The Mill on the Floss (74 page)

"Here we are in sight of Mudport," he said at last. "Now,
dearest," he added, turning toward her with a look that was half
beseeching, "the worst part of your fatigue is over. On the land we
can command swiftness. In another hour and a half we shall be in a
chaise together, and that will seem rest to you after this."

Maggie felt it was time to speak; it would only be unkind now to
assent by silence. She spoke in the lowest tone, as he had done,
but with distinct decision.

"We shall not be together; we shall have parted."

The blood rushed to Stephen's face.

"We shall not," he said. "I'll die first."

It was as he had dreaded–there was a struggle coming. But
neither of them dared to say another word till the boat was let
down, and they were taken to the landing-place. Here there was a
cluster of gazers and passengers awaiting the departure of the
steamboat to St. Ogg's. Maggie had a dim sense, when she had
landed, and Stephen was hurrying her along on his arm, that some
one had advanced toward her from that cluster as if he were coming
to speak to her. But she was hurried along, and was indifferent to
everything but the coming trial.

A porter guided them to the nearest inn and posting-house, and
Stephen gave the order for the chaise as they passed through the
yard. Maggie took no notice of this, and only said, "Ask them to
show us into a room where we can sit down."

When they entered, Maggie did not sit down, and Stephen, whose
face had a desperate determination in it, was about to ring the
bell, when she said, in a firm voice,–

"I'm not going; we must part here."

"Maggie," he said, turning round toward her, and speaking in the
tones of a man who feels a process of torture beginning, "do you
mean to kill me? What is the use of it now? The whole thing is
done."

"No, it is not done," said Maggie. "Too much is done,–more than
we can ever remove the trace of. But I will go no farther. Don't
try to prevail with me again. I couldn't choose yesterday."

What was he to do? He dared not go near her; her anger might
leap out, and make a new barrier. He walked backward and forward in
maddening perplexity.

"Maggie," he said at last, pausing before her, and speaking in a
tone of imploring wretchedness, "have some pity–hear me–forgive me
for what I did yesterday. I will obey you now; I will do nothing
without your full consent. But don't blight our lives forever by a
rash perversity that can answer no good purpose to any one, that
can only create new evils. Sit down, dearest; wait–think what you
are going to do. Don't treat me as if you couldn't trust me."

He had chosen the most effective appeal; but Maggie's will was
fixed unswervingly on the coming wrench. She had made up her mind
to suffer.

"We must not wait," she said, in a low but distinct voice; "we
must part at once."

"We
can't
part, Maggie," said Stephen, more
impetuously. "I can't bear it. What is the use of inflicting that
misery on me? The blow–whatever it may have been–has been struck
now. Will it help any one else that you should drive me mad?"

"I will not begin any future, even for you," said Maggie,
tremulously, "with a deliberate consent to what ought not to have
been. What I told you at Basset I feel now; I would rather have
died than fall into this temptation. It would have been better if
we had parted forever then. But we must part now."

"We will
not
part," Stephen burst out, instinctively
placing his back against the door, forgetting everything he had
said a few moments before; "I will not endure it. You'll make me
desperate; I sha'n't know what I do."

Maggie trembled. She felt that the parting could not be effected
suddenly. She must rely on a slower appeal to Stephen's better
self; she must be prepared for a harder task than that of rushing
away while resolution was fresh. She sat down. Stephen, watching
her with that look of desperation which had come over him like a
lurid light, approached slowly from the door, seated himself close
beside her, and grasped her hand. Her heart beat like the heart of
a frightened bird; but this direct opposition helped her. She felt
her determination growing stronger.

"Remember what you felt weeks ago," she began, with beseeching
earnestness; "remember what we both felt,–that we owed ourselves to
others, and must conquer every inclination which could make us
false to that debt. We have failed to keep our resolutions; but the
wrong remains the same."

"No, it does
not
remain the same," said Stephen. "We
have proved that it was impossible to keep our resolutions. We have
proved that the feeling which draws us toward each other is too
strong to be overcome. That natural law surmounts every other; we
can't help what it clashes with."

"It is not so, Stephen; I'm quite sure that is wrong. I have
tried to think it again and again; but I see, if we judged in that
way, there would be a warrant for all treachery and cruelty; we
should justify breaking the most sacred ties that can ever be
formed on earth. If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie?
We should have no law but the inclination of the moment."

"But there are ties that can't be kept by mere resolution," said
Stephen, starting up and walking about again. "What is outward
faithfulness? Would they have thanked us for anything so hollow as
constancy without love?"

Maggie did not answer immediately. She was undergoing an inward
as well as an outward contest. At last she said, with a passionate
assertion of her conviction, as much against herself as against
him,–

"That seems right–at first; but when I look further, I'm sure it
is
not
right. Faithfulness and constancy mean something
else besides doing what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves.
They mean renouncing whatever is opposed to the reliance others
have in us,–whatever would cause misery to those whom the course of
our lives has made dependent on us. If we–if I had been better,
nobler, those claims would have been so strongly present with me,–I
should have felt them pressing on my heart so continually, just as
they do now in the moments when my conscience is awake,–that the
opposite feeling would never have grown in me, as it has done; it
would have been quenched at once, I should have prayed for help so
earnestly, I should have rushed away as we rush from hideous
danger. I feel no excuse for myself, none. I should never have
failed toward Lucy and Philip as I have done, if I had not been
weak, selfish, and hard,–able to think of their pain without a pain
to myself that would have destroyed all temptation. Oh, what is
Lucy feeling now? She believed in me–she loved me–she was so good
to me. Think of her––"

Maggie's voice was getting choked as she uttered these last
words.

