The Mill on the Floss

t Ogg’s Passes Judgment

It was soon known throughout St Ogg’s that Miss Tulliver was come back;
she had not, then, eloped in order to be married to Mr Stephen
Guest,—at all events, Mr Stephen Guest had not married her; which came
to the same thing, so far as her culpability was concerned. We judge
others according to results; how else?—not knowing the process by which
results are arrived at. If Miss Tulliver, after a few months of
well-chosen travel, had returned as Mrs Stephen Guest, with a
post-marital trousseau, and all the advantages possessed even by the
most unwelcome wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St Ogg’s,
as else where, always knew what to think, would have judged in strict
consistency with those results. Public opinion, in these cases, is
always of the feminine gender,—not the world, but the world’s wife; and
she would have seen that two handsome young people—the gentleman of
quite the first family in St Ogg’s—having found themselves in a false
position, had been led into a course which, to say the least of it, was
highly injudicious, and productive of sad pain and disappointment,
especially to that sweet young thing, Miss Deane. Mr Stephen Guest had
certainly not behaved well; but then, young men were liable to those
sudden infatuated attachments; and bad as it might seem in Mrs Stephen
Guest to admit the faintest advances from her cousin’s lover (indeed it
had been said that she was actually engaged to young Wakem,—old Wakem
himself had mentioned it), still, she was very young,—“and a deformed
young man, you know!—and young Guest so very fascinating; and, they
say, he positively worships her (to be sure, that can’t last!), and he
ran away with her in the boat quite against her will, and what could
she do? She couldn’t come back then; no one would have spoken to her;
and how very well that maize-coloured satinette becomes her complexion!
It seems as if the folds in front were quite come in; several of her
dresses are made so,—they say he thinks nothing too handsome to buy for
her. Poor Miss Deane! She is very pitiable; but then there was no
positive engagement; and the air at the coast will do her good. After
all, if young Guest felt no more for her than that it was better for
her not to marry him. What a wonderful marriage for a girl like Miss
Tulliver,—quite romantic? Why, young Guest will put up for the borough
at the next election. Nothing like commerce nowadays! That young Wakem
nearly went out of his mind; he always was rather queer; but he’s
gone abroad again to be out of the way,—quite the best thing for a
deformed young man. Miss Unit declares she will never visit Mr and Mrs
Stephen Guest,—such nonsense! pretending to be better than other
people. Society couldn’t be carried on if we inquired into private
conduct in that way,—and Christianity tells us to think no evil,—and my
belief is, that Miss Unit had no cards sent her.”

But the results, we know, were not of a kind to warrant this
extenuation of the past. Maggie had returned without a trousseau,
without a husband,—in that degraded and outcast condition to which
error is well known to lead; and the world’s wife, with that fine
instinct which is given her for the preservation of Society, saw at
once that Miss Tulliver’s conduct had been of the most aggravated kind.
Could anything be more detestable? A girl so much indebted to her
friends—whose mother as well as herself had received so much kindness
from the Deanes—to lay the design of winning a young man’s affections
away from her own cousin, who had behaved like a sister to her! Winning
his affections? That was not the phrase for such a girl as Miss
Tulliver; it would have been more correct to say that she had been
actuated by mere unwomanly boldness and unbridled passion. There was
always something questionable about her. That connection with young
Wakem, which, they said, had been carried on for years, looked very
ill,—disgusting, in fact! But with a girl of that disposition! To the
world’s wife there had always been something in Miss Tulliver’s very
physique that a refined instinct felt to be prophetic of harm. As for
poor Mr Stephen Guest, he was rather pitiable than otherwise; a young
man of five-and-twenty is not to be too severely judged in these
cases,—he is really very much at the mercy of a designing, bold girl.
And it was clear that he had given way in spite of himself: he had
shaken her off as soon as he could; indeed, their having parted so soon
looked very black indeed—for her. To be sure, he had written a
letter, laying all the blame on himself, and telling the story in a
romantic fashion so as to try and make her appear quite innocent; of
course he would do that! But the refined instinct of the world’s wife
was not to be deceived; providentially!—else what would become of
Society? Why, her own brother had turned her from his door; he had seen
enough, you might be sure, before he would do that. A truly respectable
young man, Mr Tom Tulliver; quite likely to rise in the world! His
sister’s disgrace was naturally a heavy blow to him. It was to be hoped
that she would go out of the neighbourhood,—to America, or anywhere,—so
as to purify the air of St Ogg’s from the stain of her presence,
extremely dangerous to daughters there! No good could happen to her; it
was only to be hoped she would repent, and that God would have mercy on
her: He had not the care of society on His hands, as the world’s wife
had.

