'I can't believe in you any more,' said Tom, gradually passing from the tremulous excitement of the first moment to cold inflexibility. 'You have been carrying on a clandestine relation with Stephen Guest, — as you did before with another. He went to see you at my aunt Moss's; you walked alone with him in the lanes; you must have behaved as no modest girl would have done to her cousin's lover, else that could never have happened. The people at Luckreth saw you pass; you passed all the other places; you knew what you were doing. You have been using Philip Wakem as a screen to deceive Lucy, — the kindest friend you ever had. Go and see the return you have made her. She's ill; unable to speak. My mother can't go near her, lest she should remind her of you.'
Maggie was half stunned, — too heavily pressed upon by her anguish even to discern any difference between her actual guilt and her brother's accusations, still less to vindicate herself.
'Tom,' she said, crushing her hands together under her cloak, in the effort to speak again, 'whatever I have done, I repent it bitterly. I want to make amends. I will endure anything. I want to be kept from doing wrong again.'
'What will keep you?' said Tom, with cruel bitterness. 'Not religion; not your natural feelings of gratitude and honor. And he — he would deserve to be shot, if it were not — But you are ten times worse than he is. I loathe your character and your conduct. You struggled with your feelings, you say. Yes! I have had feelings to struggle with; but I conquered them. I have had a harder life than you have had; but I have found my comfort in doing my duty. But I will sanction no such character as yours; the world shall know that I feel the difference between right and wrong. If you are in want, I will provide for you; let my mother know. But you shall not come under my roof. It is enough that I have to bear the thought of your disgrace; the sight of you is hateful to me.'
Slowly Maggie was turning away with despair in her heart. But the poor frightened mother's love leaped out now, stronger than all dread.
'My child! I'll go with you. You've got a mother.'
Oh, the sweet rest of that embrace to the heart-stricken Maggie! More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
Tom turned and walked into the house.
'Come in, my child,' Mrs. Tulliver whispered. 'He'll let you stay and sleep in my bed. He won't deny that if I ask him.'
'No, mother,' said Maggie, in a low tone, like a moan. 'I will never go in.'
'Then wait for me outside. I'll get ready and come with you.'
When his mother appeared with her bonnet on, Tom came out to her in the passage, and put money into her hands.
'My house is yours, mother, always,' he said. 'You will come and let me know everything you want; you will come back to me.'
Poor Mrs. Tulliver took the money, too frightened to say anything. The only thing clear to her was the mother's instinct that she would go with her unhappy child.
Maggie was waiting outside the gate; she took her mother's hand and they walked a little way in silence.
'Mother,' said Maggie, at last, 'we will go to Luke's cottage. Luke will take me in. He was very good to me when I was a little girl.'
'He's got no room for us, my dear, now; his wife's got so many children. I don't know where to go, if it isn't to one o' your aunts; and I hardly durst,' said poor Mrs. Tulliver, quite destitute of mental resources in this extremity.
Maggie was silent a little while, and then said,–
'Let us go to Bob Jakin's, mother; his wife will have room for us, if they have no other lodger.'
So they went on their way to St. Ogg's, to the old house by the river-side.
Bob himself was at home, with a heaviness at heart which resisted even the new joy and pride of possessing a two-months'-old baby, quite the liveliest of its age that had ever been born to prince or packman. He would perhaps not so thoroughly have understood all the dubiousness of Maggie's appearance with Mr. Stephen Guest on the quay at Mudport if he had not witnessed the effect it produced on Tom when he went to report it; and since then, the circumstances which in any case gave a disastrous character to her elopement had passed beyond the more polite circles of St. Ogg's, and had become matter of common talk, accessible to the grooms and errand-boys. So that when he opened the door and saw Maggie standing before him in her sorrow and weariness, he had no questions to ask except one which he dared only ask himself, — where was Mr. Stephen Guest? Bob, for his part, hoped he might be in the warmest department of an asylum understood to exist in the other world for gentlemen who are likely to be in fallen circumstances there.
The lodgings were vacant, and both Mrs. Jakin the larger and Mrs. Jakin the less were commanded to make all things comfortable for 'the old Missis and the young Miss'; alas that she was still 'Miss!' The ingenious Bob was sorely perplexed as to how this result could have come about; how Mr. Stephen Guest could have gone away from her, or could have let her go away from him, when he had the chance of keeping her with him. But he was silent, and would not allow his wife to ask him a question; would not present himself in the room, lest it should appear like intrusion and a wish to pry; having the same chivalry toward dark-eyed Maggie as in the days when he had bought her the memorable present of books.
But after a day or two Mrs. Tulliver was gone to the Mill again for a few hours to see to Tom's household matters. Maggie had wished this; after the first violent outburst of feeling which came as soon as she had no longer any active purpose to fulfil, she was less in need of her mother's presence; she even desired to be alone with her grief. But she had been solitary only a little while in the old sitting-room that looked on the river, when there came a tap at the door, and turning round her sad face as she said 'Come in,' she saw Bob enter, with the baby in his arms and Mumps at his heels.
'We'll go back, if it disturbs you, Miss,' said Bob.
'No,' said Maggie, in a low voice, wishing she could smile.
Bob, closing the door behind him, came and stood before her.
'You see, we've got a little un, Miss, and I want'd you to look at it, and take it in your arms, if you'd be so good. For we made free to name it after you, and it 'ud be better for your takin' a bit o' notice on it.'
Maggie could not speak, but she put out her arms to receive the tiny baby, while Mumps snuffed at it anxiously, to ascertain that this transference was all right. Maggie's heart had swelled at this action and speech of Bob's; she knew well enough that it was a way he had chosen to show his sympathy and respect.
'Sit down, Bob,' she said presently, and he sat down in silence, finding his tongue unmanageable in quite a new fashion, refusing to say what he wanted it to say.
'Bob,' she said, after a few moments, looking down at the baby, and holding it anxiously, as if she feared it might slip from her mind and her fingers, 'I have a favor to ask of you.'
'Don't you speak so, Miss,' said Bob, grasping the skin of Mumps's neck; 'if there's anything I can do for you, I should look upon it as a day's earnings.'
'I want you to go to Dr. Kenn's, and ask to speak to him, and tell him that I am here, and should be very grateful if he would come to me while my mother is away. She will not come back till evening.'
'Eh, Miss, I'd do it in a minute, — it is but a step, — but Dr. Kenn's wife lies dead; she's to be buried to- morrow; died the day I come from Mudport. It's all the more pity she should ha' died just now, if you want him. I hardly like to go a-nigh him yet.'
'Oh no, Bob,' said Maggie, 'we must let it be, — till after a few days, perhaps, when you hear that he is going about again. But perhaps he may be going out of town — to a distance,' she added, with a new sense of despondency at this idea.
'Not he, Miss,' said Bob. 'He'll none go away. He isn't one o' them gentlefolks as go to cry at waterin'- places when their wives die; he's got summat else to do. He looks fine and sharp after the parish, he does. He christened the little un; an' he was at me to know what I did of a Sunday, as I didn't come to church. But I told him I was upo' the travel three parts o' the Sundays, — an' then I'm so used to bein' on my legs, I can't sit so long on end, — 'an' lors, sir,' says I, 'a packman can do wi' a small 'lowance o' church; it tastes strong,' says I; 'there's no call to lay it on thick.' Eh, Miss, how good the little un is wi' you! It's like as if it knowed you; it partly does, I'll be bound, — like the birds know the mornin'.'
Bob's tongue was now evidently loosed from its unwonted bondage, and might even be in danger of doing more work than was required of it. But the subjects on which he longed to be informed were so steep and difficult
