 Book 6, Chapter 6 of the Mill on the Floss. Recording by Amanda Hindman. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliott. Book 6. The Great Temptation. Chapter 6. Illustrating the Laws of Attraction. It is evident to you now that Maggie had arrived at a moment in her life which must be considered by all prudent persons as a great opportunity for a young woman. Launched into the higher society of St. Augs with a striking person, which had the advantage of being quite unfamiliar to the majority of beholders, and with such moderate assistance of costume as you have seen foreshadowed in Lucy's anxious colloquy with Aunt Pallette, Maggie was certainly at a new starting point in life. At Lucy's first evening party, young Tory fatigued his facial muscles more than usual in order that the dark-eyed girl there in the corner might see him in all the additional style conferred by his eyeglass. And several young ladies went home intending to have short sleeves with black lace and to plait their hair in a broad-core net at the back of their head. That cousin of Miss Dean's looked so very well. In fact, poor Maggie, with all her inward consciousness of a painful past and her presentment of a troublesome future, was on the way to become an object of some envy, a topic of discussion in the newly established billiard room, and between fair friends who had no secrets from each other on the subject of trimmings. The misguests who associated cheaply on terms of condescension with the families of St. Augs, and were the glass of fashion there, took some exception to Maggie's manners. She had a way of not assenting at once to the observation's current in good society, and of saying that she didn't know whether those observations were true or not, which gave her an air of gauchere, and impeded the even flow of conversation. But it is a fact capable of an amiable interpretation that ladies are not the worst disposed toward a new acquaintance of their own sex, because she has points of inferiority. And Maggie was so entirely without those pretty heirs of coquetry, which have the traditional reputation of driving gentlemen to despair, that she won some feminine pity for being so ineffective in spite of her beauty. She had not had many advantages, poor thing, and it must be admitted there was no pretension about her. Her abruptness and unevenness of manner were plainly the result of her secluded and lowly circumstances. It was only a wonder that there was no tinge of vulgarity about her. Considering what the rest of poorly these relations were, an illusion which always made the misguests shudder a little, it was not agreeable to think of any connection by marriage with such people as the Glegs and the Polettes, but it was of no use to contradict Stephen when once he had set his mind on anything, and certainly there was no possible objection to Lucy and herself. No one could help liking her. She would naturally desire that the misguests should behave kindly to this cousin of whom she was so fond, and Stephen would make a great fuss if they were deficient in civility. Under these circumstances the invitations to park house were not wanting, and elsewhere also Miss Dean was too popular and too distinguished a member of society in St. Augs for any attention toward her to be neglected. Thus Maggie was introduced for the first time to the young lady's life, and knew what it was to get up in the morning without any imperative reason for doing one thing more than another. This new sense of leisure and unchecked enjoyment, amidst the soft breathing airs and garden scents of advancing spring, amidst the new abundance of music and lingering strolls in the sunshine, and the delicious dreaminess of gliding on the river, could hardly be without some intoxicating effect on her after her years of probation. And to even in the first week Maggie began to be less haunted by her sad memories and anticipations. Life was certainly very pleasant just now. It was becoming very pleasant to dress in the evening and to feel that she was one of the beautiful things of this springtime, and there were admiring eyes always awaiting her now. She was no longer an unheeded person, liable to be shied, from whom attention was continually claimed and on whom no one felt bound to confer any. It was pleasant, too, when Stephen and Lucy were gone out riding, to sit down at the piano alone and find that the old fitness between her fingers and the keys remained, and revived like a sympathetic kinship not to be worn out by separation. To get the tune she had heard the evening before and repeat them again and again until she had found out a way of producing them so as to make them a more pregnant, passionate language to her. The American Court of Octaves was a delight to Maggie, and she would often take up a book of studies rather than animality that she might taste more keenly by abstraction the more primitive sensation of intervals. Not that her enjoyment of music was of the kind that indicates a great specific talent, it was rather that her sensibility to the supreme excitement of music was only one form of that passionate sensibility which belonged to her whole nature and made her faults and virtues all merge in each other, made her affections sometimes in inpatient demand, but also prevented her vanity from taking the form of mere feminine coquetry and device and gave it the poetry of ambition. But you have known Maggie a long while and need to be told not her characteristics, but her history, which is a thing hardly to be predicted even from the completest knowledge of characteristics, for the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from within. Character, says Nobolus, in one of his questionable aphorisms, character is destiny, but not the whole of our destiny. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was speculative and irresolute, and we have a great tragedy in consequence. But if his father had lived to a good old age and his uncle had died an early death, we can conceive Hamlet's having married Ophelia and got through life with a reputation of sanity, notwithstanding many soliloquies and some moody sarcasm toward the fair daughter of Polonius to say nothing of the frankest incivility to his father-in-law. Maggie's destiny, then, is at present hidden, and we must wait for it to reveal itself like the course of an unmapped river. We only know that the river is full and rapid, and that for all rivers there is the same final home. Under the charm of her new pleasures Maggie herself was ceasing to think, with her eager prefiguring imagination, of her future lot, and her anxiety about her first interview with Philip was losing its predominance. Perhaps unconsciously to herself she was not sorry that the interview had been deferred. For Philip had not come the evening he was expected, and Mr. Stephen Guest brought word that he was gone to the coast, probably he thought on a sketching expedition, but it was not certain when he would return. It was just like Philip to go off in that way without telling anyone. It was not until the twelfth day that he returned to find both Lucy's notes awaiting him. He had left before he knew of Maggie's arrival. Perhaps one had need be nineteen again to be quite convinced of the feelings that were crowded for Maggie into those twelve days, of the length to which they were stretched for her by the novelty of her experience in them, and the varying attitudes of her mind. The early days of an acquaintance almost always have this importance for us, and fill up a larger space in our memory than longer subsequent periods which have been less filled with discovery and new impressions. There were not many hours in those ten days in which Mr. Stephen Guest was not seated by Lucy's side or standing near her at the piano or accompanying her on some outdoor excursion. His attentions were clearly becoming more assiduous, and that was what everyone had expected. Lucy was very happy, all the happier because Stephen's society seemed to have become much more interesting and amusing since Maggie had been there. Playful discussions, sometimes serious ones, were going forward, in which both Stephen and Maggie revealed themselves to the admiration of the gentle, unobtrusive Lucy, and it more than once crossed her mind what a charming quartet they should have through life when Maggie married Philip. Is it an inexplicable thing that a girl should enjoy her lover's society the more for the presence of a third person, and be without the slightest spasm of jealousy that the third person had the conversation habitually directed to her? Not when that girl is as tranquil-hearted as Lucy, thoroughly possessed with the belief that she knows the state of her companion's affections and not prone to the feelings which shake such a belief in the absence of positive evidence against it. Besides, it was Lucy by whom Stephen sat, to whom he gave his arm, to whom he appealed as the person sure to agree with him, and every day there was the same tender politeness toward her, the same consciousness of her wants and care to supply them. Was there really the same? It seemed to Lucy that there was more, and it was no wonder that the real significance of the change escaped her. It was a subtle act of consciousness in Stephen that even he himself was not aware of. His personal attentions to Maggie were comparatively slight, and there had even sprung up an apparent distance between them that prevented the renewal of that faint resemblance to gallantry into which he had fallen the first day in the boat. If Stephen came in when Lucy was out of the room, if Lucy let them together, they never spoke to each other. Stephen, perhaps, seemed to be examining books or music, and Maggie bent her head assiduously over her work. Each was oppressively conscious of the other's presence, even to the finger ends. Yet, each looked and longed for the same thing to happen the next day. Neither of them had begun to reflect on the matter, or silently to ask, to what to solve this tent. Maggie only felt that life was revealing something quite new to her, and she was absorbed in the direct, immediate experience without any energy left for taking account of it and reasoning about it. Stephen willfully abstained from self-questioning, and would not admit to himself that he felt an influence which was to have any determining effect on his conduct. And when Lucy came into the room again, they were once more unconstrained. Maggie could contradict Stephen and dilapid him, and he could recommend to her consideration the example of that most charming heroine, Miss Sophia Western, who had a great respect for the understandings of men. Maggie could look at Stephen, which, for some reason or other, she always avoided when they were alone, and he could even ask her to play his accompaniment for him, since Lucy's fingers were so busy with that bizarre work, and lecture her on hurrying the tempo, which was certainly Maggie's weak point. One day it was the day of Philip's return. Lucy had formed a sudden engagement to spend the evening with Mrs. Ken, whose delicate state of health threatening to become confirmed illness through an attack of bronchitis, obliged her to resign her functions at the coming bazaar into the hands of other ladies, of whom she wished Lucy to be one. The engagement had been formed in Stephen's presence, and he had heard Lucy promise to dine early and call at six o'clock for Miss Torrey, who brought Mrs. Ken's request. Here is another of the moral results of this idiotic bazaar, Stephen burst forth, as soon as Miss Torrey had left the room, taking young ladies from the duties of the domestic hearth into scenes of dissipation among urn rugs and embroidered ridicules. I should like to know what is the proper function of women if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out. If this goes on much longer, the bonds of society will be dissolved. Well, it will not go on much longer, said Lucy, laughing, for the bazaar is to take place on Monday week. Thank Heaven, said Stephen. Ken himself said the other day that he didn't like this plan of making vanity do the work of charity, but just as the British public is not reasonable enough to bear a direct taxation, so St. Augs has not got force of motive enough to build and endow schools without calling in the force of folly. Did he say so, said little Lucy, her hazel eyes opening wide with anxiety. I never heard him say anything of that kind. I thought he approved of what we were doing. I'm sure he approved you, said Stephen, smiling at her affectionately. Your conduct in going out tonight looks vicious I own, but I know