The Mill on the Floss (80 page)

Poor Maggie listened with a trembling lip; she could say nothing
but a faint "Thank you, I shall be grateful"; and she walked back
to her lodgings, through the driving rain, with a new sense of
desolation. She must be a lonely wanderer; she must go out among
fresh faces, that would look at her wonderingly, because the days
did not seem joyful to her; she must begin a new life, in which she
would have to rouse herself to receive new impressions; and she was
so unspeakably, sickeningly weary! There was no home, no help for
the erring; even those who pitied were constrained to hardness. But
ought she to complain? Ought she to shrink in this way from the
long penance of life, which was all the possibility she had of
lightening the load to some other sufferers, and so changing that
passionate error into a new force of unselfish human love? All the
next day she sat in her lonely room, with a window darkened by the
cloud and the driving rain, thinking of that future, and wrestling
for patience; for what repose could poor Maggie ever win except by
wrestling?

And on the third day–this day of which she had just sat out the
close–the letter had come which was lying on the table before
her.

The letter was from Stephen. He was come back from Holland; he
was at Mudport again, unknown to any of his friends, and had
written to her from that place, enclosing the letter to a person
whom he trusted in St. Ogg's. From beginning to end it was a
passionate cry of reproach; an appeal against her useless sacrifice
of him, of herself, against that perverted notion of right which
led her to crush all his hopes, for the sake of a mere idea, and
not any substantial good,–
his
hopes, whom she loved, and
who loved her with that single overpowering passion, that worship,
which a man never gives to a woman more than once in his life.

"They have written to me that you are to marry Kenn. As if I
should believe that! Perhaps they have told you some such fables
about me. Perhaps they tell you I've been 'travelling.' My body has
been dragged about somewhere; but
I
have never travelled
from the hideous place where you left me; where I started up from
the stupor of helpless rage to find you gone.

"Maggie! whose pain can have been like mine? Whose injury is
like mine? Who besides me has met that long look of love that has
burnt itself into my soul, so that no other image can come there?
Maggie, call me back to you! Call me back to life and goodness! I
am banished from both now. I have no motives; I am indifferent to
everything. Two months have only deepened the certainty that I can
never care for life without you. Write me one word; say 'Come!' In
two days I should be with you. Maggie, have you forgotten what it
was to be together,–to be within reach of a look, to be within
hearing of each other's voice?"

When Maggie first read this letter she felt as if her real
temptation had only just begun. At the entrance of the chill dark
cavern, we turn with unworn courage from the warm light; but how,
when we have trodden far in the damp darkness, and have begun to be
faint and weary; how, if there is a sudden opening above us, and we
are invited back again to the life-nourishing day? The leap of
natural longing from under the pressure of pain is so strong, that
all less immediate motives are likely to be forgotten–till the pain
has been escaped from.

For hours Maggie felt as if her struggle had been in vain. For
hours every other thought that she strove to summon was thrust
aside by the image of Stephen waiting for the single word that
would bring him to her. She did not
read
the letter: she
heard him uttering it, and the voice shook her with its old strange
power. All the day before she had been filled with the vision of a
lonely future through which she must carry the burthen of regret,
upheld only by clinging faith. And here, close within her reach,
urging itself upon her even as a claim, was another future, in
which hard endurance and effort were to be exchanged for easy,
delicious leaning on another's loving strength! And yet that
promise of joy in the place of sadness did not make the dire force
of the temptation to Maggie.

It was Stephen's tone of misery, it was the doubt in the justice
of her own resolve, that made the balance tremble, and made her
once start from her seat to reach the pen and paper, and write
"Come!"

But close upon that decisive act, her mind recoiled; and the
sense of contradiction with her past self in her moments of
strength and clearness came upon her like a pang of conscious
degradation. No, she must wait; she must pray; the light that had
forsaken her would come again; she should feel again what she had
felt when she had fled away, under an inspiration strong enough to
conquer agony,–to conquer love; she should feel again what she had
felt when Lucy stood by her, when Philip's letter had stirred all
the fibres that bound her to the calmer past.

She sat quite still, far on into the night, with no impulse to
change her attitude, without active force enough even for the
mental act of prayer; only waiting for the light that would surely
come again. It came with the memories that no passion could long
quench; the long past came back to her, and with it the fountains
of self-renouncing pity and affection, of faithfulness and resolve.
The words that were marked by the quiet hand in the little old book
that she had long ago learned by heart, rushed even to her lips,
and found a vent for themselves in a low murmur that was quite lost
in the loud driving of the rain against the window and the loud
moan and roar of the wind. "I have received the Cross, I have
received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear it till death,
as Thou hast laid it upon me."

But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a
sob,–"Forgive me, Stephen! It will pass away. You will come back to
her."

She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it burn
slowly on the hearth. To-morrow she would write to him the last
word of parting.

"I will bear it, and bear it till death. But how long it will be
before death comes! I am so young, so healthy. How shall I have
patience and strength? Am I to struggle and fall and repent again?
Has life other trials as hard for me still?"

With that cry of self-despair, Maggie fell on her knees against
the table, and buried her sorrow-stricken face. Her soul went out
to the Unseen Pity that would be with her to the end. Surely there
was something being taught her by this experience of great need;
and she must be learning a secret of human tenderness and
long-suffering, that the less erring could hardly know? "O God, if
my life is to be long, let me live to bless and comfort––"

At that moment Maggie felt a startling sensation of sudden cold
about her knees and feet; it was water flowing under her. She
started up; the stream was flowing under the door that led into the
passage. She was not bewildered for an instant; she knew it was the
flood!

The tumult of emotion she had been enduring for the last twelve
hours seemed to have left a great calm in her; without screaming,
she hurried with the candle upstairs to Bob Jakin's bedroom. The
door was ajar; she went in and shook him by the shoulder.

