The Mill on the Floss (18 page)

Maggie felt that it was impossible she should ever be queen of
these people, or ever communicate to them amusing and useful
knowledge.

Both the men now seemed to be inquiring about Maggie, for they
looked at her, and the tone of the conversation became of that
pacific kind which implies curiosity on one side and the power of
satisfying it on the other. At last the younger woman said in her
previous deferential, coaxing tone,–

"This nice little lady's come to live with us; aren't you
glad?"

"Ay, very glad," said the younger man, who was looking at
Maggie's silver thimble and other small matters that had been taken
from her pocket. He returned them all except the thimble to the
younger woman, with some observation, and she immediately restored
them to Maggie's pocket, while the men seated themselves, and began
to attack the contents of the kettle,–a stew of meat and
potatoes,–which had been taken off the fire and turned out into a
yellow platter.

Maggie began to think that Tom must be right about the gypsies;
they must certainly be thieves, unless the man meant to return her
thimble by and by. She would willingly have given it to him, for
she was not at all attached to her thimble; but the idea that she
was among thieves prevented her from feeling any comfort in the
revival of deference and attention toward her; all thieves, except
Robin Hood, were wicked people. The women saw she was
frightened.

"We've got nothing nice for a lady to eat," said the old woman,
in her coaxing tone. "And she's so hungry, sweet little lady."

"Here, my dear, try if you can eat a bit o' this," said the
younger woman, handing some of the stew on a brown dish with an
iron spoon to Maggie, who, remembering that the old woman had
seemed angry with her for not liking the bread-and-bacon, dared not
refuse the stew, though fear had chased away her appetite. If her
father would but come by in the gig and take her up! Or even if
Jack the Giantkiller, or Mr. Greatheart, or St. George who slew the
dragon on the half-pennies, would happen to pass that way! But
Maggie thought with a sinking heart that these heroes were never
seen in the neighborhood of St. Ogg's; nothing very wonderful ever
came there.

Maggie Tulliver, you perceive, was by no means that well
trained, well-informed young person that a small female of eight or
nine necessarily is in these days; she had only been to school a
year at St. Ogg's, and had so few books that she sometimes read the
dictionary; so that in travelling over her small mind you would
have found the most unexpected ignorance as well as unexpected
knowledge. She could have informed you that there was such a word
as "polygamy," and being also acquainted with "polysyllable," she
had deduced the conclusion that "poly" mean "many"; but she had had
no idea that gypsies were not well supplied with groceries, and her
thoughts generally were the oddest mixture of clear-eyed acumen and
blind dreams.

Her ideas about the gypsies had undergone a rapid modification
in the last five minutes. From having considered them very
respectful companions, amenable to instruction, she had begun to
think that they meant perhaps to kill her as soon as it was dark,
and cut up her body for gradual cooking; the suspicion crossed her
that the fierce-eyed old man was in fact the Devil, who might drop
that transparent disguise at any moment, and turn either into the
grinning blacksmith, or else a fiery-eyed monster with dragon's
wings. It was no use trying to eat the stew, and yet the thing she
most dreaded was to offend the gypsies, by betraying her extremely
unfavorable opinion of them; and she wondered, with a keenness of
interest that no theologian could have exceeded, whether, if the
Devil were really present, he would know her thoughts.

"What! you don't like the smell of it, my dear," said the young
woman, observing that Maggie did not even take a spoonful of the
stew. "Try a bit, come."

"No, thank you," said Maggie, summoning all her force for a
desperate effort, and trying to smile in a friendly way. "I haven't
time, I think; it seems getting darker. I think I must go home now,
and come again another day, and then I can bring you a basket with
some jam-tarts and things."

Maggie rose from her seat as she threw out this illusory
prospect, devoutly hoping that Apollyon was gullible; but her hope
sank when the old gypsy-woman said, "Stop a bit, stop a bit, little
lady; we'll take you home, all safe, when we've done supper; you
shall ride home, like a lady."

Maggie sat down again, with little faith in this promise, though
she presently saw the tall girl putting a bridle on the donkey, and
throwing a couple of bags on his back.

