Chapter XIV.

Waking

When Maggie was gone to sleep, Stephen, weary too with his unaccustomed

amount of rowing, and with the intense inward life of the last twelve

hours, but too restless to sleep, walked and lounged about the deck

with his cigar far on into midnight, not seeing the dark water, hardly

conscious there were stars, living only in the near and distant future.

At last fatigue conquered restlessness, and he rolled himself up in a

piece of tarpaulin on the deck near Maggie’s feet.

She had fallen asleep before nine, and had been sleeping for six hours

before the faintest hint of a midsummer daybreak was discernible. She

awoke from that vivid dreaming which makes the margin of our deeper

rest. She was in a boat on the wide water with Stephen, and in the

gathering darkness something like a star appeared, that grew and grew

till they saw it was the Virgin seated in St Ogg’s boat, and it came

nearer and nearer, till they saw the Virgin was Lucy and the boatman

was Philip,—no, not Philip, but her brother, who rowed past without

looking at her; and she rose to stretch out her arms and call to him,

and their own boat turned over with the movement, and they began to

sink, till with one spasm of dread she seemed to awake, and find she

was a child again in the parlour at evening twilight, and Tom was not

really angry. From the soothed sense of that false waking she passed to

the real waking,—to the plash of water against the vessel, and the

sound of a footstep on the deck, and the awful starlit sky. There was a

moment of utter bewilderment before her mind could get disentangled

from the confused web of dreams; but soon the whole terrible truth

urged itself upon her. Stephen was not by her now; she was alone with

her own memory and her own dread. The irrevocable wrong that must blot

her life had been committed; she had brought sorrow into the lives of

others,—into the lives that were knit up with hers by trust and love.

The feeling of a few short weeks had hurried her into the sins her

nature had most recoiled from,—breach of faith and cruel selfishness;

she had rent the ties that had given meaning to duty, and had made

herself an outlawed soul, with no guide but the wayward choice of her

own passion. And where would that lead her? Where had it led her now?

She had said she would rather die than fall into that temptation. She

felt it now,—now that the consequences of such a fall had come before

the outward act was completed. There was at least this fruit from all

her years of striving after the highest and best,—that her soul though

betrayed, beguiled, ensnared, could never deliberately consent to a

choice of the lower. And a choice of what? O God! not a choice of joy,

but of conscious cruelty and hardness; for could she ever cease to see

before her Lucy and Philip, with their murdered trust and hopes? Her

life with Stephen could have no sacredness; she must forever sink and

wander vaguely, driven by uncertain impulse; for she had let go the

clue of life,—that clue which once in the far-off years her young need

had clutched so strongly. She had renounced all delights then, before

she knew them, before they had come within her reach. Philip had been

right when he told her that she knew nothing of renunciation; she had

thought it was quiet ecstasy; she saw it face to face now,—that sad,

patient, loving strength which holds the clue of life,—and saw that the

thorns were forever pressing on its brow. The yesterday, which could

never be revoked,—if she could have changed it now for any length of

inward silent endurance, she would have bowed beneath that cross with a

sense of rest.

Day break came and the reddening eastern light, while her past life was

grasping her in this way, with that tightening clutch which comes in

the last moments of possible rescue. She could see Stephen now lying on

the deck still fast asleep, and with the sight of him there came a wave

of anguish that found its way in a long-suppressed sob. The worst

bitterness of parting—the thought that urged the sharpest inward cry

for help—was the pain it must give to _him_. But surmounting everything

was the horror at her own possible failure, the dread lest her

conscience should be benumbed again, and not rise to energy till it was

too late. Too late! it was too late already not to have caused misery;

too late for everything, perhaps, but to rush away from the last act of

baseness,—the tasting of joys that were wrung from crushed hearts.

The sun was rising now, and Maggie started up with the sense that a day

of resistance was beginning for her. Her eyelashes were still wet with

tears, as, with her shawl over her head, she sat looking at the slowly

rounding sun. Something roused Stephen too, and getting up from his

hard bed, he came to sit beside her. The sharp instinct of anxious love

saw something to give him alarm in the very first glance. He had a

hovering dread of some resistance in Maggie’s nature that he would be

unable to overcome. He had the uneasy consciousness that he had robbed

her of perfect freedom yesterday; there was too much native honour in

him, for him not to feel that, if her will should recoil, his conduct

would have been odious, and she would have a right to reproach him.

But Maggie did not feel that right; she was too conscious of fatal

weakness in herself, too full of the tenderness that comes with the

foreseen need for inflicting a wound. She let him take her hand when he

came to sit down beside her, and smiled at him, only with rather a sad

glance; she could say nothing to pain him till the moment of possible

parting was nearer. And so they drank their cup of coffee together, and

walked about the deck, and heard the captain’s assurance that they

should be in at Mudport by five o’clock, each with an inward burthen;

but in him it was an undefined fear, which he trusted to the coming

hours to dissipate; in her it was a definite resolve on which she was

trying silently to tighten her hold. Stephen was continually, through

the morning, expressing his anxiety at the fatigue and discomfort she

was suffering, and alluded to landing and to the change of motion and

repose she would have in a carriage, wanting to assure himself more

completely by presupposing that everything would be as he had arranged

it. For a long while Maggie contented herself with assuring him that

she had had a good night’s rest, and that she didn’t mind about being

on the vessel,—it was not like being on the open sea, it was only a

little less pleasant than being in a boat on the Floss. But a

suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes, and Stephen became

more and more uneasy as the day advanced, under the sense that Maggie

had entirely lost her passiveness. He longed, but did not dare, to

speak of their marriage, of where they would go after it, and the steps

he would take to inform his father, and the rest, of what had happened.

He longed to assure himself of a tacit assent from her. But each time

he looked at her, he gathered a stronger dread of the new, quiet

sadness with which she met his eyes. And they were more and more

silent.

“Here we are in sight of Mudport,” he said at last. “Now, dearest,” he

added, turning toward her with a look that was half beseeching, “the

worst part of your fatigue is over. On the land we can command

swiftness. In another hour and a half we shall be in a chaise together,

and that will seem rest to you after this.”

Maggie felt it was time to speak; it would only be unkind now to assent

by silence. She spoke in the lowest tone, as he had done, but with

distinct decision.

“We shall not be together; we shall have parted.”

The blood rushed to Stephen’s face.

“We shall not,” he said. “I’ll die first.”

It was as he had dreaded—there was a struggle coming. But neither of

them dared to say another word till the boat was let down, and they

were taken to the landing-place. Here there was a cluster of gazers and

passengers awaiting the departure of the steamboat to St Ogg’s. Maggie

had a dim sense, when she had landed, and Stephen was hurrying her

along on his arm, that some one had advanced toward her from that

cluster as if he were coming to speak to her. But she was hurried

along, and was indifferent to everything but the coming trial.

A porter guided them to the nearest inn and posting-house, and Stephen

gave the order for the chaise as they passed through the yard. Maggie

took no notice of this, and only said, “Ask them to show us into a room

where we can sit down.”

When they entered, Maggie did not sit down, and Stephen, whose face had

a desperate determination in it, was about to ring the bell, when she

said, in a firm voice,—

“I’m not going; we must part here.”

“Maggie,” he said, turning round toward her, and speaking in the tones

of a man who feels a process of torture beginning, “do you mean to kill

me? What is the use of it now? The whole thing is done.”

“No, it is not done,” said Maggie. “Too much is done,—more than we can

ever remove the trace of. But I will go no farther. Don’t try to

prevail with me again. I couldn’t choose yesterday.”

What was he to do? He dared not go near her; her anger might leap out,

and make a new barrier. He walked backward and forward in maddening

perplexity.

“Maggie,” he said at last, pausing before her, and speaking in a tone

of imploring wretchedness, “have some pity—hear me—forgive me for what

I did yesterday. I will obey you now; I will do nothing without your

full consent. But don’t blight our lives forever by a rash perversity

that can answer no good purpose to any one, that can only create new

evils. Sit down, dearest; wait—think what you are going to do. Don’t

treat me as if you couldn’t trust me.”

He had chosen the most effective appeal; but Maggie’s will was fixed

unswervingly on the coming wrench. She had made up her mind to suffer.

“We must not wait,” she said, in a low but distinct voice; “we must

part at once.”

“We _can’t_ part, Maggie,” said Stephen, more impetuously. “I can’t

bear it. What is the use of inflicting that misery on me? The

blow—whatever it may have been—has been struck now. Will it help any

one else that you should drive me mad?”

“I will not begin any future, even for you,” said Maggie, tremulously,

“with a deliberate consent to what ought not to have been. What I told

you at Basset I feel now; I would rather have died than fall into this

temptation. It would have been better if we had parted forever then.

But we must part now.”

“We will _not_ part,” Stephen burst out, instinctively placing his back

against the door, forgetting everything he had said a few moments

before; “I will not endure it. You’ll make me desperate; I sha’n’t know

what I do.”

