for everything, perhaps, but to rush away from the last act of
baseness,–the tasting of joys that were wrung from crushed
hearts.

The sun was rising now, and Maggie started up with the sense
that a day of resistance was beginning for her. Her eyelashes were
still wet with tears, as, with her shawl over her head, she sat
looking at the slowly rounding sun. Something roused Stephen too,
and getting up from his hard bed, he came to sit beside her. The
sharp instinct of anxious love saw something to give him alarm in
the very first glance. He had a hovering dread of some resistance
in Maggie's nature that he would be unable to overcome. He had the
uneasy consciousness that he had robbed her of perfect freedom
yesterday; there was too much native honor in him, for him not to
feel that, if her will should recoil, his conduct would have been
odious, and she would have a right to reproach him.

But Maggie did not feel that right; she was too conscious of
fatal weakness in herself, too full of the tenderness that comes
with the foreseen need for inflicting a wound. She let him take her
hand when he came to sit down beside her, and smiled at him, only
with rather a sad glance; she could say nothing to pain him till
the moment of possible parting was nearer. And so they drank their
cup of coffee together, and walked about the deck, and heard the
captain's assurance that they should be in at Mudport by five
o'clock, each with an inward burthen; but in him it was an
undefined fear, which he trusted to the coming hours to dissipate;
in her it was a definite resolve on which she was trying silently
to tighten her hold. Stephen was continually, through the morning,
expressing his anxiety at the fatigue and discomfort she was
suffering, and alluded to landing and to the change of motion and
repose she would have in a carriage, wanting to assure himself more
completely by presupposing that everything would be as he had
arranged it. For a long while Maggie contented herself with
assuring him that she had had a good night's rest, and that she
didn't mind about being on the vessel,–it was not like being on the
open sea, it was only a little less pleasant than being in a boat
on the Floss. But a suppressed resolve will betray itself in the
eyes, and Stephen became more and more uneasy as the day advanced,
under the sense that Maggie had entirely lost her passiveness. He
longed, but did not dare, to speak of their marriage, of where they
would go after it, and the steps he would take to inform his
father, and the rest, of what had happened. He longed to assure
himself of a tacit assent from her. But each time he looked at her,
he gathered a stronger dread of the new, quiet sadness with which
she met his eyes. And they were more and more silent.