The Mill on the Floss (69 page)

A mad impulse seized on Stephen; he darted toward the arm, and
showered kisses on it, clasping the wrist.

But the next moment Maggie snatched it from him, and glared at
him like a wounded war-goddess, quivering with rage and
humiliation.

"How dare you?" She spoke in a deeply shaken, half-smothered
voice. "What right have I given you to insult me?"

She darted from him into the adjoining room, and threw herself
on the sofa, panting and trembling.

A horrible punishment was come upon her for the sin of allowing
a moment's happiness that was treachery to Lucy, to Philip, to her
own better soul. That momentary happiness had been smitten with a
blight, a leprosy; Stephen thought more lightly of
her
than he did of Lucy.

As for Stephen, he leaned back against the framework of the
conservatory, dizzy with the conflict of passions,–love, rage, and
confused despair; despair at his want of self-mastery, and despair
that he had offended Maggie.

The last feeling surmounted every other; to be by her side again
and entreat forgiveness was the only thing that had the force of a
motive for him, and she had not been seated more than a few minutes
when he came and stood humbly before her. But Maggie's bitter rage
was unspent.

"Leave me to myself, if you please," she said, with impetuous
haughtiness, "and for the future avoid me."

Stephen turned away, and walked backward and forward at the
other end of the room. There was the dire necessity of going back
into the dancing-room again, and he was beginning to be conscious
of that. They had been absent so short a time, that when he went in
again the waltz was not ended.

Maggie, too, was not long before she re-entered. All the pride
of her nature was stung into activity; the hateful weakness which
had dragged her within reach of this wound to her self-respect had
at least wrought its own cure. The thoughts and temptations of the
last month should all be flung away into an unvisited chamber of
memory. There was nothing to allure her now; duty would be easy,
and all the old calm purposes would reign peacefully once more. She
re-entered the drawing-room still with some excited brightness in
her face, but with a sense of proud self-command that defied
anything to agitate her. She refused to dance again, but she talked
quite readily and calmly with every one who addressed her. And when
they got home that night, she kissed Lucy with a free heart, almost
exulting in this scorching moment, which had delivered her from the
possibility of another word or look that would have the stamp of
treachery toward that gentle, unsuspicious sister.

The next morning Maggie did not set off to Basset quite so soon
as she had expected. Her mother was to accompany her in the
carriage, and household business could not be dispatched hastily by
Mrs. Tulliver. So Maggie, who had been in a hurry to prepare
herself, had to sit waiting, equipped for the drive, in the garden.
Lucy was busy in the house wrapping up some bazaar presents for the
younger ones at Basset, and when there was a loud ring at the
door-bell, Maggie felt some alarm lest Lucy should bring out
Stephen to her; it was sure to be Stephen.

But presently the visitor came out into the garden alone, and
seated himself by her on the garden-chair. It was not Stephen.

"We can just catch the tips of the Scotch firs, Maggie, from
this seat," said Philip.

They had taken each other's hands in silence, but Maggie had
looked at him with a more complete revival of the old childlike
affectionate smile than he had seen before, and he felt
encouraged.

"Yes," she said, "I often look at them, and wish I could see the
low sunlight on the stems again. But I have never been that way but
once,–to the churchyard with my mother."

"I have been there, I go there, continually," said Philip. "I
have nothing but the past to live upon."

A keen remembrance and keen pity impelled Maggie to put her hand
in Philip's. They had so often walked hand in hand!

"I remember all the spots," she said,–"just where you told me of
particular things, beautiful stories that I had never heard of
before."

"You will go there again soon, won't you, Maggie?" said Philip,
getting timid. "The Mill will soon be your brother's home
again."

"Yes; but I shall not be there," said Maggie. "I shall only hear
of that happiness. I am going away again; Lucy has not told you,
perhaps?"

"Then the future will never join on to the past again, Maggie?
That book is quite closed?"

The gray eyes that had so often looked up at her with entreating
worship, looked up at her now, with a last struggling ray of hope
in them, and Maggie met them with her large sincere gaze.

"That book never will be closed, Philip," she said, with grave
sadness; "I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
But the tie to my brother is one of the strongest. I can do nothing
willingly that will divide me always from him."

"Is that the only reason that would keep us apart forever,
Maggie?" said Philip, with a desperate determination to have a
definite answer.

"The only reason," said Maggie, with calm decision. And she
believed it. At that moment she felt as if the enchanted cup had
been dashed to the ground. The reactionary excitement that gave her
a proud self-mastery had not subsided, and she looked at the future
with a sense of calm choice.

They sat hand in hand without looking at each other or speaking
for a few minutes; in Maggie's mind the first scenes of love and
parting were more present than the actual moment, and she was
looking at Philip in the Red Deeps.

Philip felt that he ought to have been thoroughly happy in that
answer of hers; she was as open and transparent as a rock-pool. Why
was he not thoroughly happy? Jealousy is never satisfied with
anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest
fold of the heart.

Chapter XI
In the Lane

Maggie had been four days at her aunt Moss's giving the early
June sunshine quite a new brightness in the care-dimmed eyes of
that affectionate woman, and making an epoch for her cousins great
and small, who were learning her words and actions by heart, as if
she had been a transient avatar of perfect wisdom and beauty.

She was standing on the causeway with her aunt and a group of
cousins feeding the chickens, at that quiet moment in the life of
the farmyards before the afternoon milking-time. The great
buildings round the hollow yard were as dreary and tumbledown as
ever, but over the old garden-wall the straggling rose-bushes were
beginning to toss their summer weight, and the gray wood and old
bricks of the house, on its higher level, had a look of sleepy age
in the broad afternoon sunlight, that suited the quiescent time.
Maggie, with her bonnet over her arm, was smiling down at the hatch
of small fluffy chickens, when her aunt exclaimed,–

"Goodness me! who is that gentleman coming in at the gate?"

It was a gentleman on a tall bay horse; and the flanks and neck
of the horse were streaked black with fast riding. Maggie felt a
beating at head and heart, horrible as the sudden leaping to life
of a savage enemy who had feigned death.

"Who is it, my dear?" said Mrs. Moss, seeing in Maggie's face
the evidence that she knew.

"It is Mr. Stephen Guest," said Maggie, rather faintly. "My
cousin Lucy's–a gentleman who is very intimate at my cousin's."

Stephen was already close to them, had jumped off his horse, and
now raised his hat as he advanced.

"Hold the horse, Willy," said Mrs. Moss to the twelve-year-old
boy.

"No, thank you," said Stephen, pulling at the horse's
impatiently tossing head. "I must be going again immediately. I
have a message to deliver to you, Miss Tulliver, on private
business. May I take the liberty of asking you to walk a few yards
with me?"

He had a half-jaded, half-irritated look, such as a man gets
when he has been dogged by some care or annoyance that makes his
bed and his dinner of little use to him. He spoke almost abruptly,
as if his errand were too pressing for him to trouble himself about
what would be thought by Mrs. Moss of his visit and request. Good
Mrs. Moss, rather nervous in the presence of this apparently
haughty gentleman, was inwardly wondering whether she would be
doing right or wrong to invite him again to leave his horse and
walk in, when Maggie, feeling all the embarrassment of the
situation, and unable to say anything, put on her bonnet, and
turned to walk toward the gate.

Stephen turned too, and walked by her side, leading his
horse.

Not a word was spoken till they were out in the lane, and had
walked four or five yards, when Maggie, who had been looking
straight before her all the while, turned again to walk back,
saying, with haughty resentment,–

"There is no need for me to go any farther. I don't know whether
you consider it gentlemanly and delicate conduct to place me in a
position that forced me to come out with you, or whether you wished
to insult me still further by thrusting an interview upon me in
this way."

"Of course you are angry with me for coming," said Stephen,
bitterly. "Of course it is of no consequence what a man has to
suffer; it is only your woman's dignity that you care about."