It required nearly a fortnight for fine instinct to assure itself of
these inspirations; indeed, it was a whole week before Stephen’s letter
came, telling his father the facts, and adding that he was gone across
to Holland,—had drawn upon the agent at Mudport for money,—was
incapable of any resolution at present.

Maggie, all this while, was too entirely filled with a more agonizing
anxiety to spend any thought on the view that was being taken of her
conduct by the world of St Ogg’s; anxiety about Stephen, Lucy, Philip,
beat on her poor heart in a hard, driving, ceaseless storm of mingled
love, remorse, and pity. If she had thought of rejection and injustice
at all, it would have seemed to her that they had done their worst;
that she could hardly feel any stroke from them intolerable since the
words she had heard from her brother’s lips. Across all her anxiety for
the loved and the injured, those words shot again and again, like a
horrible pang that would have brought misery and dread even into a
heaven of delights. The idea of ever recovering happiness never
glimmered in her mind for a moment; it seemed as if every sensitive
fibre in her were too entirely preoccupied by pain ever to vibrate
again to another influence. Life stretched before her as one act of
penitence; and all she craved, as she dwelt on her future lot, was
something to guarantee her from more falling; her own weakness haunted
her like a vision of hideous possibilities, that made no peace
conceivable except such as lay in the sense of a sure refuge.

But she was not without practical intentions; the love of independence
was too strong an inheritance and a habit for her not to remember that
she must get her bread; and when other projects looked vague, she fell
back on that of returning to her plain sewing, and so getting enough to
pay for her lodging at Bob’s. She meant to persuade her mother to
return to the Mill by and by, and live with Tom again; and somehow or
other she would maintain herself at St Ogg’s. Dr Kenn would perhaps
help her and advise her. She remembered his parting words at the
bazaar. She remembered the momentary feeling of reliance that had
sprung in her when he was talking with her, and she waited with
yearning expectation for the opportunity of confiding everything to
him. Her mother called every day at Mr Deane’s to learn how Lucy was;
the report was always sad,—nothing had yet roused her from the feeble
passivity which had come on with the first shock. But of Philip, Mrs
Tulliver had learned nothing; naturally, no one whom she met would
speak to her about what related to her daughter. But at last she
summoned courage to go and see sister Glegg, who of course would know
everything, and had been even to see Tom at the Mill in Mrs Tulliver’s
absence, though he had said nothing of what had passed on the occasion.

As soon as her mother was gone, Maggie put on her bonnet. She had
resolved on walking to the Rectory and asking to see Dr Kenn; he was in
deep grief, but the grief of another does not jar upon us in such
circumstances. It was the first time she had been beyond the door since
her return; nevertheless her mind was so bent on the purpose of her
walk, that the unpleasantness of meeting people on the way, and being
stared at, did not occur to her. But she had no sooner passed beyond
the narrower streets which she had to thread from Bob’s dwelling, than
she became aware of unusual glances cast at her; and this consciousness
made her hurry along nervously, afraid to look to right or left.
Presently, however, she came full on Mrs and Miss Turnbull, old
acquaintances of her family; they both looked at her strangely, and
turned a little aside without speaking. All hard looks were pain to
Maggie, but her self-reproach was too strong for resentment. No wonder
they will not speak to me, she thought; they are very fond of Lucy. But
now she knew that she was about to pass a group of gentlemen, who were
standing at the door of the billiard-rooms, and she could not help
seeing young Torry step out a little with his glass at his eye, and bow
to her with that air of nonchalance which he might have bestowed on a
friendly barmaid.

