The Mill on the Floss

Voice from the Past

One afternoon, when the chestnuts were coming into flower, Maggie had
brought her chair outside the front door, and was seated there with a
book on her knees. Her dark eyes had wandered from the book, but they
did not seem to be enjoying the sunshine which pierced the screen of
jasmine on the projecting porch at her right, and threw leafy shadows
on her pale round cheek; they seemed rather to be searching for
something that was not disclosed by the sunshine. It had been a more
miserable day than usual; her father, after a visit of Wakem’s had had
a paroxysm of rage, in which for some trifling fault he had beaten the
boy who served in the mill. Once before, since his illness, he had had
a similar paroxysm, in which he had beaten his horse, and the scene had
left a lasting terror in Maggie’s mind. The thought had risen, that
some time or other he might beat her mother if she happened to speak in
her feeble way at the wrong moment. The keenest of all dread with her
was lest her father should add to his present misfortune the
wretchedness of doing something irretrievably disgraceful. The battered
school-book of Tom’s which she held on her knees could give her no
fortitude under the pressure of that dread; and again and again her
eyes had filled with tears, as they wandered vaguely, seeing neither
the chestnut-trees, nor the distant horizon, but only future scenes of
home-sorrow.

Suddenly she was roused by the sound of the opening gate and of
footsteps on the gravel. It was not Tom who was entering, but a man in
a sealskin cap and a blue plush waistcoat, carrying a pack on his back,
and followed closely by a bullterrier of brindled coat and defiant
aspect.

“Oh, Bob, it’s you!” said Maggie, starting up with a smile of pleased
recognition, for there had been no abundance of kind acts to efface the
recollection of Bob’s generosity; “I’m so glad to see you.”

“Thank you, Miss,” said Bob, lifting his cap and showing a delighted
face, but immediately relieving himself of some accompanying
embarrassment by looking down at his dog, and saying in a tone of
disgust, “Get out wi’ you, you thunderin’ sawney!”

“My brother is not at home yet, Bob,” said Maggie; “he is always at St
Ogg’s in the daytime.”

“Well, Miss,” said Bob, “I should be glad to see Mr Tom, but that isn’t
just what I’m come for,—look here!”

Bob was in the act of depositing his pack on the door-step, and with it
a row of small books fastened together with string.

Apparently, however, they were not the object to which he wished to
call Maggie’s attention, but rather something which he had carried
under his arm, wrapped in a red handkerchief.

“See here!” he said again, laying the red parcel on the others and
unfolding it; “you won’t think I’m a-makin’ too free, Miss, I hope, but
I lighted on these books, and I thought they might make up to you a bit
for them as you’ve lost; for I heared you speak o’ picturs,—an’ as for
picturs, look here!”

The opening of the red handkerchief had disclosed a superannuated
“Keepsake” and six or seven numbers of a “Portrait Gallery,” in royal
octavo; and the emphatic request to look referred to a portrait of
George the Fourth in all the majesty of his depressed cranium and
voluminous neckcloth.

“There’s all sorts o’ genelmen here,” Bob went on, turning over the
leaves with some excitement, “wi’ all sorts o’ noses,—an’ some bald an’
some wi’ wigs,—Parlament genelmen, I reckon. An’ here,” he added,
opening the “Keepsake,”—“here’s ladies for you, some wi’ curly hair
and some wi’ smooth, an’ some a-smiling wi’ their heads o’ one side,
an’ some as if they were goin’ to cry,—look here,—a-sittin’ on the
ground out o’ door, dressed like the ladies I’n seen get out o’ the
carriages at the balls in th’ Old Hall there. My eyes! I wonder what
the chaps wear as go a-courtin’ ’em! I sot up till the clock was gone
twelve last night, a-lookin’ at ’em,—I did,—till they stared at me out
o’ the picturs as if they’d know when I spoke to ’em. But, lors! I
shouldn’t know what to say to ’em. They’ll be more fittin’ company for
you, Miss; and the man at the book-stall, he said they banged
iverything for picturs; he said they was a fust-rate article.”

