The Mill on the Floss (56 page)

Tom, tired out by his active day, fell asleep soon, and slept
soundly; it seemed to him as if he had only just come to bed, when
he waked to see his mother standing by him in the gray light of
early morning.

"My boy, you must get up this minute; I've sent for the doctor,
and your father wants you and Maggie to come to him."

"Is he worse, mother?"

"He's been very ill all night with his head, but he doesn't say
it's worse; he only said suddenly, 'Bessy, fetch the boy and girl.
Tell 'em to make haste.'"

Maggie and Tom threw on their clothes hastily in the chill gray
light, and reached their father's room almost at the same moment.
He was watching for them with an expression of pain on his brow,
but with sharpened, anxious consciousness in his eyes. Mrs.
Tulliver stood at the foot of the bed, frightened and trembling,
looking worn and aged from disturbed rest. Maggie was at the
bedside first, but her father's glance was toward Tom, who came and
stood next to her.

"Tom, my lad, it's come upon me as I sha'n't get up again. This
world's been too many for me, my lad, but you've done what you
could to make things a bit even. Shake hands wi' me again, my lad,
before I go away from you."

The father and son clasped hands and looked at each other an
instant. Then Tom said, trying to speak firmly,–

"Have you any wish, father–that I can fulfil, when––"

"Ay, my lad–you'll try and get the old mill back."

"Yes, father."

"And there's your mother–you'll try and make her amends, all you
can, for my bad luck–and there's the little wench––"

The father turned his eyes on Maggie with a still more eager
look, while she, with a bursting heart, sank on her knees, to be
closer to the dear, time-worn face which had been present with her
through long years, as the sign of her deepest love and hardest
trial.

"You must take care of her, Tom–don't you fret, my
wench–there'll come somebody as'll love you and take your part–and
you must be good to her, my lad. I was good to
my
sister.
Kiss me, Maggie.–Come, Bessy.–You'll manage to pay for a brick
grave, Tom, so as your mother and me can lie together."

He looked away from them all when he had said this, and lay
silent for some minutes, while they stood watching him, not daring
to move. The morning light was growing clearer for them, and they
could see the heaviness gathering in his face, and the dulness in
his eyes. But at last he looked toward Tom and said,–

"I had my turn–I beat him. That was nothing but fair. I never
wanted anything but what was fair."

"But, father, dear father," said Maggie, an unspeakable anxiety
predominating over her grief, "you forgive him–you forgive every
one now?"

He did not move his eyes to look at her, but he said,–

"No, my wench. I don't forgive him. What's forgiving to do? I
can't love a raskill––"

His voice had become thicker; but he wanted to say more, and
moved his lips again and again, struggling in vain to speak. At
length the words forced their way.

"Does God forgive raskills?–but if He does, He won't be hard wi'
me."

His hands moved uneasily, as if he wanted them to remove some
obstruction that weighed upon him. Two or three times there fell
from him some broken words,–

"This world's–too many–honest man–puzzling––"

Soon they merged into mere mutterings; the eyes had ceased to
discern; and then came the final silence.

But not of death. For an hour or more the chest heaved, the
loud, hard breathing continued, getting gradually slower, as the
cold dews gathered on the brow.

At last there was total stillness, and poor Tulliver's dimly
lighted soul had forever ceased to be vexed with the painful riddle
of this world.

Help was come now; Luke and his wife were there, and Mr.
Turnbull had arrived, too late for everything but to say, "This is
death."

Tom and Maggie went downstairs together into the room where
their father's place was empty. Their eyes turned to the same spot,
and Maggie spoke,–

"Tom, forgive me–let us always love each other"; and they clung
and wept together.