Maggie trembled. She felt that the parting could not be effected

suddenly. She must rely on a slower appeal to Stephen’s better self;

she must be prepared for a harder task than that of rushing away while

resolution was fresh. She sat down. Stephen, watching her with that

look of desperation which had come over him like a lurid light,

approached slowly from the door, seated himself close beside her, and

grasped her hand. Her heart beat like the heart of a frightened bird;

but this direct opposition helped her. She felt her determination

growing stronger.

“Remember what you felt weeks ago,” she began, with beseeching

earnestness; “remember what we both felt,—that we owed ourselves to

others, and must conquer every inclination which could make us false to

that debt. We have failed to keep our resolutions; but the wrong

remains the same.”

“No, it does _not_ remain the same,” said Stephen. “We have proved that

it was impossible to keep our resolutions. We have proved that the

feeling which draws us toward each other is too strong to be overcome.

That natural law surmounts every other; we can’t help what it clashes

with.”

“It is not so, Stephen; I’m quite sure that is wrong. I have tried to

think it again and again; but I see, if we judged in that way, there

would be a warrant for all treachery and cruelty; we should justify

breaking the most sacred ties that can ever be formed on earth. If the

past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but

the inclination of the moment.”

“But there are ties that can’t be kept by mere resolution,” said

Stephen, starting up and walking about again. “What is outward

faithfulness? Would they have thanked us for anything so hollow as

constancy without love?”

Maggie did not answer immediately. She was undergoing an inward as well

as an outward contest. At last she said, with a passionate assertion of

her conviction, as much against herself as against him,—

“That seems right—at first; but when I look further, I’m sure it is

_not_ right. Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides

doing what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean

renouncing whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in

us,—whatever would cause misery to those whom the course of our lives

has made dependent on us. If we—if I had been better, nobler, those

claims would have been so strongly present with me,—I should have felt

them pressing on my heart so continually, just as they do now in the

moments when my conscience is awake,—that the opposite feeling would

never have grown in me, as it has done; it would have been quenched at

once, I should have prayed for help so earnestly, I should have rushed

away as we rush from hideous danger. I feel no excuse for myself, none.

I should never have failed toward Lucy and Philip as I have done, if I

had not been weak, selfish, and hard,—able to think of their pain

without a pain to myself that would have destroyed all temptation. Oh,

what is Lucy feeling now? She believed in me—she loved me—she was so

good to me. Think of her——”

Maggie’s voice was getting choked as she uttered these last words.

“I _can’t_ think of her,” said Stephen, stamping as if with pain. “I

can think of nothing but you, Maggie. You demand of a man what is

impossible. I felt that once; but I can’t go back to it now. And where

is the use of _your_ thinking of it, except to torture me? You can’t

save them from pain now; you can only tear yourself from me, and make

my life worthless to me. And even if we could go back, and both fulfil

our engagements,—if that were possible now,—it would be hateful,

horrible, to think of your ever being Philip’s wife,—of your ever being

the wife of a man you didn’t love. We have both been rescued from a

mistake.”

A deep flush came over Maggie’s face, and she couldn’t speak. Stephen

saw this. He sat down again, taking her hand in his, and looking at her

with passionate entreaty.

“Maggie! Dearest! If you love me, you are mine. Who can have so great a

claim on you as I have? My life is bound up in your love. There is

nothing in the past that can annul our right to each other; it is the

first time we have either of us loved with our whole heart and soul.”

Maggie was still silent for a little while, looking down. Stephen was

in a flutter of new hope; he was going to triumph. But she raised her

eyes and met his with a glance that was filled with the anguish of

regret, not with yielding.

“No, not with my whole heart and soul, Stephen,” she said with timid

resolution. “I have never consented to it with my whole mind. There are

memories, and affections, and longings after perfect goodness, that

have such a strong hold on me; they would never quit me for long; they

would come back and be pain to me—repentance. I couldn’t live in peace

if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God. I have

caused sorrow already—I know—I feel it; but I have never deliberately

consented to it; I have never said, ‘They shall suffer, that I may have

joy.’ It has never been my will to marry you; if you were to win

consent from the momentary triumph of my feeling for you, you would not

have my whole soul. If I could wake back again into the time before

yesterday, I would choose to be true to my calmer affections, and live

without the joy of love.”

Stephen loosed her hand, and rising impatiently, walked up and down the

room in suppressed rage.

“Good God!” he burst out at last, “what a miserable thing a woman’s

love is to a man’s! I could commit crimes for you,—and you can balance

and choose in that way. But you _don’t_ love me; if you had a tithe of

the feeling for me that I have for you, it would be impossible to you

to think for a moment of sacrificing me. But it weighs nothing with you

that you are robbing me of _my_ life’s happiness.”

Maggie pressed her fingers together almost convulsively as she held

them clasped on her lap. A great terror was upon her, as if she were

ever and anon seeing where she stood by great flashes of lightning, and

then again stretched forth her hands in the darkness.

“No, I don’t sacrifice you—I couldn’t sacrifice you,” she said, as soon

as she could speak again; “but I can’t believe in a good for you, that

I feel, that we both feel, is a wrong toward others. We can’t choose

happiness either for ourselves or for another; we can’t tell where that

will lie. We can only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the

present moment, or whether we will renounce that, for the sake of

obeying the divine voice within us,—for the sake of being true to all

the motives that sanctify our lives. I know this belief is hard; it has

slipped away from me again and again; but I have felt that if I let it

go forever, I should have no light through the darkness of this life.”

“But, Maggie,” said Stephen, seating himself by her again, “is it

possible you don’t see that what happened yesterday has altered the

whole position of things? What infatuation is it, what obstinate

prepossession, that blinds you to that? It is too late to say what we

might have done or what we ought to have done. Admitting the very worst

view of what has been done, it is a fact we must act on now; our

position is altered; the right course is no longer what it was before.

We must accept our own actions and start afresh from them. Suppose we

had been married yesterday? It is nearly the same thing. The effect on

others would not have been different. It would only have made this

difference to ourselves,” Stephen added bitterly, “that you might have

acknowledged then that your tie to me was stronger than to others.”

Again a deep flush came over Maggie’s face, and she was silent. Stephen

thought again that he was beginning to prevail,—he had never yet

believed that he should _not_ prevail; there are possibilities which

our minds shrink from too completely for us to fear them.

“Dearest,” he said, in his deepest, tenderest tone, leaning toward her,

and putting his arm round her, “you _are_ mine now,—the world believes

it; duty must spring out of that now.

“In a few hours you will be legally mine, and those who had claims on

us will submit,—they will see that there was a force which declared

against their claims.”

Maggie’s eyes opened wide in one terrified look at the face that was

close to hers, and she started up, pale again.

“Oh, I can’t do it,” she said, in a voice almost of agony; “Stephen,

don’t ask me—don’t urge me. I can’t argue any longer,—I don’t know what

is wise; but my heart will not let me do it. I see,—I feel their

trouble now; it is as if it were branded on my mind. _I_ have suffered,

and had no one to pity me; and now I have made others suffer. It would

never leave me; it would embitter your love to me. I _do_ care for

Philip—in a different way; I remember all we said to each other; I know

how he thought of me as the one promise of his life. He was given to me

that I might make his lot less hard; and I have forsaken him. And

Lucy—she has been deceived; she who trusted me more than any one. I

cannot marry you; I cannot take a good for myself that has been wrung

out of their misery. It is not the force that ought to rule us,—this

that we feel for each other; it would rend me away from all that my

past life has made dear and holy to me. I can’t set out on a fresh

life, and forget that; I must go back to it, and cling to it, else I

shall feel as if there were nothing firm beneath my feet.”

“Good God, Maggie!” said Stephen, rising too and grasping her arm, “you

rave. How can you go back without marrying me? You don’t know what will

be said, dearest. You see nothing as it really is.”

“Yes, I do. But they will believe me. I will confess everything. Lucy

will believe me—she will forgive you, and—and—oh, _some_ good will come

by clinging to the right. Dear, dear Stephen, let me go!—don’t drag me

into deeper remorse. My whole soul has never consented; it does not

consent now.”

Stephen let go her arm, and sank back on his chair, half-stunned by

despairing rage. He was silent a few moments, not looking at her; while

her eyes were turned toward him yearningly, in alarm at this sudden

change. At last he said, still without looking at her,—

“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 SEVENTH

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 honour. 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 favour to ask of you.”

“Don’t you speak so, Miss,” said Bob, grasping the skin of Mumps’s

neck; “if there’s anything I can do for you, I should look upon it as a

day’s earnings.”

“I want you to go to Dr Kenn’s, and ask to speak to him, and tell him

that I am here, and should be very grateful if he would come to me

while my mother is away. She will not come back till evening.”

