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

He was looking into her deep, deep eyes, far off and mysterious at the starlit blackness, and yet very near, and timidly loving. Maggie sat perfectly still⁠—perhaps for moments, perhaps for minutes⁠—until the helpless trembling had ceased, and there was a warm glow on her check.

“The man is waiting; he has taken the cushions,” she said. “Will you go and tell him?”

“What shall I tell him?” said Stephen, almost in a whisper. He was looking at the lips now.

Maggie made no answer.

“Let us go,” Stephen murmured entreatingly, rising, and taking her hand to raise her too. “We shall not be long together.”

And they went. Maggie felt that she was being led down the garden among the roses, being helped with firm, tender care into the boat, having the cushion and cloak arranged for her feet, and her parasol opened for her (which she had forgotten), all by this stronger presence that seemed to bear her along without any act of her own will, like the added self which comes with the sudden exalting influence of a strong tonic, and she felt nothing else. Memory was excluded.

They glided rapidly along, Stephen rowing, helped by the backward-flowing tide, past the Tofton trees and houses; on between the silent sunny fields and pastures, which seemed filled with a natural joy that had no reproach for theirs. The breath of the young, unwearied day, the delicious rhythmic dip of the oars, the fragmentary song of a passing bird heard now and then, as if it were only the overflowing of brimful gladness, the sweet solitude of a twofold consciousness that was mingled into one by that grave, untiring gaze which need not be averted⁠—what else could there be in their minds for the first hour? Some low, subdued, languid exclamation of love came from Stephen from time to time, as he went on rowing idly, half automatically; otherwise they spoke no word; for what could words have been but an inlet to thought? and thought did not belong to that enchanted haze in which they were enveloped⁠—it belonged to the past and the future that lay outside the haze. Maggie was only dimly conscious of the banks, as they passed them, and dwelt with no recognition on the villages; she knew there were several to be passed before they reached Luckreth, where they always stopped and left the boat. At all times she was so liable to fits of absence, that she was likely enough to let her waymarks pass unnoticed.

But at last Stephen, who had been rowing more and more idly, ceased to row, laid down the oars, folded his arms, and looked down on the water as if watching the pace at which the boat glided without his help. This sudden change roused Maggie. She looked at the far-stretching fields, at the banks close by, and felt that they were entirely strange to her. A terrible alarm took possession of her.

“Oh, have we passed Luckreth, where we were to stop?” she exclaimed, looking back to see if the place were out of sight. No village was to be seen. She turned around again, with a look of distressed questioning at Stephen.

He went on watching the water, and said, in a strange, dreamy, absent tone, “Yes, a long way.”

“Oh, what shall I do?” cried Maggie, in an agony. “We shall not get home for hours, and Lucy? O God, help me!”

She clasped her hands and broke into a sob, like a frightened child; she thought of nothing but of meeting Lucy, and seeing her look of pained surprise and doubt, perhaps of just upbraiding.

Stephen moved and sat near her, and gently drew down the clasped hands.

“Maggie,” he said, in a deep tone of slow decision, “let us never go home again, till no one can part us⁠—till we are married.”

The unusual tone, the startling words, arrested Maggie’s sob, and she sat quite still, wondering; as if Stephen might have seen some possibilities that would alter everything, and annul the wretched facts.

“See, Maggie, how everything has come without our seeking⁠—in spite of all our efforts. We never thought of being alone together again; it has all been done by others. See how the tide is carrying us out, away from all those unnatural bonds that we have been trying to make faster round us, and trying in vain. It will carry us on to Torby, and we can land there, and get some carriage, and hurry on to York and then to Scotland⁠—and never pause a moment till we are bound to each other, so that only death can part us. It is the only right thing, dearest; it is the only way of escaping from this wretched entanglement. Everything has concurred to point it out to us. We have contrived nothing, we have thought of nothing ourselves.”

Stephen spoke with deep, earnest pleading. Maggie listened, passing from her startled wonderment to the yearning after that belief that the tide was doing it all, that she might glide along with the swift, silent stream, and not struggle any more. But across that stealing influence came the terrible shadow of past thoughts; and the sudden horror lest now, at last, the moment of fatal intoxication was close upon her, called up feelings of angry resistance toward Stephen.

“Let me go!” she said, in an agitated tone, flashing an indignant look at him, and trying to get her hands free. “You have wanted to deprive me of any choice. You knew we were come too far; you have dared to take advantage of my thoughtlessness. It is unmanly to bring me into such a position.”

Stung by this reproach, he released her hands, moved back to his former place, and folded his arms, in a sort of desperation at the difficulty Maggie’s words had made present to him. If she would not consent to go on, he must curse himself for the embarrassment he had led her into. But the reproach was the