Maggie’s pride was too intense for her not to feel that sting, even in
the midst of her sorrow; and for the first time the thought took strong
hold of her that she would have other obloquy cast on her besides that
which was felt to be due to her breach of faith toward Lucy. But she
was at the Rectory now; there, perhaps, she would find something else
than retribution. Retribution may come from any voice; the hardest,
cruelest, most imbruted urchin at the street-corner can inflict it;
surely help and pity are rarer things, more needful for the righteous
to bestow.

She was shown up at once, after being announced, into Dr Kenn’s study,
where he sat amongst piled-up books, for which he had little appetite,
leaning his cheek against the head of his youngest child, a girl of
three. The child was sent away with the servant, and when the door was
closed, Dr Kenn said, placing a chair for Maggie,—

“I was coming to see you, Miss Tulliver; you have anticipated me; I am
glad you did.”

Maggie looked at him with her childlike directness as she had done at
the bazaar, and said, “I want to tell you everything.” But her eyes
filled fast with tears as she said it, and all the pent-up excitement
of her humiliating walk would have its vent before she could say more.

“Do tell me everything,” Dr Kenn said, with quiet kindness in his
grave, firm voice. “Think of me as one to whom a long experience has
been granted, which may enable him to help you.”

In rather broken sentences, and with some effort at first, but soon
with the greater ease that came from a sense of relief in the
confidence, Maggie told the brief story of a struggle that must be the
beginning of a long sorrow. Only the day before, Dr Kenn had been made
acquainted with the contents of Stephen’s letter, and he had believed
them at once, without the confirmation of Maggie’s statement. That
involuntary plaint of hers, “Oh, I must go,” had remained with him as
the sign that she was undergoing some inward conflict.

Maggie dwelt the longest on the feeling which had made her come back to
her mother and brother, which made her cling to all the memories of the
past. When she had ended, Dr Kenn was silent for some minutes; there
was a difficulty on his mind. He rose, and walked up and down the
hearth with his hands behind him. At last he seated himself again, and
said, looking at Maggie,—

“Your prompting to go to your nearest friends,—to remain where all the
ties of your life have been formed,—is a true prompting, to which the
Church in its original constitution and discipline responds, opening
its arms to the penitent, watching over its children to the last; never
abandoning them until they are hopelessly reprobate. And the Church
ought to represent the feeling of the community, so that every parish
should be a family knit together by Christian brotherhood under a
spiritual father. But the ideas of discipline and Christian fraternity
are entirely relaxed,—they can hardly be said to exist in the public
mind; they hardly survive except in the partial, contradictory form
they have taken in the narrow communities of schismatics; and if I were
not supported by the firm faith that the Church must ultimately recover
the full force of that constitution which is alone fitted to human
needs, I should often lose heart at observing the want of fellowship
and sense of mutual responsibility among my own flock. At present
everything seems tending toward the relaxation of ties,—toward the
substitution of wayward choice for the adherence to obligation, which
has its roots in the past. Your conscience and your heart have given
you true light on this point, Miss Tulliver; and I have said all this
that you may know what my wish about you—what my advice to you—would
be, if they sprang from my own feeling and opinion unmodified by
counteracting circumstances.”

Dr Kenn paused a little while. There was an entire absence of effusive
benevolence in his manner; there was something almost cold in the
gravity of his look and voice. If Maggie had not known that his
benevolence was persevering in proportion to its reserve, she might
have been chilled and frightened. As it was, she listened expectantly,
quite sure that there would be some effective help in his words. He
went on.

“Your inexperience of the world, Miss Tulliver, prevents you from
anticipating fully the very unjust conceptions that will probably be
formed concerning your conduct,—conceptions which will have a baneful
effect, even in spite of known evidence to disprove them.”

“Oh, I do,—I begin to see,” said Maggie, unable to repress this
utterance of her recent pain. “I know I shall be insulted. I shall be
thought worse than I am.”

“You perhaps do not yet know,” said Dr Kenn, with a touch of more
personal pity, “that a letter is come which ought to satisfy every one
who has known anything of you, that you chose the steep and difficult
path of a return to the right, at the moment when that return was most
of all difficult.”

