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

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 extra paleness, 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, were 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 have 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 tranquil, 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 overstep 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 Deane,” 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 in diffident natures 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 whole menagerie of 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, in 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 alude 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 in dependence,—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 allusion to the words of love, of plighted 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 every one, 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 chide 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 oppression at the heart that sometimes accompanies a sudden mental pang.

“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 banish 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 allusion 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 door-bell 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 ushered 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 house-top, 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 embitter friendship.”

“I’ve so few visitors, it seems hardly worth while 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,