there is benevolence at the bottom of it. Oh, you think too well of me, said Lucy, shaking her head with a pretty blush, and there the subject ended. But it was tackately understood that Stephen would not come in the evening, and on the strength of that tack at understanding he made his morning visit the longer, not saying good-bye until after four. Maggie was seated in the drawing-room alone shortly after dinner, with many on her lap, having left her uncle to his wine and his nap, and her mother to the compromise between knitting and nodding, which when there was no company, she always carried on in the dining-room till tea-time. Maggie was stooping to caress the tiny silken pet and comforting him for his mistress' absence when the sound of a footstep on the gravel made her look up and she saw Mr. Stephen guest walking up the garden as if he had come straight from the river. It was very unusual to see him so soon after dinner. He often complained that their dinner-hour was late at Parkhouse. Nevertheless, there he was in his black dress. He had evidently been home and must have come again by the river. Maggie felt her cheeks glowing and her heart beating. It was natural she should be nervous, for she was not accustomed to receive visitors alone. He had seen her look up through the open window and raised his hat as he walked toward it to enter that way instead of by the door. He blushed too and certainly looked as foolish as a young man of some wit and self-possession can be expected to look as he walked in with a roll of music in his hand and said, with an air of hesitating improvisation, You are surprised to see me again, Miss Tolliver. I ought to apologize for coming upon you by surprise, but I wanted to come into the town and I got our man to row me, so I thought I would bring these things from the maid of Artaus for your cousin. I forgot them this morning. Will you give them to her?" Yes, said Maggie, who had risen confusedly with many in her arms, and now not quite knowing what else to do sat down again. Stephen laid down his hat with the music which rolled on the floor, and sat down in the chair close by her. He had never done so before, and both he and Maggie were quite aware that it was an entirely new position. Well, you pampered Minion, said Stephen, leaning to pull the long curly ears that drooped over Maggie's arm. It was not a suggested remark, and as the speaker did not follow it up by further development, it naturally left the conversation at a standstill. It seemed to Stephen like some action in a dream that he was obliged to do and wonder at himself all the while, to go on stroking many's head. Yet it was very pleasant. He only wished he dared look at Maggie, and that she would look at him, let him have one long look into those deep, strange eyes of hers, and then he would be satisfied and quite reasonable after that. He thought it was becoming a sort of monomania with him, to want that long look from Maggie, and he was racking his invention continually to find out some means by which he could have it without its appearing singular and entailing subsequent embarrassment. As for Maggie, she had no distinct thought, only the sense of a presence like that of a closely hovering broad-winged bird in the darkness, for she was unable to look up and saw nothing but many's black wavy coat. But this must end some time. Perhaps it ended very soon and only seemed long, as a minute's dream does. Stephen at last sat upright sideways in his chair, leaning one hand and arm over the back and looking at Maggie. What should he say? We shall have a splendid sunset, I think. Shant you go out and see it? I don't know, said Maggie, then courageously raising her eyes and looking out of the window, if I'm not playing cribbage with my uncle. A pause, during which many is stroked again, but has sufficient insight not to be grateful for it, to growl, rather. Do you like sitting alone? A rather arch-look came over Maggie's face, and just glancing at Stephen, she said, would it be quite civil to say yes? It was rather a dangerous question for an intruder to ask, said Stephen, delighted with that glance, and getting determined to stay for another. But you will have more than half an hour to yourself after I'm gone, he added, taking out his watch. I know Mr. Dean never comes in till half past seven. Another pause, during which Maggie looked steadily out of the window, till by a great effort she moved her head to look down at many's back again, and said, I wish Lucy had not been obliged to go out, we lose our music. We shall have a new voice tomorrow night, said Stephen. Will you tell your cousin that our friend Philip Wakeham has come back? I saw him as I went home. Maggie gave a little start. It seemed hardly more than a vibration that passed from head to foot in an instant, but the new images summoned by Philip's name dispersed half the oppressive spell she had been under. She rose from her chair with a sudden resolution, and laying many on his cushion, went to reach Lucy's large work-basket from its corner. Stephen was vexed and disappointed. He thought perhaps Maggie didn't like the name of Wakeham to be mentioned to her in that abrupt way, for he now recalled what Lucy had told him of the family quarrel. It was of no use to stay any longer. Maggie was seating herself at the table with her work and looking chill and proud, and he looked like a simpleton for having come. A gratuitous, entirely superfluous visit of that sort was sure to make a man disagreeable and ridiculous. Of course it was palpable to Maggie's thinking that he had dined hastily in his own room for the sake of setting off again and finding her alone. A boyish state of mind for an accomplished young gentleman of five and twenty, not without legal knowledge, but a reference to history perhaps may make it not incredible. At this moment Maggie's ball of knitting wool rolled along the ground, and she started up to reach it. Stephen rose too, and picking up the ball met her with a vexed, complaining look that gave his eyes quite a new expression to Maggie, whose own eyes met them as he presented the ball to her. Good-bye, said Stephen, in a tone that had the same beseeching discontent as his eyes. He dared not put out his hand. He thrust both hands into his tail-pockets as he spoke. Maggie thought she had perhaps been rude. Won't you stay, she said timidly, not looking away, for that would have seemed rude again. No, thank you, said Stephen, looking still into the half-unwilling, half-fascinated eyes as a thirsty man looks toward the track of the distant brook. The boat is waiting for me. You'll tell your cousin. Yes, that I brought the music, I mean. Yes, and that Philip has come back. Yes, Maggie did not notice Philip's name this time. Won't you come out a little way into the garden, said Stephen, in a still, gentler tone? But the next moment he was vexed that she did not say no, for she moved away now toward the open window, and he was obliged to take his hat and walk by her side. But he thought of something to make him a man's. Do take my arm, he said, in a low tone as if it were a secret. There is something strangely winning to most women in that offer of the firm arm. The help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help, the presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs, meets a continual want of the imagination. Either on that ground or some other, Maggie took the arm, and they walked together round the grass-pot and under the drooping green of the levernums in the same dim, dreamy state as they had been in a quarter of an hour before. Only that Stephen had had the look he longed for, without yet perceiving in himself the symptoms of returning reasonableness, and Maggie had darting thoughts across the dimness. How came he to be there? Why had she come out? Not a word was spoken. If it had been, each would have been less intensely conscious of the other. Take care of this step, said Stephen at last. Oh, I will go in now, said Maggie, feeling that the step had come like a rescue. Good evening. In an instant she had withdrawn her arm and was running back to the house. She did not reflect that this sudden action would only add to the embarrassing recollections of the last half hour. She had no thought left for that. She only threw herself into the low armchair and burst into tears. Oh, Philip! Philip, I wish we were together again, so quietly in the red deeps. Stephen looked after her a moment, then went on to the boat, and was soon landed at the wharf. He spent the evening in the billiard-room smoking one cigar after another and losing lives at pool, but he would not leave off. He was determined not to think, not to admit any more distinct remembrance than was urged upon him by the perpetual presence of Maggie. He was looking at her, and she was on his arm. But there came the necessity of walking home in the cool starlight, and with it the necessity of cursing his own folly and bitterly determining that he would never trust himself alone with Maggie again. It was all madness. He was in love, thoroughly attached to Lucy, and engaged. Engaged as strongly as an honorable man need be. He wished he had never seen this Maggie-tulliver, to be thrown into a fever by her in this way. She would make a sweet, strange, troublesome, adorable wife to some man or other, but he would never have chosen her himself. Did she feel as he did? He hoped she did not. He ought not to have gone. He would master himself in future. He would make himself disagreeable to her, quarrel with her perhaps. Quarrel with her was it possible to quarrel with a creature who had such eyes, defying and deprecating, contradicting and clinging, imperious and beseeching, full of delicious opposites. To see such a creature subdued by love for one would be a lot worth having to another man. There was a muttered exclamation which ended this inward soliloquy as Stephen threw away the end of his last cigar, and thrusting his hands into his pockets docked along at a quieter pace through the shrubbery. It was not of a benedictory kind. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliott Book 6 The Great Temptation Chapter 7 Philip Re-Enters The next morning was very wet. The sort of morning on which male neighbors who have no imperative occupation at home are likely to pay their fair friends an ill-limitable visit. The rain, which has been indurable enough for the walk or ride one way, is sure to become so heavy and at the same time so certain to clear up by and by that nothing but an open quarrel can abbreviate the visit. Latent detestation will not do at all. And if people happen to be lovers, what can be so delightful in England as a rainy morning? English sunshine is dubious. Bonnets are never quite secure and if you sit down on the grass it may lead to guitars. But the rain is to be depended on. You gallop through it in a macintosh and presently find yourself in the seat you like best, a little above or a little below the one on which your goddess sits. It is the same thing to the metaphysical mind and that is the reason why women are at once worshipped and looked down upon. With a satisfactory confidence that there will be no lady-collars. Stephen will come earlier this morning, I know, said Lucy. He always does when it's rainy. Maggie made no answer. She was angry with Stephen. She began to think she should dislike him. And if it had not been for the rain she would have gone to her Aunt Glakes this morning and so have avoided him altogether. As it was she must find some reason for remaining out of the room with her mother. But Stephen did not come earlier and there was another visitor, a nearer neighbor who preceded him. When Philip entered the room he was going merely to bow to Maggie, feeling that their acquaintance was a secret which he was bound not to betray. But when she advanced toward him and put out her hand he guessed at once that Lucy had been taken into her confidence. It was a moment of some agitation to both, though Philip had spent many hours in preparing for it. But like all persons who have passed through life with little expectation of sympathy, he seldom lost his self-control and shrank with the most sensitive pride from any noticeable betrayal of emotion. A little extrapillness, a little tension of the nostril when he spoke and the voice pitched in rather a higher key that to strangers would seem expressive of cold indifference where all the signs Philip usually gave of an inward drama that was not without its fierceness. But Maggie, who had little more power of concealing the impressions made upon her than if she had been constructed of musical