The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot (rom com books to read .txt) 📗

“Let me introduce you to my cousin, Miss Tulliver,” said Lucy, turning with wicked enjoyment toward Maggie, who now approached from the farther window. “This is Mr. Stephen Guest.”

For one instant Stephen could not conceal his astonishment at the sight of this tall, dark-eyed nymph with her jet-black coronet of hair; the next, Maggie felt herself, for the first time in her life, receiving the tribute of a very deep blush and a very deep bow from a person toward whom she herself was conscious of timidity.

This new experience was very agreeable to her, so agreeable that it almost effaced her previous emotion about Philip. There was a new brightness in her eyes, and a very becoming flush on her cheek, as she seated herself.

“I hope you perceive what a striking likeness you drew the day before yesterday,” said Lucy, with a pretty laugh of triumph. She enjoyed her lover’s confusion; the advantage was usually on his side.

“This designing cousin of yours quite deceived me, Miss Tulliver,” said Stephen, seating himself by Lucy, and stooping to play with Minny, only looking at Maggie furtively. “She said you had light hair and blue eyes.”

“Nay, it was you who said so,” remonstrated Lucy. “I only refrained from destroying your confidence in your own second-sight.”

“I wish I could always err in the same way,” said Stephen, “and find reality so much more beautiful than my preconceptions.”

“Now you have proved yourself equal to the occasion,” said Maggie, “and said what it was incumbent on you to say under the circumstances.”

She flashed a slightly defiant look at him; it was clear to her that he had been drawing a satirical portrait of her beforehand. Lucy had said he was inclined to be satirical, and Maggie had mentally supplied the addition, “and rather conceited.”

“An alarming amount of devil there,” was Stephen’s first thought. The second, when she had bent over her work, was, “I wish she would look at me again.” The next was to answer,—

“I suppose all phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true. A man is occasionally grateful when he says ‘Thank you.’ It’s rather hard upon him that he must use the same words with which all the world declines a disagreeable invitation, don’t you think so, Miss Tulliver?”

“No,” said Maggie, looking at him with her direct glance; “if we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or every-day clothes, hung up in a sacred place.”

“Then my compliment ought to be eloquent,” said Stephen, really not quite knowing what he said while Maggie looked at him, “seeing that the words were so far beneath the occasion.”

“No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference,” said Maggie, flushing a little.

Lucy was rather alarmed; she thought Stephen and Maggie were not going to like each other. She had always feared lest Maggie should appear too old and clever to please that critical gentleman. “Why, dear Maggie,” she interposed, “you have always pretended that you are too fond of being admired; and now, I think, you are angry because some one ventures to admire you.”

“Not at all,” said Maggie; “I like too well to feel that I am admired, but compliments never make me feel that.”

“I will never pay you a compliment again, Miss Tulliver,” said Stephen.

“Thank you; that will be a proof of respect.”

Poor Maggie! She was so unused to society that she could take nothing as a matter of course, and had never in her life spoken from the lips merely, so that she must necessarily appear absurd to more experienced ladies, from the excessive feeling she was apt to throw into very trivial incidents. But she was even conscious herself of a little absurdity in this instance. It was true she had a theoretic objection to compliments, and had once said impatiently to Philip that she didn’t see why women were to be told with a simper that they were beautiful, any more than old men were to be told that they were venerable; still, to be so irritated by a common practice in the case of a stranger like Mr. Stephen Guest, and to care about his having spoken slightingly of her before he had seen her, was certainly unreasonable, and as soon as she was silent she began to be ashamed of herself. It did not occur to her that her irritation was due to the pleasanter emotion which preceded it, just as when we are satisfied with a sense of glowing warmth an innocent drop of cold water may fall upon us as a sudden smart.

Stephen was too well bred not to seem unaware that the previous conversation could have been felt embarrassing, and at once began to talk of impersonal matters, asking Lucy if she knew when the bazaar was at length to take place, so that there might be some hope of seeing her rain the influence of her eyes on objects more grateful than those worsted flowers that were growing under her fingers.

“Some day next month, I believe,” said Lucy. “But your sisters are doing more for it than I am; they are to have the largest stall.”

“Ah yes; but they carry on their manufactures in their own sitting-room, where I don’t intrude on them. I see you are not addicted to the fashionable vice of fancy-work, Miss Tulliver,” said Stephen, looking at Maggie’s plain hemming.

“No,” said Maggie, “I can do nothing more difficult or more elegant than shirt-making.”

“And your plain sewing is so beautiful, Maggie,” said Lucy, “that I think I shall beg a few specimens of you to show as fancy-work. Your exquisite sewing is quite a mystery to me, you used to dislike that sort of work so much in old days.”

“It is a mystery easily explained, dear,” said Maggie, looking up quietly. “Plain sewing was the only thing I could get money by, so I was obliged to try and do it well.”

Lucy, good and simple as she was, could not help blushing a little. She did not quite like that Stephen should know that; Maggie need not have mentioned it. Perhaps there was some pride in the confession,— the pride of poverty that will not be ashamed of itself. But if Maggie had been the queen of coquettes she could hardly have invented a means of giving greater piquancy to her beauty in Stephen’s eyes; I am not sure that the quiet admission of plain sewing and poverty would have done alone, but assisted by the beauty, they made Maggie more unlike other women even than she had seemed at first.

“But I can knit, Lucy,” Maggie went on, “if that will be of any use for your bazaar.”

“Oh yes, of infinite use. I shall set you to work with scarlet wool tomorrow. But your sister is the most enviable person,” continued Lucy, turning to Stephen, “to have the talent of modelling. She is doing a wonderful bust of Dr. Kenn entirely from memory.”

“Why, if she can remember to put the eyes very near together, and the corners of the mouth very far apart, the likeness can hardly fail to be striking in St. Ogg’s.”

“Now that is very wicked of you,” said Lucy, looking rather hurt. “I didn’t think you would speak disrespectfully of Dr. Kenn.”

“I say anything disrespectful of Dr. Kenn? Heaven forbid! But I am not bound to respect a libellous bust of him. I think Kenn one of the finest fellows in the world. I don’t care much about the tall candlesticks he has put on the communion-table, and I shouldn’t like to spoil my temper by getting up to early prayers every morning. But he’s the only man I ever knew personally who seems to me to have anything of the real apostle in him,—a man who has eight hundred a-year and is contented with deal furniture and boiled beef because he gives away two-thirds of his income. That was a very fine thing of him,—taking into his house that poor lad Grattan, who shot his mother by accident. He sacrifices more time than a less busy man could spare, to save the poor fellow from getting into a morbid state of mind about it. He takes the lad out with him constantly, I see.”

“That is beautiful,” said Maggie, who had let her work fall, and was listening with keen interest. “I never knew any one who did such things.”

“And one admires that sort of action in Kenn all the more,” said Stephen, “because his manners in general are rather cold and severe. There’s nothing sugary and maudlin about him.”

“Oh, I think he’s a perfect character!” said Lucy, with pretty enthusiasm.

“No; there I can’t agree with you,” said Stephen, shaking his head with sarcastic gravity.

“Now, what fault can you point out in him?”

“He’s an Anglican.”

“Well, those are the right views, I think,” said Lucy, gravely.

“That settles the question in the abstract,” said Stephen, “but not from a parliamentary point of view. He has set the Dissenters and the Church people by the ears; and a rising senator like myself, of whose services the country is very much in need, will find it inconvenient when he puts up for the honor of representing St. Ogg’s in Parliament.”

“Do you really think of that?” said Lucy, her eyes brightening with a proud pleasure that made her neglect the argumentative interests of Anglicanism.

“Decidedly, whenever old Mr. Leyburn’s public spirit and gout induce him to give way. My father’s heart is set on it; and gifts like mine, you know”—here Stephen drew himself up, and rubbed his large white hands over his hair with playful self-admiration—“gifts like mine involve great responsibilities. Don’t you think so, Miss Tulliver?”

“Yes,” said Maggie, smiling, but not looking up; “so much fluency and self-possession should not be wasted entirely on private occasions.”

“Ah, I see how much penetration you have,” said Stephen. “You have discovered already that I am talkative and impudent. Now superficial people never discern that, owing to my manner, I suppose.”

“She doesn’t look at me when I talk of myself,” he thought, while his listeners were laughing. “I must try other subjects.”

Did Lucy intend to be present at the meeting of the Book Club next week? was the next question. Then followed the recommendation to choose Southey’s “Life of Cowper,” unless she were inclined to be philosophical, and startle the ladies of St. Ogg’s by voting for one of the Bridgewater Treatises. Of course Lucy wished to know what these alarmingly learned books were; and as it is always pleasant to improve the minds of ladies by talking to them at ease on subjects of which they know nothing, Stephen became quite brilliant in an account of Buckland’s Treatise, which he had just been reading. He was rewarded by seeing Maggie let her work fall, and gradually get so absorbed in his wonderful geological story that she sat looking at him, leaning forward with crossed arms, and with an entire absence of self-consciousness, as if he had been the snuffiest of old professors, and she a downy-lipped alumna. He was so fascinated by the clear, large gaze that at last he forgot to look away from it occasionally toward Lucy; but she, sweet child, was only rejoicing that Stephen was proving to Maggie how clever he was, and that they would certainly be good friends after all.

“I will bring you the book, shall I, Miss Tulliver?” said Stephen, when he found the stream of his recollections running rather shallow. “There are many illustrations in it that you will like to see.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Maggie, blushing with returning self-consciousness at this direct address, and taking