Part 18

"Why, what book is it the wench has got hold on?" he burst out, at last.

"_The History of the Devil_, by Daniel Defoe; not quite the right book for a little girl," said Mr. Riley. "How came it among your books, Tulliver?"

Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her father said, "Why, it's one o' the books I bought at Partridge's sale. They was all bound alike--it's a good binding, you see--and I thought they'd be all good books. There's Jeremy Taylor's _Holy Living and Dying_ among 'em; I read in it often of a Sunday," (Mr. Tulliver felt somehow a familiarity with that great writer because his name was Jeremy), "and there's a lot more of 'em, sermons mostly, I think; but they've all got the same covers, and I thought they were all o' one sample, as you may say. But it seems one mustn't judge by th' outside. This is a puzzling world."

"Well," said Mr. Riley, in an admonitory patronizing tone, as he patted Maggie on the head, "I advise you to put by the _History of the Devil_, and read some prettier book. Have you no prettier books?"

"Oh, yes," said Maggie, reviving a little in the desire to vindicate the variety of her reading; "I know the reading in this book isn't pretty, but I like to look at the pictures, and I make stories to the pictures out of my own head, you know. But I've got _Aesop's Fables_, and a book about kangaroos and things, and the _Pilgrim's Progress_."...

"Ah! a beautiful book," said Mr. Riley: "you can't read a better."

"Well, but there's a great deal about the devil in that," said Maggie, triumphantly, "and I'll show you the picture of him in his true shape, as he fought with Christian."

Maggie ran in an instant to the corner of the room, jumped on a chair, and reached down from the small bookcase a shabby old copy of Bunyan, which opened at once, without the least trouble of search, at the picture she wanted.

"Here he is," she said, running back to Mr. Riley, "and Tom colored him for me with his paints when he was at home last holidays--the body all black, you know, and the eyes red, like fire, because he's all fire inside, and it shines out at his eyes."

"Go, go!" said Mr. Tulliver, peremptorily, beginning to feel rather uncomfortable at these free remarks on the personal appearance of a being powerful enough to create lawyers; "shut up the book, and let's hear no more o' such talk. It is as I thought--the child 'ull learn more mischief nor good wi' the books. Go--go and see after your mother."

And here are further various hints of Maggie's ways in which we find clues to many outbursts of her later life.

"It was a heavy disappointment to Maggie that she was not allowed to go with her father in the gig when he went to fetch Tom home from the academy; but the morning was too wet, Mrs. Tulliver said, for a little girl to go out in her best bonnet. Maggie took the opposite view very strongly; and it was a direct consequence of this difference of opinion that, when her mother was in the act of brushing out the reluctant black crop, Maggie suddenly rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of water standing near, in the vindictive determination that there should be no more chance of curls that day.

"Maggie, Maggie," exclaimed Mrs. Tulliver, sitting stout and helpless with the brushes on her lap, "what is to become of you if you're so naughty? I'll tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt Pullet when they come next week, and they'll never love you any more. Oh dear, oh dear, look at your clean pinafore, wet from top to bottom. Folks 'ull think it's a judgment on me as I've got such a child--they'll think I've done summat wicked."

Before this remonstrance was finished Maggie was already out of hearing, making her way toward the great attic that ran under the old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Maggie's favorite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold; here she fretted out all her ill-humors, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs; and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks, but was now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering. Three nails driven into the head commemorated as many crises in Maggie's nine years of earthly struggle, that luxury of vengeance having been suggested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in the old Bible. The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than usual, for the Fetish on that occasion represented aunt Glegg."

But a ray of sunshine on the window of the garret proves too much for her; she dances down stairs, and after a wild whirl in the sunshine with Yap the terrier goes up into the mill for a talk with Luke the miller.