"Now, then, little missis," said the younger man, rising, and
leading the donkey forward, "tell us where you live; what's the
name o' the place?"

"Dorlcote Mill is my home," said Maggie, eagerly. "My father is
Mr. Tulliver; he lives there."

"What! a big mill a little way this side o' St. Ogg's?"

"Yes," said Maggie. "Is it far off? I think I should like to
walk there, if you please."

"No, no, it'll be getting dark, we must make haste. And the
donkey'll carry you as nice as can be; you'll see."

He lifted Maggie as he spoke, and set her on the donkey. She
felt relieved that it was not the old man who seemed to be going
with her, but she had only a trembling hope that she was really
going home.

"Here's your pretty bonnet," said the younger woman, putting
that recently despised but now welcome article of costume on
Maggie's head; "and you'll say we've been very good to you, won't
you? and what a nice little lady we said you was."

"Oh yes, thank you," said Maggie, "I'm very much obliged to you.
But I wish you'd go with me too." She thought anything was better
than going with one of the dreadful men alone; it would be more
cheerful to be murdered by a larger party.

"Ah, you're fondest o'
me
, aren't you?" said the woman.
"But I can't go; you'll go too fast for me."

It now appeared that the man also was to be seated on the
donkey, holding Maggie before him, and she was as incapable of
remonstrating against this arrangement as the donkey himself,
though no nightmare had ever seemed to her more horrible. When the
woman had patted her on the back, and said "Good-by," the donkey,
at a strong hint from the man's stick, set off at a rapid walk
along the lane toward the point Maggie had come from an hour ago,
while the tall girl and the rough urchin, also furnished with
sticks, obligingly escorted them for the first hundred yards, with
much screaming and thwacking.

Not Leonore, in that preternatural midnight excursion with her
phantom lover, was more terrified than poor Maggie in this entirely
natural ride on a short-paced donkey, with a gypsy behind her, who
considered that he was earning half a crown. The red light of the
setting sun seemed to have a portentous meaning, with which the
alarming bray of the second donkey with the log on its foot must
surely have some connection. Two low thatched cottages–the only
houses they passed in this lane–seemed to add to its dreariness;
they had no windows to speak of, and the doors were closed; it was
probable that they were inhabitated by witches, and it was a relief
to find that the donkey did not stop there.

At last–oh, sight of joy!–this lane, the longest in the world,
was coming to an end, was opening on a broad highroad, where there
was actually a coach passing! And there was a finger-post at the
corner,–she had surely seen that finger-post before,–"To St. Ogg's,
2 miles." The gypsy really meant to take her home, then; he was
probably a good man, after all, and might have been rather hurt at
the thought that she didn't like coming with him alone. This idea
became stronger as she felt more and more certain that she knew the
road quite well, and she was considering how she might open a
conversation with the injured gypsy, and not only gratify his
feelings but efface the impression of her cowardice, when, as they
reached a cross-road. Maggie caught sight of some one coming on a
white-faced horse.

"Oh, stop, stop!" she cried out. "There's my father! Oh, father,
father!"

The sudden joy was almost painful, and before her father reached
her, she was sobbing. Great was Mr. Tulliver's wonder, for he had
made a round from Basset, and had not yet been home.

"Why, what's the meaning o' this?" he said, checking his horse,
while Maggie slipped from the donkey and ran to her father's
stirrup.

"The little miss lost herself, I reckon," said the gypsy. "She'd
come to our tent at the far end o' Dunlow Lane, and I was bringing
her where she said her home was. It's a good way to come after
being on the tramp all day."

"Oh yes, father, he's been very good to bring me home," said
Maggie,–"a very kind, good man!"

"Here, then, my man," said Mr. Tulliver, taking out five
shillings. "It's the best day's work
you
ever did. I
couldn't afford to lose the little wench; here, lift her up before
me."

"Why, Maggie, how's this, how's this?" he said, as they rode
along, while she laid her head against her father and sobbed. "How
came you to be rambling about and lose yourself?"

"Oh, father," sobbed Maggie, "I ran away because I was so
unhappy; Tom was so angry with me. I couldn't bear it."

"Pooh, pooh," said Mr. Tulliver, soothingly, "you mustn't think
o' running away from father. What 'ud father do without his little
wench?"

"Oh no, I never will again, father–never."

Mr. Tulliver spoke his mind very strongly when he reached home
that evening; and the effect was seen in the remarkable fact that
Maggie never heard one reproach from her mother, or one taunt from
Tom, about this foolish business of her running away to the
gypsies. Maggie was rather awe-stricken by this unusual treatment,
and sometimes thought that her conduct had been too wicked to be
alluded to.

Chapter XII
Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at Home

In order to see Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at home, we must enter the
town of St. Ogg's,–that venerable town with the red fluted roofs
and the broad warehouse gables, where the black ships unlade
themselves of their burthens from the far north, and carry away, in
exchange, the precious inland products, the well-crushed cheese and
the soft fleeces which my refined readers have doubtless become
acquainted with through the medium of the best classic
pastorals.

It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a
continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the
bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town
which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a
millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot
between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman
legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and
the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce,
eager eyes at the fatness of the land. It is a town "familiar with
forgotten years." The shadow of the Saxon hero-king still walks
there fitfully, reviewing the scenes of his youth and love-time,
and is met by the gloomier shadow of the dreadful heathen Dane, who
was stabbed in the midst of his warriors by the sword of an
invisible avenger, and who rises on autumn evenings like a white
mist from his tumulus on the hill, and hovers in the court of the
old hall by the river-side, the spot where he was thus miraculously
slain in the days before the old hall was built. It was the Normans
who began to build that fine old hall, which is, like the town,
telling of the thoughts and hands of widely sundered generations;
but it is all so old that we look with loving pardon at its
inconsistencies, and are well content that they who built the stone
oriel, and they who built the Gothic façade and towers of finest
small brickwork with the trefoil ornament, and the windows and
battlements defined with stone, did not sacreligiously pull down
the ancient half-timbered body with its oak-roofed
banqueting-hall.

But older even than this old hall is perhaps the bit of wall now
built into the belfry of the parish church, and said to be a
remnant of the original chapel dedicated to St. Ogg, the patron
saint of this ancient town, of whose history I possess several
manuscript versions. I incline to the briefest, since, if it should
not be wholly true, it is at least likely to contain the least
falsehood. "Ogg the son of Beorl," says my private hagiographer,
"was a boatman who gained a scanty living by ferrying passengers
across the river Floss. And it came to pass, one evening when the
winds were high, that there sat moaning by the brink of the river a
woman with a child in her arms; and she was clad in rags, and had a
worn and withered look, and she craved to be rowed across the
river. And the men thereabout questioned her, and said, 'Wherefore
dost thou desire to cross the river? Tarry till the morning, and
take shelter here for the night; so shalt thou be wise and not
foolish.' Still she went on to mourn and crave. But Ogg the son of
Beorl came up and said, 'I will ferry thee across; it is enough
that thy heart needs it.' And he ferried her across. And it came to
pass, when she stepped ashore, that her rags were turned into robes
of flowing white, and her face became bright with exceeding beauty,
and there was a glory around it, so that she shed a light on the
water like the moon in its brightness. And she said, 'Ogg, the son
of Beorl, thou art blessed in that thou didst not question and
wrangle with the heart's need, but wast smitten with pity, and
didst straightway relieve the same. And from henceforth whoso steps
into thy boat shall be in no peril from the storm; and whenever it
puts forth to the rescue, it shall save the lives both of men and
beasts.' And when the floods came, many were saved by reason of
that blessing on the boat. But when Ogg the son of Beorl died,
behold, in the parting of his soul, the boat loosed itself from its
moorings, and was floated with the ebbing tide in great swiftness
to the ocean, and was seen no more. Yet it was witnessed in the
floods of aftertime, that at the coming on of eventide, Ogg the son
of Beorl was always seen with his boat upon the wide-spreading
waters, and the Blessed Virgin sat in the prow, shedding a light
around as of the moon in its brightness, so that the rowers in the
gathering darkness took heart and pulled anew."