The Mill on the Floss

Chapter X

Maggie Behaves Worse Than She Expected

The startling object which thus made an epoch for uncle Pullet was noother than little Lucy, with one side of her person, from her smallfoot to her bonnet-crown, wet and discolored with mud, holding out twotiny blackened hands, and making a very piteous face. To account forthis unprecedented apparition in aunt Pullet's parlor, we must returnto the moment when the three children went to play out of doors, andthe small demons who had taken possession of Maggie's soul at an earlyperiod of the day had returned in all the greater force after atemporary absence. All the disagreeable recollections of the morningwere thick upon her, when Tom, whose displeasure toward her had beenconsiderably refreshed by her foolish trick of causing him to upsethis cowslip wine, said, ”Here, Lucy, you come along with me,” andwalked off to the area where the toads were, as if there were noMaggie in existence. Seeing this, Maggie lingered at a distancelooking like a small Medusa with her snakes cropped. Lucy wasnaturally pleased that cousin Tom was so good to her, and it was veryamusing to see him tickling a fat toad with a piece of string when thetoad was safe down the area, with an iron grating over him. Still Lucywished Maggie to enjoy the spectacle also, especially as she woulddoubtless find a name for the toad, and say what had been his pasthistory; for Lucy had a delighted semibelief in Maggie's stories aboutthe live things they came upon by accident,--how Mrs. Earwig had awash at home, and one of her children had fallen into the hot copper,for which reason she was running so fast to fetch the doctor. Tom hada profound contempt for this nonsense of Maggie's, smashing the earwigat once as a superfluous yet easy means of proving the entireunreality of such a story; but Lucy, for the life of her, could nothelp fancying there was something in it, and at all events thought itwas very pretty make-believe. So now the desire to know the history ofa very portly toad, added to her habitual affectionateness, made herrun back to Maggie and say, ”Oh, there is such a big, funny toad,Maggie! Do come and see!”

Maggie said nothing, but turned away from her with a deeper frown. Aslong as Tom seemed to prefer Lucy to her, Lucy made part of hisunkindness. Maggie would have thought a little while ago that shecould never be cross with pretty little Lucy, any more than she couldbe cruel to a little white mouse; but then, Tom had always been quiteindifferent to Lucy before, and it had been left to Maggie to pet andmake much of her. As it was, she was actually beginning to think thatshe should like to make Lucy cry by slapping or pinching her,especially as it might vex Tom, whom it was of no use to slap, even ifshe dared, because he didn't mind it. And if Lucy hadn't been there,Maggie was sure he would have got friends with her sooner.

Tickling a fat toad who is not highly sensitive is an amusement thatit is possible to exhaust, and Tom by and by began to look round forsome other mode of passing the time. But in so prim a garden, wherethey were not to go off the paved walks, there was not a great choiceof sport. The only great pleasure such a restriction suggested was thepleasure of breaking it, and Tom began to meditate an insurrectionaryvisit to the pond, about a field's length beyond the garden.

”I say, Lucy,” he began, nodding his head up and down with greatsignificance, as he coiled up his string again, ”what do you think Imean to do?”

”What, Tom?” said Lucy, with curiosity.

”I mean to go to the pond and look at the pike. You may go with me ifyou like,” said the young sultan.

”Oh, Tom, _dare_ you?” said Lucy. ”Aunt said we mustn't go out of thegarden.”

”Oh, I shall go out at the other end of the garden,” said Tom. ”Nobody'ull see us. Besides, I don't care if they do,--I'll run off home.”

”But _I_ couldn't run,” said Lucy, who had never before been exposedto such severe temptation.

”Oh, never mind; they won't be cross with _you_,” said Tom. ”You say Itook you.”

Tom walked along, and Lucy trotted by his side, timidly enjoying therare treat of doing something naughty,--excited also by the mention ofthat celebrity, the pike, about which she was quite uncertain whetherit was a fish or a fowl.