"Maggie loved to linger in the great spaces of the mill, and often came out with her black hair powdered to a soft whiteness that made her dark eyes flash out with a new fire. The resolute din, the unresting motion of the great stones, giving her a dim delicious awe as at the presence of an uncontrollable force--the meal forever pouring, pouring--the fine white powder softening all surfaces, and making the very spider-nets look like a fancy lace-work--the sweet, pure scent of the meal--all helped to make Maggie feel that the mill was a little world apart from her outside, everyday life. The spiders were especially a subject of speculation with her. She wondered if they had any relations outside the mill, for in that case there must be a painful difficulty in their family intercourse--a flat and floury spider, accustomed to take his fly well dusted with meal, must suffer a little at a cousin's table where the fly was _au naturel_; and the lady-spiders must be mutually shocked at each other's appearance. But the part of the mill she liked best was the topmost story--the corn-hutch, where there were the great heaps of grain, which she could sit on and slide down continually. She was in the habit of taking this recreation as she conversed with Luke, to whom she was very communicative, wishing him to think well of her understanding, as her father did. Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her position with him on the present occasion, for, as she sat sliding on the heap of grain near which he was busying himself, she said, at that shrill pitch which was requisite in mill society,

'I think you never read any book but the Bible--did you Luke?'

'Nay, miss--an' not much o' that,' said Luke, with great frankness. 'I'm no reader, I ain't.'

'But if I lent you one of my books, Luke? I've not got any _very_ pretty books that would be easy for you to read, but there's _Pug's Tour of Europe_--that would tell you all about the different sorts of people in the world, and if you didn't understand the reading, the pictures would help you--they show the looks and the ways of the people, and what they do. There are the Dutchmen, very fat, and smoking, you know--and one sitting on a barrel.'

'Nay, miss, I've no opinion o' Dutchmen. There ben't much good i' knowin' about _them_.'

'But they're our fellow-creatures, Luke--we ought to know about our fellow-creatures.'

'Not much o' fellow-creatures, I think, miss; all I know--my old master, as war a knowin' man, used to say, says he, 'If e'er I sow my wheat wi'out brinin', I'm a Dutchman,' says he; an' that war as much as to say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next door. Nay, nay, I arn't goin' to bother mysen about Dutchmen. There's fools enoo--an' rogues enoo--wi'out lookin' i' books for 'em.'

'Oh, well,' said Maggie, rather foiled by Luke's unexpectedly decided views about Dutchmen, 'perhaps you would like _Animated Nature_ better; that's not Dutchmen, you know, but elephants, and kangaroos, and the civet cat, and the sunfish, and a bird sitting on its tail--I forget its name. There are countries full of those creatures, instead of horses and cows, you know. Shouldn't you like to know about them, Luke?'

'Nay, miss, I'n got to keep count o' the flour an' corn--I can't do wi' knowin' so many things besides my work. That's what brings folks to the gallows--knowin' every thing but what they'n got to get their bread by--An' they're mostly lies, I think, what's printed i' the books; them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men cry i' the streets.'

But these are idyllic hours; presently the afternoon comes, Tom arrives, Maggie has an hour of rapturous happiness over him and a new fishing-line which he has brought her, to be hers all by herself; and then comes tragedy. Tom learns from Maggie the death of certain rabbits which he had left in her charge and which, as might have been expected, she had forgotten to feed. Here follows a harrowing scene of reproaches from Tom, of pleadings for forgiveness from Maggie, until finally Tom appears to close the door of mercy. He sternly insists: "Last holidays you licked the paint off my lozenge box, and the holidays before you let the boat drag my fish-line down when I set you to watch it, and you pushed your head through my kite all for nothing." "But I didn't mean," said Maggie; "I couldn't help it." "Yes you could," said Tom, "if you'd minded what you were doing.... And you shan't go fishing with me to-morrow." With this terrible conclusion Tom runs off to the mill, while the heart broken Maggie creeps up to her attic, lays her head against the worm-eaten shelf and abandons herself to misery.

In the scene which I now read, howbeit planned upon so small a scale, the absolute insufficiency of justice to give final satisfaction to human hearts as now constituted, and the inexorable necessity of love for such satisfaction appear quite as plainly as if the canvas were of Promethean dimensions.

"Maggie soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and it must be tea-time, and they were all having their tea, and not thinking of her. Well, then, she would stay up there and starve herself--hide herself behind the tub, and stay there all night; and then they would all be frightened, and Tom would be sorry. Thus Maggie thought in the pride of her heart, as she crept behind the tub; but presently she began to cry again at the idea that they didn't mind her being there. If she went down again to Tom now, would he forgive her? Perhaps her father would be there, and he would take her part. But, then she wanted Tom to forgive her because he loved her, and not because his father told him. No, she would never go down if Tom didn't come to fetch her. This resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes behind the tub; but then the need of being loved, the strongest need in poor Maggie's nature, began to wrestle with her pride, and soon threw it. She crept from behind her tub into the twilight of the long attic, but just then she heard a quick footstep on the stairs."

