The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (best beach reads of all time .txt) 📕

and Stephen was paying her the utmost attention on this public occasion; jealously buying up the articles he had seen under her fingers in the process of making, and gayly helping her to cajole the male customers into the purchase of the most effeminate futilities. He chose to lay aside his hat and wear a scarlet fez of her embroidering; but by superficial observers this was necessarily liable to be interpreted less as a compliment to Lucy than as a mark of coxcombry. “Guest is a great coxcomb,” young Torry observed; “but then he is a privileged person in St. Ogg’s⁠—he carries all before him; if another fellow did such things, everybody would say he made a fool of himself.”

And Stephen purchased absolutely nothing from Maggie, until Lucy said, in rather a vexed undertone⁠—

“See, now; all the things of Maggie’s knitting will be gone, and you will not have bought one. There are those deliciously soft warm things for the wrists⁠—do buy them.”

“Oh no,” said Stephen, “they must be intended for imaginative persons, who can chill themselves on this warm day by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. Stern reason is my forte, you know. You must get Philip to buy those. By the way, why doesn’t he come?”

“He never likes going where there are many people, though I enjoined him to come. He said he would buy up any of my goods that the rest of the world rejected. But now, do go and buy something of Maggie.”

“No, no; see, she has got a customer; there is old Wakem himself just coming up.”

Lucy’s eyes turned with anxious interest toward Maggie to see how she went through this first interview, since a sadly memorable time, with a man toward whom she must have so strange a mixture of feelings; but she was pleased to notice that Wakem had tact enough to enter at once into talk about the bazaar wares, and appear interested in purchasing, smiling now and then kindly at Maggie, and not calling on her to speak much, as if he observed that she was rather pale and tremulous.

“Why, Wakem is making himself particularly amiable to your cousin,” said Stephen, in an undertone to Lucy; “is it pure magnanimity? You talked of a family quarrel.”

“Oh, that will soon be quite healed, I hope,” said Lucy, becoming a little indiscreet in her satisfaction, and speaking with an air of significance. But Stephen did not appear to notice this, and as some lady-purchasers came up, he lounged on toward Maggie’s end, handling trifles and standing aloof until Wakem, who had taken out his purse, had finished his transactions.

“My son came with me,” he overheard Wakem saying, “but he has vanished into some other part of the building, and has left all these charitable gallantries to me. I hope you’ll reproach him for his shabby conduct.”

She returned his smile and bow without speaking, and he turned away, only then observing Stephen and nodding to him. Maggie, conscious that Stephen was still there, busied herself with counting money, and avoided looking up. She had been well pleased that he had devoted himself to Lucy today, and had not come near her. They had begun the morning with an indifferent salutation, and both had rejoiced in being aloof from each other, like a patient who has actually done without his opium, in spite of former failures in resolution. And during the last few days they had even been making up their minds to failures, looking to the outward events that must soon come to separate them, as a reason for dispensing with self-conquest in detail.

Stephen moved step by step as if he were being unwillingly dragged, until he had got round the open end of the stall, and was half hidden by a screen of draperies. Maggie went on counting her money till she suddenly heard a deep gentle voice saying, “Aren’t you very tried? Do let me bring you something⁠—some fruit or jelly, mayn’t I?”

The unexpected tones shook her like a sudden accidental vibration of a harp close by her.

“Oh no, thank you,” she said faintly, and only half looking up for an instant.

“You look so pale,” Stephen insisted, in a more entreating tone. “I’m sure you’re exhausted. I must disobey you, and bring something.”

“No, indeed, I couldn’t take it.”

“Are you angry with me? What have I done? Do look at me.”

“Pray, go away,” said Maggie, looking at him helplessly, her eyes glancing immediately from him to the opposite corner of the orchestra, which was half hidden by the folds of the old faded green curtain. Maggie had no sooner uttered this entreaty than she was wretched at the admission it implied; but Stephen turned away at once, and following her upward glance, he saw Philip Wakem sealed in the half-hidden corner, so that he could command little more than that angle of the hall in which Maggie sat. An entirely new thought occurred to Stephen, and linking itself with what he had observed of Wakem’s manner, and with Lucy’s reply to his observation, it convinced him that there had been some former relation between Philip and Maggie beyond that childish one of which he had heard. More than one impulse made him immediately leave the hall and go upstairs to the refreshment-room, where, walking up to Philip, he sat down behind him, and put his hand on his shoulder.

“Are you studying for a portrait, Phil,” he said, “or for a sketch of that oriel window? By George, it makes a capital bit from this dark corner, with the curtain just marking it off.”

“I have been studying expression,” said Philip, curtly.

“What! Miss Tulliver’s? It’s rather of the savage-moody order today, I think⁠—something of the fallen princess serving behind a counter. Her cousin sent me to her with a civil offer to get her some refreshment, but I have been snubbed, as usual. There’s natural antipathy between us, I suppose; I have seldom the honour to please her.”

“What a hypocrite you are!” said Philip, flushing