“And you’ve bought them for me, Bob?” said Maggie, deeply touched by
this simple kindness. “How very, very good of you! But I’m afraid you
gave a great deal of money for them.”

“Not me!” said Bob. “I’d ha’ gev three times the money if they’ll make
up to you a bit for them as was sold away from you, Miss. For I’n niver
forgot how you looked when you fretted about the books bein’ gone; it’s
stuck by me as if it was a pictur hingin’ before me. An’ when I see’d
the book open upo’ the stall, wi’ the lady lookin’ out of it wi’ eyes a
bit like your’n when you was frettin’,—you’ll excuse my takin’ the
liberty, Miss,—I thought I’d make free to buy it for you, an’ then I
bought the books full o’ genelmen to match; an’ then”—here Bob took up
the small stringed packet of books—“I thought you might like a bit more
print as well as the picturs, an’ I got these for a sayso,—they’re
cram-full o’ print, an’ I thought they’d do no harm comin’ along wi’
these bettermost books. An’ I hope you won’t say me nay, an’ tell me as
you won’t have ’em, like Mr Tom did wi’ the suvreigns.”

“No, indeed, Bob,” said Maggie, “I’m very thankful to you for thinking
of me, and being so good to me and Tom. I don’t think any one ever did
such a kind thing for me before. I haven’t many friends who care for
me.”

“Hev a dog, Miss!—they’re better friends nor any Christian,” said Bob,
laying down his pack again, which he had taken up with the intention of
hurrying away; for he felt considerable shyness in talking to a young
lass like Maggie, though, as he usually said of himself, “his tongue
overrun him” when he began to speak. “I can’t give you Mumps, ’cause
he’d break his heart to go away from me—eh, Mumps, what do you say, you
riff-raff?” (Mumps declined to express himself more diffusely than by a
single affirmative movement of his tail.) “But I’d get you a pup, Miss,
an’ welcome.”

“No, thank you, Bob. We have a yard dog, and I mayn’t keep a dog of my
own.”

“Eh, that’s a pity; else there’s a pup,—if you didn’t mind about it not
being thoroughbred; its mother acts in the Punch show,—an uncommon
sensible bitch; she means more sense wi’ her bark nor half the chaps
can put into their talk from breakfast to sundown. There’s one chap
carries pots,—a poor, low trade as any on the road,—he says, ‘Why
Toby’s nought but a mongrel; there’s nought to look at in her.’ But I
says to him, ‘Why, what are you yoursen but a mongrel? There wasn’t
much pickin’ o’ your feyther an’ mother, to look at you.’ Not but I
like a bit o’ breed myself, but I can’t abide to see one cur grinnin’
at another. I wish you good evenin’, Miss,” said Bob, abruptly taking
up his pack again, under the consciousness that his tongue was acting
in an undisciplined manner.

“Won’t you come in the evening some time, and see my brother, Bob?”
said Maggie.

“Yes, Miss, thank you—another time. You’ll give my duty to him, if you
please. Eh, he’s a fine growed chap, Mr Tom is; he took to growin’ i’
the legs, an’ I didn’t.”

The pack was down again, now, the hook of the stick having somehow gone
wrong.

“You don’t call Mumps a cur, I suppose?” said Maggie, divining that any
interest she showed in Mumps would be gratifying to his master.

“No, Miss, a fine way off that,” said Bob, with pitying smile; “Mumps
is as fine a cross as you’ll see anywhere along the Floss, an’ I’n been
up it wi’ the barge times enow. Why, the gentry stops to look at him;
but you won’t catch Mumps a-looking at the gentry much,—he minds his
own business, he does.”

The expression of Mump’s face, which seemed to be tolerating the
superfluous existence of objects in general, was strongly confirmatory
of this high praise.

“He looks dreadfully surly,” said Maggie. “Would he let me pat him?”

“Ay, that would he, and thank you. He knows his company, Mumps does. He
isn’t a dog as ’ull be caught wi’ gingerbread; he’d smell a thief a
good deal stronger nor the gingerbread, he would. Lors, I talk to him
by th’ hour together, when I’m walking i’ lone places, and if I’n done
a bit o’ mischief, I allays tell him. I’n got no secrets but what Mumps
knows ’em. He knows about my big thumb, he does.”

“Your big thumb—what’s that, Bob?” said Maggie.

“That’s what it is, Miss,” said Bob, quickly, exhibiting a singularly
broad specimen of that difference between the man and the monkey. “It
tells i’ measuring out the flannel, you see. I carry flannel, ’cause
it’s light for my pack, an’ it’s dear stuff, you see, so a big thumb
tells. I clap my thumb at the end o’ the yard and cut o’ the hither
side of it, and the old women aren’t up to’t.”

“But Bob,” said Maggie, looking serious, “that’s cheating; I don’t like
to hear you say that.”

“Don’t you, Miss?” said Bob regretfully. “Then I’m sorry I said it. But
I’m so used to talking to Mumps, an’ he doesn’t mind a bit o’ cheating,
when it’s them skinflint women, as haggle an’ haggle, an’ ’ud like to
get their flannel for nothing, an’ ’ud niver ask theirselves how I got
my dinner out on’t. I niver cheat anybody as doesn’t want to cheat me,
Miss,—lors, I’m a honest chap, I am; only I must hev a bit o’ sport,
an’ now I don’t go wi’ th’ ferrets, I’n got no varmint to come over but
them haggling women. I wish you good evening, Miss.”

“Good-by, Bob. Thank you very much for bringing me the books. And come
again to see Tom.”

“Yes, Miss,” said Bob, moving on a few steps; then turning half round
he said, “I’ll leave off that trick wi’ my big thumb, if you don’t
think well on me for it, Miss; but it ’ud be a pity, it would. I
couldn’t find another trick so good,—an’ what ’ud be the use o’ havin’
a big thumb? It might as well ha’ been narrow.”

Maggie, thus exalted into Bob’s exalting Madonna, laughed in spite of
herself; at which her worshipper’s blue eyes twinkled too, and under
these favouring auspices he touched his cap and walked away.

The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke’s grand dirge
over them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth
and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so
much as her little finger or the hem of her robe. Bob, with the pack on
his back, had as respectful an adoration for this dark-eyed maiden as
if he had been a knight in armor calling aloud on her name as he
pricked on to the fight.

That gleam of merriment soon died away from Maggie’s face, and perhaps
only made the returning gloom deeper by contrast. She was too
dispirited even to like answering questions about Bob’s present of
books, and she carried them away to her bedroom, laying them down there
and seating herself on her one stool, without caring to look at them
just yet. She leaned her cheek against the window-frame, and thought
that the light-hearted Bob had a lot much happier than hers.

Maggie’s sense of loneliness, and utter privation of joy, had deepened
with the brightness of advancing spring. All the favourite outdoor
nooks about home, which seemed to have done their part with her parents
in nurturing and cherishing her, were now mixed up with the
home-sadness, and gathered no smile from the sunshine. Every affection,
every delight the poor child had had, was like an aching nerve to her.
There was no music for her any more,—no piano, no harmonised voices, no
delicious stringed instruments, with their passionate cries of
imprisoned spirits sending a strange vibration through her frame. And
of all her school-life there was nothing left her now but her little
collection of school-books, which she turned over with a sickening
sense that she knew them all, and they were all barren of comfort. Even
at school she had often wished for books with more in them;
everything she learned there seemed like the ends of long threads that
snapped immediately. And now—without the indirect charm of
school-emulation—Télémaque was mere bran; so were the hard, dry
questions on Christian Doctrine; there was no flavour in them, no
strength. Sometimes Maggie thought she could have been contented with
absorbing fancies; if she could have had all Scott’s novels and all
Byron’s poems!—then, perhaps, she might have found happiness enough to
dull her sensibility to her actual daily life. And yet they were hardly
what she wanted. She could make dream-worlds of her own, but no
dream-world would satisfy her now. She wanted some explanation of this
hard, real life,—the unhappy-looking father, seated at the dull
breakfast-table; the childish, bewildered mother; the little sordid
tasks that filled the hours, or the more oppressive emptiness of weary,
joyless leisure; the need of some tender, demonstrative love; the cruel
sense that Tom didn’t mind what she thought or felt, and that they were
no longer playfellows together; the privation of all pleasant things
that had come to her more than to others,—she wanted some key that
would enable her to understand, and in understanding, to endure, the
heavy weight that had fallen on her young heart. If she had been taught
“real learning and wisdom, such as great men knew,” she thought she
should have held the secrets of life; if she had only books, that she
might learn for herself what wise men knew! Saints and martyrs had
never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets. She knew little of
saints and martyrs, and had gathered, as a general result of her
teaching, that they were a temporary provision against the spread of
Catholicism, and had all died at Smithfield.

In one of these meditations it occurred to her that she had forgotten
Tom’s school-books, which had been sent home in his trunk. But she
found the stock unaccountably shrunk down to the few old ones which had
been well thumbed,—the Latin Dictionary and Grammar, a Delectus, a torn
Eutropius, the well-worn Virgil, Aldrich’s Logic, and the exasperating
Euclid. Still, Latin, Euclid, and Logic would surely be a considerable
step in masculine wisdom,—in that knowledge which made men contented,
and even glad to live. Not that the yearning for effectual wisdom was
quite unmixed; a certain mirage would now and then rise on the desert
of the future, in which she seemed to see herself honoured for her
surprising attainments. And so the poor child, with her soul’s hunger
and her illusions of self-flattery, began to nibble at this
thick-rinded fruit of the tree of knowledge, filling her vacant hours
with Latin, geometry, and the forms of the syllogism, and feeling a
gleam of triumph now and then that her understanding was quite equal to
these peculiarly masculine studies. For a week or two she went on
resolutely enough, though with an occasional sinking of heart, as if
she had set out toward the Promised Land alone, and found it a thirsty,
trackless, uncertain journey. In the severity of her early resolution,
she would take Aldrich out into the fields, and then look off her book
toward the sky, where the lark was twinkling, or to the reeds and
bushes by the river, from which the waterfowl rustled forth on its
anxious, awkward flight,—with a startled sense that the relation
between Aldrich and this living world was extremely remote for her. The
discouragement deepened as the days went on, and the eager heart gained
faster and faster on the patient mind. Somehow, when she sat at the
window with her book, her eyes would fix themselves blankly on the
outdoor sunshine; then they would fill with tears, and sometimes, if
her mother was not in the room, the studies would all end in sobbing.
She rebelled against her lot, she fainted under its loneliness, and
fits even of anger and hatred toward her father and mother, who were so
unlike what she would have them to be; toward Tom, who checked her, and
met her thought or feeling always by some thwarting difference,—would
flow out over her affections and conscience like a lava stream, and
frighten her with a sense that it was not difficult for her to become a
demon. Then her brain would be busy with wild romances of a flight from
home in search of something less sordid and dreary; she would go to
some great man—Walter Scott, perhaps—and tell him how wretched and how
clever she was, and he would surely do something for her. But, in the
middle of her vision, her father would perhaps enter the room for the
evening, and, surprised that she sat still without noticing him, would
say complainingly, “Come, am I to fetch my slippers myself?” The voice
pierced through Maggie like a sword; there was another sadness besides
her own, and she had been thinking of turning her back on it and
forsaking it.

This afternoon, the sight of Bob’s cheerful freckled face had given her
discontent a new direction. She thought it was part of the hardship of
her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than
others seemed to feel,—that she had to endure this wide, hopeless
yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and
best on this earth. She wished she could have been like Bob, with his
easily satisfied ignorance, or like Tom, who had something to do on
which he could fix his mind with a steady purpose, and disregard
everything else. Poor child! as she leaned her head against the
window-frame, with her hands clasped tighter and tighter, and her foot
beating the ground, she was as lonely in her trouble as if she had been
the only girl in the civilised world of that day who had come out of
her school-life with a soul untrained for inevitable struggles, with no
other part of her inherited share in the hard-won treasures of thought
which generations of painful toil have laid up for the race of men,
than shreds and patches of feeble literature and false history, with
much futile information about Saxon and other kings of doubtful
example, but unhappily quite without that knowledge of the irreversible
laws within and without her, which, governing the habits, becomes
morality, and developing the feelings of submission and dependence,
becomes religion,—as lonely in her trouble as if every other girl
besides herself had been cherished and watched over by elder minds, not
forgetful of their own early time, when need was keen and impulse
strong.