strings, felt her eyes getting larger with tears as they took each other's hands in silence. They were not painful tears, they had rather something of the same origin as the tears women and children shed when they had found some protection to cling to and look back on the threatened danger. For Philip, who a little while ago was associated continually in Maggie's mind with the sense that Tom might reproach her with some justice, had now in this short space become a sort of outward conscience to her that she might fly to for rescue and strength. Her tranq will tender affection for Philip with its root deep down in her childhood and its memories of long, quiet talk confirming by distinct successive impressions the first instinctive bias, the fact that in him the appeal was more strongly to her pity and womanly devotedness than to her vanity or other egoistic excitability of her nature, seemed now to make a sort of sacred place, a sanctuary where she could find refuge from an alluring influence which the best part of herself must resist, which must bring horrible tumult within, wretchedness without. This new sense of her relation to Philip nullified the anxious scruples she would otherwise have felt, lest she should oversteck the limit of intercourse with him that Tom would sanction, and she put out her hand to him and felt the tears in her eyes without any consciousness of an inward check. The scene was just what Lucy expected, and her kind heart delighted in bringing Philip and Maggie together again. Though, even with all her regard for Philip, she could not resist the impression that her cousin Tom had some excuse for feeling shocked at the physical incongruity between the two, a prosaic person like cousin Tom who didn't like poetry and fairy tales, but she began to speak as soon as possible to set them at ease. This was very good and virtuous of you, she said in her pretty treble, like the low conversational notes of little birds, to come so soon after your arrival, and as it is I think I will pardon you for running away in an inopportune manner and giving your friends no notice. Come and sit down here, she went on, placing the chair that would suit him best, and you shall find yourself treated mercifully. You will never govern well, Miss Dean, said Philip as he seated himself, because no one will ever believe in your severity, people will always encourage themselves in misdemeanors by the certainty that you will be indulgent. Lucy gave some playful contradiction, but Philip did not hear what it was, for he had naturally turned toward Maggie, and she was looking at him with that open affectionate scrutiny which we give to a friend from whom we have been long separated. What a moment their parting had been, and Philip felt as if he were only in the morrow of it. He felt this so keenly, with such intense, detailed remembrance, with such passionate revival of all that had been said and looked in their last conversation, that with that jealousy and distrust which is almost inevitably linked with a strong feeling. He thought he read in Maggie's glance and manner the evidence of a change. The very fact that he feared and half expected it would be sure to make this thought rush in in the absence of positive proof to the contrary. I am having a great holiday, am I not? said Maggie. Lucy is like a fairy godmother. She has turned me from a drudge into a princess in no time. I do nothing but indulge myself all day long, and she always finds out what I want before I know it myself. I am sure she is the happier for having you then, said Philip. You must be better than a home and azurea pets to her, and you look well. You are benefiting by the change. Artificial conversation of this sort went on a little while till Lucy, determined to put an end to it, exclaimed with a good imitation of annoyance that she had forgotten something and was quickly out of the room. In a moment Maggie and Philip leaned forward and the hands were clasped again, with a look of sad contentment, like that of friends who meet in the memory of recent sorrow. I told my brother I wished to see you, Philip. I asked him to release me from my promise and he consented. Maggie and her impulsiveness wanted Philip to know at once the position they must hold toward each other, but she checked herself. The things that had happened since he had spoken of his love for her were so painful that she shrank from being the first to allude to them. It seemed almost like an injury toward Philip, even to mention her brother, her brother who had insulted him. But he was thinking too entirely of her to be sensitive on any other point at that moment. Then we can at least be friends, Maggie. There is nothing to hinder that now. Will not your father object, said Maggie, withdrawing her hand? I should not give you up on any ground but your own wish, Maggie, said Philip, coloring. There are points on which I should always resist my father as I used to tell you. That is one. Then there is nothing to hinder our being friends, Philip, seeing each other and talking to each other while I am here. I shall soon go away again. I mean to go very soon to a new situation. Is that inevitable, Maggie? Yes, I must not stay here long. It would unfit me for the life I must begin again at last. I can't live independence. I can't live with my brother, though he is very good to me. He would like to provide for me, but that would be intolerable to me. Philip was silent a few moments and then said in that high feeble voice which with him indicated the resolute suppression of emotion. Is there no other alternative, Maggie? Is that life away from those who love you, the only one you will allow yourself to look forward to? Yes, Philip, she said, looking at him pleadingly as if she entreated him to believe that she was compelled to this course. At least as things are, I don't know what may be in years to come, but I begin to think there can never come much happiness to me from loving. I have always had so much pain mingled with it. I wish I could make myself a world outside it as men do. Now you are returning to your old thought in a new form, Maggie, the thought I used to combat, said Philip, with a slight tinge of bitterness. You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain. I tell you again there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one's nature. What would become of me if I tried to escape from pain? Scorn and cynicism would be my only opium unless I could fall into some kind of conceited madness and fancy myself a favorite of heaven because I am not a favorite with men. The bitterness had taken on some impetuosity as Philip went on speaking. The words were evidently an outlet for some immediate feeling of his own as well as an answer to Maggie. There was a pain pressing on him at that moment. He shrank with proud delicacy from the faintest delusion to the words of love, of pided love that had passed between them. It would have seemed to him like reminding Maggie of a promise. It would have had for him something of the baseness of compulsion. He could not dwell on the fact that he himself had not changed, for that too would have had the air of an appeal. His love for Maggie was stamped, even more than the rest of his experience, with the exaggerated sense that he was an exception, that she, that everyone, saw him in the light of an exception. But Maggie was conscience-stricken. Yes, Philip, she said, with her childish contrition when he used to shide her. You are right, I know. I do always think too much of my own feelings and not enough of others, not enough of yours. I had need have you always to find fault with me and teach me, so many things have come true that you used to tell me. Maggie was resting her elbow on the table, leaning her head on her hand and looking at Philip with half-penitent, dependent affection, as she said this. While he was returning her gaze with an expression that, to her consciousness gradually became less vague, became charged with a specific recollection, had his mind flown back to something that she now remembered, something about a lover of Lucy's. It was a thought that made her shudder. It gave new definiteness to her present position and to the tendency of what had happened the evening before. She moved her arm from the table, urged to change her position by that positive physical impression at the heart that sometimes accompanies a sudden mental pain. What is the matter, Maggie, has something happened? Philip said in inexpressible anxiety, his imagination being only too ready to weave everything that was fatal to them both. No, nothing said Maggie, rousing her latent will. Philip must not have that odious thought in his mind. She would vanish it from her own. Nothing, she repeated, except in my own mind. You used to say I should feel the effect of my starved life, as you called it, and I do. I am too eager in my enjoyment of music and all luxuries now they are come to me. She took up her work and occupied herself resolutely while Philip watched her, really in doubt whether she had anything more than this general illusion in her mind. It was quite in Maggie's character to be agitated by vague self-reproach, but soon there came a violent well-known ring at the doorbell resounding through the house. Oh, what a startling announcement said Maggie, quite mistress of herself, though not without some inward flutter. I wonder where Lucy is. Lucy had not been deaf to the signal, and after an interval long enough for a few solicitous but not hurried inquiries, she herself assured Stephen in. Well, old fellow, he said, going straight up to Philip and shaking him heartily by the hand, bowing to Maggie in passing. It's glorious to have you back again. Only I wish you'd conduct yourself a little less like a sparrow with a residence on the housetop and not go in and out constantly without letting the servants know. This is about the twentieth time I've had to scamper up those countless stairs to that painting-room of yours all to no purpose, because your people thought you were at home. Such incidents in bitter friendship. I've so few visitors it seems hardly worthwhile to leave notice of my exit and entrances, said Philip, feeling rather oppressed just then by Stephen's bright, strong presence and strong voice. Are you quite well this morning, Miss Tulliver? said Stephen, turning to Maggie with stiff politeness and putting out his hand with the air of fulfilling a social duty. Maggie gave the tips of her fingers and said, quite well, thank you, in a tone of proud indifference. Philip's eyes were watching them keenly, but Lucy was used to seeing variations in their manner to each other and only thought with regret that there was some natural antipathy which every now and then surmounted their mutual goodwill. Maggie is not the sort of woman Stephen admires, and she is irritated by something in him which she interprets as conceit, was the silent observation that accounted for everything to guileless Lucy. Stephen and Maggie had no sooner completed this study of greeting than each felt hurt by the other's coldness, and Stephen, while rattling on in questions to Philip about his recent sketching expedition, was thinking all the more about Maggie because he was not drawing her into the conversation as he had invariably done before. Maggie and Philip are not looking happy, thought Lucy. This first interview has been saddening to them. I think we people who have not been galloping, she said to Stephen, are all a little damped by the rain. Let us have some music. We ought to take advantage of having Philip and you together. Give us the duet and mausoleum yellow. Maggie has not heard that, and I know it will suit her. Come, then, said Stephen, going toward the piano, and giving a foretaste of the tune in his deep, brum-brum, very pleasant to hear. You please, Philip, you play the accompaniment, said Lucy, and then I can go on with my work. You will like to play Chant You, she added, with a pretty inquiring look, anxious as usual, lest she should have proposed what was not pleasant to another, but with yearnings toward her unfinished embroidery. Philip had brightened at the proposition, for there is no feeling perhaps except the extremes of fear and grief that does not find relief in music, that does not make a man sing or play the better, and Philip had an abundance of pent-up feeling at this moment as complex as any trio or quartet that was ever meant to express love and jealousy and resignation and fierce suspicion all at the same time. Oh, yes, he said, seating himself at the piano, it is a way of aching out one's imperfect life and being three people at once, to