The Mill on the Floss (64 page)

"This was very good and virtuous of you," she said, in her
pretty treble, like the low conversational notes of little birds,
"to come so soon after your arrival. And as it is, I think I will
pardon you for running away in an inopportune manner, and giving
your friends no notice. Come and sit down here," she went on,
placing the chair that would suit him best, "and you shall find
yourself treated mercifully."

"You will never govern well, Miss Deane," said Philip, as he
seated himself, "because no one will ever believe in your severity.
People will always encourage themselves in misdemeanors by the
certainty that you will be indulgent."

Lucy gave some playful contradiction, but Philip did not hear
what it was, for he had naturally turned toward Maggie, and she was
looking at him with that open, affectionate scrutiny which we give
to a friend from whom we have been long separated. What a moment
their parting had been! And Philip felt as if he were only in the
morrow of it. He felt this so keenly,–with such intense, detailed
remembrance, with such passionate revival of all that had been said
and looked in their last conversation,–that with that jealousy and
distrust which in diffident natures is almost inevitably linked
with a strong feeling, he thought he read in Maggie's glance and
manner the evidence of a change. The very fact that he feared and
half expected it would be sure to make this thought rush in, in the
absence of positive proof to the contrary.

"I am having a great holiday, am I not?" said Maggie. "Lucy is
like a fairy godmother; she has turned me from a drudge into a
princess in no time. I do nothing but indulge myself all day long,
and she always finds out what I want before I know it myself."

"I am sure she is the happier for having you, then," said
Philip. "You must be better than a whole menagerie of pets to her.
And you look well. You are benefiting by the change."

Artificial conversation of this sort went on a little while,
till Lucy, determined to put an end to it, exclaimed, with a good
imitation of annoyance, that she had forgotten something, and was
quickly out of the room.

In a moment Maggie and Philip leaned forward, and the hands were
clasped again, with a look of sad contentment, like that of friends
who meet in the memory of recent sorrow.

"I told my brother I wished to see you, Philip; I asked him to
release me from my promise, and he consented."

Maggie, in her impulsiveness, wanted Philip to know at once the
position they must hold toward each other; but she checked herself.
The things that had happened since he had spoken of his love for
her were so painful that she shrank from being the first to alude
to them. It seemed almost like an injury toward Philip even to
mention her brother,–her brother, who had insulted him. But he was
thinking too entirely of her to be sensitive on any other point at
that moment.

"Then we can at least be friends, Maggie? There is nothing to
hinder that now?"

"Will not your father object?" said Maggie, withdrawing her
hand.

"I should not give you up on any ground but your own wish,
Maggie," said Philip, coloring. "There are points on which I should
always resist my father, as I used to tell you.
That
is
one."

"Then there is nothing to hinder our being friends,
Philip,–seeing each other and talking to each other while I am
here; I shall soon go away again. I mean to go very soon, to a new
situation."

"Is that inevitable, Maggie?"

"Yes; I must not stay here long. It would unfit me for the life
I must begin again at last. I can't live in dependence,–I can't
live with my brother, though he is very good to me. He would like
to provide for me; but that would be intolerable to me."

Philip was silent a few moments, and then said, in that high,
feeble voice which with him indicated the resolute suppression of
emotion,–

"Is there no other alternative, Maggie? Is that life, away from
those who love you, the only one you will allow yourself to look
forward to?"

"Yes, Philip," she said, looking at him pleadingly, as if she
entreated him to believe that she was compelled to this course. "At
least, as things are; I don't know what may be in years to come.
But I begin to think there can never come much happiness to me from
loving; I have always had so much pain mingled with it. I wish I
could make myself a world outside it, as men do."

"Now you are returning to your old thought in a new form,
Maggie,–the thought I used to combat," said Philip, with a slight
tinge of bitterness. "You want to find out a mode of renunciation
that will be an escape from pain. I tell you again, there is no
such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one's
nature. What would become of me, if I tried to escape from pain?
Scorn and cynicism would be my only opium; unless I could fall into
some kind of conceited madness, and fancy myself a favorite of
Heaven because I am not a favorite with men."

The bitterness had taken on some impetuosity as Philip went on
speaking; the words were evidently an outlet for some immediate
feeling of his own, as well as an answer to Maggie. There was a
pain pressing on him at that moment. He shrank with proud delicacy
from the faintest allusion to the words of love, of plighted love
that had passed between them. It would have seemed to him like
reminding Maggie of a promise; it would have had for him something
of the baseness of compulsion. He could not dwell on the fact that
he himself had not changed; for that too would have had the air of
an appeal. His love for Maggie was stamped, even more than the rest
of his experience, with the exaggerated sense that he was an
exception,–that she, that every one, saw him in the light of an
exception.

But Maggie was conscience-stricken.

"Yes, Philip," she said, with her childish contrition when he
used to chide her, "you are right, I know. I do always think too
much of my own feelings, and not enough of others',–not enough of
yours. I had need have you always to find fault with me and teach
me; so many things have come true that you used to tell me."

Maggie was resting her elbow on the table, leaning her head on
her hand and looking at Philip with half-penitent dependent
affection, as she said this; while he was returning her gaze with
an expression that, to her consciousness, gradually became less
vague,–became charged with a specific recollection. Had his mind
flown back to something that
she
now remembered,–something
about a lover of Lucy's? It was a thought that made her shudder; it
gave new definiteness to her present position, and to the tendency
of what had happened the evening before. She moved her arm from the
table, urged to change her position by that positive physical
oppression at the heart that sometimes accompanies a sudden mental
pang.

"What is the matter, Maggie? Has something happened?" Philip
said, in inexpressible anxiety, his imagination being only too
ready to weave everything that was fatal to them both.