“Eh, Miss, I’d do it in a minute,—it is but a step,—but Dr Kenn’s wife

lies dead; she’s to be buried to-morrow; died the day I come from

Mudport. It’s all the more pity she should ha’ died just now, if you

want him. I hardly like to go a-nigh him yet.”

“Oh no, Bob,” said Maggie, “we must let it be,—till after a few days,

perhaps, when you hear that he is going about again. But perhaps he may

be going out of town—to a distance,” she added, with a new sense of

despondency at this idea.

“Not he, Miss,” said Bob. “_He’ll_ none go away. He isn’t one o’ them

gentlefolks as go to cry at waterin’-places when their wives die; he’s

got summat else to do. He looks fine and sharp after the parish, he

does. He christened the little un; an’ he was _at_ me to know what I

did of a Sunday, as I didn’t come to church. But I told him I was upo’

the travel three parts o’ the Sundays,—an’ then I’m so used to bein’ on

my legs, I can’t sit so long on end,—‘an’ lors, sir,’ says I, ‘a

packman can do wi’ a small ’lowance o’ church; it tastes strong,’ says

I; ‘there’s no call to lay it on thick.’ Eh, Miss, how good the little

un is wi’ you! It’s like as if it knowed you; it partly does, I’ll be

bound,—like the birds know the mornin’.”

Bob’s tongue was now evidently loosed from its unwonted bondage, and

might even be in danger of doing more work than was required of it. But

the subjects on which he longed to be informed were so steep and

difficult of approach, that his tongue was likely to run on along the

level rather than to carry him on that unbeaten road. He felt this, and

was silent again for a little while, ruminating much on the possible

forms in which he might put a question. At last he said, in a more

timid voice than usual,—

“Will you give me leave to ask you only one thing, Miss?”

Maggie was rather startled, but she answered, “Yes, Bob, if it is about

myself—not about any one else.”

“Well, Miss, it’s this. _Do_ you owe anybody a grudge?”

“No, not any one,” said Maggie, looking up at him inquiringly. “Why?”

“Oh, lors, Miss,” said Bob, pinching Mumps’s neck harder than ever. “I

wish you did, an’ tell me; I’d leather him till I couldn’t see—I

would—an’ the Justice might do what he liked to me arter.”

“Oh, Bob,” said Maggie, smiling faintly, “you’re a very good friend to

me. But I shouldn’t like to punish any one, even if they’d done me

wrong; I’ve done wrong myself too often.”

This view of things was puzzling to Bob, and threw more obscurity than

ever over what could possibly have happened between Stephen and Maggie.

But further questions would have been too intrusive, even if he could

have framed them suitably, and he was obliged to carry baby away again

to an expectant mother.

“Happen you’d like Mumps for company, Miss,” he said when he had taken

the baby again. “He’s rare company, Mumps is; he knows iverything, an’

makes no bother about it. If I tell him, he’ll lie before you an’ watch

you, as still,—just as he watches my pack. You’d better let me leave

him a bit; he’ll get fond on you. Lors, it’s a fine thing to hev a dumb

brute fond on you; it’ll stick to you, an’ make no jaw.”

“Yes, do leave him, please,” said Maggie. “I think I should like to

have Mumps for a friend.”

“Mumps, lie down there,” said Bob, pointing to a place in front of

Maggie, “and niver do you stir till you’re spoke to.”

Mumps lay down at once, and made no sign of restlessness when his

master left the room.

Chapter II.

St Ogg’s Passes Judgment

It was soon known throughout St Ogg’s that Miss Tulliver was come back;

she had not, then, eloped in order to be married to Mr Stephen

Guest,—at all events, Mr Stephen Guest had not married her; which came

to the same thing, so far as her culpability was concerned. We judge

others according to results; how else?—not knowing the process by which

results are arrived at. If Miss Tulliver, after a few months of

well-chosen travel, had returned as Mrs Stephen Guest, with a

post-marital _trousseau_, and all the advantages possessed even by the

most unwelcome wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St Ogg’s,

as else where, always knew what to think, would have judged in strict

consistency with those results. Public opinion, in these cases, is

always of the feminine gender,—not the world, but the world’s wife; and

she would have seen that two handsome young people—the gentleman of

quite the first family in St Ogg’s—having found themselves in a false

position, had been led into a course which, to say the least of it, was

highly injudicious, and productive of sad pain and disappointment,

especially to that sweet young thing, Miss Deane. Mr Stephen Guest had

certainly not behaved well; but then, young men were liable to those

sudden infatuated attachments; and bad as it might seem in Mrs Stephen

Guest to admit the faintest advances from her cousin’s lover (indeed it

_had_ been said that she was actually engaged to young Wakem,—old Wakem

himself had mentioned it), still, she was very young,—“and a deformed

young man, you know!—and young Guest so very fascinating; and, they

say, he positively worships her (to be sure, that can’t last!), and he

ran away with her in the boat quite against her will, and what could

she do? She couldn’t come back then; no one would have spoken to her;

and how very well that maize-coloured satinette becomes her complexion!

It seems as if the folds in front were quite come in; several of her

dresses are made so,—they say he thinks nothing too handsome to buy for

her. Poor Miss Deane! She is very pitiable; but then there was no

positive engagement; and the air at the coast will do her good. After

all, if young Guest felt no more for her than _that_ it was better for

her not to marry him. What a wonderful marriage for a girl like Miss

Tulliver,—quite romantic? Why, young Guest will put up for the borough

at the next election. Nothing like commerce nowadays! That young Wakem

nearly went out of his mind; he always _was_ rather queer; but he’s

gone abroad again to be out of the way,—quite the best thing for a

deformed young man. Miss Unit declares she will never visit Mr and Mrs

Stephen Guest,—such nonsense! pretending to be better than other

people. Society couldn’t be carried on if we inquired into private

conduct in that way,—and Christianity tells us to think no evil,—and my

belief is, that Miss Unit had no cards sent her.”

But the results, we know, were not of a kind to warrant this

extenuation of the past. Maggie had returned without a _trousseau_,

without a husband,—in that degraded and outcast condition to which

error is well known to lead; and the world’s wife, with that fine

instinct which is given her for the preservation of Society, saw at

once that Miss Tulliver’s conduct had been of the most aggravated kind.

Could anything be more detestable? A girl so much indebted to her

friends—whose mother as well as herself had received so much kindness

from the Deanes—to lay the design of winning a young man’s affections

away from her own cousin, who had behaved like a sister to her! Winning

his affections? That was not the phrase for such a girl as Miss

Tulliver; it would have been more correct to say that she had been

actuated by mere unwomanly boldness and unbridled passion. There was

always something questionable about her. That connection with young

Wakem, which, they said, had been carried on for years, looked very

ill,—disgusting, in fact! But with a girl of that disposition! To the

world’s wife there had always been something in Miss Tulliver’s very

_physique_ that a refined instinct felt to be prophetic of harm. As for

poor Mr Stephen Guest, he was rather pitiable than otherwise; a young

man of five-and-twenty is not to be too severely judged in these

cases,—he is really very much at the mercy of a designing, bold girl.

And it was clear that he had given way in spite of himself: he had

shaken her off as soon as he could; indeed, their having parted so soon

looked very black indeed—_for her_. To be sure, he had written a

letter, laying all the blame on himself, and telling the story in a

romantic fashion so as to try and make her appear quite innocent; of

course he would do that! But the refined instinct of the world’s wife

was not to be deceived; providentially!—else what would become of

Society? Why, her own brother had turned her from his door; he had seen

enough, you might be sure, before he would do that. A truly respectable

young man, Mr Tom Tulliver; quite likely to rise in the world! His

sister’s disgrace was naturally a heavy blow to him. It was to be hoped

that she would go out of the neighbourhood,—to America, or anywhere,—so

as to purify the air of St Ogg’s from the stain of her presence,

extremely dangerous to daughters there! No good could happen to her; it

was only to be hoped she would repent, and that God would have mercy on

her: He had not the care of society on His hands, as the world’s wife

had.

It required nearly a fortnight for fine instinct to assure itself of

these inspirations; indeed, it was a whole week before Stephen’s letter

came, telling his father the facts, and adding that he was gone across

to Holland,—had drawn upon the agent at Mudport for money,—was

incapable of any resolution at present.

Maggie, all this while, was too entirely filled with a more agonizing

anxiety to spend any thought on the view that was being taken of her

conduct by the world of St Ogg’s; anxiety about Stephen, Lucy, Philip,

beat on her poor heart in a hard, driving, ceaseless storm of mingled

love, remorse, and pity. If she had thought of rejection and injustice

at all, it would have seemed to her that they had done their worst;

that she could hardly feel any stroke from them intolerable since the

words she had heard from her brother’s lips. Across all her anxiety for

the loved and the injured, those words shot again and again, like a

horrible pang that would have brought misery and dread even into a

heaven of delights. The idea of ever recovering happiness never

glimmered in her mind for a moment; it seemed as if every sensitive

fibre in her were too entirely preoccupied by pain ever to vibrate

again to another influence. Life stretched before her as one act of

penitence; and all she craved, as she dwelt on her future lot, was

something to guarantee her from more falling; her own weakness haunted

her like a vision of hideous possibilities, that made no peace

conceivable except such as lay in the sense of a sure refuge.