Maggie saw them leaving the garden, and could not resist the impulseto follow. Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of theirobjects than love, and that Tom and Lucy should do or see anything ofwhich she was ignorant would have been an intolerable idea to Maggie.So she kept a few yards behind them, unobserved by Tom, who waspresently absorbed in watching for the pike,--a highly interestingmonster; he was said to be so very old, so very large, and to havesuch a remarkable appetite. The pike, like other celebrities, did notshow when he was watched for, but Tom caught sight of something inrapid movement in the water, which attracted him to another spot onthe brink of the pond.

”Here, Lucy!” he said in a loud whisper, ”come here! take care! keepon the grass!--don't step where the cows have been!” he added,pointing to a peninsula of dry grass, with trodden mud on each side ofit; for Tom's contemptuous conception of a girl included the attributeof being unfit to walk in dirty places.

Lucy came carefully as she was bidden, and bent down to look at whatseemed a golden arrow-head darting through the water. It was awater-snake, Tom told her; and Lucy at last could see the serpentinewave of its body, very much wondering that a snake could swim. Maggiehad drawn nearer and nearer; she _must_ see it too, though it wasbitter to her, like everything else, since Tom did not care about herseeing it. At last she was close by Lucy; and Tom, who had been awareof her approach, but would not notice it till he was obliged, turnedround and said,--

”Now, get away, Maggie; there's no room for you on the grass here.Nobody asked _you_ to come.”

There were passions at war in Maggie at that moment to have made atragedy, if tragedies were made by passion only; but the essential[Greek text] which was present in the passion was wanting to the actionthe utmost Maggie could do, with a fierce thrust of her small brown arm,was to push poor little pink-and-white Lucy into the cow-trodden mud.

Then Tom could not restrain himself, and gave Maggie two smart slapson the arm as he ran to pick up Lucy, who lay crying helplessly.Maggie retreated to the roots of a tree a few yards off, and looked onimpenitently. Usually her repentance came quickly after one rash deed,but now Tom and Lucy had made her so miserable, she was glad to spoiltheir happiness,--glad to make everybody uncomfortable. Why should shebe sorry? Tom was very slow to forgive _her_, however sorry she mighthave been.

”I shall tell mother, you know, Miss Mag,” said Tom, loudly andemphatically, as soon as Lucy was up and ready to walk away. It wasnot Tom's practice to ”tell,” but here justice clearly demanded thatMaggie should be visited with the utmost punishment; not that Tom hadlearned to put his views in that abstract form; he never mentioned”justice,” and had no idea that his desire to punish might be calledby that fine name. Lucy was too entirely absorbed by the evil that hadbefallen her,--the spoiling of her pretty best clothes, and thediscomfort of being wet and dirty,--to think much of the cause, whichwas entirely mysterious to her. She could never have guessed what shehad done to make Maggie angry with her; but she felt that Maggie wasvery unkind and disagreeable, and made no magnanimous entreaties toTom that he would not ”tell,” only running along by his side andcrying piteously, while Maggie sat on the roots of the tree and lookedafter them with her small Medusa face.

”Sally,” said Tom, when they reached the kitchen door, and Sallylooked at them in speechless amaze, with a piece of bread-and-butterin her mouth and a toasting-fork in her hand,--”Sally, tell mother itwas Maggie pushed Lucy into the mud.”

”But Lors ha' massy, how did you get near such mud as that?” saidSally, making a wry face, as she stooped down and examined the _corpusdelicti_.

Tom's imagination had not been rapid and capacious enough to includethis question among the foreseen consequences, but it was no soonerput than he foresaw whither it tended, and that Maggie would not beconsidered the only culprit in the case. He walked quietly away fromthe kitchen door, leaving Sally to that pleasure of guessing whichactive minds notoriously prefer to ready-made knowledge.

Sally, as you are aware, lost no time in presenting Lucy at the parlordoor, for to have so dirty an object introduced into the house atGarum Firs was too great a weight to be sustained by a single mind.