In point of fact Tom has been sent from the tea-table for her, and mounts the attic munching a great piece of plum-cake.

... "He went out rather sullenly, carrying his piece of plum-cake, and not intending to retrieve Maggie's punishment, which was no more than she deserved. Tom was only thirteen, and had no decided views in grammar and arithmetic, regarding them for the most part as open questions, but he was particularly clear and positive on one point, namely, that he would punish every body who deserved it; why, he wouldn't have minded being punished himself, if he deserved; but then he never _did_ deserve it.

It was Tom's step, then, that Maggie heard on the stairs when her need of love had triumphed over her pride, and she was going down with her swollen eyes and disheveled hair to beg for pity. At least her father would stroke her head and say, 'Never mind, my wench.' It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love--this hunger of the heart--as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world.

But she knew Tom's step, and her heart began to beat violently with the sudden shock of hope. He only stood still at the top of the stairs and said, 'Maggie, you're to come down.' But she rushed to him and clung round his neck, sobbing, 'Oh, Tom, please forgive me--I can't bear it--I will always be good--always remember things--do love me--please, dear Tom?'

We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart when we have quarreled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our behavior to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but conduct ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civilized society. Maggie and Tom were still very much like young animals, and so she could rub her cheek against his, and kiss his ear in a random, sobbing way; and there were tender fibres in the lad that had been used to answer to Maggie's fondling, so that he behaved with a weakness quite inconsistent with his resolution to punish her as much as she deserved; he actually began to kiss her in return, and say,

'Don't cry, then, Maggie--here, eat a bit o' cake.' Maggie's sobs began to subside, and she put out her mouth for the cake and bit a piece; and then Tom bit a piece, just for company; and they ate together, and rubbed each other's cheeks, and brows, and noses together, while they ate, with a humiliating resemblance to two friendly ponies.

'Come along, Maggie, and have tea,' said Tom at last, when there was no more cake except what was down stairs."

Various points of contrast lead me to cite some types of character which appear to offer instructive comparisons with this picture of the healthy English boy and girl. Take for example this portrait of the modern American boy given us by Mr. Henry James, Jr., in his _Daisy Miller_, which was, I believe, the work that first brought him into fame. The scene is in Europe. A gentleman is seated in the garden of a hotel at Geneva, smoking his cigarette after breakfast.

"Presently a small boy came walking along the path--an urchin of nine or ten. The child, who was diminutive for his years, had an aged expression of countenance, a pale complexion, and sharp little features. He was dressed in Knickerbockers, with red stockings, which displayed his poor little spindleshanks; he also wore a brilliant red cravat. He carried in his hand a long alpenstock, the sharp point of which he thrust into everything that he approached--the flower-beds, the garden benches, the trains of the ladies' dresses. In front of Winterbourne he paused, looking at him with a pair of bright penetrating little eyes.

'Will you give me a lump of sugar?' he asked in a sharp, hard little voice--a voice immature, and yet, somehow, not young.

Winterbourne glanced at the small table near him on which his coffee-service rested, and saw that several morsels of sugar remained. 'Yes, you may take one,' he answered, 'but I don't think sugar is good for little boys.'

This little boy slipped forward and carefully selected three of the coveted fragments, two of which he buried in the pocket of his Knickerbockers, depositing the other as promptly in another place. He poked his alpenstock lance-fashion into Winterbourne's bench, and tried to crack the lump of sugar with his teeth.

'Oh, blazes; it's har-r-d!' he exclaimed, pronouncing the adjective in a peculiar manner.

Winterbourne had immediately perceived that he might have the honor of claiming him as a fellow-countryman. 'Take care you don't hurt your teeth,' he said paternally.

'I haven't got any teeth to hurt. They have all come out. I have only got seven teeth. My mother counted them last night, and one came out right afterwards. She said she'd slap me if any more came out. I can't help it. It's this old Europe. It's the climate that makes them come out. In America they didn't come out. It's these hotels.'

Winterbourne was much amused. 'If you eat three lumps of sugar, your mother will certainly slap you,' he said.