But she was not without practical intentions; the love of independence

was too strong an inheritance and a habit for her not to remember that

she must get her bread; and when other projects looked vague, she fell

back on that of returning to her plain sewing, and so getting enough to

pay for her lodging at Bob’s. She meant to persuade her mother to

return to the Mill by and by, and live with Tom again; and somehow or

other she would maintain herself at St Ogg’s. Dr Kenn would perhaps

help her and advise her. She remembered his parting words at the

bazaar. She remembered the momentary feeling of reliance that had

sprung in her when he was talking with her, and she waited with

yearning expectation for the opportunity of confiding everything to

him. Her mother called every day at Mr Deane’s to learn how Lucy was;

the report was always sad,—nothing had yet roused her from the feeble

passivity which had come on with the first shock. But of Philip, Mrs

Tulliver had learned nothing; naturally, no one whom she met would

speak to her about what related to her daughter. But at last she

summoned courage to go and see sister Glegg, who of course would know

everything, and had been even to see Tom at the Mill in Mrs Tulliver’s

absence, though he had said nothing of what had passed on the occasion.

As soon as her mother was gone, Maggie put on her bonnet. She had

resolved on walking to the Rectory and asking to see Dr Kenn; he was in

deep grief, but the grief of another does not jar upon us in such

circumstances. It was the first time she had been beyond the door since

her return; nevertheless her mind was so bent on the purpose of her

walk, that the unpleasantness of meeting people on the way, and being

stared at, did not occur to her. But she had no sooner passed beyond

the narrower streets which she had to thread from Bob’s dwelling, than

she became aware of unusual glances cast at her; and this consciousness

made her hurry along nervously, afraid to look to right or left.

Presently, however, she came full on Mrs and Miss Turnbull, old

acquaintances of her family; they both looked at her strangely, and

turned a little aside without speaking. All hard looks were pain to

Maggie, but her self-reproach was too strong for resentment. No wonder

they will not speak to me, she thought; they are very fond of Lucy. But

now she knew that she was about to pass a group of gentlemen, who were

standing at the door of the billiard-rooms, and she could not help

seeing young Torry step out a little with his glass at his eye, and bow

to her with that air of _nonchalance_ which he might have bestowed on a

friendly barmaid.

Maggie’s pride was too intense for her not to feel that sting, even in

the midst of her sorrow; and for the first time the thought took strong

hold of her that she would have other obloquy cast on her besides that

which was felt to be due to her breach of faith toward Lucy. But she

was at the Rectory now; there, perhaps, she would find something else

than retribution. Retribution may come from any voice; the hardest,

cruelest, most imbruted urchin at the street-corner can inflict it;

surely help and pity are rarer things, more needful for the righteous

to bestow.

She was shown up at once, after being announced, into Dr Kenn’s study,

where he sat amongst piled-up books, for which he had little appetite,

leaning his cheek against the head of his youngest child, a girl of

three. The child was sent away with the servant, and when the door was

closed, Dr Kenn said, placing a chair for Maggie,—

“I was coming to see you, Miss Tulliver; you have anticipated me; I am

glad you did.”

Maggie looked at him with her childlike directness as she had done at

the bazaar, and said, “I want to tell you everything.” But her eyes

filled fast with tears as she said it, and all the pent-up excitement

of her humiliating walk would have its vent before she could say more.

“Do tell me everything,” Dr Kenn said, with quiet kindness in his

grave, firm voice. “Think of me as one to whom a long experience has

been granted, which may enable him to help you.”

In rather broken sentences, and with some effort at first, but soon

with the greater ease that came from a sense of relief in the

confidence, Maggie told the brief story of a struggle that must be the

beginning of a long sorrow. Only the day before, Dr Kenn had been made

acquainted with the contents of Stephen’s letter, and he had believed

them at once, without the confirmation of Maggie’s statement. That

involuntary plaint of hers, “_Oh, I must go_,” had remained with him as

the sign that she was undergoing some inward conflict.

Maggie dwelt the longest on the feeling which had made her come back to

her mother and brother, which made her cling to all the memories of the

past. When she had ended, Dr Kenn was silent for some minutes; there

was a difficulty on his mind. He rose, and walked up and down the

hearth with his hands behind him. At last he seated himself again, and

said, looking at Maggie,—

“Your prompting to go to your nearest friends,—to remain where all the

ties of your life have been formed,—is a true prompting, to which the

Church in its original constitution and discipline responds, opening

its arms to the penitent, watching over its children to the last; never

abandoning them until they are hopelessly reprobate. And the Church

ought to represent the feeling of the community, so that every parish

should be a family knit together by Christian brotherhood under a

spiritual father. But the ideas of discipline and Christian fraternity

are entirely relaxed,—they can hardly be said to exist in the public

mind; they hardly survive except in the partial, contradictory form

they have taken in the narrow communities of schismatics; and if I were

not supported by the firm faith that the Church must ultimately recover

the full force of that constitution which is alone fitted to human

needs, I should often lose heart at observing the want of fellowship

and sense of mutual responsibility among my own flock. At present

everything seems tending toward the relaxation of ties,—toward the

substitution of wayward choice for the adherence to obligation, which

has its roots in the past. Your conscience and your heart have given

you true light on this point, Miss Tulliver; and I have said all this

that you may know what my wish about you—what my advice to you—would

be, if they sprang from my own feeling and opinion unmodified by

counteracting circumstances.”

Dr Kenn paused a little while. There was an entire absence of effusive

benevolence in his manner; there was something almost cold in the

gravity of his look and voice. If Maggie had not known that his

benevolence was persevering in proportion to its reserve, she might

have been chilled and frightened. As it was, she listened expectantly,

quite sure that there would be some effective help in his words. He

went on.

“Your inexperience of the world, Miss Tulliver, prevents you from

anticipating fully the very unjust conceptions that will probably be

formed concerning your conduct,—conceptions which will have a baneful

effect, even in spite of known evidence to disprove them.”

“Oh, I do,—I begin to see,” said Maggie, unable to repress this

utterance of her recent pain. “I know I shall be insulted. I shall be

thought worse than I am.”

“You perhaps do not yet know,” said Dr Kenn, with a touch of more

personal pity, “that a letter is come which ought to satisfy every one

who has known anything of you, that you chose the steep and difficult

path of a return to the right, at the moment when that return was most

of all difficult.”

“Oh, where is he?” said poor Maggie, with a flush and tremor that no

presence could have hindered.

“He is gone abroad; he has written of all that passed to his father. He

has vindicated you to the utmost; and I hope the communication of that

letter to your cousin will have a beneficial effect on her.”

Dr Kenn waited for her to get calm again before he went on.

“That letter, as I said, ought to suffice to prevent false impressions

concerning you. But I am bound to tell you, Miss Tulliver, that not

only the experience of my whole life, but my observation within the

last three days, makes me fear that there is hardly any evidence which

will save you from the painful effect of false imputations. The persons

who are the most incapable of a conscientious struggle such as yours

are precisely those who will be likely to shrink from you, because they

will not believe in your struggle. I fear your life here will be

attended not only with much pain, but with many obstructions. For this

reason—and for this only—I ask you to consider whether it will not

perhaps be better for you to take a situation at a distance, according

to your former intention. I will exert myself at once to obtain one for

you.”

“Oh, if I could but stop here!” said Maggie. “I have no heart to begin

a strange life again. I should have no stay. I should feel like a

lonely wanderer, cut off from the past. I have written to the lady who

offered me a situation to excuse myself. If I remained here, I could

perhaps atone in some way to Lucy—to others; I could convince them that

I’m sorry. And,” she added, with some of the old proud fire flashing

out, “I will not go away because people say false things of me. They

shall learn to retract them. If I must go away at last, because—because

others wish it, I will not go now.”

“Well,” said Dr Kenn, after some consideration, “if you determine on

that, Miss Tulliver, you may rely on all the influence my position

gives me. I am bound to aid and countenance you by the very duties of

my office as a parish priest. I will add, that personally I have a deep

interest in your peace of mind and welfare.”

“The only thing I want is some occupation that will enable me to get my

bread and be independent,” said Maggie. “I shall not want much. I can

go on lodging where I am.”

“I must think over the subject maturely,” said Dr Kenn, “and in a few

days I shall be better able to ascertain the general feeling. I shall

come to see you; I shall bear you constantly in mind.”

