The Mill on the Floss (57 page)

"Oh, ah; I've heard about that. I heard your father and mine
talking about it a little while ago, after dinner, in one of their
interminable discussions about business. They think of doing
something for young Tulliver; he saved them from a considerable
loss by riding home in some marvellous way, like Turpin, to bring
them news about the stoppage of a bank, or something of that sort.
But I was rather drowsy at the time."

Stephen rose from his seat, and sauntered to the piano, humming
in falsetto, "Graceful Consort," as he turned over the volume of
"The Creation," which stood open on the desk.

"Come and sing this," he said, when he saw Lucy rising.

"What, 'Graceful Consort'? I don't think it suits your
voice."

"Never mind; it exactly suits my feeling, which, Philip will
have it, is the grand element of good singing. I notice men with
indifferent voices are usually of that opinion."

"Philip burst into one of his invectives against 'The Creation'
the other day," said Lucy, seating herself at the piano. "He says
it has a sort of sugared complacency and flattering make-believe in
it, as if it were written for the birthday
fête
of a
German Grand-Duke."

"Oh, pooh! He is the fallen Adam with a soured temper. We are
Adam and Eve unfallen, in Paradise. Now, then,–the recitative, for
the sake of the moral. You will sing the whole duty of woman,–'And
from obedience grows my pride and happiness.'"

"Oh no, I shall not respect an Adam who drags the
tempo
, as you will," said Lucy, beginning to play the
duet.

Surely the only courtship unshaken by doubts and fears must be
that in which the lovers can sing together. The sense of mutual
fitness that springs from the two deep notes fulfilling expectation
just at the right moment between the notes of the silvery soprano,
from the perfect accord of descending thirds and fifths, from the
preconcerted loving chase of a fugue, is likely enough to supersede
any immediate demand for less impassioned forms of agreement. The
contralto will not care to catechise the bass; the tenor will
foresee no embarrassing dearth of remark in evenings spent with the
lovely soprano. In the provinces, too, where music was so scarce in
that remote time, how could the musical people avoid falling in
love with each other? Even political principle must have been in
danger of relaxation under such circumstances; and the violin,
faithful to rotten boroughs, must have been tempted to fraternize
in a demoralizing way with a reforming violoncello. In that case,
the linnet-throated soprano and the full-toned bass singing,–

"With thee delight is ever new,
With thee is life incessant bliss,"

believed what they sang all the more
because
they sang
it.

"Now for Raphael's great song," said Lucy, when they had
finished the duet. "You do the 'heavy beasts' to perfection."

"That sounds complimentary," said Stephen, looking at his watch.
"By Jove, it's nearly half-past one! Well, I can just sing
this."

Stephen delivered with admirable ease the deep notes
representing the tread of the heavy beasts; but when a singer has
an audience of two, there is room for divided sentiments. Minny's
mistress was charmed; but Minny, who had intrenched himself,
trembling, in his basket as soon as the music began, found this
thunder so little to his taste that he leaped out and scampered
under the remotest
chiffonnier
, as the most eligible place
in which a small dog could await the crack of doom.

"Adieu, 'graceful consort,'" said Stephen, buttoning his coat
across when he had done singing, and smiling down from his tall
height, with the air of rather a patronizing lover, at the little
lady on the music-stool. "My bliss is not incessant, for I must
gallop home. I promised to be there at lunch."

"You will not be able to call on Philip, then? It is of no
consequence; I have said everything in my note."

"You will be engaged with your cousin to-morrow, I suppose?"

"Yes, we are going to have a little family-party. My cousin Tom
will dine with us; and poor aunty will have her two children
together for the first time. It will be very pretty; I think a
great deal about it."

"But I may come the next day?"

"Oh yes! Come and be introduced to my cousin Maggie; though you
can hardly be said not to have seen her, you have described her so
well."