Maggie gave a slight start, such as might have come from the
slightest possible electric shock.

"As if it were not enough that I'm entangled in this way; that
I'm mad with love for you; that I resist the strongest passion a
man can feel, because I try to be true to other claims; but you
must treat me as if I were a coarse brute, who would willingly
offend you. And when, if I had my own choice, I should ask you to
take my hand and my fortune and my whole life, and do what you
liked with them! I know I forgot myself. I took an unwarrantable
liberty. I hate myself for having done it. But I repented
immediately; I've been repenting ever since. You ought not to think
it unpardonable; a man who loves with his whole soul, as I do you,
is liable to be mastered by his feelings for a moment; but you
know–you must believe–that the worst pain I could have is to have
pained you; that I would give the world to recall the error."

Maggie dared not speak, dared not turn her head. The strength
that had come from resentment was all gone, and her lips were
quivering visibly. She could not trust herself to utter the full
forgiveness that rose in answer to that confession.

They were come nearly in front of the gate again, and she
paused, trembling.

"You must not say these things; I must not hear them," she said,
looking down in misery, as Stephen came in front of her, to prevent
her from going farther toward the gate. "I'm very sorry for any
pain you have to go through; but it is of no use to speak."

"Yes, it
is
of use," said Stephen, impetuously. "It
would be of use if you would treat me with some sort of pity and
consideration, instead of doing me vile injustice in your mind. I
could bear everything more quietly if I knew you didn't hate me for
an insolent coxcomb. Look at me; see what a hunted devil I am; I've
been riding thirty miles every day to get away from the thought of
you."

Maggie did not–dared not–look. She had already seen the harassed
face. But she said gently,–

"I don't think any evil of you."

"Then, dearest, look at me," said Stephen, in deepest, tenderest
tones of entreaty. "Don't go away from me yet. Give me a moment's
happiness; make me feel you've forgiven me."

"Yes, I do forgive you," said Maggie, shaken by those tones, and
all the more frightened at herself. "But pray let me go in again.
Pray go away."

A great tear fell from under her lowered eyelids.

"I can't go away from you; I can't leave you," said Stephen,
with still more passionate pleading. "I shall come back again if
you send me away with this coldness; I can't answer for myself. But
if you will go with me only a little way I can live on that. You
see plainly enough that your anger has only made me ten times more
unreasonable."

Maggie turned. But Tancred, the bay horse, began to make such
spirited remonstrances against this frequent change of direction,
that Stephen, catching sight of Willy Moss peeping through the
gate, called out, "Here! just come and hold my horse for five
minutes."

"Oh, no," said Maggie, hurriedly, "my aunt will think it so
strange."

"Never mind," Stephen answered impatiently; "they don't know the
people at St. Ogg's. Lead him up and down just here for five
minutes," he added to Willy, who was now close to them; and then he
turned to Maggie's side, and they walked on. It was clear that she
must
go on now.

"Take my arm," said Stephen, entreatingly; and she took it,
feeling all the while as if she were sliding downward in a
nightmare.

"There is no end to this misery," she began, struggling to repel
the influence by speech. "It is wicked–base–ever allowing a word or
look that Lucy–that others might not have seen. Think of Lucy."

"I do think of her–bless her. If I didn't––" Stephen had laid
his hand on Maggie's that rested on his arm, and they both felt it
difficult to speak.

"And I have other ties," Maggie went on, at last, with a
desperate effort, "even if Lucy did not exist."

"You are engaged to Philip Wakem?" said Stephen, hastily. "Is it
so?"

"I consider myself engaged to him; I don't mean to marry any one
else."

Stephen was silent again until they had turned out of the sun
into a side lane, all grassy and sheltered. Then he burst out
impetuously,–

"It is unnatural, it is horrible. Maggie, if you loved me as I
love you, we should throw everything else to the winds for the sake
of belonging to each other. We should break all these mistaken ties
that were made in blindness, and determine to marry each
other."