sing and make the piano sing and hear them both all the while, or else to sing and paint. Ah, there you are, an enviable fellow. I can do nothing with my hands, said Stephen. That has generally been observed in men of great administrative capacity, I believe, a tendency to predominance of the reflective powers in me. Haven't you observed that, Miss Tulliver? Stephen had fallen by mistake into his habit of playful appeal to Maggie, and she could not repress the answering flesh and epigram. I have observed a tendency to predominance, she said, smiling, and Philip at that moment devoutly hoped that she found the tendency disagreeable. Come, come, said Lucy, music, music, we will discuss each other's qualities another time. Maggie always tried in vain to go on with her work when music began. She tried harder than ever today, for the thought that Stephen knew how much she cared for his singing was one that no longer roused at merely playful resistance, and she knew, too, that it was his habit always to stand so he could look at her. But it was of no use. She soon threw her work down, and all her intentions were lost in the vague state of emotion produced by the inspiring duet, emotion that seemed to make her at once strong and weak, strong for all enjoyment, weak for all resistance. When the strain passed into the minor, she half started from her seat with the sudden thrill of that change. Poor Maggie, she looked very beautiful when her soul was being played on in this way by the inexorable power of sound. You might have seen the slightest perceptible querying through her whole frame as she leaned a little forward, clasping her hands as if to steady herself while her eyes dilated and brightened into that wide open, childish expression of wondering delight which always came back in her happiest moments. Lucy, who at other times had always been at the piano when Maggie was looking in this way, could not resist the impulse to still up to her and kiss her. Philip, too, caught a glimpse of her now and then round the open book on the desk, and felt that he had never before seen her under so strong an influence. More, more, said Lucy, when the duet had been on-cored. Something spirited again. Maggie always says she likes a great rush of sound. It must be let us take the road then, said Stephen, so suitable for a wet morning. But are you prepared to abandon the most sacred duties of life and come and sing with us? Oh, yes, said Lucy, laughing. If you will look out the beggar's opera from the large cantabary, it has a dingy cover. That is a great clue considering there are about a score covers here of rival dinginess, said Stephen, drawing out the cantabary. Oh, play something the wild, Philip, said Lucy, noticing that his fingers were wandering over the keys. What is that you are falling into? Something delicious that I don't know? Don't you know that, said Philip, bringing out the tune more definitely? It's from the Sonambula. Ah, per se non posso odiarti. I don't know the opera, but it appears the tenor is telling the heroine that he shall always love her though she may forsake him. You've heard me sing it to the English words. I love thee still. It was not quite unintentionally that Philip had wandered into this song, which might be an indirect expression to Maggie of what he could not prevail on himself to say to her directly. Her ears had been open to what he was saying, and when he began to sing she understood the plaintive passion of the music. That pleading tenor had no very fine qualities as a voice, but it was not quite new to her. It had sung to her by snatches in a subdued way among the grassy walks and hollows and underneath the leaning astray in the red deeps. There seemed to be some reproach in the words. Did Philip mean that? She wished she had assured him more distinctly in their conversation that she desired not to renew the hope of love between them only because it clashed with her inevitable circumstances. She was touched not thrilled by the song. It suggested distinct memories and thoughts and brought quiet regret in the place of excitement. That's the way with you, tenor, said Stephen, who was waiting with music in his hand while Philip finished the song. You deemoralize the fair sex by warbling your sentimental love and constancy under all sorts of vile treatment. Nothing short of having your head served up on a dish like that medieval tenor, or troubadour, would prevent you from expressing your entire resignation. I must administer an antidote while Miss Dean prepares to tear herself away from her bobbins. Stephen rolled out with saucy energy. Shall I, wasting in despair, die because a woman's fair? And seemed to make all the air in the room alive with a new influence. Lucy, always proud of what Stephen did, went toward the piano with laughing admiring looks at him, and Maggie, in spite of her resistance to the spirit of the song and to the singer, was taken hold of and shaken by the invisible influence, was born along by a wave too strong for her. But, angrily resolved not to betray herself, she seized her work and went on making false stitches and pricking her fingers with much perseverance, not looking up or taking notice of what was going forward until all three voices united and let us take the road. I am afraid there would have been a subtle, stealing gratification in her mind if she had known how entirely this saucy defiant Stephen was occupied with her, how he was passing rapidly from a determination to treat her with ostentatious indifference to an irritating desire for some sign of inclination from her, some interchange of subdued word or look with her. It was not long before he found an opportunity, when they had passed to the music of the tempest. Maggie, feeling the need of a footstool, was walking across the room to get one when Stephen, who was not singing just then and was conscious of all her movements, guessed her want and flew to anticipate her, lifting the footstool with an entreating look at her, which made it impossible not to return a glance of gratitude. And then, to have the footstool placed carefully by two self-confident personage, not any self-confident personage, but one in particular, who suddenly looks humble and anxious, and lingers, bending still to ask if there is not some drought in that position between the window and the fireplace, and if he may not be allowed to move the work table for her. These things will summon a little of the two ready, traitorous tenderness into a woman's eyes, compelled as she is in her girlish time to learn her life lessons in very trivial language. And to Maggie such things had not been everyday incidents, but were a new element in her life, and found her keen appetite for homage quite fresh. That tone of gentle solicitude obliged her to look at the face that was bent toward her, and to say, no thank you, and nothing could prevent that mutual glance from being delicious to both, as it had been the evening before. It was but an ordinary act of politeness in Stephen. It had hardly taken two minutes, and Lucy, who was singing, scarcely noticed it, but to Philip's mind filled already with a vague anxiety that was likely to find a definite ground for itself in any trivial incident. This sudden eagerness in Stephen, and the change in Maggie's face which was plainly reflecting a beam from his, seemed so strong a contrast with the previous overwrought signs of indifference as to be charged with painful meaning. Stephen's voice pouring in again jarred upon his nerves susceptibly as if it had been the clang of sheet iron, and he felt inclined to make the piano shriek and utter discord. He had really seen no communicable ground for suspecting any unusual feeling between Stephen and Maggie. His own reason told him so, and he wanted to go home at once that he might reflect coolly on these false images till he had convinced himself of their nullity. But then again he wanted to stay as long as Stephen stayed, always to be present when Stephen was present with Maggie. It seemed to poor Philip so natural, nay inevitable that any man who was near Maggie should fall in love with her. There was no promise of happiness for her if she were beguiled into loving Stephen guest, and this thought emboldened Philip to view his own love for her in the light of a less unequal offering. He was beginning to play very falsely under this deafening inward tumult, and Lucy was looking at him in astonishment when Mistress Tulliver's entrance to summon them to lunch came as an excuse for abruptly breaking off the music. Ah, Mr. Philip, said Mr. Dean, when they entered the dining room. I've not seen you for a long while. Your father's not at home, I think, is he? I went after him to the office the other day, and they said he was out of town. He's been to Mudport on business for several days, said Philip, but he's come back now. As fond of his farming hobby as ever, eh? I believe so, said Philip, rather wondering at the sudden interest in his father's pursuits. Ah, said Mr. Dean, he's got some land in his own hands on this side of the river as well as the other, I think. Yes, he has. Ah, continued Mr. Dean as he dispensed the pigeon pie. He must find farming a heavy item, an expensive hobby. I never had a hobby myself. Never would give in to that. And the worst of all hobbies are those that people think they can get money at. They shoot their money down like corn out of a sack then. Lucy felt a little nervous under her father's apparently gratuitous criticism of Mr. Wakeham's expenditure, but it ceased there, and Mr. Dean became unusually silent and meditative during his luncheon. Lucy, accustomed to watch all indications in her father and having reasons which had recently become strong for an extra interest in what referred to the Wakehams, felt an unusual curiosity to know what had prompted her father's questions. His subsequent silence made her suspect there had been some special reason for them in his mind. With this idea in her head she resorted to her usual plan when she wanted to tell or ask her father anything particular. She found a reason for her Aunt Tulliver to leave the dining room after dinner and seated herself on a small stool at her father's knee. Mr. Dean, under those circumstances, considered that he tasted some of the most agreeable moments his merits had purchased him in life, notwithstanding that Lucy, disliking to have her hair powdered with snuff, usually began by mastering his snuff box on such occasions. You don't want to go to sleep yet, Papa, do you? she said as she brought up her stool and opened the large fingers that clutched the snuff box. Not yet, said Mr. Dean, glancing at the reward of merit in the decanter. But what do you want? he added, pinching the dimpled chin fondly, to coax some more sovereigns out of my pocket for your bazaar, eh? No, I have no base motives at all today. I only want to talk, not to beg. I want to know what made you ask Philip Wakeham about his father's farming today, Papa. It seemed rather odd, because you never hardly say anything to him about his father, and why should you care about Mr. Wakeham's losing money by his hobby? Something to do with business, said Mr. Dean, waving his hands as if to repel intrusion into that mystery. But, Papa, you always say Mr. Wakeham has brought Philip up like a girl. How came you to think you should get any business knowledge out of him? Those abrupt questions sounded rather oddly. Philip thought them queer. Nonsense child, said Mr. Dean, willing to justify his social demeanor, with which he had taken some pains in his upward progress. There's a report that Wakeham's mill and farm on the other side of the river, Doral Coat Mill, your Uncle Tolliver's, you know, isn't answering as well as it did. I wanted to see if your friend Philip would let anything out about his father's being tired of farming. Why would you buy the mill, Papa, if he would part with it? said Lucy eagerly. Oh, tell me everything. Here, you shall have your snuff box if you'll tell me, because Maggie says all their hearts are set on Tom's getting back the mill sometime. It was one of the last things her father said to Tom that he must get back the mill. Hush, you little puss, said Mr. Dean, availing himself of the restored snuff box. You must not say a word about this thing, do you hear? There's very little chance of their getting the mill or of anybody's getting it out of Wakeham's hands, and if he knew that we wanted it with a view to the Tolliver's getting it again, he'd be the less likely to part with it. It's natural after what happened. He behaved well enough to Tolliver before, but a horse whipping is