When Maggie had left him, Dr Kenn stood ruminating with his hands

behind him, and his eyes fixed on the carpet, under a painful sense of

doubt and difficulty. The tone of Stephen’s letter, which he had read,

and the actual relations of all the persons concerned, forced upon him

powerfully the idea of an ultimate marriage between Stephen and Maggie

as the least evil; and the impossibility of their proximity in St Ogg’s

on any other supposition, until after years of separation, threw an

insurmountable prospective difficulty over Maggie’s stay there. On the

other hand, he entered with all the comprehension of a man who had

known spiritual conflict, and lived through years of devoted service to

his fellow-men, into that state of Maggie’s heart and conscience which

made the consent to the marriage a desecration to her; her conscience

must not be tampered with; the principle on which she had acted was a

safer guide than any balancing of consequences. His experience told him

that intervention was too dubious a responsibility to be lightly

incurred; the possible issue either of an endeavor to restore the

former relations with Lucy and Philip, or of counselling submission to

this irruption of a new feeling, was hidden in a darkness all the more

impenetrable because each immediate step was clogged with evil.

The great problem of the shifting relation between passion and duty is

clear to no man who is capable of apprehending it; the question whether

the moment has come in which a man has fallen below the possibility of

a renunciation that will carry any efficacy, and must accept the sway

of a passion against which he had struggled as a trespass, is one for

which we have no master-key that will fit all cases. The casuists have

become a byword of reproach; but their perverted spirit of minute

discrimination was the shadow of a truth to which eyes and hearts are

too often fatally sealed,—the truth, that moral judgments must remain

false and hollow, unless they are checked and enlightened by a

perpetual reference to the special circumstances that mark the

individual lot.

All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the

men of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious

complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to

lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine

promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and

sympathy. And the man of maxims is the popular representative of the

minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general rules,

thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent

method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination,

impartiality,—without any care to assure themselves whether they have

the insight that comes from a hardly earned estimate of temptation, or

from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide

fellow-feeling with all that is human.

Chapter III.

Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us

When Maggie was at home again, her mother brought her news of an

unexpected line of conduct in aunt Glegg. As long as Maggie had not

been heard of, Mrs Glegg had half closed her shutters and drawn down

her blinds. She felt assured that Maggie was drowned; that was far more

probable than that her niece and legatee should have done anything to

wound the family honour in the tenderest point. When at last she

learned from Tom that Maggie had come home, and gathered from him what

was her explanation of her absence, she burst forth in severe reproof

of Tom for admitting the worst of his sister until he was compelled. If

you were not to stand by your “kin” as long as there was a shred of

honour attributable to them, pray what were you to stand by? Lightly to

admit conduct in one of your own family that would force you to alter

your will, had never been the way of the Dodsons; and though Mrs Glegg

had always augured ill of Maggie’s future at a time when other people

were perhaps less clear-sighted, yet fair play was a jewel, and it was

not for her own friends to help to rob the girl of her fair fame, and

to cast her out from family shelter to the scorn of the outer world,

until she had become unequivocally a family disgrace. The circumstances

were unprecedented in Mrs Glegg’s experience; nothing of that kind had

happened among the Dodsons before; but it was a case in which her

hereditary rectitude and personal strength of character found a common

channel along with her fundamental ideas of clanship, as they did in

her lifelong regard to equity in money matters. She quarrelled with Mr

Glegg, whose kindness, flowing entirely into compassion for Lucy, made

him as hard in his judgment of Maggie as Mr Deane himself was; and

fuming against her sister Tulliver because she did not at once come to

her for advice and help, shut herself up in her own room with Baxter’s

“Saints’ Rest” from morning till night, denying herself to all

visitors, till Mr Glegg brought from Mr Deane the news of Stephen’s

letter. Then Mrs Glegg felt that she had adequate fighting-ground; then

she laid aside Baxter, and was ready to meet all comers. While Mrs

Pullet could do nothing but shake her head and cry, and wish that

cousin Abbot had died, or any number of funerals had happened rather

than this, which had never happened before, so that there was no

knowing how to act, and Mrs Pullet could never enter St Ogg’s again,

because “acquaintances” knew of it all, Mrs Glegg only hoped that Mrs

Wooll, or any one else, would come to her with their false tales about

her own niece, and she would know what to say to that ill-advised

person!

Again she had a scene of remonstrance with Tom, all the more severe in

proportion to the greater strength of her present position. But Tom,

like other immovable things, seemed only the more rigidly fixed under

that attempt to shake him. Poor Tom! he judged by what he had been able

to see; and the judgment was painful enough to himself. He thought he

had the demonstration of facts observed through years by his own eyes,

which gave no warning of their imperfection, that Maggie’s nature was

utterly untrustworthy, and too strongly marked with evil tendencies to

be safely treated with leniency. He would act on that demonstration at

any cost; but the thought of it made his days bitter to him. Tom, like

every one of us, was imprisoned within the limits of his own nature,

and his education had simply glided over him, leaving a slight deposit

of polish; if you are inclined to be severe on his severity, remember

that the responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider

vision. There had arisen in Tom a repulsion toward Maggie that derived

its very intensity from their early childish love in the time when they

had clasped tiny fingers together, and their later sense of nearness in

a common duty and a common sorrow; the sight of her, as he had told

her, was hateful to him. In this branch of the Dodson family aunt Glegg

found a stronger nature than her own; a nature in which family feeling

had lost the character of clanship by taking on a doubly deep dye of

personal pride.

Mrs Glegg allowed that Maggie ought to be punished,—she was not a woman

to deny that; she knew what conduct was,—but punished in proportion to

the misdeeds proved against her, not to those which were cast upon her

by people outside her own family who might wish to show that their own

kin were better.

“Your aunt Glegg scolded me so as niver was, my dear,” said poor Mrs

Tulliver, when she came back to Maggie, “as I didn’t go to her before;

she said it wasn’t for her to come to me first. But she spoke like a

sister, too; _having_ she allays was, and hard to please,—oh dear!—but

she’s said the kindest word as has ever been spoke by you yet, my

child. For she says, for all she’s been so set again’ having one extry

in the house, and making extry spoons and things, and putting her about

in her ways, you shall have a shelter in her house, if you’ll go to her

dutiful, and she’ll uphold you against folks as say harm of you when

they’ve no call. And I told her I thought you couldn’t bear to see

anybody but me, you were so beat down with trouble; but she said, ‘_I_

won’t throw ill words at her; there’s them out o’ th’ family ’ull be

ready enough to do that. But I’ll give her good advice; an’ she must be

humble.’ It’s wonderful o’ Jane; for I’m sure she used to throw

everything I did wrong at me,—if it was the raisin-wine as turned out

bad, or the pies too hot, or whativer it was.”

“Oh, mother,” said poor Maggie, shrinking from the thought of all the

contact her bruised mind would have to bear, “tell her I’m very

grateful; I’ll go to see her as soon as I can; but I can’t see any one

just yet, except Dr Kenn. I’ve been to him,—he will advise me, and help

me to get some occupation. I can’t live with any one, or be dependent

on them, tell aunt Glegg; I must get my own bread. But did you hear

nothing of Philip—Philip Wakem? Have you never seen any one that has

mentioned him?”

“No, my dear; but I’ve been to Lucy’s, and I saw your uncle, and he

says they got her to listen to the letter, and she took notice o’ Miss

Guest, and asked questions, and the doctor thinks she’s on the turn to

be better. What a world this is,—what trouble, oh dear! The law was the

first beginning, and it’s gone from bad to worse, all of a sudden, just

when the luck seemed on the turn.” This was the first lamentation that

Mrs Tulliver had let slip to Maggie, but old habit had been revived by

the interview with sister Glegg.

“My poor, poor mother!” Maggie burst out, cut to the heart with pity

and compunction, and throwing her arms round her mother’s neck; “I was

always naughty and troublesome to you. And now you might have been

happy if it hadn’t been for me.”

“Eh, my dear,” said Mrs Tulliver, leaning toward the warm young cheek;

“I must put up wi’ my children,—I shall never have no more; and if they

bring me bad luck, I must be fond on it. There’s nothing else much to

be fond on, for my furnitur’ went long ago. And you’d got to be very

good once; I can’t think how it’s turned out the wrong way so!”

Still two or three more days passed, and Maggie heard nothing of

Philip; anxiety about him was becoming her predominant trouble, and she

summoned courage at last to inquire about him of Dr Kenn, on his next

visit to her. He did not even know if Philip was at home. The elder

Wakem was made moody by an accumulation of annoyance; the

disappointment in this young Jetsome, to whom, apparently, he was a

good deal attached, had been followed close by the catastrophe to his

son’s hopes after he had done violence to his own strong feeling by

conceding to them, and had incautiously mentioned this concession in St

Ogg’s; and he was almost fierce in his brusqueness when any one asked

him a question about his son.

But Philip could hardly have been ill, or it would have been known

through the calling in of the medical man; it was probable that he was

gone out of the town for a little while. Maggie sickened under this

suspense, and her imagination began to live more and more persistently

in what Philip was enduring. What did he believe about her?