Book VI
The Great Temptation

Chapter I
A Duet in Paradise

The well-furnished drawing-room, with the open grand piano, and
the pleasant outlook down a sloping garden to a boat-house by the
side of the Floss, is Mr. Deane's. The neat little lady in
mourning, whose light-brown ringlets are falling over the colored
embroidery with which her fingers are busy, is of course Lucy
Deane; and the fine young man who is leaning down from his chair to
snap the scissors in the extremely abbreviated face of the "King
Charles" lying on the young lady's feet is no other than Mr.
Stephen Guest, whose diamond ring, attar of roses, and air of
nonchalant
leisure, at twelve o'clock in the day, are the
graceful and odoriferous result of the largest oil-mill and the
most extensive wharf in St. Ogg's. There is an apparent triviality
in the action with the scissors, but your discernment perceives at
once that there is a design in it which makes it eminently worthy
of a large-headed, long-limbed young man; for you see that Lucy
wants the scissors, and is compelled, reluctant as she may be, to
shake her ringlets back, raise her soft hazel eyes, smile playfully
down on the face that is so very nearly on a level with her knee,
and holding out her little shell-pink palm, to say,–

"My scissors, please, if you can renounce the great pleasure of
persecuting my poor Minny."

The foolish scissors have slipped too far over the knuckles, it
seems, and Hercules holds out his entrapped fingers hopelessly.

"Confound the scissors! The oval lies the wrong way. Please draw
them off for me."

"Draw them off with your other hand," says Miss Lucy,
roguishly.

"Oh, but that's my left hand; I'm not left-handed."

Lucy laughs, and the scissors are drawn off with gentle touches
from tiny tips, which naturally dispose Mr. Stephen for a
repetition
da capo
. Accordingly, he watches for the
release of the scissors, that he may get them into his possession
again.

"No, no," said Lucy, sticking them in her band, "you shall not
have my scissors again,–you have strained them already. Now don't
set Minny growling again. Sit up and behave properly, and then I
will tell you some news."

"What is that?" said Stephen, throwing himself back and hanging
his right arm over the corner of his chair. He might have been
sitting for his portrait, which would have represented a rather
striking young man of five-and-twenty, with a square forehead,
short dark-brown hair, standing erect, with a slight wave at the
end, like a thick crop of corn, and a half-ardent, half-sarcastic
glance from under his well-marked horizontal eyebrows. "Is it very
important news?"

"Yes, very. Guess."

"You are going to change Minny's diet, and give him three
ratafias soaked in a dessert-spoonful of cream daily?"

"Quite wrong."

"Well, then, Dr. Kenn has been preaching against buckram, and
you ladies have all been sending him a roundrobin, saying, 'This is
a hard doctrine; who can bear it?'"

"For shame!" said Lucy, adjusting her little mouth gravely. "It
is rather dull of you not to guess my news, because it is about
something I mentioned to you not very long ago."

"But you have mentioned many things to me not long ago. Does
your feminine tyranny require that when you say the thing you mean
is one of several things, I should know it immediately by that
mark?"

"Yes, I know you think I am silly."

"I think you are perfectly charming."

"And my silliness is part of my charm?"

"I didn't say
that
."

"But I know you like women to be rather insipid. Philip Wakem
betrayed you; he said so one day when you were not here."

"Oh, I know Phil is fierce on that point; he makes it quite a
personal matter. I think he must be love-sick for some unknown
lady,–some exalted Beatrice whom he met abroad."

"By the by," said Lucy, pausing in her work, "it has just
occurred to me that I never found out whether my cousin Maggie will
object to see Philip, as her brother does. Tom will not enter a
room where Philip is, if he knows it; perhaps Maggie may be the
same, and then we sha'n't be able to sing our glees, shall we?"

"What! is your cousin coming to stay with you?" said Stephen,
with a look of slight annoyance.

"Yes; that was my news, which you have forgotten. She's going to
leave her situation, where she has been nearly two years, poor
thing,–ever since her father's death; and she will stay with me a
month or two,–many months, I hope."

"And am I bound to be pleased at that news?"

"Oh no, not at all," said Lucy, with a little air of pique.
"
I
am pleased, but that, of course, is no reason why
you
should be pleased. There is no girl in the world I
love so well as my cousin Maggie."