"No, nothing," said Maggie, rousing her latent will. Philip must
not have that odious thought in his mind; she would banish it from
her own. "Nothing," she repeated, "except in my own mind. You used
to say I should feel the effect of my starved life, as you called
it; and I do. I am too eager in my enjoyment of music and all
luxuries, now they are come to me."

She took up her work and occupied herself resolutely, while
Philip watched her, really in doubt whether she had anything more
than this general allusion in her mind. It was quite in Maggie's
character to be agitated by vague self-reproach. But soon there
came a violent well-known ring at the door-bell resounding through
the house.

"Oh, what a startling announcement!" said Maggie, quite mistress
of herself, though not without some inward flutter. "I wonder where
Lucy is."

Lucy had not been deaf to the signal, and after an interval long
enough for a few solicitous but not hurried inquiries, she herself
ushered Stephen in.

"Well, old fellow," he said, going straight up to Philip and
shaking him heartily by the hand, bowing to Maggie in passing,
"it's glorious to have you back again; only I wish you'd conduct
yourself a little less like a sparrow with a residence on the
house-top, and not go in and out constantly without letting the
servants know. This is about the twentieth time I've had to scamper
up those countless stairs to that painting-room of yours, all to no
purpose, because your people thought you were at home. Such
incidents embitter friendship."

"I've so few visitors, it seems hardly worth while to leave
notice of my exit and entrances," said Philip, feeling rather
oppressed just then by Stephen's bright strong presence and strong
voice.

"Are you quite well this morning, Miss Tulliver?" said Stephen,
turning to Maggie with stiff politeness, and putting out his hand
with the air of fulfilling a social duty.

Maggie gave the tips of her fingers, and said, "Quite well,
thank you," in a tone of proud indifference. Philip's eyes were
watching them keenly; but Lucy was used to seeing variations in
their manner to each other, and only thought with regret that there
was some natural antipathy which every now and then surmounted
their mutual good-will. "Maggie is not the sort of woman Stephen
admires, and she is irritated by something in him which she
interprets as conceit," was the silent observation that accounted
for everything to guileless Lucy. Stephen and Maggie had no sooner
completed this studied greeting than each felt hurt by the other's
coldness. And Stephen, while rattling on in questions to Philip
about his recent sketching expedition, was thinking all the more
about Maggie because he was not drawing her into the conversation
as he had invariably done before. "Maggie and Philip are not
looking happy," thought Lucy; "this first interview has been
saddening to them."

"I think we people who have not been galloping," she said to
Stephen, "are all a little damped by the rain. Let us have some
music. We ought to take advantage of having Philip and you
together. Give us the duet in 'Masaniello'; Maggie has not heard
that, and I know it will suit her."

"Come, then," said Stephen, going toward the piano, and giving a
foretaste of the tune in his deep "brum-brum," very pleasant to
hear.

"You, please, Philip,–you play the accompaniment," said Lucy,
"and then I can go on with my work. You
will
like to play,
sha'n't you?" she added, with a pretty, inquiring look, anxious, as
usual, lest she should have proposed what was not pleasant to
another; but with yearnings toward her unfinished embroidery.

Philip had brightened at the proposition, for there is no
feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does
not find relief in music,–that does not make a man sing or play the
better; and Philip had an abundance of pent-up feeling at this
moment, as complex as any trio or quartet that was ever meant to
express love and jealousy and resignation and fierce suspicion, all
at the same time.

"Oh, yes," he said, seating himself at the piano, "it is a way
of eking out one's imperfect life and being three people at
once,–to sing and make the piano sing, and hear them both all the
while,–or else to sing and paint."

"Ah, there you are an enviable fellow. I can do nothing with my
hands," said Stephen. "That has generally been observed in men of
great administrative capacity, I believe,–a tendency to
predominance of the reflective powers in me! Haven't you observed
that, Miss Tulliver?"

Stephen had fallen by mistake into his habit of playful appeal
to Maggie, and she could not repress the answering flush and
epigram.

"I
have
observed a tendency to predominance," she said,
smiling; and Philip at that moment devoutly hoped that she found
the tendency disagreeable.

"Come, come," said Lucy; "music, music! We will discuss each
other's qualities another time."

Maggie always tried in vain to go on with her work when music
began. She tried harder than ever to-day; for the thought that
Stephen knew how much she cared for his singing was one that no
longer roused a merely playful resistance; and she knew, too, that
it was his habit always to stand so that he could look at her. But
it was of no use; she soon threw her work down, and all her
intentions were lost in the vague state of emotion produced by the
inspiring duet,–emotion that seemed to make her at once strong and
weak; strong for all enjoyment, weak for all resistance. When the
strain passed into the minor, she half started from her seat with
the sudden thrill of that change. Poor Maggie! She looked very
beautiful when her soul was being played on in this way by the
inexorable power of sound. You might have seen the slightest
perceptible quivering through her whole frame as she leaned a
little forward, clasping her hands as if to steady herself; while
her eyes dilated and brightened into that wide-open, childish
expression of wondering delight which always came back in her
happiest moments. Lucy, who at other times had always been at the
piano when Maggie was looking in this way, could not resist the
impulse to steal up to her and kiss her. Philip, too, caught a
glimpse of her now and then round the open book on the desk, and
felt that he had never before seen her under so strong an
influence.

"More, more!" said Lucy, when the duet had been encored.
"Something spirited again. Maggie always says she likes a great
rush of sound."

"It must be 'Let us take the road,' then," said Stephen,–"so
suitable for a wet morning. But are you prepared to abandon the
most sacred duties of life, and come and sing with us?"

"Oh, yes," said Lucy, laughing. "If you will look out the
'Beggar's Opera' from the large canterbury. It has a dingy
cover."