At last Bob brought her a letter, without a postmark, directed in a

hand which she knew familiarly in the letters of her own name,—a hand

in which her name had been written long ago, in a pocket Shakespeare

which she possessed. Her mother was in the room, and Maggie, in violent

agitation, hurried upstairs that she might read the letter in solitude.

She read it with a throbbing brow.

“Maggie,—I believe in you; I know you never meant to deceive me; I know

you tried to keep faith to me and to all. I believed this before I had

any other evidence of it than your own nature. The night after I last

parted from you I suffered torments. I had seen what convinced me that

you were not free; that there was another whose presence had a power

over you which mine never possessed; but through all the

suggestions—almost murderous suggestions—of rage and jealousy, my mind

made its way to believe in your truthfulness. I was sure that you meant

to cleave to me, as you had said; that you had rejected him; that you

struggled to renounce him, for Lucy’s sake and for mine. But I could

see no issue that was not fatal for _you;_ and that dread shut out the

very thought of resignation. I foresaw that he would not relinquish

you, and I believed then, as I believe now, that the strong attraction

which drew you together proceeded only from one side of your

characters, and belonged to that partial, divided action of our nature

which makes half the tragedy of the human lot. I have felt the

vibration of chords in your nature that I have continually felt the

want of in his. But perhaps I am wrong; perhaps I feel about you as the

artist does about the scene over which his soul has brooded with love;

he would tremble to see it confided to other hands; he would never

believe that it could bear for another all the meaning and the beauty

it bears for him.

“I dared not trust myself to see you that morning; I was filled

with selfish passion; I was shattered by a night of conscious

delirium. I told you long ago that I had never been resigned even

to the mediocrity of my powers; how could I be resigned to the loss

of the one thing which had ever come to me on earth with the

promise of such deep joy as would give a new and blessed meaning to

the foregoing pain,—the promise of another self that would lift my

aching affection into the divine rapture of an ever-springing,

ever-satisfied want?

“But the miseries of that night had prepared me for what came

before the next. It was no surprise to me. I was certain that he

had prevailed on you to sacrifice everything to him, and I waited

with equal certainty to hear of your marriage. I measured your love

and his by my own. But I was wrong, Maggie. There is something

stronger in you than your love for him.

“I will not tell you what I went through in that interval. But even

in its utmost agony—even in those terrible throes that love must

suffer before it can be disembodied of selfish desire—my love for

you sufficed to withhold me from suicide, without the aid of any

other motive. In the midst of my egoism, I yet could not bear to

come like a death-shadow across the feast of your joy. I could not

bear to forsake the world in which you still lived and might need

me; it was part of the faith I had vowed to you,—to wait and

endure. Maggie, that is a proof of what I write now to assure you

of,—that no anguish I have had to bear on your account has been too

heavy a price to pay for the new life into which I have entered in

loving you. I want you to put aside all grief because of the grief

you have caused me. I was nurtured in the sense of privation; I

never expected happiness; and in knowing you, in loving you, I have

had, and still have, what reconciles me to life. You have been to

my affections what light, what colour is to my eyes, what music is

to the inward ear, you have raised a dim unrest into a vivid

consciousness. The new life I have found in caring for your joy and

sorrow more than for what is directly my own, has transformed the

spirit of rebellious murmuring into that willing endurance which is

the birth of strong sympathy. I think nothing but such complete and

intense love could have initiated me into that enlarged life which

grows and grows by appropriating the life of others; for before, I

was always dragged back from it by ever-present painful

self-consciousness. I even think sometimes that this gift of

transferred life which has come to me in loving you, may be a new

power to me.

“Then, dear one, in spite of all, you have been the blessing of my

life. Let no self-reproach weigh on you because of me. It is I who

should rather reproach myself for having urged my feelings upon

you, and hurried you into words that you have felt as fetters. You

meant to be true to those words; you _have_ been true. I can

measure your sacrifice by what I have known in only one half-hour

of your presence with me, when I dreamed that you might love me

best. But, Maggie, I have no just claim on you for more than

affectionate remembrance.

“For some time I have shrunk from writing to you, because I have

shrunk even from the appearance of wishing to thrust myself before

you, and so repeating my original error. But you will not

misconstrue me. I know that we must keep apart for a long while;

cruel tongues would force us apart, if nothing else did. But I

shall not go away. The place where you are is the one where my mind

must live, wherever I might travel. And remember that I am

unchangeably yours,—yours not with selfish wishes, but with a

devotion that excludes such wishes.

“God comfort you, my loving, large-souled Maggie. If every one else

has misconceived you, remember that you have never been doubted by

him whose heart recognised you ten years ago.

“Do not believe any one who says I am ill, because I am not seen

out of doors. I have only had nervous headaches,—no worse than I

have sometimes had them before. But the overpowering heat inclines

me to be perfectly quiescent in the daytime. I am strong enough to

obey any word which shall tell me that I can serve you by word or

deed.

“Yours to the last,

“_Philip Wakem_.”

As Maggie knelt by the bed sobbing, with that letter pressed under her,

her feelings again and again gathered themselves in a whispered cry,

always in the same words,—

“O God, is there any happiness in love that could make me forget

_their_ pain?”

Chapter IV.

Maggie and Lucy

By the end of the week Dr Kenn had made up his mind that there was only

one way in which he could secure to Maggie a suitable living at St

Ogg’s. Even with his twenty years’ experience as a parish priest, he

was aghast at the obstinate continuance of imputations against her in

the face of evidence. Hitherto he had been rather more adored and

appealed to than was quite agreeable to him; but now, in attempting to

open the ears of women to reason, and their consciences to justice, on

behalf of Maggie Tulliver, he suddenly found himself as powerless as he

was aware he would have been if he had attempted to influence the shape

of bonnets. Dr Kenn could not be contradicted; he was listened to in

silence; but when he left the room, a comparison of opinions among his

hearers yielded much the same result as before. Miss Tulliver had

undeniably acted in a blamable manner, even Dr Kenn did not deny that;

how, then, could he think so lightly of her as to put that favourable

interpretation on everything she had done? Even on the supposition that

required the utmost stretch of belief,—namely, that none of the things

said about Miss Tulliver were true,—still, since they _had_ been said

about her, they had cast an odor round her which must cause her to be

shrunk from by every woman who had to take care of her own

reputation—and of Society. To have taken Maggie by the hand and said,

“I will not believe unproved evil of you; my lips shall not utter it;

my ears shall be closed against it; I, too, am an erring mortal, liable

to stumble, apt to come short of my most earnest efforts; your lot has

been harder than mine, your temptation greater; let us help each other

to stand and walk without more falling,”—to have done this would have

demanded courage, deep pity, self-knowledge, generous trust; would have

demanded a mind that tasted no piquancy in evil-speaking, that felt no

self-exaltation in condemning, that cheated itself with no large words

into the belief that life can have any moral end, any high religion,

which excludes the striving after perfect truth, justice, and love

toward the individual men and women who come across our own path. The

ladies of St Ogg’s were not beguiled by any wide speculative

conceptions; but they had their favourite abstraction, called Society,

which served to make their consciences perfectly easy in doing what

satisfied their own egoism,—thinking and speaking the worst of Maggie

Tulliver, and turning their backs upon her. It was naturally

disappointing to Dr Kenn, after two years of superfluous incense from

his feminine parishioners, to find them suddenly maintaining their

views in opposition to his; but then they maintained them in opposition

to a higher Authority, which they had venerated longer. That Authority

had furnished a very explicit answer to persons who might inquire where

their social duties began, and might be inclined to take wide views as

to the starting-point. The answer had not turned on the ultimate good

of Society, but on “a certain man” who was found in trouble by the

wayside.

Not that St Ogg’s was empty of women with some tenderness of heart and

conscience; probably it had as fair a proportion of human goodness in

it as any other small trading town of that day. But until every good

man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid,—too timid

even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings, when

these would place them in a minority. And the men at St Ogg’s were not

all brave, by any means; some of them were even fond of scandal, and to

an extent that might have given their conversation an effeminate

character, if it had not been distinguished by masculine jokes, and by

an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual hatred of women. It

was the general feeling of the masculine mind at St Ogg’s that women

were not to be interfered with in their treatment of each other.

And thus every direction in which Dr Kenn had turned, in the hope of

procuring some kind recognition and some employment for Maggie, proved

a disappointment to him. Mrs James Torry could not think of taking

Maggie as a nursery governess, even temporarily,—a young woman about

whom “such things had been said,” and about whom “gentlemen joked”; and

Miss Kirke, who had a spinal complaint, and wanted a reader and

companion, felt quite sure that Maggie’s mind must be of a quality with

which she, for her part, could not risk _any_ contact. Why did not Miss

Tulliver accept the shelter offered her by her aunt Glegg? It did not

become a girl like her to refuse it. Or else, why did she not go out of

the neighbourhood, and get a situation where she was not known? (It was

not, apparently, of so much importance that she should carry her

dangerous tendencies into strange families unknown at St Ogg’s.) She

must be very bold and hardened to wish to stay in a parish where she

was so much stared at and whispered about.