"I
can't
think of her," said Stephen, stamping as if
with pain. "I can think of nothing but you, Maggie. You demand of a
man what is impossible. I felt that once; but I can't go back to it
now. And where is the use of
your
thinking of it, except
to torture me? You can't save them from pain now; you can only tear
yourself from me, and make my life worthless to me. And even if we
could go back, and both fulfil our engagements,–if that were
possible now,–it would be hateful, horrible, to think of your ever
being Philip's wife,–of your ever being the wife of a man you
didn't love. We have both been rescued from a mistake."

A deep flush came over Maggie's face, and she couldn't speak.
Stephen saw this. He sat down again, taking her hand in his, and
looking at her with passionate entreaty.

"Maggie! Dearest! If you love me, you are mine. Who can have so
great a claim on you as I have? My life is bound up in your love.
There is nothing in the past that can annul our right to each
other; it is the first time we have either of us loved with our
whole heart and soul."

Maggie was still silent for a little while, looking down.
Stephen was in a flutter of new hope; he was going to triumph. But
she raised her eyes and met his with a glance that was filled with
the anguish of regret, not with yielding.

"No, not with my whole heart and soul, Stephen," she said with
timid resolution. "I have never consented to it with my whole mind.
There are memories, and affections, and longings after perfect
goodness, that have such a strong hold on me; they would never quit
me for long; they would come back and be pain to me–repentance. I
couldn't live in peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between
myself and God. I have caused sorrow already–I know–I feel it; but
I have never deliberately consented to it; I have never said, 'They
shall suffer, that I may have joy.' It has never been my will to
marry you; if you were to win consent from the momentary triumph of
my feeling for you, you would not have my whole soul. If I could
wake back again into the time before yesterday, I would choose to
be true to my calmer affections, and live without the joy of
love."

Stephen loosed her hand, and rising impatiently, walked up and
down the room in suppressed rage.

"Good God!" he burst out at last, "what a miserable thing a
woman's love is to a man's! I could commit crimes for you,–and you
can balance and choose in that way. But you
don't
love me;
if you had a tithe of the feeling for me that I have for you, it
would be impossible to you to think for a moment of sacrificing me.
But it weighs nothing with you that you are robbing me of
my
life's happiness."

Maggie pressed her fingers together almost convulsively as she
held them clasped on her lap. A great terror was upon her, as if
she were ever and anon seeing where she stood by great flashes of
lightning, and then again stretched forth her hands in the
darkness.

"No, I don't sacrifice you–I couldn't sacrifice you," she said,
as soon as she could speak again; "but I can't believe in a good
for you, that I feel, that we both feel, is a wrong toward others.
We can't choose happiness either for ourselves or for another; we
can't tell where that will lie. We can only choose whether we will
indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will
renounce that, for the sake of obeying the divine voice within
us,–for the sake of being true to all the motives that sanctify our
lives. I know this belief is hard; it has slipped away from me
again and again; but I have felt that if I let it go forever, I
should have no light through the darkness of this life."

"But, Maggie," said Stephen, seating himself by her again, "is
it possible you don't see that what happened yesterday has altered
the whole position of things? What infatuation is it, what
obstinate prepossession, that blinds you to that? It is too late to
say what we might have done or what we ought to have done.
Admitting the very worst view of what has been done, it is a fact
we must act on now; our position is altered; the right course is no
longer what it was before. We must accept our own actions and start
afresh from them. Suppose we had been married yesterday? It is
nearly the same thing. The effect on others would not have been
different. It would only have made this difference to ourselves,"
Stephen added bitterly, "that you might have acknowledged then that
your tie to me was stronger than to others."

Again a deep flush came over Maggie's face, and she was silent.
Stephen thought again that he was beginning to prevail,–he had
never yet believed that he should
not
prevail; there are
possibilities which our minds shrink from too completely for us to
fear them.

"Dearest," he said, in his deepest, tenderest tone, leaning
toward her, and putting his arm round her, "you
are
mine
now,–the world believes it; duty must spring out of that now.

"In a few hours you will be legally mine, and those who had
claims on us will submit,–they will see that there was a force
which declared against their claims."

Maggie's eyes opened wide in one terrified look at the face that
was close to hers, and she started up, pale again.

"Oh, I can't do it," she said, in a voice almost of agony;
"Stephen, don't ask me–don't urge me. I can't argue any longer,–I
don't know what is wise; but my heart will not let me do it. I
see,–I feel their trouble now; it is as if it were branded on my
mind.
I
have suffered, and had no one to pity me; and now
I have made others suffer. It would never leave me; it would
embitter your love to me. I
do
care for Philip–in a
different way; I remember all we said to each other; I know how he
thought of me as the one promise of his life. He was given to me
that I might make his lot less hard; and I have forsaken him. And
Lucy–she has been deceived; she who trusted me more than any one. I
cannot marry you; I cannot take a good for myself that has been
wrung out of their misery. It is not the force that ought to rule
us,–this that we feel for each other; it would rend me away from
all that my past life has made dear and holy to me. I can't set out
on a fresh life, and forget that; I must go back to it, and cling
to it, else I shall feel as if there were nothing firm beneath my
feet."

"Good God, Maggie!" said Stephen, rising too and grasping her
arm, "you rave. How can you go back without marrying me? You don't
know what will be said, dearest. You see nothing as it really
is."

"Yes, I do. But they will believe me. I will confess everything.
Lucy will believe me–she will forgive you, and–and–oh,
some
good will come by clinging to the right. Dear, dear
Stephen, let me go!–don't drag me into deeper remorse. My whole
soul has never consented; it does not consent now."

Stephen let go her arm, and sank back on his chair, half-stunned
by despairing rage. He was silent a few moments, not looking at
her; while her eyes were turned toward him yearningly, in alarm at
this sudden change. At last he said, still without looking at
her,–