The Mill on the Floss (75 page)

"Go, then,–leave me; don't torture me any longer,–I can't bear
it."

Involuntarily she leaned toward him and put out her hand to
touch his. But he shrank from it as if it had been burning iron,
and said again,–

"Leave me."

Maggie was not conscious of a decision as she turned away from
that gloomy averted face, and walked out of the room; it was like
an automatic action that fulfils a forgotten intention. What came
after? A sense of stairs descended as if in a dream, of flagstones,
of a chaise and horses standing, then a street, and a turning into
another street where a stage-coach was standing, taking in
passengers, and the darting thought that that coach would take her
away, perhaps toward home. But she could ask nothing yet; she only
got into the coach.

Home–where her mother and brother were, Philip, Lucy, the scene
of her very cares and trials–was the haven toward which her mind
tended; the sanctuary where sacred relics lay, where she would be
rescued from more falling. The thought of Stephen was like a
horrible throbbing pain, which yet, as such pains do, seemed to
urge all other thoughts into activity. But among her thoughts, what
others would say and think of her conduct was hardly present. Love
and deep pity and remorseful anguish left no room for that.

The coach was taking her to York, farther away from home; but
she did not learn that until she was set down in the old city at
midnight. It was no matter; she could sleep there, and start home
the next day. She had her purse in her pocket, with all her money
in it,–a bank-note and a sovereign; she had kept it in her pocket
from forgetfulness, after going out to make purchases the day
before yesterday.

Did she lie down in the gloomy bedroom of the old inn that night
with her will bent unwaveringly on the path of penitent sacrifice?
The great struggles of life are not so easy as that; the great
problems of life are not so clear. In the darkness of that night
she saw Stephen's face turned toward her in passionate, reproachful
misery; she lived through again all the tremulous delights of his
presence with her that made existence an easy floating in a stream
of joy, instead of a quiet resolved endurance and effort. The love
she had renounced came back upon her with a cruel charm; she felt
herself opening her arms to receive it once more; and then it
seemed to slip away and fade and vanish, leaving only the dying
sound of a deep, thrilling voice that said, "Gone, forever
gone."

Book VII
The Final Rescue

Chapter I
The Return to the Mill

Between four and five o'clock on the afternoon of the fifth day
from that on which Stephen and Maggie had left St. Ogg's, Tom
Tulliver was standing on the gravel walk outside the old house at
Dorlcote Mill. He was master there now; he had half fulfilled his
father's dying wish, and by years of steady self-government and
energetic work he had brought himself near to the attainment of
more than the old respectability which had been the proud
inheritance of the Dodsons and Tullivers.

But Tom's face, as he stood in the hot, still sunshine of that
summer afternoon, had no gladness, no triumph in it. His mouth wore
its bitterest expression, his severe brow its hardest and deepest
fold, as he drew down his hat farther over his eyes to shelter them
from the sun, and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, began
to walk up and down the gravel. No news of his sister had been
heard since Bob Jakin had come back in the steamer from Mudport,
and put an end to all improbable suppositions of an accident on the
water by stating that he had seen her land from a vessel with Mr.
Stephen Guest. Would the next news be that she was married,–or
what? Probably that she was not married; Tom's mind was set to the
expectation of the worst that could happen,–not death, but
disgrace.

As he was walking with his back toward the entrance gate, and
his face toward the rushing mill-stream, a tall, dark-eyed figure,
that we know well, approached the gate, and paused to look at him
with a fast-beating heart. Her brother was the human being of whom
she had been most afraid from her childhood upward; afraid with
that fear which springs in us when we love one who is inexorable,
unbending, unmodifiable, with a mind that we can never mould
ourselves upon, and yet that we cannot endure to alienate from
us.

That deep-rooted fear was shaking Maggie now; but her mind was
unswervingly bent on returning to her brother, as the natural
refuge that had been given her. In her deep humiliation under the
retrospect of her own weakness,–in her anguish at the injury she
had inflicted,–she almost desired to endure the severity of Tom's
reproof, to submit in patient silence to that harsh, disapproving
judgment against which she had so often rebelled; it seemed no more
than just to her now,–who was weaker than she was? She craved that
outward help to her better purpose which would come from complete,
submissive confession; from being in the presence of those whose
looks and words would be a reflection of her own conscience.

Maggie had been kept on her bed at York for a day with that
prostrating headache which was likely to follow on the terrible
strain of the previous day and night. There was an expression of
physical pain still about her brow and eyes, and her whole
appearance, with her dress so long unchanged, was worn and
distressed. She lifted the latch of the gate and walked in slowly.
Tom did not hear the gate; he was just then close upon the roaring
dam; but he presently turned, and lifting up his eyes, saw the
figure whose worn look and loneliness seemed to him a confirmation
of his worst conjectures. He paused, trembling and white with
disgust and indignation.

Maggie paused too, three yards before him. She felt the hatred
in his face, felt it rushing through her fibres; but she must
speak.

"Tom," she began faintly, "I am come back to you,–I am come back
home–for refuge–to tell you everything."

"You will find no home with me," he answered, with tremulous
rage. "You have disgraced us all. You have disgraced my father's
name. You have been a curse to your best friends. You have been
base, deceitful; no motives are strong enough to restrain you. I
wash my hands of you forever. You don't belong to me."

Their mother had come to the door now. She stood paralyzed by
the double shock of seeing Maggie and hearing Tom's words.

"Tom," said Maggie, with more courage, "I am perhaps not so
guilty as you believe me to be. I never meant to give way to my
feelings. I struggled against them. I was carried too far in the
boat to come back on Tuesday. I came back as soon as I could."

"I can't believe in you any more," said Tom, gradually passing
from the tremulous excitement of the first moment to cold
inflexibility. "You have been carrying on a clandestine relation
with Stephen Guest,–as you did before with another. He went to see
you at my aunt Moss's; you walked alone with him in the lanes; you
must have behaved as no modest girl would have done to her cousin's
lover, else that could never have happened. The people at Luckreth
saw you pass; you passed all the other places; you knew what you
were doing. You have been using Philip Wakem as a screen to deceive
Lucy,–the kindest friend you ever had. Go and see the return you
have made her. She's ill; unable to speak. My mother can't go near
her, lest she should remind her of you."

Maggie was half stunned,–too heavily pressed upon by her anguish
even to discern any difference between her actual guilt and her
brother's accusations, still less to vindicate herself.

"Tom," she said, crushing her hands together under her cloak, in
the effort to speak again, "whatever I have done, I repent it
bitterly. I want to make amends. I will endure anything. I want to
be kept from doing wrong again."

"What
will
keep you?" said Tom, with cruel bitterness.
"Not religion; not your natural feelings of gratitude and honor.
And he–he would deserve to be shot, if it were not––But you are ten
times worse than he is. I loathe your character and your conduct.
You struggled with your feelings, you say. Yes!
I
have had
feelings to struggle with; but I conquered them. I have had a
harder life than you have had; but I have found
my
comfort
in doing my duty. But I will sanction no such character as yours;
the world shall know that
I
feel the difference between
right and wrong. If you are in want, I will provide for you; let my
mother know. But you shall not come under my roof. It is enough
that I have to bear the thought of your disgrace; the sight of you
is hateful to me."

Slowly Maggie was turning away with despair in her heart. But
the poor frightened mother's love leaped out now, stronger than all
dread.

"My child! I'll go with you. You've got a mother."

Oh, the sweet rest of that embrace to the heart-stricken Maggie!
More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity
that will not forsake us.

Tom turned and walked into the house.

"Come in, my child," Mrs. Tulliver whispered. "He'll let you
stay and sleep in my bed. He won't deny that if I ask him."

"No, mother," said Maggie, in a low tone, like a moan. "I will
never go in."

"Then wait for me outside. I'll get ready and come with
you."

When his mother appeared with her bonnet on, Tom came out to her
in the passage, and put money into her hands.

"My house is yours, mother, always," he said. "You will come and
let me know everything you want; you will come back to me."

Poor Mrs. Tulliver took the money, too frightened to say
anything. The only thing clear to her was the mother's instinct
that she would go with her unhappy child.

Maggie was waiting outside the gate; she took her mother's hand
and they walked a little way in silence.

"Mother," said Maggie, at last, "we will go to Luke's cottage.
Luke will take me in. He was very good to me when I was a little
girl."

"He's got no room for us, my dear, now; his wife's got so many
children. I don't know where to go, if it isn't to one o' your
aunts; and I hardly durst," said poor Mrs. Tulliver, quite
destitute of mental resources in this extremity.

Maggie was silent a little while, and then said,–

"Let us go to Bob Jakin's, mother; his wife will have room for
us, if they have no other lodger."

So they went on their way to St. Ogg's, to the old house by the
river-side.

Bob himself was at home, with a heaviness at heart which
resisted even the new joy and pride of possessing a two-months'-old
baby, quite the liveliest of its age that had ever been born to
prince or packman. He would perhaps not so thoroughly have
understood all the dubiousness of Maggie's appearance with Mr.
Stephen Guest on the quay at Mudport if he had not witnessed the
effect it produced on Tom when he went to report it; and since
then, the circumstances which in any case gave a disastrous
character to her elopement had passed beyond the more polite
circles of St. Ogg's, and had become matter of common talk,
accessible to the grooms and errand-boys. So that when he opened
the door and saw Maggie standing before him in her sorrow and
weariness, he had no questions to ask except one which he dared
only ask himself,–where was Mr. Stephen Guest? Bob, for his part,
hoped he might be in the warmest department of an asylum understood
to exist in the other world for gentlemen who are likely to be in
fallen circumstances there.

The lodgings were vacant, and both Mrs. Jakin the larger and
Mrs. Jakin the less were commanded to make all things comfortable
for "the old Missis and the young Miss"; alas that she was still
"Miss!" The ingenious Bob was sorely perplexed as to how this
result could have come about; how Mr. Stephen Guest could have gone
away from her, or could have let her go away from him, when he had
the chance of keeping her with him. But he was silent, and would
not allow his wife to ask him a question; would not present himself
in the room, lest it should appear like intrusion and a wish to
pry; having the same chivalry toward dark-eyed Maggie as in the
days when he had bought her the memorable present of books.

But after a day or two Mrs. Tulliver was gone to the Mill again
for a few hours to see to Tom's household matters. Maggie had
wished this; after the first violent outburst of feeling which came
as soon as she had no longer any active purpose to fulfil, she was
less in need of her mother's presence; she even desired to be alone
with her grief. But she had been solitary only a little while in
the old sitting-room that looked on the river, when there came a
tap at the door, and turning round her sad face as she said "Come
in," she saw Bob enter, with the baby in his arms and Mumps at his
heels.

"We'll go back, if it disturbs you, Miss," said Bob.

"No," said Maggie, in a low voice, wishing she could smile.

Bob, closing the door behind him, came and stood before her.

"You see, we've got a little un, Miss, and I want'd you to look
at it, and take it in your arms, if you'd be so good. For we made
free to name it after you, and it 'ud be better for your takin' a
bit o' notice on it."

Maggie could not speak, but she put out her arms to receive the
tiny baby, while Mumps snuffed at it anxiously, to ascertain that
this transference was all right. Maggie's heart had swelled at this
action and speech of Bob's; she knew well enough that it was a way
he had chosen to show his sympathy and respect.

"Sit down, Bob," she said presently, and he sat down in silence,
finding his tongue unmanageable in quite a new fashion, refusing to
say what he wanted it to say.

"Bob," she said, after a few moments, looking down at the baby,
and holding it anxiously, as if she feared it might slip from her
mind and her fingers, "I have a favor to ask of you."