Dr Kenn, having great natural firmness, began, in the presence of this

opposition, as every firm man would have done, to contract a certain

strength of determination over and above what would have been called

forth by the end in view. He himself wanted a daily governess for his

younger children; and though he had hesitated in the first instance to

offer this position to Maggie, the resolution to protest with the

utmost force of his personal and priestly character against her being

crushed and driven away by slander, was now decisive. Maggie gratefully

accepted an employment that gave her duties as well as a support; her

days would be filled now, and solitary evenings would be a welcome

rest. She no longer needed the sacrifice her mother made in staying

with her, and Mrs Tulliver was persuaded to go back to the Mill.

But now it began to be discovered that Dr Kenn, exemplary as he had

hitherto appeared, had his crotchets, possibly his weaknesses. The

masculine mind of St Ogg’s smiled pleasantly, and did not wonder that

Kenn liked to see a fine pair of eyes daily, or that he was inclined to

take so lenient a view of the past; the feminine mind, regarded at that

period as less powerful, took a more melancholy view of the case. If Dr

Kenn should be beguiled into marrying that Miss Tulliver! It was not

safe to be too confident, even about the best of men; an apostle had

fallen, and wept bitterly afterwards; and though Peter’s denial was not

a close precedent, his repentance was likely to be.

Maggie had not taken her daily walks to the Rectory for many weeks,

before the dreadful possibility of her some time or other becoming the

Rector’s wife had been talked of so often in confidence, that ladies

were beginning to discuss how they should behave to her in that

position. For Dr Kenn, it had been understood, had sat in the

schoolroom half an hour one morning, when Miss Tulliver was giving her

lessons,—nay, he had sat there every morning; he had once walked home

with her,—he almost _always_ walked home with her,—and if not, he went

to see her in the evening. What an artful creature she was! What a

_mother_ for those children! It was enough to make poor Mrs Kenn turn

in her grave, that they should be put under the care of this girl only

a few weeks after her death. Would he be so lost to propriety as to

marry her before the year was out? The masculine mind was sarcastic,

and thought _not_.

The Miss Guests saw an alleviation to the sorrow of witnessing a folly

in their Rector; at least their brother would be safe; and their

knowledge of Stephen’s tenacity was a constant ground of alarm to them,

lest he should come back and marry Maggie. They were not among those

who disbelieved their brother’s letter; but they had no confidence in

Maggie’s adherence to her renunciation of him; they suspected that she

had shrunk rather from the elopement than from the marriage, and that

she lingered in St Ogg’s, relying on his return to her. They had always

thought her disagreeable; they now thought her artful and proud; having

quite as good grounds for that judgment as you and I probably have for

many strong opinions of the same kind. Formerly they had not altogether

delighted in the contemplated match with Lucy, but now their dread of a

marriage between Stephen and Maggie added its momentum to their genuine

pity and indignation on behalf of the gentle forsaken girl, in making

them desire that he should return to her. As soon as Lucy was able to

leave home, she was to seek relief from the oppressive heat of this

August by going to the coast with the Miss Guests; and it was in their

plans that Stephen should be induced to join them. On the very first

hint of gossip concerning Maggie and Dr Kenn, the report was conveyed

in Miss Guest’s letter to her brother.

Maggie had frequent tidings through her mother, or aunt Glegg, or Dr

Kenn, of Lucy’s gradual progress toward recovery, and her thoughts

tended continually toward her uncle Deane’s house; she hungered for an

interview with Lucy, if it were only for five minutes, to utter a word

of penitence, to be assured by Lucy’s own eyes and lips that she did

not believe in the willing treachery of those whom she had loved and

trusted. But she knew that even if her uncle’s indignation had not

closed his house against her, the agitation of such an interview would

have been forbidden to Lucy. Only to have seen her without speaking

would have been some relief; for Maggie was haunted by a face cruel in

its very gentleness; a face that had been turned on hers with glad,

sweet looks of trust and love from the twilight time of memory; changed

now to a sad and weary face by a first heart-stroke. And as the days

passed on, that pale image became more and more distinct; the picture

grew and grew into more speaking definiteness under the avenging hand

of remorse; the soft hazel eyes, in their look of pain, were bent

forever on Maggie, and pierced her the more because she could see no

anger in them. But Lucy was not yet able to go to church, or any place

where Maggie could see her; and even the hope of that departed, when

the news was told her by aunt Glegg, that Lucy was really going away in

a few days to Scarborough with the Miss Guests, who had been heard to

say that they expected their brother to meet them there.

Only those who have known what hardest inward conflict is, can know

what Maggie felt as she sat in her loneliness the evening after hearing

that news from Mrs Glegg,—only those who have known what it is to dread

their own selfish desires as the watching mother would dread the

sleeping-potion that was to still her own pain.

She sat without candle in the twilight, with the window wide open

toward the river; the sense of oppressive heat adding itself

undistinguishably to the burthen of her lot. Seated on a chair against

the window, with her arm on the windowsill she was looking blankly at

the flowing river, swift with the backward-rushing tide, struggling to

see still the sweet face in its unreproaching sadness, that seemed now

from moment to moment to sink away and be hidden behind a form that

thrust itself between, and made darkness. Hearing the door open, she

thought Mrs Jakin was coming in with her supper, as usual; and with

that repugnance to trivial speech which comes with languor and

wretchedness, she shrank from turning round and saying she wanted

nothing; good little Mrs Jakin would be sure to make some well-meant

remarks. But the next moment, without her having discerned the sound of

a footstep, she felt a light hand on her shoulder, and heard a voice

close to her saying, “Maggie!”

The face was there,—changed, but all the sweeter; the hazel eyes were

there, with their heart-piercing tenderness.

“Maggie!” the soft voice said. “Lucy!” answered a voice with a sharp

ring of anguish in it; and Lucy threw her arms round Maggie’s neck, and

leaned her pale cheek against the burning brow.

“I stole out,” said Lucy, almost in a whisper, while she sat down close

to Maggie and held her hand, “when papa and the rest were away. Alice

is come with me. I asked her to help me. But I must only stay a little

while, because it is so late.”

It was easier to say that at first than to say anything else. They sat

looking at each other. It seemed as if the interview must end without

more speech, for speech was very difficult. Each felt that there would

be something scorching in the words that would recall the irretrievable

wrong. But soon, as Maggie looked, every distinct thought began to be

overflowed by a wave of loving penitence, and words burst forth with a

sob.

“God bless you for coming, Lucy.”

The sobs came thick on each other after that.

“Maggie, dear, be comforted,” said Lucy now, putting her cheek against

Maggie’s again. “Don’t grieve.” And she sat still, hoping to soothe

Maggie with that gentle caress.

“I didn’t mean to deceive you, Lucy,” said Maggie, as soon as she could

speak. “It always made me wretched that I felt what I didn’t like you

to know. It was because I thought it would all be conquered, and you

might never see anything to wound you.”

“I know, dear,” said Lucy. “I know you never meant to make me unhappy.

It is a trouble that has come on us all; you have more to bear than I

have—and you gave him up, when—you did what it must have been very hard

to do.”

They were silent again a little while, sitting with clasped hands, and

cheeks leaned together.

“Lucy,” Maggie began again, “_he_ struggled too. He wanted to be true

to you. He will come back to you. Forgive him—he will be happy then——”

These words were wrung forth from Maggie’s deepest soul, with an effort

like the convulsed clutch of a drowning man. Lucy trembled and was

silent.

A gentle knock came at the door. It was Alice, the maid, who entered

and said,—

“I daren’t stay any longer, Miss Deane. They’ll find it out, and

there’ll be such anger at your coming out so late.”

Lucy rose and said, “Very well, Alice,—in a minute.”

“I’m to go away on Friday, Maggie,” she added, when Alice had closed

the door again. “When I come back, and am strong, they will let me do

as I like. I shall come to you when I please then.”

“Lucy,” said Maggie, with another great effort, “I pray to God

continually that I may never be the cause of sorrow to you any more.”

She pressed the little hand that she held between hers, and looked up

into the face that was bent over hers. Lucy never forgot that look.

“Maggie,” she said, in a low voice, that had the solemnity of

confession in it, “you are better than I am. I can’t——”

She broke off there, and said no more. But they clasped each other

again in a last embrace.

Chapter V.