not likely to be paid for with sugar plums. Now, Papa, said Lucy, with the little air of solemnity, will you trust me? You must not ask me all my reasons for what I'm going to say, but I have very strong reasons, and I'm very cautious I am indeed. Well, let us hear. Why, I believe if you will let me take Philip Wakeham into our confidence, let me tell him all about your wish to buy, and what it's for, that my cousins wish to have it, and why they wish to have it, I believe Philip would help to bring it about. I know he would desire to do it. I don't see how that can be, child, said Mr. Dean, looking puzzled. Why should he care? Then with a sudden penetrating look at his daughter, you don't think the poor lads fond of you, and so you can make him do what you like. Mr. Dean felt quite safe about his daughter's affections. No, Papa, he cares very little about me, not so much as I care about him, but I have a reason for being quite sure of what I say. Don't you ask me, and if you ever guess, don't tell me, only give me leave to do as I think fit about it. Lucy rose from her stool to seat herself on her father's knee and kissed him with that last request. Are you sure you won't do mischief now, he said, looking at her with delight? Yes, Papa, quite sure. I'm very wise. I've got all your business talents. Didn't you admire my accomplished book now when I showed it to you? Well, well, if this youngster will keep his counsel, there won't be much harm done, and to tell the truth, I think there's not much chance for us any other way. Now, let me go off to sleep. Chapter 8 of The Mill on the Floss This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliott. Book 6 The Great Temptation. Chapter 8 Wake'em in a New Light Before three days had passed after the conversation you have just overheard between Lucy and her father, she had contrived to have a private interview with Philip during a visit of Maggie's to her Aunt Gleg. For a day and a night Philip turned over in his mind with restless agitation all that Lucy had told him in that interview till he had thoroughly resolved on a course of action. He thought he saw before him now a possibility of altering his position with respect to Maggie and removing at least one obstacle between them. He laid his plan and calculated all his moves with the fervent deliberation of a chess player in the days of his first ardor and was amazed himself and his sudden genius as a tactician. His plan was as bold as it was thoroughly calculated. Having watched for a moment when his father had nothing more urgent on his hands than the newspaper, he went behind him, laid a hand on his shoulder and said, Father, will you come up into my sanctum and look at my new sketches? I've arranged them now. I'm getting terrible stiff in the joints, Phil, for climbing those stairs of yours," said Wake'em, looking kindly at his son as he laid down his paper. But come along, then. This is a nice place for you, isn't it, Phil? A capital light that from the roof, eh? Was, as usual, the first thing he said on entering the painting room. He liked to remind himself and his son, too, that his fatherly indulgence had provided the accommodation. He had been a good father. Emily would have nothing to reproach him with there if she came back again from her grave. Come, come," he said, putting his double eyeglass over his nose and seating himself to take a general view while he rested. You've got a famous show here. Upon my word I don't see that your things aren't as good as that London artist—what's his name?—that Laburn gave so much money for. Philip shook his head and smiled. He had seated himself on his painting stool and had taken a lead pencil in his hand, with which he was making strong marks to counteract the sense of tremulousness. He watched his father get up and walk slowly round, good-naturedly dwelling on the pictures much longer than his amount of genuine taste for landscape would have prompted, till he stopped before a stand on which two pictures were placed, one much larger than the other, the smaller one in a leather case. Bless me, what have you here? said Wakeham, startled by a sudden transition from landscape to portrait. I thought you'd left off figures. Who are these? They are the same person, said Philip, with calm promptness, at different ages. And what person? said Wakeham, sharply fixing his eyes with a growing look of suspicion on the larger picture. Miss Tulliver, the small one is something like what she was when I was at school with her brother at King's Lorton. The larger one is not quite so good a likeness of what she was when I came from abroad. Wakeham turned round fiercely with a flushed face, letting his eyeglass fall and looking at his son with a savage expression for a moment, as if he was ready to strike that daring feebleness from the stool. But he threw himself into the armchair again and thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, still looking angrily at his son, however. Philip did not return the look, but sat quietly watching the point of his pencil. And do you mean to say, then, that you have had any acquaintance with her since you came from abroad? said Wakeham at last, with that vain effort which rage always makes to throw as much punishment as it desires to inflict into words and tones since blows are forbidden. Yes, I saw a great deal of her for a whole year before her father's death. We met often in that thicket, the red deeps, near Dolecote Mill. I love her dearly. I shall never love any other woman. I have thought of her ever since she was a little girl. Go on, sir, and you have corresponded with her all this while. No. I never told her I loved her till just before we parted, and she promised her brother not to see me again or to correspond with me. I am not sure that she loves me or would consent to marry me, but if she would consent, if she did love me well enough, I should marry her. And this is the return you make me for all the indulgences I have heaped on you, said Wakeham, getting white, and beginning to tremble under an enraged sense of impotence before Philip's calm defiance and concentration of purpose. No father, said Philip, looking up at him for the first time. I don't regard it as a return. You have been an indulgent father to me, but I have always felt that it was because you had an affectionate wish to give me as much happiness as my unfortunate lot would admit. Not that it was a debt you expected me to pay by sacrificing all my chances of happiness to satisfy feelings of yours which I can never share. I think most sons would share their father's feelings in this case, said Wakeham bitterly. The girl's father was an ignorant mad brute who was within an inch of murdering me. The whole town knows it, and the brother is just as insolent only in a cooler way. He forbade her seeing you, you say. He'll break every bone in your body for your greater happiness if you don't take care. But you seem to have made up your mind. You have counted the consequences, I suppose. Of course you're independent of me. You can marry this girl tomorrow if you like. You're a man of five and twenty. You can go your way, and I can go mine. We need have no more to do with each other. Wakeham rose and walked toward the door, but something held him back, and instead of leaving the room, he walked up and down it. Philip was slow to reply, and when he spoke, his tone had a more incisive quietness and clearness than ever. No, I can't marry Miss Tulliver, even if she would have me, if I have only my own resources to maintain her with. I have been brought up to no profession. I can't offer her poverty as well as deformity. Ah, there is a reason for your clinging to me, doubtless said Wakeham still bitterly, though Philip's last words had given him a pang. They had stirred a feeling which had been a habit for a quarter of a century. He threw himself into the chair again. I expect that all this, said Philip. I know these scenes are often happening between father and son. If I were like other men of my age, I might answer your angry words by still angrier. We might part, I should marry the woman I love, and have a chance of being as happy as the rest. But if it will be a satisfaction to you to annihilate the very object of everything you've done for me, you have an advantage over most fathers. You can completely deprive me of the only thing that would make my life worth having. Philip paused, but his father was silent. You know best what satisfaction you would have beyond that of gratifying a ridiculous rancor where the only of wandering savages. Ridiculous rancor, Wakeham burst out, what do you mean? Damn it, is a man to be horsewhipped by a boar and love him for it? Besides, there's that cold, proud devil of a son who said a word to me I shall not forget when we had the settling. He would be as pleasant to mark for a bullet as I know if he were worth the expense. I don't mean your resentment toward them, said Philip, who had his reasons for some sympathy with this view of Tom. Though a feeling of revenge is not worth much, that you should care to keep it. I mean you're extending the enmity to a helpless girl who has too much sense and goodness to share their narrow prejudices. She has never entered into the family quarrels. What does that signify? We don't ask what a woman does. We ask whom she belongs to. It's altogether a degrading thing to you to think of marrying old Tuller's daughter. For the first time in the dialogue Philip lost some of his self-control and colored with anger. Miss Tulliver, he said with bitter incisiveness, has the only grounds of rank that anything but vulgar folly can suppose to belong to the middle class. She is thoroughly refined, and her friends, whatever else they may be, are respected for irreproachable honor and integrity. All St. Augs I fancy would pronounce her to be more than my equal. Wacom darted a glance of fierce question at his son, but Philip was not looking at him, and with a certain penitent consciousness went on, in a few moments, as if an amplification of his last words. Find a single person in St. Augs who will not tell you that a beautiful creature like her would be throwing herself away on a pitiable object like me. Not she, said Wacom, rising again and forgetting everything else in a burst of resentful pride, half fatherly, half personal. It would be a deuce-fine match for her. It's all stuff about an accidental deformity when a girl is really attached to a man. But girls are not apt to get attached under those circumstances, said Philip. Well, then, said Wacom, rather brutally, trying to recover his previous position. If she doesn't care for you, you might have spared yourself the trouble of talking to me about her, and you might have spared me the trouble of refusing my consent to what was never likely to happen. Wacom strode to the door, and without looking round again, banged at after him. Philip was not without confidence that his father would be ultimately wrought upon, as he had expected, by what had passed. But the scene had jarred upon his nerves, which were as sensitive as a woman's. He determined not to go down to dinner. He couldn't meet his father again that day. It was Wacom's habit, when he had no company at home, to go out in the evening, often as early as half past seven. And as it was far on in the afternoon now, Philip locked up his room and went out for a long ramble, thinking he would not return until his father was out of the house again. He got into a boat and went down the river to a favorite village, where he dined, and lingered till it was late enough for him to return. He had never had any sort of quarrel with his father before, and had a sickening fear that this contest, just begun, might go on for weeks, and what might not happen in that time. He would not allow himself to define what that involuntary question meant. But if he could once be in the position of Maggie's accepted, acknowledged lover, there would be less room for vague dread. He went up to his painting room again, and threw himself for the sense of fatigue into the armchair, looking round absently at the views of water and rock that were ranged around, till he fell into a doze in which he fancied Maggie with slipping down a glistening green slimy channel of a waterfall, and he was looking on helpless, till he was awakened by what seemed a sudden awful crash. It was the opening of the door, and he could hardly have dozen more than a few moments, for there was no perceptible change in the evening light. It was his father who entered, and when Philip moved to vacate the chair for him he said, Sit still, I'd rather walk about. He stalked up and down the room once or twice, and then standing opposite Philip with his hands thrust in his side pockets, he said, as if continuing a conversation that had not been broken off. But this girl seems to have been fond of you, Phil, else she wouldn't have met you in that way. Philip's heart was beating rapidly, and a transient flush passed over his face like a gleam. It was not quite easy to speak at once. She liked me at King's Lorton when she was a little girl, because I used to sit with her brother a great deal when he had hurt his foot. She had kept that in her memory, and thought of me as a friend of a long while ago. She didn't think of me as a lover when she met me. Well, what you made love to her at last, what did she say then? said Wakeham walking about again. She said she did love me then. Confound it then, what else do you want? Is she a jilt? She was very young then, said Philip hesitatingly. I'm afraid she hardly knew what she felt. I'm afraid our long separation and the idea that events must always divide us may have made a difference. But she's in the town. I've seen her at church. Haven't you spoken to her since you came back? Yes, at Mr. Dean's. But I couldn't renew my proposals to her on several grounds. One obstacle would be removed if you would give your consent, if you would be willing to think of her as a daughter-in-law. Wakeham was silent a little while, pausing before Maggie's picture. She's not the sort of woman your mother was, though, Phil, he said at last. I saw her at church. She's handsomer than this. Deuced fine eyes and fine figure I saw. But rather dangerous and unmanageable, eh? She's very tender and affectionate and so simple without the heirs and petty contrivance as other women have. Ah, said Wakeham, then looking round at his son. But your mother looked gentler. She had that brown, wavy hair and gray eyes like yours. You can't remember her very well. It was a thousand pitties I'd know likeness of her. Then shouldn't you be glad for me to have the same sort of happiness, father, to sweeten my life for me? There can never be another tie so strong to you as that which began eighteen and twenty years ago when you married my mother and you have been tightening it ever since. Ah, Phil, you're the only fellow that knows the best of me, said Wakeham, giving his hand to his son. We must keep together if we can. And now what am I to do? You must come downstairs and tell me. Am I to go and call on this dark-eyed damsel? The barrier once thrown down in this way, Philip could talk freely to his father of their entire relation with the Tullibers, of the desire to get the mill and land back into the family, and of its transfer to Gaston Company as an intermediate step. He could venture now to be persuasive and urgent, and his father yielded with more readiness than he had calculated on. I don't care about the mill, he said at last, with a sort of angry compliance. I've had an infernal deal of bother lately about the mill. Let them pay me for my improvements, that's all. But there's one thing you needn't ask me. I shall have no direct transactions with young Tullibur. If you like to swallow him for his sister's sake you may, but I have no sauce that will make him go down. I leave you to imagine the agreeable feelings with which Philip went to Mr. Dean the next day, to say that Mr. Wakin was ready to open the negotiations, and Lucy's pretty triumph as she appealed to her father whether she had not proved her great business abilities. Mr. Dean was rather puzzled, and suspected that there had been something going on among the young people to which he wanted a clue. But to men of Mr. Dean's stamp, what goes on among the young people is as extraneous to the real business of life as what goes on among the birds and butterflies, until it can be shown to have a maligned bearing on monetary affairs. And in this case the bearing appeared to be entirely propitious. Recording by Leanne Howlett Book 6, Chapter 9 of The Mill on the Floss This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Leanne Howlett The Mill on the Floss by George Elliott Book 6, The Great Temptation Chapter 9, Charity in Full Dress The culmination of Maggie's career as an admired member of society in St. Augs was certainly the day of the bizarre, when her simple noble beauty, clad in a white muslin of some soft floating kind, which I suspect must have come from the stores of Aunt Pullitt's wardrobe, appeared with marked distinction among the more adorned and conventional women around her. We perhaps never detect how much of our social demeanor is made up of artificial airs until we see a person who is at once beautiful and simple, without the beauty we are apt to call simplicity awkwardness. The Miss Guests were much too well bred to have any of the grimaces and affected tones that belonged to pretentious vulgarity, but their stall being next to the one where Maggie sat, it seemed newly obvious today that Miss Guest held her chin too high, and that Miss Laura spoke and moved continually with a view to effect. All well-dressed St. Augs and its neighborhood were there, and it would have been worthwhile to come even from a distance to see the fine old hall, with its open roof and carved oaken rafters and great oaken folding doors and light shed down from a height on the many-colored show beneath, a very quaint place with broad-faded stripes painted on the walls, and here and there a show of heraldic animals of a bristly, long-snouted character, the cherished emblems of a noble family once the seniors of this now civic hall. A grand darch cut in the upper wall at one end surmounted an oaken orchestra, with an open room behind it, where hothouse plants and stalls for refreshments were disposed, an agreeable resort for gentlemen disposed to loiter, and yet to exchange the occasional crush down below for a more commodious point of view. In fact, the perfect fitness of this ancient building for an admirable modern purpose that made charity truly elegant and led through vanity up to the supply of a deficit was so striking that hardly a person entered the room without exchanging the remark more than once. Near the great arch over the orchestra was a stone orial with painted glass, which was one of the venerable inconsistencies of the old hall, and it was close by this that Lucy had her stall for the convenience of certain large, plain articles which she had taken charge of for Mrs. Ken. Maggie had begged to sit at the open end of the stall and to have the sale of these articles rather than a bead mats and other elaborate products of which she had but a dim understanding. But it soon appeared that the gentlemen's dressing gowns, which were among her commodities, were objects of such general attention and inquiry and excited so troublesome a curiosity as to their lining and comparative merits, together with a determination to test them matrying on as to make her post a very conspicuous one. The ladies who had commodities of their own to sell and did not want dressing gowns saw at once the frivolity and bad taste of this masculine preference for goods which any tailor could furnish, and it is possible that the emphatic notice of various kinds which was drawn toward Miss Tulliver on this public occasion through a very strong and unmistakable light on her subsequent conduct in many minds then present. Not that anger on account of spurned beauty can dwell on the celestial breasts of charitable ladies, but rather that the errors of persons who have once been much admired necessarily take a deeper tinge from the mere force of contrast, and also that today Maggie's conspicuous position for the first time made evidence certain characteristics which were subsequently felt to have an explanatory bearing. There was something rather bold in Miss Tulliver's direct gaze and something undefinably coarse in the style of her beauty, which placed her in the opinion of all feminine judges far below her cousin Miss Dean, for the ladies of St. Augs had now completely ceded to Lucy their hypothetical claims on the admiration of Mr. Stephen Guest. As for dear little Lucy herself, her late benevolent triumph about the mill and all the affectionate projects she was cherishing for Maggie and Philip, and she felt nothing but pleasure in the evidence of Maggie's attractiveness. It is true she was looking very charming herself, and Stephen was paying her the utmost attention on this public occasion, jealously buying up the articles he had seen under her fingers in the process of making, and gaily helping her to cajole the male customers into the purchase of the most effeminate futilities. He chose to lay aside his hat and wear a scarlet fez of her embroidering, but by superficial observers this was necessarily liable to be interpreted less as a compliment to Lucy than as a mark of cox combre. Guest is a great coxcom, young Tory observed, but then he is a privileged person in St. Augs. He carries all before him. If another fellow did such things everybody would say he made a fool of himself. And Stephen purchased absolutely nothing from Maggie, until Lucy said in rather a vexed undertone. See now, all the things of Maggie's knitting will be gone and you will not have bought one. There are those deliciously soft, warm things for the wrists, do buy them. Oh no, said Stephen. They must be intended for imaginative persons who can chill themselves on this warm day by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. Stern reason is my forte, you know. You must get Philip to buy those. By the way, why doesn't he come? He never likes going where there are many people, though I enjoined him to come. He said he would buy up any of my goods that the rest of the world rejected. But now do go and buy something of Maggie. No, no. See, she has got a customer. There is old Wacom himself just coming up. Lucy's eyes turned with anxious interest toward Maggie to see how she went through this first interview, since a sadly memorable time, with a man toward whom she must have so strange a mixture of feelings. But she was pleased to notice that Wacom had tacked enough to enter at once and to talk about the bizarre wares and appear interested in purchasing, smiling now and then kindly at Maggie and not calling on her to speak much, as if he observed that she was rather pale and tremulous. Why, Wacom is making himself particularly amiable to your cousin, said Stephen and undertone to Lucy. Is it pure magnanimity? You talked of a family quarrel. Oh, that will soon be quite healed, I hope, said Lucy, becoming a little indiscreet in her satisfaction in speaking with an air of significance. But Stephen did not appear to notice this, and as some lady purchasers came up, he lounged on toward Maggie's end, handling trifles and standing aloof until Wacom, who had taken out his purse, had finished his transactions. My son came with me, he overheard Wacom saying, but he has vanished into some other part of the building and has left all these charitable gallantries to me. I hope you'll reproach him for his shabby conduct. She returned his smile and bow without speaking, and he turned away, only then observing Stephen and nodding to him. Maggie, conscious that Stephen was still there, busied herself with counting money and avoided looking up. She had been well pleased that he had devoted himself to Lucy today, had it not come near her. They had begun the morning with an indifferent salutation, and both had rejoiced in being aloof from each other, like a patient who was actually done without his opium, in spite of former failures in resolution. And during the last few days they had even been making up their minds to failures, looking to the outward events that must soon come to separate them, as a reason for dispensing with self-conquest in detail. Stephen moved step by step as if he were being unwillingly dragged, until he had got round the open end of the stall and was half hidden by a screen of draperies. Maggie went on counting her money till she suddenly heard a deep gentle voice saying, Aren't you very tired? Do let me bring you something, some fruit or jelly, may I? The unexpected tones shook her like a sudden accidental vibration of a harp close by her. Oh no, thank you, she said faintly, and only half looking up for an instant. You look so pale, Stephen insisted, in a more intriguing tone. I'm sure you're exhausted. I must disobey you and bring something. No indeed, I couldn't take it. Are you angry with me? What have I done? Do look at me. Who look at me? Pray go away, said Maggie, looking at him helplessly, her eyes glancing immediately from him to the opposite corner of the orchestra, which was half hidden by the folds of the old faded green curtain. Maggie had no sooner uttered this entreaty than she was wretched at the admission, it implied. But Stephen turned away at once, and following her upward glance, he saw Philip Wakeham sealed in the half hidden corner so that he could command little more than that angle of the hall in which Maggie sat. An entirely new thought occurred to Stephen, and linking itself with what he had observed of Wakeham's manner and with Lucy's reply to his observation, it convinced him that there had been some former relation between Philip and Maggie beyond that childish one of which he had heard. More than one impulse made him immediately leave the hall and go upstairs to the refreshment room, where, walking up to Philip, he sat down behind him and put his hand on his shoulder. Are you studying for a portrait, Phil? he said, or for a sketch of that Oreo window? By George it makes a capital bit from this dark corner, with the curtain just marking it off. I have been studying expression, said Philip curtly. What? Miss Tulliver's? It's rather of the savage moody order today, I think, something of the fallen princess serving behind a counter. Her cousin sent me to her with a civil offer to get her some refreshment, but I have been snubbed, as usual. There is natural antipathy between us, I suppose. I have seldom the honour to please her. What a hypocrite you are, said Philip, flushing angrily. What? Because experience must have told me that I am universally pleasing. I admit the law, but there is some disturbing force here. I am going, said Philip, rising abruptly. So am I. To get a breath of fresh air, this place gets oppressive. I think I have done suit and service long enough. The two friends walked downstairs together without speaking. Philip turned through the outer door into the courtyard. But Stephen, saying, oh, by the by I must call in here, went on along the passage to one of the rooms at the other end of the building, which were appropriated to the town library. He had the room all to himself, and a man requires nothing less than this when he wants to dash his cap on the table, throw himself a stride of chair, and stare at a high brick wall with a frown which would not have been beneath the occasion if he had been slaying the giant python. The conduct that issues from a moral conflict has often so closely resemblance to vice that the distinction escapes all outward judgments found that on a mere comparison of actions. It is clear to you, I hope, that Stephen was not a hypocrite, capable of deliberate doubleness for a selfish end, and yet his fluctuations between the indulgence of a feeling and the systematic concealment of it might have made a good case in support of Philip's accusation. Meanwhile Maggie sat at her stall, cold and trembling, with that painful sensation in the eyes which comes from resolutely repressed tears. Was her life to be always like this, always bringing some new source of inward strife? She heard confusedly the busy and different voices around her, and wished her mind could flow into that easy babbling current. It was at this moment that Dr. Ken, who had quite lately come into the hall, and was now walking down the middle with his hands behind him, taking a general view, fixed his eyes on Maggie for the first time, and was struck with the expression of pain on her beautiful face. She was sitting quite still, for the stream of customers had lessened at this late hour in the afternoon. The gentleman had chiefly chosen the middle of the day, and Maggie's stall was looking rather bare. This, with her absent pained expression, finished the contrast between her and her companions, who were all bright, eager and busy. He was strongly arrested. Her face had naturally drawn his attention as a new and striking one at church, and even introduced to her during a short call on business at Mr. Dean's, but he had never spoken more than three words to her. He walked toward her now, and Maggie, perceiving someone approaching, roused herself to look up and be prepared to speak. She felt a childlike instinctive relief from the sense of uneasiness in this exertion, when she saw it was Dr. Ken's face that was looking at her. That plain, middle-aged face, with a grave penetrating kindness in it, seeming to tell of a human being who had reached a firm, safe strand, but was looking with helpful pity toward the struggler still tossed by the waves, had an effect on Maggie at this moment, which was afterward remembered by her as if it had been a promise. The middle-aged, who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half-passionate and not merely contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood, whom life has disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of early stumblers and victims of self-despair. Most of us at some moment in our young lives would have welcomed a priest of that natural order in any sort of canonicals or uncanonicals, but had to scramble upward into all the difficulties of nineteen entirely without such aid as Maggie did. You find your office rather fatiguing when I fear Miss Tulliver, said Dr. Ken. It is rather, said Maggie, simply, not being accustomed to simpler, amiable denials of obvious facts. But I can tell Mrs. Ken that you have disposed of her goods very quickly, he added. She will be very much obliged to you. Oh, I have done nothing. The gentleman came very fast to buy the dressing gowns and embroidered waistcoats, but I think any of the other ladies would have sold more. I didn't know what to say about them. Dr. Ken smiled. I hope I am going to have you as a permanent parishioner now, Miss Tulliver, am I? You have been at a distance from us hither too. I have been a teacher in a school, and I am going into another situation of the same kind very soon. Ah, I was hoping you would remain among your friends who are all in this neighborhood, I believe. Oh, I must go, said Maggie earnestly, looking at Dr. Ken with an expression of reliance, as if she had told him her history in those three words. It was one of those moments of implicit revelation which will sometimes happen even between people who meet quite transiently, on a mile's journey perhaps, or when resting by the wayside. There is always this possibility of a word or look from a stranger to keep alive the sense of human brotherhood. Dr. Ken's ear and eye took in all the signs that this brief confidence of Maggie's was charged with meaning. I understand, he said, you feel it right to go, but that will not prevent our meeting again, I hope. It will not prevent my knowing you better, if I can be of any service to you. He put out his hand and pressed hers kindly before he turned away. She has some trouble or other at heart, he thought. Poor child, she looks as if she might turn out to be one of the souls by nature pitched too high by suffering plunged too low. There's something wonderfully honest in those beautiful eyes. It may be surprising that Maggie, among whose many imperfections and excessive delight and admiration and acknowledged supremacy were not absent now, any more than when she was instructing the gypsies with a view toward achieving a royal position among them, was not more elated on a day when she had had the tribute of so many looks and smiles, together with that satisfactory consciousness which had necessarily come from being taken before Lucy's cheval glass, and made to look at the full length of her tall beauty, crowned by the night of her massy hair. Maggie had smiled at herself then, and for the moment had forgotten everything in the sense of her own beauty. If that state of mind could have lasted, her choice would have been to have Stephen guest at her feet, offering her life filled with all luxuries, with daily incense of adoration near and distant, and with all possibilities of culture at her command. But there were things in her stronger than vanity, passion and affection, and long deep memories of early discipline and effort, of early claims on her love and pity, and the stream of vanity was soon swept along and mingled imperceptibly with that wider current which was at its highest force today, under the double urgency of the events and inward impulses brought by the last week. Philip had not spoken to her himself about the removal of obstacles between them on his father's side. He shrank from that. But he had told everything to Lucy, with the hope that Maggie, being informed through her, might give her some encouraging sign that their being brought thus much nearer to each other was a happiness to her. The rush of conflicting feelings was too great for Maggie to say much when Lucy, with a face breathing playful joy, like one of Correggio's cherubs, poured forth her triumphant revelation, and Lucy could hardly be surprised that she could do little more than cry with gladness at the thought of her father's wish being fulfilled, and of Tom's getting the mill again and reward for all his hard striving. The details of preparation for the bazaar had then come to usurp Lucy's attention for the next few days, and nothing had been said by the cousins on subjects that were likely to rouse deeper feelings. Philip had been to the house more than once, but Maggie had had no private conversation with him, and thus she had been left to fight her inward battle without interference. But when the bazaar was fairly ended and the cousins were alone again, resting together at home, Lucy said, You must give up going to stay with your Aunt Moss the day after tomorrow, Maggie. Write a note to her and tell her you have put it off at my request, and I'll send the man with it. She won't be displeased. You'll have plenty of time to go by and by, and I don't want you to go out of the way just now. Yes, indeed, I must go, dear. I can't put it off. I wouldn't leave Aunt Gritty out for the world, and I shall have very little time from going away to a new situation on the twenty-fifth of June. Maggie, said Lucy, almost white with astonishment. I didn't tell you, dear, said Maggie, making a great effort to command herself. Because you've been so busy, but some time ago I wrote to our old governess, Miss Furness, to ask her to let me know if she met with any situation that I could fill, and the other day I had a letter from her telling me that I could take three orphaned pupils of hers to the coast during the holidays and then make trial of a situation with her as teacher. I wrote yesterday to accept the offer. Lucy felt so hurt that for some moments she was unable to speak. Maggie, she said at last, how could you be so unkind to me, not to tell me, to take such a step, and now? She hesitated a little and then added, and Philip, I thought everything was going to be so happy. Oh Maggie, what is the reason? Give it up, let me write. There is nothing now to keep you and Philip apart. Yes, said Maggie faintly. There is Tom's feeling. He said I must give him up if I married Philip, and I know he will not change, at least not for a long while, unless something happened to soften him. But I will talk to him. He's coming back this week, and this good news about the mill will soften him, and I'll talk to him about Philip. Tom's always very compliant to me. I don't think he's so obstinate. But I must go, said Maggie in a distressed voice. I must leave some time to pack. Don't press me to stay, dear Lucy. Lucy was silent for two or three minutes, looking away and ruminating. At length she knelt down by her cousin and looking up in her face with anxious seriousness said, Maggie, is it that you don't love Philip well enough to marry him? Tell me, trust me. Maggie held Lucy's hands tightly in silence a little while. Her own hands were quite cold, but when she spoke her voice was quite clear and distinct. Yes, Lucy, I would choose to marry him. I think it would be the best and highest lot for me to make his life happy. He loved me first. No one else could be quite what he is to me. But I can't divide myself from my brother for life. I must go away and wait. Pray don't speak to me again about it. Lucy obeyed in pain and wonder. The next word she said was, Well, dear Maggie, at least you will go to the dance at Park House tomorrow and have some music and brightness before you go to pay these dull, dutiful visits. Ah, here come Auntie in the tea. End of Book 6, Chapter 9, Recording by Leanne Howlett Book 6, Chapter 10 of The Mill on the Floss This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett The Mill on the Floss by George Elliott Book 6, The Great Temptation Chapter 10, The Spells Seem Spoken The suite of rooms opening into each other at Park House looked