"Good-bye, then." And there was that slight pressure of the
hands, and momentary meeting of the eyes, which will often leave a
little lady with a slight flush and smile on her face that do not
subside immediately when the door is closed, and with an
inclination to walk up and down the room rather than to seat
herself quietly at her embroidery, or other rational and improving
occupation. At least this was the effect on Lucy; and you will not,
I hope, consider it an indication of vanity predominating over more
tender impulses, that she just glanced in the chimney-glass as her
walk brought her near it. The desire to know that one has not
looked an absolute fright during a few hours of conversation may be
construed as lying within the bounds of a laudable benevolent
consideration for others. And Lucy had so much of this benevolence
in her nature that I am inclined to think her small egoisms were
impregnated with it, just as there are people not altogether
unknown to you whose small benevolences have a predominant and
somewhat rank odor of egoism. Even now, that she is walking up and
down with a little triumphant flutter of her girlish heart at the
sense that she is loved by the person of chief consequence in her
small world, you may see in her hazel eyes an ever-present sunny
benignity, in which the momentary harmless flashes of personal
vanity are quite lost; and if she is happy in thinking of her
lover, it is because the thought of him mingles readily with all
the gentle affections and good-natured offices with which she fills
her peaceful days. Even now, her mind, with that instantaneous
alternation which makes two currents of feeling or imagination seem
simultaneous, is glancing continually from Stephen to the
preparations she has only half finished in Maggie's room. Cousin
Maggie should be treated as well as the grandest lady-visitor,–nay,
better, for she should have Lucy's best prints and drawings in her
bedroom, and the very finest bouquet of spring flowers on her
table. Maggie would enjoy all that, she was so found of pretty
things! And there was poor aunt Tulliver, that no one made any
account of, she was to be surprised with the present of a cap of
superlative quality, and to have her health drunk in a gratifying
manner, for which Lucy was going to lay a plot with her father this
evening. Clearly, she had not time to indulge in long reveries
about her own happy love-affairs. With this thought she walked
toward the door, but paused there.

"What's the matter, then, Minny?" she said, stooping in answer
to some whimpering of that small quadruped, and lifting his glossy
head against her pink cheek. "Did you think I was going without
you? Come, then, let us go and see Sinbad."

Sinbad was Lucy's chestnut horse, that she always fed with her
own hand when he was turned out in the paddock. She was fond of
feeding dependent creatures, and knew the private tastes of all the
animals about the house, delighting in the little rippling sounds
of her canaries when their beaks were busy with fresh seed, and in
the small nibbling pleasures of certain animals which, lest she
should appear too trivial, I will here call "the more familiar
rodents."

Was not Stephen Guest right in his decided opinion that this
slim maiden of eighteen was quite the sort of wife a man would not
be likely to repent of marrying,–a woman who was loving and
thoughtful for other women, not giving them Judas-kisses with eyes
askance on their welcome defects, but with real care and vision for
their half-hidden pains and mortifications, with long ruminating
enjoyment of little pleasures prepared for them? Perhaps the
emphasis of his admiration did not fall precisely on this rarest
quality in her; perhaps he approved his own choice of her chiefly
because she did not strike him as a remarkable rarity. A man likes
his wife to be pretty; well, Lucy was pretty, but not to a
maddening extent. A man likes his wife to be accomplished, gentle,
affectionate, and not stupid; and Lucy had all these
qualifications. Stephen was not surprised to find himself in love
with her, and was conscious of excellent judgment in preferring her
to Miss Leyburn, the daughter of the county member, although Lucy
was only the daughter of his father's subordinate partner; besides,
he had had to defy and overcome a slight unwillingness and
disappointment in his father and sisters,–a circumstance which
gives a young man an agreeable consciousness of his own dignity.
Stephen was aware that he had sense and independence enough to
choose the wife who was likely to make him happy, unbiassed by any
indirect considerations. He meant to choose Lucy; she was a little
darling, and exactly the sort of woman he had always admired.

Chapter II
First Impressions

"He is very clever, Maggie," said Lucy. She was kneeling on a
footstool at Maggie's feet, after placing that dark lady in the
large crimson-velvet chair. "I feel sure you will like him. I hope
you will."