“Oh, where is he?” said poor Maggie, with a flush and tremor that no
presence could have hindered.

“He is gone abroad; he has written of all that passed to his father. He
has vindicated you to the utmost; and I hope the communication of that
letter to your cousin will have a beneficial effect on her.”

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

“That letter, as I said, ought to suffice to prevent false impressions
concerning you. But I am bound to tell you, Miss Tulliver, that not
only the experience of my whole life, but my observation within the
last three days, makes me fear that there is hardly any evidence which
will save you from the painful effect of false imputations. The persons
who are the most incapable of a conscientious struggle such as yours
are precisely those who will be likely to shrink from you, because they
will not believe in your struggle. I fear your life here will be
attended not only with much pain, but with many obstructions. For this
reason—and for this only—I ask you to consider whether it will not
perhaps be better for you to take a situation at a distance, according
to your former intention. I will exert myself at once to obtain one for
you.”

“Oh, if I could but stop here!” said Maggie. “I have no heart to begin
a strange life again. I should have no stay. I should feel like a
lonely wanderer, cut off from the past. I have written to the lady who
offered me a situation to excuse myself. If I remained here, I could
perhaps atone in some way to Lucy—to others; I could convince them that
I’m sorry. And,” she added, with some of the old proud fire flashing
out, “I will not go away because people say false things of me. They
shall learn to retract them. If I must go away at last, because—because
others wish it, I will not go now.”

“Well,” said Dr Kenn, after some consideration, “if you determine on
that, Miss Tulliver, you may rely on all the influence my position
gives me. I am bound to aid and countenance you by the very duties of
my office as a parish priest. I will add, that personally I have a deep
interest in your peace of mind and welfare.”

“The only thing I want is some occupation that will enable me to get my
bread and be independent,” said Maggie. “I shall not want much. I can
go on lodging where I am.”

“I must think over the subject maturely,” said Dr Kenn, “and in a few
days I shall be better able to ascertain the general feeling. I shall
come to see you; I shall bear you constantly in mind.”

When Maggie had left him, Dr Kenn stood ruminating with his hands
behind him, and his eyes fixed on the carpet, under a painful sense of
doubt and difficulty. The tone of Stephen’s letter, which he had read,
and the actual relations of all the persons concerned, forced upon him
powerfully the idea of an ultimate marriage between Stephen and Maggie
as the least evil; and the impossibility of their proximity in St Ogg’s
on any other supposition, until after years of separation, threw an
insurmountable prospective difficulty over Maggie’s stay there. On the
other hand, he entered with all the comprehension of a man who had
known spiritual conflict, and lived through years of devoted service to
his fellow-men, into that state of Maggie’s heart and conscience which
made the consent to the marriage a desecration to her; her conscience
must not be tampered with; the principle on which she had acted was a
safer guide than any balancing of consequences. His experience told him
that intervention was too dubious a responsibility to be lightly
incurred; the possible issue either of an endeavor to restore the
former relations with Lucy and Philip, or of counselling submission to
this irruption of a new feeling, was hidden in a darkness all the more
impenetrable because each immediate step was clogged with evil.

The great problem of the shifting relation between passion and duty is
clear to no man who is capable of apprehending it; the question whether
the moment has come in which a man has fallen below the possibility of
a renunciation that will carry any efficacy, and must accept the sway
of a passion against which he had struggled as a trespass, is one for
which we have no master-key that will fit all cases. The casuists have
become a byword of reproach; but their perverted spirit of minute
discrimination was the shadow of a truth to which eyes and hearts are
too often fatally sealed,—the truth, that moral judgments must remain
false and hollow, unless they are checked and enlightened by a
perpetual reference to the special circumstances that mark the
individual lot.

All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the
men of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious
complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to
lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine
promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and
sympathy. And the man of maxims is the popular representative of the
minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general rules,
thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent
method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination,
impartiality,—without any care to assure themselves whether they have
the insight that comes from a hardly earned estimate of temptation, or
from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide
fellow-feeling with all that is human.