duly brilliant with lights and flowers and the personal splendors of sixteen couples with attendant parents and guardians. The focus of brilliancy was the long drawing room where the dancing went forward under the inspiration of the grand piano. The library, and to which it opened at one end, had the more sober illumination of maturity and gaps in cards, and at the other end the pretty sitting-room, with a conservatory attached, was left as an occasional cool retreat. Lucy, who had laid aside her black for the first time and had her pretty slimness set off by an abundant dress of white crepe, was the acknowledged queen of the occasion, for this was one of the misguests thoroughly condescending parties, including no member of any aristocracy higher than that of St. Augs and stretching to the extreme limits of commercial and professional gentility. Maggie at first refused to dance, saying that she had forgotten all the figures. It was so many years since she had danced at school and she was glad to have that excuse for it is ill dancing with a heavy heart. But at length the music rotted her young limbs and the longing came, even though it was the horrible young Tory who walked up a second time to try and persuade her. She warned him that she could not dance anything but he, of course, was willing to wait for that high felicity, meaning only to be complementary when he assured her at several intervals that it was a great bore that she couldn't waltz. He would have liked so much to waltz with her. But at last it was the turn of the good old fashioned dance which has the least of vanity and the most of merriment in it and Maggie quite forgot her troublesome life and a childlike enjoyment of that half rustic rhythm which seems to vanish pretentious etiquette. She felt quite charitably toward young Tory as his hand bore her along and held her up in the dance. Her eyes and cheeks had that fire of young joy in them which will flame out if it can find the least breath to fan it and her simple black dress with its bit of black lace seemed like the dim setting of a jewel. Stephen had not yet asked her to dance, had not yet paid her more than a passing civility. Since yesterday that inward vision of her which perpetually made part of his consciousness had been half screened by the image of Philip Wacom which came across it like a blot. There was some attachment between her and Philip. At least there was an attachment on his side which made her feel in some bondage. Here then Stephen told himself was another claim of honor which called on him to resist the attraction that was continually threatening to overpower him. He told himself so and yet he had once or twice felt a certain savage resistance and at another moment a shuddering repugnance to this intrusion of Philip's image which almost made it a new incitement to rush toward Maggie and claim her for himself. Nevertheless he had done what he meant to do this evening. He had kept aloof from her. He had hardly looked at her and he had been gaily assiduous to Lucy. But now his eyes were devouring Maggie. He felt inclined to kick young Tory out of the dance and take his place. Then he wanted the dance to end that he might get rid of his partner. The possibility that he too should dance with Maggie and have her hand in his so long was beginning to possess him like a thirst. But even now their hands were meeting in the dance. Were meeting still to the very end of it though they were far off each other. Stephen hardly knew what happened or in what automatic way he got through the duties of politeness in the interval until he was free and saw Maggie seated alone again at the farther end of the room. He made his way toward her around the couples that were forming for the waltz and when Maggie became conscious that she was the person he sought she felt in spite of all the thoughts that had gone before a glowing gladness at heart. Her eyes and cheeks were still brightened with her childlike enthusiasm in the dance. Her whole frame was set to joy and tenderness. Even the coming pain could not seem bitter. She was ready to welcome it as a part of life. For life at this moment seemed a keen, vibrating consciousness poised above pleasure or pain. This one, this last night, she might expand unrestrainedly in the warmth of the present without those chill eating thoughts of the past and the future. They're going to waltz again said Stephen bending to speak to her with that glance and tone which young dreams create to themselves in the summer woods when low, cooing voices fill the air. Such glances and tones bring the breath of poetry with them into a room that is half stifling with glaring gas and hard flirtation. They're going to waltz again. It is rather dizzy work to look on and the room is very warm. Shall we walk about a little? He took her hand and placed it within his arm and they walked on into the sitting room where the tables were strewn with engravings for the accommodation of visitors who would not want to look at them. But no visitors were here at this moment. They passed on into the conservatory. How strange and unreal the trees and flowers looked with the lights among them said Maggie in a low voice. They looked as if they belonged to an enchanted land and would never fade away. I could fancy they were all made of jewels. She was looking at the tear of geraniums as she spoke and Stephen made no answer looking at her and does not a supreme poet blend light and sound into one calling darkness mute and light eloquent. Something strangely powerful there was in the light of Stephen's long gaze for it made Maggie's face turn toward it and look upward at it slowly like a flower at the ascending brightness and they walked unsteadily on without feeling that they were walking without feeling anything with that long grave mutual gaze which has this alimony belonging to human passion the hovering thought that they must and would renounce each other made this moment of mute confession more intense than its rapture but they had reached the end of the conservatory and were obliged to pause and turn the change of movement brought a new consciousness to Maggie she blushed deeply turned away her head and drew her arm from Stevens going up to some flowers to smell them Stevens stood motionless and still pale Maggie making a great effort to say something and dissipate the burning sense of irretrievable confession I think I am quite wicked with roses I like to gather them and smell them till they have no scent left Steven was mute he was incapable of putting a sentence together and Maggie bent her arm a little upward toward the large half-opened rose that had attracted her who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm the unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow and all the very gently lessening curves down to the delicate wrist with its tiniest almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness a woman's arm touched the soul of a great sculptor 2,000 years ago so that he wrought an image of it for the Parthenon which moves us still as it clasps lovingly the time-worn marble of a headless trunk Maggie's was such an arm as that and it had the warm tense of life a mad impulse seized on Steven he darted toward the arm and showered kisses on it clasping the wrist but the next moment Maggie snatched it from him and glared at him like a wounded war-goddess quivering with rage and humiliation how dare you she spoke in a deeply shaken half-smothered voice what right have I given you to insult me she darted from him into the adjoining room and threw herself on the sofa panting and trembling a horrible punishment was come upon her for the sin of allowing a moment's happiness that was treachery to Lucy to Phillip to her own better soul that momentary happiness had been smitten with a blight a leprosy Steven thought more lightly of her than he did of Lucy as for Steven he leaned back against the framework of the conservatory of love, rage and confused despair disparate his want of self-mastery and despair that he had offended Maggie the last feelings surmounted every other to be by her side again and entreat forgiveness was the only thing that had the force of a motive for him and she had not been seated more than a few minutes when he came and stood humbly before her but Maggie's bitter rage was unspent leave me to myself if you please she said with impetuous haughtiness and for the future avoid me Steven turned away and walked backward and forward at the other end of the room there was the dire necessity of going back into the dancing room again and he was beginning to be conscious of that they had been absent so short a time that when he went in again the waltz was not ended Maggie too was not long before she re-entered all the pride of her nature was stung into activity the hateful weakness which had dragged her wound to her self-respect had at least wrought its own cure the thoughts and temptations of the last month should all be flung away into an unvisited chamber of memory there was nothing to allure her now duty would be easy and all the old calm purposes would reign peacefully once more she re-entered the drawing room still with some excited brightness in her face but with a sense of proud self-command that defied anything to agitate her she refused to dance again in bed early and calmly with everyone who addressed her and when they got home that night she kissed Lucy with a free heart almost exalting in the scorching moment which had delivered her from the possibility of another word or look that would have the stamp of treachery toward that gentle, unsuspicious sister the next morning Maggie did not set off to Bassett quite so soon as she had expected her mother was to accompany her in the carriage and household business could not be so Maggie, who had been in a hurry to prepare herself had to sit waiting equipped for the drive in the garden Lucy was busy in the house wrapping up some bizarre presents for the younger ones at Bassett and when there was a loud ring at the doorbell Maggie felt some alarm less Lucy should bring out Steven to her it was sure to be Steven but presently the visitor came out into the garden alone and seated himself by her on the garden chair it was not Steven that's the tips of the scotch furs Maggie from this seat said Philip they had taken each other's hands in silence but Maggie had looked at him with a more complete revival of the old child like affectionate smile than he had seen before and he felt encouraged yes she said I often look at them and wish I could see the low sunlight on the stems again but I have never been that way but once to the churchyard with my mother I have been there continually said Philip I have nothing but the past to live upon a keen remembrance and keen pity impelled Maggie to put her hand in Philip's they had so often walked hand in hand I remember all the spots she said just where you told me of particular things beautiful stories that I had never heard of before you will go there again soon won't you Maggie said Philip getting timid the mill will soon be your brother's home again yes but I shall not be there said Maggie I should only hear of that happiness I am going away again Lucy has not told you perhaps then the future will never join on to the past again Maggie that book is quite closed the gray eyes that had so often looked up at her within treating worship looked up at her now with the last struggling ray of hope in them and Maggie met them with her large sincere gaze that book never will be closed Philip she said with grave sadness I desire no future that will break the ties of the past but the tie to my brother is one of the strongest I can do nothing willingly that will divide me always from him is that the only reason that would keep us apart forever Maggie said Philip with the desperate determination to have a definite answer the only reason said Maggie with calm decision and she believed it at that moment she felt as if the enchanted cup had been dashed to the ground the reactionary excitement that gave her a proud self mastery had not subsided and she looked at the future with a sense of calm choice they sat hand in hand without looking at each other or speaking for a few minutes and Maggie's mind the first scenes of love and parting were more present than the actual moment and she was looking at Philip in the red deeps Philip felt that he ought to have been thoroughly happy in that answer of hers she was as open and transparent as a rock pool why was he not thoroughly happy jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart end of book 6 chapter 10 recording by Leanne Howlett