The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (good novels to read in english .txt) 📕

“I can’t say either yes or no,” she said at last, turning round and walking toward the way she come; “I must wait, lest I should decide wrongly. I must seek for guidance.”

“May I come again, then, tomorrow, or the next day, or next week?”

“I think I had better write,” said Maggie, faltering again. “I have to go to St. Ogg’s sometimes, and I can put the letter in the post.”

“Oh no,” said Philip eagerly; “that would not be so well. My father might see the letter—and—he has not any enmity, I believe, but he views things differently from me; he thinks a great deal about wealth and position. Pray let me come here once more. Tell me when it shall be; or if you can’t tell me, I will come as often as I can till I do see you.”

“I think it must be so, then,” said Maggie, “for I can’t be quite certain of coming here any particular evening.”

Maggie felt a great relief in adjourning the decision. She was free now to enjoy the minutes of companionship; she almost thought she might linger a little; the next time they met she should have to pain Philip by telling him her determination.

“I can’t help thinking,” she said, looking smilingly at him, after a few moments of silence, “how strange it is that we should have met and talked to each other, just as if it had been only yesterday when we parted at Lorton. And yet we must both be very much altered in those five years,—I think it is five years. How was it you seemed to have a sort of feeling that I was the same Maggie? I was not quite so sure that you would be the same; I know you are so clever, and you must have seen and learnt so much to fill your mind; I was not quite sure you would care about me now.”

“I have never had any doubt that you would be the same, whenever I migh see you,” said Philip,—“I mean, the same in everything that made me like you better than any one else. I don’t want to explain that; I don’t think any of the strongest effects our natures are susceptible of can ever be explained. We can neither detect the process by which they are arrived at, nor the mode in which they act on us. The greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child; he couldn’t have told how he did it, and we can’t tell why we feel it to be divine. I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains of music affect me so strangely; I can never hear them without their changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of heroisms.”

“Ah! I know what you mean about music; I feel so,” said Maggie, clasping her hands with her old impetuosity. “At least,” she added, in a saddened tone, “I used to feel so when I had any music; I never have any now except the organ at church.”

“And you long for it, Maggie?” said Philip, looking at her with affectionate pity. “Ah, you can have very little that is beautiful in your life. Have you many books? You were so fond of them when you were a little girl.”

They were come back to the hollow, round which the dog-roses grew, and they both paused under the charm of the faery evening light, reflected from the pale pink clusters.

“No, I have given up books,” said Maggie, quietly, “except a very, very few.”

Philip had already taken from his pocket a small volume, and was looking at the back as he said:

“Ah, this is the second volume, I see, else you might have liked to take it home with you. I put it in my pocket because I am studying a scene for a picture.”

Maggie had looked at the back too, and saw the title; it revived an old impression with overmastering force.

“‘The Pirate,’” she said, taking the book from Philip’s hands. “Oh, I began that once; I read to where Minna is walking with Cleveland, and I could never get to read the rest. I went on with it in my own head, and I made several endings; but they were all unhappy. I could never make a happy ending out of that beginning. Poor Minna! I wonder what is the real end. For a long while I couldn’t get my mind away from the Shetland Isles,—I used to feel the wind blowing on me from the rough sea.”

Maggie spoke rapidly, with glistening eyes.

“Take that volume home with you, Maggie,” said Philip, watching her with delight. “I don’t want it now. I shall make a picture of you instead,—you, among the Scotch firs and the slanting shadows.”

Maggie had not heard a word he had said; she was absorbed in a page at which she had opened. But suddenly she closed the book, and gave it back to Philip, shaking her head with a backward movement, as if to say “avaunt” to floating visions.

“Do keep it, Maggie,” said Philip, entreatingly; “it will give you pleasure.”

“No, thank you,” said Maggie, putting it aside with her hand and walking on. “It would make me in love with this world again, as I used to be; it would make me long to see and know many things; it would make me long for a full life.”

“But you will not always be shut up in your present lot; why should you starve your mind in that way? It is narrow asceticism; I don’t like to see you persisting in it, Maggie. Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.”

“But not for me, not for me,” said Maggie, walking more hurriedly; “because I should want too much. I must wait; this life will not last long.”

“Don’t hurry away from me without saying ‘good-by,’ Maggie,” said Philip, as they reached the group of Scotch firs, and she continued still to walk along without speaking. “I must not go any farther, I think, must I?”

“Oh no, I forgot; good-by,” said Maggie, pausing, and putting out her hand to him. The action brought her feeling back in a strong current to Philip; and after they had stood looking at each other in silence for a few moments, with their hands clasped, she said, withdrawing her hand:

“I’m very grateful to you for thinking of me all those years. It is very sweet to have people love us. What a wonderful, beautiful thing it seems that God should have made your heart so that you could care about a queer little girl whom you only knew for a few weeks! I remember saying to you that I thought you cared for me more than Tom did.”

“Ah, Maggie,” said Philip, almost fretfully, “you would never love me so well as you love your brother.”

“Perhaps not,” said Maggie, simply; “but then, you know, the first thing I ever remember in my life is standing with Tom by the side of the Floss, while he held my hand; everything before that is dark to me. But I shall never forget you, though we must keep apart.”

“Don’t say so, Maggie,” said Philip. “If I kept that little girl in my mind for five years, didn’t I earn some part in her? She ought not to take herself quite away from me.”

“Not if I were free,” said Maggie; “but I am not, I must submit.” She hesitated a moment, and then added, “And I wanted to say to you, that you had better not take more notice of my brother than just bowing to him. He once told me not to speak to you again, and he doesn’t change his mind—Oh dear, the sun is set. I am too long away. Good-by.” She gave him her hand once more.

“I shall come here as often as I can till I see you again, Maggie. Have some feeling for me as well as for others.”

“Yes, yes, I have,” said Maggie, hurrying away, and quickly disappearing behind the last fir-tree; though Philip’s gaze after her remained immovable for minutes as if he saw her still.

Maggie went home, with an inward conflict already begun; Philip went home to do nothing but remember and hope. You can hardly help blaming him severely. He was four or five years older than Maggie, and had a full consciousness of his feeling toward her to aid him in foreseeing the character his contemplated interviews with her would bear in the opinion of a third person. But you must not suppose that he was capable of a gross selfishness, or that he could have been satisfied without persuading himself that he was seeking to infuse some happiness into Maggie’s life,—seeking this even more than any direct ends for himself. He could give her sympathy; he could give her help. There was not the slightest promise of love toward him in her manner; it was nothing more than the sweet girlish tenderness she had shown him when she was twelve. Perhaps she would never love him; perhaps no woman ever could love him. Well, then, he would endure that; he should at least have the happiness of seeing her, of feeling some nearness to her. And he clutched passionately the possibility that she might love him; perhaps the feeling would grow, if she could come to associate him with that watchful tenderness which her nature would be so keenly alive to. If any woman could love him, surely Maggie was that woman; there was such wealth of love in her, and there was no one to claim it all. Then, the pity of it, that a mind like hers should be withering in its very youth, like a young forest-tree, for want of the light and space it was formed to flourish in! Could he not hinder that, by persuading her out of her system of privation? He would be her guardian angel; he would do anything, bear anything, for her sake—except not seeing her.