"And you will be inseparable I suppose, when she comes. There
will be no possibility of a
tête-à-tête
with you any more,
unless you can find an admirer for her, who will pair off with her
occasionally. What is the ground of dislike to Philip? He might
have been a resource."

"It is a family quarrel with Philip's father. There were very
painful circumstances, I believe. I never quite understood them, or
knew them all. My uncle Tulliver was unfortunate and lost all his
property, and I think he considered Mr. Wakem was somehow the cause
of it. Mr. Wakem bought Dorlcote Mill, my uncle's old place, where
he always lived. You must remember my uncle Tulliver, don't
you?"

"No," said Stephen, with rather supercilious indifference. "I've
always known the name, and I dare say I knew the man by sight,
apart from his name. I know half the names and faces in the
neighborhood in that detached, disjointed way."

"He was a very hot-tempered man. I remember, when I was a little
girl and used to go to see my cousins, he often frightened me by
talking as if he were angry. Papa told me there was a dreadful
quarrel, the very day before my uncle's death, between him and Mr.
Wakem, but it was hushed up. That was when you were in London. Papa
says my uncle was quite mistaken in many ways; his mind had become
embittered. But Tom and Maggie must naturally feel it very painful
to be reminded of these things. They have had so much, so very much
trouble. Maggie was at school with me six years ago, when she was
fetched away because of her father's misfortunes, and she has
hardly had any pleasure since, I think. She has been in a dreary
situation in a school since uncle's death, because she is
determined to be independent, and not live with aunt Pullet; and I
could hardly wish her to come to me then, because dear mamma was
ill, and everything was so sad. That is why I want her to come to
me now, and have a long, long holiday."

"Very sweet and angelic of you," said Stephen, looking at her
with an admiring smile; "and all the more so if she has the
conversational qualities of her mother."

"Poor aunty! You are cruel to ridicule her. She is very valuable
to
me
, I know. She manages the house beautifully,–much
better than any stranger would,–and she was a great comfort to me
in mamma's illness."

"Yes, but in point of companionship one would prefer that she
should be represented by her brandy-cherries and cream-cakes. I
think with a shudder that her daughter will always be present in
person, and have no agreeable proxies of that kind,–a fat, blond
girl, with round blue eyes, who will stare at us silently."

"Oh yes!" exclaimed Lucy, laughing wickedly, and clapping her
hands, "that is just my cousin Maggie. You must have seen her!"

"No, indeed; I'm only guessing what Mrs. Tulliver's daughter
must be; and then if she is to banish Philip, our only apology for
a tenor, that will be an additional bore."

"But I hope that may not be. I think I will ask you to call on
Philip and tell him Maggie is coming to-morrow. He is quite aware
of Tom's feeling, and always keeps out of his way; so he will
understand, if you tell him, that I asked you to warn him not to
come until I write to ask him."

"I think you had better write a pretty note for me to take; Phil
is so sensitive, you know, the least thing might frighten him off
coming at all, and we had hard work to get him. I can never induce
him to come to the park; he doesn't like my sisters, I think. It is
only your faëry touch that can lay his ruffled feathers."

Stephen mastered the little hand that was straying toward the
table, and touched it lightly with his lips. Little Lucy felt very
proud and happy. She and Stephen were in that stage of courtship
which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest
blossom-time of passion,–when each is sure of the other's love, but
no formal declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination,
exalting the most trivial word, the lightest gesture, into thrills
delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent. The explicitness of
an engagement wears off this finest edge of susceptibility; it is
jasmine gathered and presented in a large bouquet.

"But it is really odd that you should have hit so exactly on
Maggie's appearance and manners," said the cunning Lucy, moving to
reach her desk, "because she might have been like her brother, you
know; and Tom has not round eyes; and he is as far as possible from
staring at people."

"Oh, I suppose he is like the father; he seems to be as proud as
Lucifer. Not a brilliant companion, though, I should think."

"I like Tom. He gave me my Minny when I lost Lolo; and papa is
very fond of him: he says Tom has excellent principles. It was
through him that his father was able to pay all his debts before he
died."