The Mill on the Floss

onfidential Moments

When Maggie went up to her bedroom that night, it appeared that she was
not at all inclined to undress. She set down her candle on the first
table that presented itself, and began to walk up and down her room,
which was a large one, with a firm, regular, and rather rapid step,
which showed that the exercise was the instinctive vent of strong
excitement. Her eyes and cheeks had an almost feverish brilliancy; her
head was thrown backward, and her hands were clasped with the palms
outward, and with that tension of the arms which is apt to accompany
mental absorption.

Had anything remarkable happened?

Nothing that you are not likely to consider in the highest degree
unimportant. She had been hearing some fine music sung by a fine bass
voice,—but then it was sung in a provincial, amateur fashion, such as
would have left a critical ear much to desire. And she was conscious of
having been looked at a great deal, in rather a furtive manner, from
beneath a pair of well-marked horizontal eyebrows, with a glance that
seemed somehow to have caught the vibratory influence of the voice.
Such things could have had no perceptible effect on a thoroughly
well-educated young lady, with a perfectly balanced mind, who had had
all the advantages of fortune, training, and refined society. But if
Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing
about her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could
hardly have been written; for the happiest women, like the happiest
nations, have no history.

In poor Maggie’s highly-strung, hungry nature,—just come away from a
third-rate schoolroom, with all its jarring sounds and petty round of
tasks,—these apparently trivial causes had the effect of rousing and
exalting her imagination in a way that was mysterious to herself. It
was not that she thought distinctly of Mr Stephen Guest, or dwelt on
the indications that he looked at her with admiration; it was rather
that she felt the half-remote presence of a world of love and beauty
and delight, made up of vague, mingled images from all the poetry and
romance she had ever read, or had ever woven in her dreamy reveries.
Her mind glanced back once or twice to the time when she had courted
privation, when she had thought all longing, all impatience was
subdued; but that condition seemed irrecoverably gone, and she recoiled
from the remembrance of it. No prayer, no striving now, would bring
back that negative peace; the battle of her life, it seemed, was not to
be decided in that short and easy way,—by perfect renunciation at the
very threshold of her youth.

The music was vibrating in her still,—Purcell’s music, with its wild
passion and fancy,—and she could not stay in the recollection of that
bare, lonely past. She was in her brighter aerial world again, when a
little tap came at the door; of course it was her cousin, who entered
in ample white dressing-gown.

“Why, Maggie, you naughty child, haven’t you begun to undress?” said
Lucy, in astonishment. “I promised not to come and talk to you, because
I thought you must be tired. But here you are, looking as if you were
ready to dress for a ball. Come, come, get on your dressing-gown and
unplait your hair.”

“Well, you are not very forward,” retorted Maggie, hastily reaching
her own pink cotton gown, and looking at Lucy’s light-brown hair
brushed back in curly disorder.

“Oh, I have not much to do. I shall sit down and talk to you till I see
you are really on the way to bed.”

While Maggie stood and unplaited her long black hair over her pink
drapery, Lucy sat down near the toilette-table, watching her with
affectionate eyes, and head a little aside, like a pretty spaniel. If
it appears to you at all incredible that young ladies should be led on
to talk confidentially in a situation of this kind, I will beg you to
remember that human life furnishes many exceptional cases.

“You really have enjoyed the music to-night, haven’t you Maggie?”

“Oh yes, that is what prevented me from feeling sleepy. I think I
should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of
music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my
brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.
At other times one is conscious of carrying a weight.”

“And Stephen has a splendid voice, hasn’t he?”

“Well, perhaps we are neither of us judges of that,” said Maggie,
laughing, as she seated herself and tossed her long hair back. “You are
not impartial, and I think any barrel-organ splendid.”

“But tell me what you think of him, now. Tell me exactly; good and bad
too.”

“Oh, I think you should humiliate him a little. A lover should not be
so much at ease, and so self-confident. He ought to tremble more.”

