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

Tom stood with his back against the chimney-piece, and Maggie was seated opposite the light. He noticed that she was tremulous, and he had a presentiment of the subject she was going to speak about. The presentiment made his voice colder and harder as he said, “What is it?”

This tone roused a spirit of resistance in Maggie, and she put her request in quite a different form from the one she had predetermined on. She rose from her seat, and looking straight at Tom, said,—

“I want you to absolve me from my promise about Philip Wakem. Or rather, I promised you not to see him without telling you. I am come to tell you that I wish to see him.”

“Very well,” said Tom, still more coldly.

But Maggie had hardly finished speaking in that chill, defiant manner, before she repented, and felt the dread of alienation from her brother.

“Not for myself, dear Tom. Don’t be angry. I shouldn’t have asked it, only that Philip, you know, is a friend of Lucy’s and she wishes him to come, has invited him to come this evening; and I told her I couldn’t see him without telling you. I shall only see him in the presence of other people. There will never be anything secret between us again.”

Tom looked away from Maggie, knitting his brow more strongly for a little while. Then he turned to her and said, slowly and emphatically,—

“You know what is my feeling on that subject, Maggie. There is no need for my repeating anything I said a year ago. While my father was living, I felt bound to use the utmost power over you, to prevent you from disgracing him as well as yourself, and all of us. But now I must leave you to your own choice. You wish to be independent; you told me so after my father’s death. My opinion is not changed. If you think of Philip Wakem as a lover again, you must give up me.”

“I don’t wish it, dear Tom, at least as things are; I see that it would lead to misery. But I shall soon go away to another situation, and I should like to be friends with him again while I am here. Lucy wishes it.”

The severity of Tom’s face relaxed a little.

“I shouldn’t mind your seeing him occasionally at my uncle’s—I don’t want you to make a fuss on the subject. But I have no confidence in you, Maggie. You would be led away to do anything.”

That was a cruel word. Maggie’s lip began to tremble.

“Why will you say that, Tom? It is very hard of you. Have I not done and borne everything as well as I could? And I kept my word to you—when—when–-My life has not been a happy one, any more than yours.”

She was obliged to be childish; the tears would come. When Maggie was not angry, she was as dependent on kind or cold words as a daisy on the sunshine or the cloud; the need of being loved would always subdue her, as, in old days, it subdued her in the worm-eaten attic. The brother’s goodness came uppermost at this appeal, but it could only show itself in Tom’s fashion. He put his hand gently on her arm, and said, in the tone of a kind pedagogue,—

“Now listen to me, Maggie. I’ll tell you what I mean. You’re always in extremes; you have no judgment and self-command; and yet you think you know best, and will not submit to be guided. You know I didn’t wish you to take a situation. My aunt Pullet was willing to give you a good home, and you might have lived respectably amongst your relations, until I could have provided a home for you with my mother. And that is what I should like to do. I wished my sister to be a lady, and I always have taken care of you, as my father desired, until you were well married. But your ideas and mine never accord, and you will not give way. Yet you might have sense enough to see that a brother, who goes out into the world and mixes with men, necessarily knows better what is right and respectable for his sister than she can know herself. You think I am not kind; but my kindness can only be directed by what I believe to be good for you.”

“Yes, I know, dear Tom,” said Maggie, still half-sobbing, but trying to control her tears. “I know you would do a great deal for me; I know how you work, and don’t spare yourself. I am grateful to you. But, indeed, you can’t quite judge for me; our natures are very different. You don’t know how differently things affect me from what they do you.”

“Yes, I do know; I know it too well. I know how differently you must feel about all that affects our family, and your own dignity as a young woman, before you could think of receiving secret addresses from Philip Wakem. If it was not disgusting to me in every other way, I should object to my sister’s name being associated for a moment with that of a young man whose father must hate the very thought of us all, and would spurn you. With any one but you, I should think it quite certain that what you witnessed just before my father’s death would secure you from ever thinking again of Philip Wakem as a lover. But I don’t feel certain of it with you; I never feel certain about anything with you. At one time you take pleasure in a sort of perverse self-denial, and at another you have not resolution to resist a thing that you know to be wrong.”

There was a terrible cutting truth in Tom’s words,—that hard rind of truth which is discerned by unimaginative, unsympathetic minds. Maggie always writhed under this judgment of Tom’s; she rebelled and was humiliated in the same moment; it seemed as if he held a glass before her to show her her own folly and weakness, as if he were a prophetic voice predicting her future fallings; and yet, all the while, she judged him in return; she said inwardly that he was narrow and unjust, that he was below feeling those mental needs which were often the source of the wrong-doing or absurdity that made her life a planless riddle to him.

She did not answer directly; her heart was too full, and she sat down, leaning her arm on the table. It was no use trying to make Tom feel that she was near to him. He always repelled her. Her feeling under his words was complicated by the allusion to the last scene between her father and Wakem; and at length that painful, solemn memory surmounted the immediate grievance. No! She did not think of such things with frivolous indifference, and Tom must not accuse her of that. She looked up at him with a grave, earnest gaze and said,—

“I can’t make you think better of me, Tom, by anything I can say. But I am not so shut out from all your feelings as you believe me to be. I see as well as you do that from our position with regard to Philip’s father—not on other grounds—it would be unreasonable, it would be wrong, for us to entertain the idea of marriage; and I have given up thinking of him as a lover. I am telling you the truth, and you have no right to disbelieve me; I have kept my word to you, and you have never detected me in a falsehood. I should not only not encourage, I should carefully avoid, any intercourse with Philip on any other footing than of quiet friendship. You may think that I am unable to keep my resolutions; but at least you ought not to treat me with hard contempt on the ground of faults that I have not committed yet.”

“Well, Maggie,” said Tom, softening under this appeal, “I don’t want to overstrain matters. I think, all things considered, it will be best for you to see Philip Wakem, if Lucy wishes him to come to the house. I believe what you say,—at least you believe it yourself, I know; I can only warn you. I wish to be as good a brother to you as you will let me.”

There was a little tremor in Tom’s voice as he uttered the last words, and Maggie’s ready affection came back with as sudden a glow as when they were children, and bit their cake together as a sacrament of conciliation. She rose and laid her hand on Tom’s shoulder.

“Dear Tom, I know you mean to be good. I know you have had a great deal to bear, and have done a great deal. I should like to be a comfort to you, not to vex you. You don’t think I’m altogether naughty, now, do you?”

Tom smiled at the eager face; his smiles were very pleasant to see when they did come, for the gray eyes could be tender underneath the frown.

“No, Maggie.”

“I may turn out better than you expect.”

“I hope you will.”

“And may I come some day and make tea for you, and see this extremely small wife of Bob’s again?”

“Yes; but trot away now, for I’ve no more time to spare,” said Tom, looking at his watch.

“Not to give me a kiss?”

Tom bent to kiss her cheek, and then said,—

“There! Be a good girl. I’ve got a great deal to think of to-day. I’m going to have a long consultation with my uncle Deane this afternoon.”

“You’ll come to aunt Glegg’s tomorrow? We’re going all to dine early, that we may go there to tea. You must come; Lucy told me to say so.”

“Oh, pooh! I’ve plenty else to do,” said Tom, pulling his bell violently, and bringing down the small bell-rope.

“I’m frightened; I shall run away,” said Maggie, making a laughing retreat; while Tom, with masculine philosophy, flung the bell-rope to the farther end of the room; not very far either,—a touch of human experience which I flatter myself will come home to the bosoms of not a few substantial or distinguished men who were once at an early stage of their rise in the world, and were cherishing very large hopes in very small lodgings.