At last Maggie’s eyes glanced down on the books that lay on the
window-shelf, and she half forsook her reverie to turn over listlessly
the leaves of the “Portrait Gallery,” but she soon pushed this aside to
examine the little row of books tied together with string. “Beauties of
the Spectator,” “Rasselas,” “Economy of Human Life,” “Gregory’s
Letters,”—she knew the sort of matter that was inside all these; the
“Christian Year,”—that seemed to be a hymnbook, and she laid it down
again; but Thomas à Kempis?—the name had come across her in her
reading, and she felt the satisfaction, which every one knows, of
getting some ideas to attach to a name that strays solitary in the
memory. She took up the little, old, clumsy book with some curiosity;
it had the corners turned down in many places, and some hand, now
forever quiet, had made at certain passages strong pen-and-ink marks,
long since browned by time. Maggie turned from leaf to leaf, and read
where the quiet hand pointed: “Know that the love of thyself doth hurt
thee more than anything in the world.... If thou seekest this or that,
and wouldst be here or there to enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou
shalt never be quiet nor free from care; for in everything somewhat
will be wanting, and in every place there will be some that will cross
thee.... Both above and below, which way soever thou dost turn thee,
everywhere thou shalt find the Cross; and everywhere of necessity thou
must have patience, if thou wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an
everlasting crown.... If thou desirest to mount unto this height, thou
must set out courageously, and lay the axe to the root, that thou
mayest pluck up and destroy that hidden inordinate inclination to
thyself, and unto all private and earthly good. On this sin, that a man
inordinately loveth himself, almost all dependeth, whatsoever is
thoroughly to be overcome; which evil being once overcome and subdued,
there will presently ensue great peace and tranquillity.... It is but
little thou sufferest in comparison of them that have suffered so much,
were so strongly tempted, so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried
and exercised. Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more heavy
sufferings of others, that thou mayest the easier bear thy little
adversities. And if they seem not little unto thee, beware lest thy
impatience be the cause thereof.... Blessed are those ears that receive
the whispers of the divine voice, and listen not to the whisperings of
the world. Blessed are those ears which hearken not unto the voice
which soundeth outwardly, but unto the Truth, which teacheth inwardly.”

A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while she read, as if she
had been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling of
beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupor. She went on
from one brown mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to point,
hardly conscious that she was reading, seeming rather to listen while a
low voice said;

“Why dost thou here gaze about, since this is not the place of thy
rest? In heaven ought to be thy dwelling, and all earthly things are to
be looked on as they forward thy journey thither. All things pass away,
and thou together with them. Beware thou cleavest not unto them, lest
thou be entangled and perish.... If a man should give all his
substance, yet it is as nothing. And if he should do great penances,
yet are they but little. And if he should attain to all knowledge, he
is yet far off. And if he should be of great virtue, and very fervent
devotion, yet is there much wanting; to wit, one thing, which is most
necessary for him. What is that? That having left all, he leave
himself, and go wholly out of himself, and retain nothing of
self-love.... I have often said unto thee, and now again I say the
same, Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy much inward
peace.... Then shall all vain imaginations, evil perturbations, and
superfluous cares fly away; then shall immoderate fear leave thee, and
inordinate love shall die.”

Maggie drew a long breath and pushed her heavy hair back, as if to see
a sudden vision more clearly. Here, then, was a secret of life that
would enable her to renounce all other secrets; here was a sublime
height to be reached without the help of outward things; here was
insight, and strength, and conquest, to be won by means entirely within
her own soul, where a supreme Teacher was waiting to be heard. It
flashed through her like the suddenly apprehended solution of a
problem, that all the miseries of her young life had come from fixing
her heart on her own pleasure, as if that were the central necessity of
the universe; and for the first time she saw the possibility of
shifting the position from which she looked at the gratification of her
own desires,—of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at her own
life as an insignificant part of a divinely guided whole. She read on
and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with the
invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength;
returning to it after she had been called away, and reading till the
sun went down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an imagination
that could never rest in the present, she sat in the deepening twilight
forming plans of self-humiliation and entire devotedness; and in the
ardor of first discovery, renunciation seemed to her the entrance into
that satisfaction which she had so long been craving in vain. She had
not perceived—how could she until she had lived longer?—the inmost
truth of the old monk’s out-pourings, that renunciation remains sorrow,
though a sorrow borne willingly. Maggie was still panting for
happiness, and was in ecstasy because she had found the key to it. She
knew nothing of doctrines and systems, of mysticism or quietism; but
this voice out of the far-off middle ages was the direct communication
of a human soul’s belief and experience, and came to Maggie as an
unquestioned message.

I suppose that is the reason why the small old-fashioned book, for
which you need only pay sixpence at a book-stall, works miracles to
this day, turning bitter waters into sweetness; while expensive sermons
and treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they were before. It
was written down by a hand that waited for the heart’s prompting; it is
the chronicle of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, trust, and
triumph, not written on velvet cushions to teach endurance to those who
are treading with bleeding feet on the stones. And so it remains to all
time a lasting record of human needs and human consolations; the voice
of a brother who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced,—in the
cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much
chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from
ours,—but under the same silent far-off heavens, and with the same
passionate desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the same
weariness.

In writing the history of unfashionable families, one is apt to fall
into a tone of emphasis which is very far from being the tone of good
society, where principles and beliefs are not only of an extremely
moderate kind, but are always presupposed, no subjects being eligible
but such as can be touched with a light and graceful irony. But then
good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its
dinner-engagements six weeks deep, its opera and its faëry ball-rooms;
rides off its ennui on thoroughbred horses; lounges at the club; has
to keep clear of crinoline vortices; gets its science done by Faraday,
and its religion by the superior clergy who are to be met in the best
houses,—how should it have time or need for belief and emphasis? But
good society, floated on gossamer wings of light irony, is of very
expensive production; requiring nothing less than a wide and arduous
national life condensed in unfragrant deafening factories, cramping
itself in mines, sweating at furnaces, grinding, hammering, weaving
under more or less oppression of carbonic acid, or else, spread over
sheepwalks, and scattered in lonely houses and huts on the clayey or
chalky corn-lands, where the rainy days look dreary. This wide national
life is based entirely on emphasis,—the emphasis of want, which urges
it into all the activities necessary for the maintenance of good
society and light irony; it spends its heavy years often in a chill,
uncarpeted fashion, amidst family discord unsoftened by long corridors.
Under such circumstances, there are many among its myriads of souls who
have absolutely needed an emphatic belief, life in this unpleasurable
shape demanding some solution even to unspeculative minds,—just as you
inquire into the stuffing of your couch when anything galls you there,
whereas eider-down and perfect French springs excite no question. Some
have an emphatic belief in alcohol, and seek their ekstasis or
outside standing-ground in gin; but the rest require something that
good society calls “enthusiasm,” something that will present motives in
an entire absence of high prizes; something that will give patience and
feed human love when the limbs ache with weariness, and human looks are
hard upon us; something, clearly, that lies outside personal desires,
that includes resignation for ourselves and active love for what is not
ourselves. Now and then that sort of enthusiasm finds a far-echoing
voice that comes from an experience springing out of the deepest need;
and it was by being brought within the long lingering vibrations of
such a voice that Maggie, with her girl’s face and unnoted sorrows,
found an effort and a hope that helped her through years of loneliness,
making out a faith for herself without the aid of established
authorities and appointed guides; for they were not at hand, and her
need was pressing. From what you know of her, you will not be surprised
that she threw some exaggeration and wilfulness, some pride and
impetuosity, even into her self-renunciation; her own life was still a
drama for her, in which she demanded of herself that her part should be
played with intensity. And so it came to pass that she often lost the
spirit of humility by being excessive in the outward act; she often
strove after too high a flight, and came down with her poor little
half-fledged wings dabbled in the mud. For example, she not only
determined to work at plain sewing, that she might contribute something
toward the fund in the tin box, but she went, in the first instance, in
her zeal of self-mortification, to ask for it at a linen shop in St
Ogg’s, instead of getting it in a more quiet and indirect way; and
could see nothing but what was entirely wrong and unkind, nay,
persecuting, in Tom’s reproof of her for this unnecessary act. “I don’t
like my sister to do such things,” said Tom, “I’ll take care that
the debts are paid, without your lowering yourself in that way.” Surely
there was some tenderness and bravery mingled with the worldliness and
self-assertion of that little speech; but Maggie held it as dross,
overlooking the grains of gold, and took Tom’s rebuke as one of her
outward crosses. Tom was very hard to her, she used to think, in her
long night-watchings,—to her who had always loved him so; and then she
strove to be contented with that hardness, and to require nothing. That
is the path we all like when we set out on our abandonment of
egoism,—the path of martyrdom and endurance, where the palm-branches
grow, rather than the steep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and
self-blame, where there are no leafy honours to be gathered and worn.

The old books, Virgil, Euclid, and Aldrich—that wrinkled fruit of the
tree of knowledge—had been all laid by; for Maggie had turned her back
on the vain ambition to share the thoughts of the wise. In her first
ardor she flung away the books with a sort of triumph that she had
risen above the need of them; and if they had been her own, she would
have burned them, believing that she would never repent. She read so
eagerly and constantly in her three books, the Bible, Thomas à Kempis,
and the “Christian Year” (no longer rejected as a “hymn-book”), that
they filled her mind with a continual stream of rhythmic memories; and
she was too ardently learning to see all nature and life in the light
of her new faith, to need any other material for her mind to work on,
as she sat with her well-plied needle, making shirts and other
complicated stitchings, falsely called “plain,”—by no means plain to
Maggie, since wristband and sleeve and the like had a capability of
being sewed in wrong side outward in moments of mental wandering.

Hanging diligently over her sewing, Maggie was a sight any one might
have been pleased to look at. That new inward life of hers,
notwithstanding some volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions, yet
shone out in her face with a tender soft light that mingled itself as
added loveliness with the gradually enriched colour and outline of her
blossoming youth. Her mother felt the change in her with a sort of
puzzled wonder that Maggie should be “growing up so good”; it was
amazing that this once “contrairy” child was become so submissive, so
backward to assert her own will. Maggie used to look up from her work
and find her mother’s eyes fixed upon her; they were watching and
waiting for the large young glance, as if her elder frame got some
needful warmth from it. The mother was getting fond of her tall, brown
girl,—the only bit of furniture now on which she could bestow her
anxiety and pride; and Maggie, in spite of her own ascetic wish to have
no personal adornment, was obliged to give way to her mother about her
hair, and submit to have the abundant black locks plaited into a
coronet on the summit of her head, after the pitiable fashion of those
antiquated times.

“Let your mother have that bit o’ pleasure, my dear,” said Mrs
Tulliver; “I’d trouble enough with your hair once.”

So Maggie, glad of anything that would soothe her mother, and cheer
their long day together, consented to the vain decoration, and showed a
queenly head above her old frocks, steadily refusing, however, to look
at herself in the glass. Mrs Tulliver liked to call the father’s
attention to Maggie’s hair and other unexpected virtues, but he had a
brusque reply to give.

“I knew well enough what she’d be, before now,—it’s nothing new to me.
But it’s a pity she isn’t made o’ commoner stuff; she’ll be thrown
away, I doubt,—there’ll be nobody to marry her as is fit for her.”

And Maggie’s graces of mind and body fed his gloom. He sat patiently
enough while she read him a chapter, or said something timidly when
they were alone together about trouble being turned into a blessing. He
took it all as part of his daughter’s goodness, which made his
misfortunes the sadder to him because they damaged her chance in life.
In a mind charged with an eager purpose and an unsatisfied
vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings; Mr Tulliver did not
want spiritual consolation—he wanted to shake off the degradation of
debt, and to have his revenge.

BOOK FIFTH

WHEAT AND TARES.