“Nonsense, Maggie! As if any one could tremble at me! You think he is
conceited, I see that. But you don’t dislike him, do you?”

“Dislike him! No. Am I in the habit of seeing such charming people,
that I should be very difficult to please? Besides, how could I dislike
any one that promised to make you happy, my dear thing!” Maggie pinched
Lucy’s dimpled chin.

“We shall have more music to-morrow evening,” said Lucy, looking happy
already, “for Stephen will bring Philip Wakem with him.”

“Oh, Lucy, I can’t see him,” said Maggie, turning pale. “At least, I
could not see him without Tom’s leave.”

“Is Tom such a tyrant as that?” said Lucy, surprised. “I’ll take the
responsibility, then,—tell him it was my fault.”

“But, dear,” said Maggie, falteringly, “I promised Tom very solemnly,
before my father’s death,—I promised him I would not speak to Philip
without his knowledge and consent. And I have a great dread of opening
the subject with Tom,—of getting into a quarrel with him again.”

“But I never heard of anything so strange and unreasonable. What harm
can poor Philip have done? May I speak to Tom about it?”

“Oh no, pray don’t, dear,” said Maggie. “I’ll go to him myself
to-morrow, and tell him that you wish Philip to come. I’ve thought
before of asking him to absolve me from my promise, but I’ve not had
the courage to determine on it.”

They were both silent for some moments, and then Lucy said,—

“Maggie, you have secrets from me, and I have none from you.”

Maggie looked meditatively away from Lucy. Then she turned to her and
said, “I should like to tell you about Philip. But, Lucy, you must
not betray that you know it to any one—least of all to Philip himself,
or to Mr Stephen Guest.”

The narrative lasted long, for Maggie had never before known the relief
of such an outpouring; she had never before told Lucy anything of her
inmost life; and the sweet face bent toward her with sympathetic
interest, and the little hand pressing hers, encouraged her to speak
on. On two points only she was not expansive. She did not betray fully
what still rankled in her mind as Tom’s great offence,—the insults he
had heaped on Philip. Angry as the remembrance still made her, she
could not bear that any one else should know it at all, both for Tom’s
sake and Philip’s. And she could not bear to tell Lucy of the last
scene between her father and Wakem, though it was this scene which she
had ever since felt to be a new barrier between herself and Philip. She
merely said, she saw now that Tom was, on the whole, right in regarding
any prospect of love and marriage between her and Philip as put out of
the question by the relation of the two families. Of course Philip’s
father would never consent.

“There, Lucy, you have had my story,” said Maggie, smiling, with the
tears in her eyes. “You see I am like Sir Andrew Aguecheek. I was
adored once.”

“Ah, now I see how it is you know Shakespeare and everything, and have
learned so much since you left school; which always seemed to me
witchcraft before,—part of your general uncanniness,” said Lucy.

She mused a little with her eyes downward, and then added, looking at
Maggie, “It is very beautiful that you should love Philip; I never
thought such a happiness would befall him. And in my opinion, you ought
not to give him up. There are obstacles now; but they may be done away
with in time.”

Maggie shook her head.

“Yes, yes,” persisted Lucy; “I can’t help being hopeful about it. There
is something romantic in it,—out of the common way,—just what
everything that happens to you ought to be. And Philip will adore you
like a husband in a fairy tale. Oh, I shall puzzle my small brain to
contrive some plot that will bring everybody into the right mind, so
that you may marry Philip when I marry—somebody else. Wouldn’t that be
a pretty ending to all my poor, poor Maggie’s troubles?”

Maggie tried to smile, but shivered, as if she felt a sudden chill.

“Ah, dear, you are cold,” said Lucy. “You must go to bed; and so must
I. I dare not think what time it is.”

They kissed each other, and Lucy went away, possessed of a confidence
which had a strong influence over her subsequent impressions. Maggie
had been thoroughly sincere; her nature had never found it easy to be
otherwise. But confidences are sometimes blinding, even when they are
sincere.