”Goodness gracious!” aunt Pullet exclaimed, after preluding by aninarticulate scream; ”keep her at the door, Sally! Don't bring her offthe oil-cloth, whatever you do.”

”Why, she's tumbled into some nasty mud,” said Mrs. Tulliver, going upto Lucy to examine into the amount of damage to clothes for which shefelt herself responsible to her sister Deane.

”If you please, 'um, it was Miss Maggie as pushed her in,” said Sally;”Master Tom's been and said so, and they must ha' been to the pond,for it's only there they could ha' got into such dirt.”

”There it is, Bessy; it's what I've been telling you,” said Mrs.Pullet, in a tone of prophetic sadness; ”it's your children,--there'sno knowing what they'll come to.”

Mrs. Tulliver was mute, feeling herself a truly wretched mother. Asusual, the thought pressed upon her that people would think she haddone something wicked to deserve her maternal troubles, while Mrs.Pullet began to give elaborate directions to Sally how to guard thepremises from serious injury in the course of removing the dirt.Meantime tea was to be brought in by the cook, and the two naughtychildren were to have theirs in an ignominious manner in the kitchen.Mrs. Tulliver went out to speak to these naughty children, supposingthem to be close at hand; but it was not until after some search thatshe found Tom leaning with rather a hardened, careless air against thewhite paling of the poultry-yard, and lowering his piece of string onthe other side as a means of exasperating the turkey-cock.

”Tom, you naughty boy, where's your sister?” said Mrs. Tulliver, in adistressed voice.

”I don't know,” said Tom; his eagerness for justice on Maggie haddiminished since he had seen clearly that it could hardly be broughtabout without the injustice of some blame on his own conduct.

”Why, where did you leave her?” said the mother, looking round.

”Sitting under the tree, against the pond,” said Tom, apparentlyindifferent to everything but the string and the turkey-cock.

”Then go and fetch her in this minute, you naughty boy. And how couldyou think o' going to the pond, and taking your sister where there wasdirt? You know she'll do mischief if there's mischief to be done.”

It was Mrs. Tulliver's way, if she blamed Tom, to refer hismisdemeanor, somehow or other, to Maggie.

The idea of Maggie sitting alone by the pond roused an habitual fearin Mrs. Tulliver's mind, and she mounted the horse-block to satisfyherself by a sight of that fatal child, while Tom walked--not veryquickly--on his way toward her.

”They're such children for the water, mine are,” she said aloud,without reflecting that there was no one to hear her; ”they'll bebrought in dead and drownded some day. I wish that river was farenough.”

But when she not only failed to discern Maggie, but presently saw Tomreturning from the pool alone, this hovering fear entered and tookcomplete possession of her, and she hurried to meet him.

”Maggie's nowhere about the pond, mother,” said Tom; ”she's goneaway.”

You may conceive the terrified search for Maggie, and the difficultyof convincing her mother that she was not in the pond. Mrs. Pulletobserved that the child might come to a worse end if she lived, therewas no knowing; and Mr. Pullet, confused and overwhelmed by thisrevolutionary aspect of things,--the tea deferred and the poultryalarmed by the unusual running to and fro,--took up his spud as aninstrument of search, and reached down a key to unlock the goose-pen,as a likely place for Maggie to lie concealed in.

Tom, after a while, started the idea that Maggie was gone home(without thinking it necessary to state that it was what he shouldhave done himself under the circumstances), and the suggestion wasseized as a comfort by his mother.

”Sister, for goodness' sake let 'em put the horse in the carriage andtake me home; we shall perhaps find her on the road. Lucy can't walkin her dirty clothes,” she said, looking at that innocent victim, whowas wrapped up in a shawl, and sitting with naked feet on the sofa.

Aunt Pullet was quite willing to take the shortest means of restoringher premises to order and quiet, and it was not long before Mrs.Tulliver was in the chaise, looking anxiously at the most distantpoint before her. What the father would say if Maggie was lost, was aquestion that predominated over every other.