The Last Conflict

In the second week of September, Maggie was again sitting in her lonely

room, battling with the old shadowy enemies that were forever slain and

rising again. It was past midnight, and the rain was beating heavily

against the window, driven with fitful force by the rushing,

loud-moaning wind. For the day after Lucy’s visit there had been a

sudden change in the weather; the heat and drought had given way to

cold variable winds, and heavy falls of rain at intervals; and she had

been forbidden to risk the contemplated journey until the weather

should become more settled. In the counties higher up the Floss the

rains had been continuous, and the completion of the harvest had been

arrested. And now, for the last two days, the rains on this lower

course of the river had been incessant, so that the old men had shaken

their heads and talked of sixty years ago, when the same sort of

weather, happening about the equinox, brought on the great floods,

which swept the bridge away, and reduced the town to great misery. But

the younger generation, who had seen several small floods, thought

lightly of these sombre recollections and forebodings; and Bob Jakin,

naturally prone to take a hopeful view of his own luck, laughed at his

mother when she regretted their having taken a house by the riverside,

observing that but for that they would have had no boats, which were

the most lucky of possessions in case of a flood that obliged them to

go to a distance for food.

But the careless and the fearful were alike sleeping in their beds now.

There was hope that the rain would abate by the morrow; threatenings of

a worse kind, from sudden thaws after falls of snow, had often passed

off, in the experience of the younger ones; and at the very worst, the

banks would be sure to break lower down the river when the tide came in

with violence, and so the waters would be carried off, without causing

more than temporary inconvenience, and losses that would be felt only

by the poorer sort, whom charity would relieve.

All were in their beds now, for it was past midnight; all except some

solitary watchers such as Maggie. She was seated in her little parlour

toward the river, with one candle, that left everything dim in the room

except a letter which lay before her on the table. That letter, which

had come to her to-day, was one of the causes that had kept her up far

on into the night, unconscious how the hours were going, careless of

seeking rest, with no image of rest coming across her mind, except of

that far, far off rest from which there would be no more waking for her

into this struggling earthly life.

Two days before Maggie received that letter, she had been to the

Rectory for the last time. The heavy rain would have prevented her from

going since; but there was another reason. Dr Kenn, at first

enlightened only by a few hints as to the new turn which gossip and

slander had taken in relation to Maggie, had recently been made more

fully aware of it by an earnest remonstrance from one of his male

parishioners against the indiscretion of persisting in the attempt to

overcome the prevalent feeling in the parish by a course of resistance.

Dr Kenn, having a conscience void of offence in the matter, was still

inclined to persevere,—was still averse to give way before a public

sentiment that was odious and contemptible; but he was finally wrought

upon by the consideration of the peculiar responsibility attached to

his office, of avoiding the appearance of evil,—an “appearance” that is

always dependent on the average quality of surrounding minds. Where

these minds are low and gross, the area of that “appearance” is

proportionately widened. Perhaps he was in danger of acting from

obstinacy; perhaps it was his duty to succumb. Conscientious people are

apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course; and to

recede was always painful to Dr Kenn. He made up his mind that he must

advise Maggie to go away from St Ogg’s for a time; and he performed

that difficult task with as much delicacy as he could, only stating in

vague terms that he found his attempt to countenance her stay was a

source of discord between himself and his parishioners, that was likely

to obstruct his usefulness as a clergyman. He begged her to allow him

to write to a clerical friend of his, who might possibly take her into

his own family as governess; and, if not, would probably know of some

other available position for a young woman in whose welfare Dr Kenn

felt a strong interest.

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

colour, 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.

Great God! there were floating masses in it, that might dash against

her boat as she passed, and cause her to perish too soon. What were

those masses?

For the first time Maggie’s heart began to beat in an agony of dread.

She sat helpless, dimly conscious that she was being floated along,

more intensely conscious of the anticipated clash. But the horror was

transient; it passed away before the oncoming warehouses of St Ogg’s.

She had passed the mouth of the Ripple, then; _now_, she must use all

her skill and power to manage the boat and get it if possible out of

the current. She could see now that the bridge was broken down; she

could see the masts of a stranded vessel far out over the watery field.

But no boats were to be seen moving on the river,—such as had been laid

hands on were employed in the flooded streets.

With new resolution, Maggie seized her oar, and stood up again to

paddle; but the now ebbing tide added to the swiftness of the river,

and she was carried along beyond the bridge. She could hear shouts from

the windows overlooking the river, as if the people there were calling

to her. It was not till she had passed on nearly to Tofton that she

could get the boat clear of the current. Then with one yearning look

toward her uncle Deane’s house that lay farther down the river, she

took to both her oars and rowed with all her might across the watery

fields, back toward the Mill. Colour was beginning to awake now, and as

she approached the Dorlcote fields, she could discern the tints of the

trees, could see the old Scotch firs far to the right, and the home

chestnuts,—oh, how deep they lay in the water,—deeper than the trees on

this side the hill! And the roof of the Mill—where was it? Those heavy

fragments hurrying down the Ripple,—what had they meant? But it was not

the house,—the house stood firm; drowned up to the first story, but

still firm,—or was it broken in at the end toward the Mill?

With panting joy that she was there at last,—joy that overcame all

distress,—Maggie neared the front of the house. At first she heard no

sound; she saw no object moving. Her boat was on a level with the

upstairs window. She called out in a loud, piercing voice,—

“Tom, where are you? Mother, where are you? Here is Maggie!”

Soon, from the window of the attic in the central gable, she heard

Tom’s voice,—

“Who is it? Have you brought a boat?”

“It is I, Tom,—Maggie. Where is mother?”

“She is not here; she went to Garum the day before yesterday. I’ll come

down to the lower window.”

“Alone, Maggie?” said Tom, in a voice of deep astonishment, as he

opened the middle window, on a level with the boat.

“Yes, Tom; God has taken care of me, to bring me to you. Get in

quickly. Is there no one else?”

“No,” said Tom, stepping into the boat; “I fear the man is drowned; he

was carried down the Ripple, I think, when part of the Mill fell with

the crash of trees and stones against it; I’ve shouted again and again,

and there has been no answer. Give me the oars, Maggie.”

It was not till Tom had pushed off and they were on the wide water,—he

face to face with Maggie,—that the full meaning of what had happened

rushed upon his mind. It came with so overpowering a force,—it was such

a new revelation to his spirit, of the depths in life that had lain

beyond his vision, which he had fancied so keen and clear,—that he was

unable to ask a question. They sat mutely gazing at each other,—Maggie

with eyes of intense life looking out from a weary, beaten face; Tom

pale, with a certain awe and humiliation. Thought was busy though the

lips were silent; and though he could ask no question, he guessed a

story of almost miraculous, divinely protected effort. But at last a

mist gathered over the blue-gray eyes, and the lips found a word they

could utter,—the old childish “Magsie!”

Maggie could make no answer but a long, deep sob of that mysterious,

wondrous happiness that is one with pain.

As soon as she could speak, she said, “We will go to Lucy, Tom; we’ll

go and see if she is safe, and then we can help the rest.”

Tom rowed with untired vigor, and with a different speed from poor

Maggie’s. The boat was soon in the current of the river again, and soon

they would be at Tofton.

“Park House stands high up out of the flood,” said Maggie. “Perhaps

they have got Lucy there.”

Nothing else was said; a new danger was being carried toward them by

the river. Some wooden machinery had just given way on one of the

wharves, and huge fragments were being floated along. The sun was

rising now, and the wide area of watery desolation was spread out in

dreadful clearness around them; in dreadful clearness floated onward

the hurrying, threatening masses. A large company in a boat that was

working its way along under the Tofton houses observed their danger,

and shouted, “Get out of the current!”

But that could not be done at once; and Tom, looking before him, saw

death rushing on them. Huge fragments, clinging together in fatal

fellowship, made one wide mass across the stream.

“It is coming, Maggie!” Tom said, in a deep, hoarse voice, loosing the

oars, and clasping her.

The next instant the boat was no longer seen upon the water, and the

huge mass was hurrying on in hideous triumph.

But soon the keel of the boat reappeared, a black speck on the golden

water.

The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace

never to be parted; living through again in one supreme moment the days

when they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the

daisied fields together.

Conclusion

Nature repairs her ravages,—repairs them with her sunshine, and with

human labour. The desolation wrought by that flood had left little

visible trace on the face of the earth, five years after. The fifth

autumn was rich in golden cornstacks, rising in thick clusters among

the distant hedgerows; the wharves and warehouses on the Floss were

busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopeful lading and

unlading.

And every man and woman mentioned in this history was still living,

except those whose end we know.

Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not

rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new

growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath

their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes

that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.

Dorlcote Mill was rebuilt. And Dorlcote churchyard—where the brick

grave that held a father whom we know, was found with the stone laid

prostrate upon it after the flood—had recovered all its grassy order

and decent quiet.

Near that brick grave there was a tomb erected, very soon after the

flood, for two bodies that were found in close embrace; and it was

visited at different moments by two men who both felt that their

keenest joy and keenest sorrow were forever buried there.

One of them visited the tomb again with a sweet face beside him; but

that was years after.

The other was always solitary. His great companionship was among the

trees of the Red Deeps, where the buried joy seemed still to hover,

like a revisiting spirit.

The tomb bore the names of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, and below the names

it was written,—

“In their death they were not divided.”