'She's got to give me some candy, then,' rejoined his young interlocutor. 'I can't git any candy here--any American candy. American candy's the best candy.'

'And are American boys the best little boys?' asked Winterbourne.

'I don't know. I'm an American boy,' said the child.

'I see you are one of the best!' laughed Winterbourne.

'Are you an American man?' pursued this vivacious infant. And then on Winterbourne's affirmative reply,--'American men are the best,' he declared."

On the other hand compare this intense, dark-eyed Maggie in her garret and with her flaming ways, with Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh." Aurora Leigh, too, has her garret, and doubtless her intensity too, blossoms in that congenial dark and lonesomeness. I read a few lines from Book 1st by way of reminder.

"Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret-room Piled high with cases in my father's name ... Where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here or there At this or that box, pulling through the gap In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow in the morning's dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books! At last, because the time was ripe, I chanced upon the poets."

And here, every reader of _The Mill on the Floss_ will remember how, at a later period, Maggie chanced upon Thomas a Kempis at a tragic moment of her existence; and it is fine to see how in describing situations so alike, the purely elemental differences between the natures of Mrs. Browning and George Eliot project themselves upon each other.

The scene in George Eliot concerning Maggie and Thomas a Kempis is too long to repeat here, but everyone will recall the sober, analytic, yet altogether vital and thrilling picture of the trembling Maggie, as she absorbs wisdom from the sweet old mediaeval soul. But, on the other hand, Mrs. Browning sings it out, after this riotous melody:

"As the earth Plunges in fury when the internal fires Have reached and pricked her heart, And throwing flat The marts and temples--the triumphal gates And towers of observation--clears herself To elemental freedom--thus, my soul, At poetry's divine first finger-touch, Let go conventions and sprang up surprised, Convicted of the great eternities Before two worlds.

But the sun was high When first I felt my pulses set themselves For concord; when the rhythmic turbulence Of blood and brain swept outward upon words, As wind upon the alders, blanching them By turning up their under-natures till They trembled in dilation. O delight And triumph of the poet who would say A man's mere 'yes,' a woman's common 'no,' A little human hope of that or this, And says the word so that it burns you through With special revelation, shakes the heart Of all the men and women in the world As if one came back from the dead and spoke, With eyes too happy, a familiar thing Become divine i' the utterance!"

I have taken special pleasure in the last sentence of this outburst, because it restates with a precise felicity at once poetic and scientific, but from a curiously different point of view, that peculiar function of George Eliot which I pointed out as appearing in the very first of her stories, namely, the function of elevating the plane of all commonplace life into the plane of the heroic by keeping every man well in mind of the awful _ego_ within him which includes all the possibilities of heroic action. Now this is what George Eliot does, in putting before us these humble forms of Tom and Maggie, and the like: she _says_ these common "yes" and "no" in terms of Tom and Maggie; and yet says them so that this particular Tom and Maggie burn you through with a special revelation--though one has known a hundred Maggies and Toms before. Thus we find the delight and triumph of the poetic and analytic novelist, George Eliot, precisely parallel to this delight and triumph of the more exclusively poetic Mrs. Browning, who says a man's mere "yes," a woman's common "no," so that it shakes the hearts of all the men and women in the world, etc. Aurora Leigh continues:

"In those days, though, I never analysed, Not even myself, Analysis comes late. You catch a sight of nature, earliest; In full front sun-face, and your eye-lids wink And drop before the wonder of 't; you miss The form, through seeing the light. I lived those days, And wrote because I lived--unlicensed else; My heart beat in my brain. Life's violent flood Abolished bounds--and, which my neighbor's field, Which mine, what mattered? It is thus in youth! We play at leap-frog over the god Time; The love within us and the love without Are mixed, confounded; if we are loved or love We scarce distinguish.... In that first outrush of life's chariot wheels We know not if the forests move, or we."

And now as showing the extreme range of George Eliot's genius, in regions where perhaps Mrs. Browning never penetrated, let me recall Sister Glegg and Sister Pullet, as types of women contrasting with Maggie and Aurora Leigh. You will remember how Mrs. Tulliver has bidden her three sisters, Mrs. Glegg, Mrs. Pullet, and Mrs. Deane, with their respective husbands, to a great and typical Dodson dinner, in order to eat and drink upon the momentous changes impending in Tom's educational existence: