The Mill on the Floss (47 page)

Maggie spoke with more and more sorrowful gentleness as she went
on, and her eyes began to fill with tears. The deepening expression
of pain on Philip's face gave him a stronger resemblance to his
boyish self, and made the deformity appeal more strongly to her
pity.

"I know; I see all that you mean," he said, in a voice that had
become feebler from discouragement; "I know what there is to keep
us apart on both sides. But it is not right, Maggie,–don't you be
angry with me, I am so used to call you Maggie in my thoughts,–it
is not right to sacrifice everything to other people's unreasonable
feelings. I would give up a great deal for
my
father; but
I would not give up a friendship or–or an attachment of any sort,
in obedience to any wish of his that I didn't recognize as
right."

"I don't know," said Maggie, musingly. "Often, when I have been
angry and discontented, it has seemed to me that I was not bound to
give up anything; and I have gone on thinking till it has seemed to
me that I could think away all my duty. But no good has ever come
of that; it was an evil state of mind. I'm quite sure that whatever
I might do, I should wish in the end that I had gone without
anything for myself, rather than have made my father's life harder
to him."

"But would it make his life harder if we were to see each other
sometimes?" said Philip. He was going to say something else, but
checked himself.

"Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't like it. Don't ask me why, or anything
about it," said Maggie, in a distressed tone. "My father feels so
strongly about some things. He is not at all happy."

"No more am I," said Philip, impetuously; "I am not happy."

"Why?" said Maggie, gently. "At least–I ought not to ask–but I'm
very, very sorry."

Philip turned to walk on, as if he had not patience to stand
still any longer, and they went out of the hollow, winding amongst
the trees and bushes in silence. After that last word of Philip's,
Maggie could not bear to insist immediately on their parting.

"I've been a great deal happier," she said at last, timidly,
"since I have given up thinking about what is easy and pleasant,
and being discontented because I couldn't have my own will. Our
life is determined for us; and it makes the mind very free when we
give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us,
and doing what is given us to do."

"But I can't give up wishing," said Philip, impatiently. "It
seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are
thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful
and good, and we
must
hunger after them. How can we ever
be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened? I
delight in fine pictures; I long to be able to paint such. I strive
and strive, and can't produce what I want. That is pain to me, and
always
will
be pain, until my faculties lose their
keenness, like aged eyes. Then there are many other things I long
for,"–here Philip hesitated a little, and then said,–"things that
other men have, and that will always be denied me. My life will
have nothing great or beautiful in it; I would rather not have
lived."

"Oh, Philip," said Maggie, "I wish you didn't feel so." But her
heart began to beat with something of Philip's discontent.

"Well, then," said he, turning quickly round and fixing his gray
eyes entreatingly on her face, "I should be contented to live, if
you would let me see you sometimes." Then, checked by a fear which
her face suggested, he looked away again and said more calmly, "I
have no friend to whom I can tell everything, no one who cares
enough about me; and if I could only see you now and then, and you
would let me talk to you a little, and show me that you cared for
me, and that we may always be friends in heart, and help each
other, then I might come to be glad of life."

"But how can I see you, Philip?" said Maggie, falteringly.
(Could she really do him good? It would be very hard to say
"good-by" this day, and not speak to him again. Here was a new
interest to vary the days; it was so much easier to renounce the
interest before it came.)

"If you would let me see you here sometimes,–walk with you
here,–I would be contented if it were only once or twice in a
month.
That
could injure no one's happiness, and it would
sweeten my life. Besides," Philip went on, with all the inventive
astuteness of love at one-and-twenty, "if there is any enmity
between those who belong to us, we ought all the more to try and
quench it by our friendship; I mean, that by our influence on both
sides we might bring about a healing of the wounds that have been
made in the past, if I could know everything about them. And I
don't believe there is any enmity in my own father's mind; I think
he has proved the contrary."

Maggie shook her head slowly, and was silent, under conflicting
thoughts. It seemed to her inclination, that to see Philip now and
then, and keep up the bond of friendship with him, was something
not only innocent, but good; perhaps she might really help him to
find contentment as she had found it. The voice that said this made
sweet music to Maggie; but athwart it there came an urgent,
monotonous warning from another voice which she had been learning
to obey,–the warning that such interviews implied secrecy; implied
doing something she would dread to be discovered in, something
that, if discovered, must cause anger and pain; and that the
admission of anything so near doubleness would act as a spiritual
blight. Yet the music would swell out again, like chimes borne
onward by a recurrent breeze, persuading her that the wrong lay all
in the faults and weaknesses of others, and that there was such a
thing as futile sacrifice for one to the injury of another. It was
very cruel for Philip that he should be shrunk from, because of an
unjustifiable vindictiveness toward his father,–poor Philip, whom
some people would shrink from only because he was deformed. The
idea that he might become her lover or that her meeting him could
cause disapproval in that light, had not occurred to her; and
Philip saw the absence of this idea clearly enough, saw it with a
certain pang, although it made her consent to his request the less
unlikely. There was bitterness to him in the perception that Maggie
was almost as frank and unconstrained toward him as when she was a
child.

"I can't say either yes or no," she said at last, turning round
and walking toward the way she come; "I must wait, lest I should
decide wrongly. I must seek for guidance."

"May I come again, then, to-morrow, or the next day, or next
week?"

"I think I had better write," said Maggie, faltering again. "I
have to go to St. Ogg's sometimes, and I can put the letter in the
post."

"Oh no," said Philip eagerly; "that would not be so well. My
father might see the letter–and–he has not any enmity, I believe,
but he views things differently from me; he thinks a great deal
about wealth and position. Pray let me come here once more.
Tell
me when it shall be; or if you can't tell me, I will
come as often as I can till I do see you."

"I think it must be so, then," said Maggie, "for I can't be
quite certain of coming here any particular evening."

Maggie felt a great relief in adjourning the decision. She was
free now to enjoy the minutes of companionship; she almost thought
she might linger a little; the next time they met she should have
to pain Philip by telling him her determination.

"I can't help thinking," she said, looking smilingly at him,
after a few moments of silence, "how strange it is that we should
have met and talked to each other, just as if it had been only
yesterday when we parted at Lorton. And yet we must both be very
much altered in those five years,–I think it is five years. How was
it you seemed to have a sort of feeling that I was the same Maggie?
I was not quite so sure that you would be the same; I know you are
so clever, and you must have seen and learnt so much to fill your
mind; I was not quite sure you would care about me now."

"I have never had any doubt that you would be the same, whenever
I migh see you," said Philip,–"I mean, the same in everything that
made me like you better than any one else. I don't want to explain
that; I don't think any of the strongest effects our natures are
susceptible of can ever be explained. We can neither detect the
process by which they are arrived at, nor the mode in which they
act on us. The greatest of painters only once painted a
mysteriously divine child; he couldn't have told how he did it, and
we can't tell why we feel it to be divine. I think there are stores
laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no
complete inventory of. Certain strains of music affect me so
strangely; I can never hear them without their changing my whole
attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might
be capable of heroisms."

"Ah! I know what you mean about music;
I
feel so," said
Maggie, clasping her hands with her old impetuosity. "At least,"
she added, in a saddened tone, "I used to feel so when I had any
music; I never have any now except the organ at church."

"And you long for it, Maggie?" said Philip, looking at her with
affectionate pity. "Ah, you can have very little that is beautiful
in your life. Have you many books? You were so fond of them when
you were a little girl."

They were come back to the hollow, round which the dog-roses
grew, and they both paused under the charm of the faëry evening
light, reflected from the pale pink clusters.

"No, I have given up books," said Maggie, quietly, "except a
very, very few."

Philip had already taken from his pocket a small volume, and was
looking at the back as he said:

"Ah, this is the second volume, I see, else you might have liked
to take it home with you. I put it in my pocket because I am
studying a scene for a picture."

Maggie had looked at the back too, and saw the title; it revived
an old impression with overmastering force.

"'The Pirate,'" she said, taking the book from Philip's hands.
"Oh, I began that once; I read to where Minna is walking with
Cleveland, and I could never get to read the rest. I went on with
it in my own head, and I made several endings; but they were all
unhappy. I could never make a happy ending out of that beginning.
Poor Minna! I wonder what is the real end. For a long while I
couldn't get my mind away from the Shetland Isles,–I used to feel
the wind blowing on me from the rough sea."

Maggie spoke rapidly, with glistening eyes.

"Take that volume home with you, Maggie," said Philip, watching
her with delight. "I don't want it now. I shall make a picture of
you instead,–you, among the Scotch firs and the slanting
shadows."

Maggie had not heard a word he had said; she was absorbed in a
page at which she had opened. But suddenly she closed the book, and
gave it back to Philip, shaking her head with a backward movement,
as if to say "avaunt" to floating visions.

"Do keep it, Maggie," said Philip, entreatingly; "it will give
you pleasure."

"No, thank you," said Maggie, putting it aside with her hand and
walking on. "It would make me in love with this world again, as I
used to be; it would make me long to see and know many things; it
would make me long for a full life."

"But you will not always be shut up in your present lot; why
should you starve your mind in that way? It is narrow asceticism; I
don't like to see you persisting in it, Maggie. Poetry and art and
knowledge are sacred and pure."

"But not for me, not for me," said Maggie, walking more
hurriedly; "because I should want too much. I must wait; this life
will not last long."

"Don't hurry away from me without saying 'good-by,' Maggie,"
said Philip, as they reached the group of Scotch firs, and she
continued still to walk along without speaking. "I must not go any
farther, I think, must I?"

"Oh no, I forgot; good-by," said Maggie, pausing, and putting
out her hand to him. The action brought her feeling back in a
strong current to Philip; and after they had stood looking at each
other in silence for a few moments, with their hands clasped, she
said, withdrawing her hand:

"I'm very grateful to you for thinking of me all those years. It
is very sweet to have people love us. What a wonderful, beautiful
thing it seems that God should have made your heart so that you
could care about a queer little girl whom you only knew for a few
weeks! I remember saying to you that I thought you cared for me
more than Tom did."

"Ah, Maggie," said Philip, almost fretfully, "you would never
love me so well as you love your brother."

"Perhaps not," said Maggie, simply; "but then, you know, the
first thing I ever remember in my life is standing with Tom by the
side of the Floss, while he held my hand; everything before that is
dark to me. But I shall never forget you, though we must keep
apart."

"Don't say so, Maggie," said Philip. "If I kept that little girl
in my mind for five years, didn't I earn some part in her? She
ought not to take herself quite away from me."

"Not if I were free," said Maggie; "but I am not, I must
submit." She hesitated a moment, and then added, "And I wanted to
say to you, that you had better not take more notice of my brother
than just bowing to him. He once told me not to speak to you again,
and he doesn't change his mind–Oh dear, the sun is set. I am too
long away. Good-by." She gave him her hand once more.

"I shall come here as often as I can till I see you again,
Maggie. Have some feeling for
me
as well as for
others."

"Yes, yes, I have," said Maggie, hurrying away, and quickly
disappearing behind the last fir-tree; though Philip's gaze after
her remained immovable for minutes as if he saw her still.