"Bob, the flood is come! it is in the house; let us see if we
can make the boats safe."

She lighted his candle, while the poor wife, snatching up her
baby, burst into screams; and then she hurried down again to see if
the waters were rising fast. There was a step down into the room at
the door leading from the staircase; she saw that the water was
already on a level with the step. While she was looking, something
came with a tremendous crash against the window, and sent the
leaded panes and the old wooden framework inward in shivers, the
water pouring in after it.

"It is the boat!" cried Maggie. "Bob, come down to get the
boats!"

And without a moment's shudder of fear, she plunged through the
water, which was rising fast to her knees, and by the glimmering
light of the candle she had left on the stairs, she mounted on to
the window-sill, and crept into the boat, which was left with the
prow lodging and protruding through the window. Bob was not long
after her, hurrying without shoes or stockings, but with the
lanthorn in his hand.

"Why, they're both here,–both the boats," said Bob, as he got
into the one where Maggie was. "It's wonderful this fastening isn't
broke too, as well as the mooring."

In the excitement of getting into the other boat, unfastening
it, and mastering an oar, Bob was not struck with the danger Maggie
incurred. We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are
companions in their danger, and Bob's mind was absorbed in possible
expedients for the safety of the helpless indoors. The fact that
Maggie had been up, had waked him, and had taken the lead in
activity, gave Bob a vague impression of her as one who would help
to protect, not need to be protected. She too had got possession of
an oar, and had pushed off, so as to release the boat from the
overhanging window-frame.

"The water's rising so fast," said Bob, "I doubt it'll be in at
the chambers before long,–th' house is so low. I've more mind to
get Prissy and the child and the mother into the boat, if I could,
and trusten to the water,–for th' old house is none so safe. And if
I let go the boat–but
you
," he exclaimed, suddenly lifting
the light of his lanthorn on Maggie, as she stood in the rain with
the oar in her hand and her black hair streaming.

Maggie had no time to answer, for a new tidal current swept
along the line of the houses, and drove both the boats out on to
the wide water, with a force that carried them far past the meeting
current of the river.

In the first moments Maggie felt nothing, thought of nothing,
but that she had suddenly passed away from that life which she had
been dreading; it was the transition of death, without its
agony,–and she was alone in the darkness with God.

The whole thing had been so rapid, so dreamlike, that the
threads of ordinary association were broken; she sank down on the
seat clutching the oar mechanically, and for a long while had no
distinct conception of her position. The first thing that waked her
to fuller consciousness was the cessation of the rain, and a
perception that the darkness was divided by the faintest light,
which parted the overhanging gloom from the immeasurable watery
level below. She was driven out upon the flood,–that awful
visitation of God which her father used to talk of; which had made
the nightmare of her childish dreams. And with that thought there
rushed in the vision of the old home, and Tom, and her mother,–they
had all listened together.

"O God, where am I? Which is the way home?" she cried out, in
the dim loneliness.

What was happening to them at the Mill? The flood had once
nearly destroyed it. They might be in danger, in distress,–her
mother and her brother, alone there, beyond reach of help! Her
whole soul was strained now on that thought; and she saw the
long-loved faces looking for help into the darkness, and finding
none.

She was floating in smooth water now,–perhaps far on the
overflooded fields. There was no sense of present danger to check
the outgoing of her mind to the old home; and she strained her eyes
against the curtain of gloom that she might seize the first sight
of her whereabout,–that she might catch some faint suggestion of
the spot toward which all her anxieties tended.

Oh, how welcome, the widening of that dismal watery level, the
gradual uplifting of the cloudy firmament, the slowly defining
blackness of objects above the glassy dark! Yes, she must be out on
the fields; those were the tops of hedgerow trees. Which way did
the river lie? Looking behind her, she saw the lines of black
trees; looking before her, there were none; then the river lay
before her. She seized an oar and began to paddle the boat forward
with the energy of wakening hope; the dawning seemed to advance
more swiftly, now she was in action; and she could soon see the
poor dumb beasts crowding piteously on a mound where they had taken
refuge. Onward she paddled and rowed by turns in the growing
twilight; her wet clothes clung round her, and her streaming hair
was dashed about by the wind, but she was hardly conscious of any
bodily sensations,–except a sensation of strength, inspired by
mighty emotion. Along with the sense of danger and possible rescue
for those long-remembered beings at the old home, there was an
undefined sense of reconcilement with her brother; what quarrel,
what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the
presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of
our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive
mortal needs? Vaguely Maggie felt this, in the strong resurgent
love toward her brother that swept away all the later impressions
of hard, cruel offence and misunderstanding, and left only the
deep, underlying, unshakable memories of early union.

But now there was a large dark mass in the distance, and near to
her Maggie could discern the current of the river. The dark mass
must be–yes, it was–St. Ogg's. Ah, now she knew which way to look
for the first glimpse of the well-known trees–the gray willows, the
now yellowing chestnuts–and above them the old roof! But there was
no color, no shape yet; all was faint and dim. More and more
strongly the energies seemed to come and put themselves forth, as
if her life were a stored-up force that was being spent in this
hour, unneeded for any future.

She must get her boat into the current of the Floss, else she
would never be able to pass the Ripple and approach the house; this
was the thought that occurred to her, as she imagined with more and
more vividness the state of things round the old home. But then she
might be carried very far down, and be unable to guide her boat out
of the current again. For the first time distinct ideas of danger
began to press upon her; but there was no choice of courses, no
room for hesitation, and she floated into the current. Swiftly she
went now without effort; more and more clearly in the lessening
distance and the growing light she began to discern the objects
that she knew must be the well-known trees and roofs; nay, she was
not far off a rushing, muddy current that must be the strangely
altered Ripple.