"I shall be very difficult to please," said Maggie, smiling, and
holding up one of Lucy's long curls, that the sunlight might shine
through it. "A gentleman who thinks he is good enough for Lucy must
expect to be sharply criticised."

"Indeed, he's a great deal too good for me. And sometimes, when
he is away, I almost think it can't really be that he loves me. But
I can never doubt it when he is with me, though I couldn't bear any
one but you to know that I feel in that way, Maggie."

"Oh, then, if I disapprove of him you can give him up, since you
are not engaged," said Maggie, with playful gravity.

"I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they
begin to think of being married soon," said Lucy, too thoroughly
preoccupied to notice Maggie's joke; "and I should like everything
to go on for a long while just as it is. Sometimes I am quite
frightened lest Stephen should say that he has spoken to papa; and
from something that fell from papa the other day, I feel sure he
and Mr. Guest are expecting that. And Stephen's sisters are very
civil to me now. At first, I think they didn't like his paying me
attention; and that was natural. It
does
seem out of
keeping that I should ever live in a great place like the Park
House, such a little insignificant thing as I am."

"But people are not expected to be large in proportion to the
houses they live in, like snails," said Maggie, laughing. "Pray,
are Mr. Guest's sisters giantesses?"

"Oh no; and not handsome,–that is, not very," said Lucy,
half-penitent at this uncharitable remark. "But
he
is–at
least he is generally considered very handsome."

"Though you are unable to share that opinion?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Lucy, blushing pink over brow and neck.
"It is a bad plan to raise expectation; you will perhaps be
disappointed. But I have prepared a charming surprise for
him;
I shall have a glorious laugh against him. I shall
not tell you what it is, though."

Lucy rose from her knees and went to a little distance, holding
her pretty head on one side, as if she had been arranging Maggie
for a portrait, and wished to judge of the general effect.

"Stand up a moment, Maggie."

"What is your pleasure now?" said Maggie, smiling languidly as
she rose from her chair and looked down on her slight, aerial
cousin, whose figure was quite subordinate to her faultless drapery
of silk and crape.

Lucy kept her contemplative attitude a moment or two in silence,
and then said,–

"I can't think what witchery it is in you, Maggie, that makes
you look best in shabby clothes; though you really must have a new
dress now. But do you know, last night I was trying to fancy you in
a handsome, fashionable dress, and do what I would, that old limp
merino would come back as the only right thing for you. I wonder if
Marie Antoinette looked all the grander when her gown was darned at
the elbows. Now, if
I
were to put anything shabby on, I
should be quite unnoticeable. I should be a mere rag."

"Oh, quite," said Maggie, with mock gravity. "You would be
liable to be swept out of the room with the cobwebs and
carpet-dust, and to find yourself under the grate, like Cinderella.
Mayn't I sit down now?"

"Yes, now you may," said Lucy, laughing. Then, with an air of
serious reflection, unfastening her large jet brooch, "But you must
change brooches, Maggie; that little butterfly looks silly on
you."

"But won't that mar the charming effect of my consistent
shabbiness?" said Maggie, seating herself submissively, while Lucy
knelt again and unfastened the contemptible butterfly. "I wish my
mother were of your opinion, for she was fretting last night
because this is my best frock. I've been saving my money to pay for
some lessons; I shall never get a better situation without more
accomplishments."

Maggie gave a little sigh.

"Now, don't put on that sad look again," said Lucy, pinning the
large brooch below Maggie's fine throat. "You're forgetting that
you've left that dreary schoolroom behind you, and have no little
girls' clothes to mend."

"Yes," said Maggie. "It is with me as I used to think it would
be with the poor uneasy white bear I saw at the show. I thought he
must have got so stupid with the habit of turning backward and
forward in that narrow space that he would keep doing it if they
set him free. One gets a bad habit of being unhappy."

"But I shall put you under a discipline of pleasure that will
make you lose that bad habit," said Lucy, sticking the black
butterfly absently in her own collar, while her eyes met Maggie's
affectionately.