The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot [rocket ebook reader txt] 📗

“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 tomorrow; 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 of approach, that his tongue was likely to run on along the level rather than to carry him on that unbeaten road. He felt this, and was silent again for a little while, ruminating much on the possible forms in which he might put a question. At last he said, in a more timid voice than usual⁠—

“Will you give me leave to ask you only one thing, Miss?”

Maggie was rather startled, but she answered, “Yes, Bob, if it is about myself⁠—not about anyone else.”

“Well, Miss, it’s this. Do you owe anybody a grudge?”

“No, not anyone,” said Maggie, looking up at him inquiringly. “Why?”

“Oh, lors, Miss,” said Bob, pinching Mumps’s neck harder than ever. “I wish you did, an’ tell me; I’d leather him till I couldn’t see⁠—I would⁠—an’ the Justice might do what he liked to me arter.”

“Oh, Bob,” said Maggie, smiling faintly, “you’re a very good friend to me. But I shouldn’t like to punish anyone, even if they’d done me wrong; I’ve done wrong myself too often.”

This view of things was puzzling to Bob, and threw more obscurity than ever over what could possibly have happened between Stephen and Maggie. But further questions would have been too intrusive, even if he could have framed them suitably, and he was obliged to carry baby away again to an expectant mother.

“Happen you’d like Mumps for company, Miss,” he said when he had taken the baby again. “He’s rare company, Mumps is; he knows iverything, an’ makes no bother about it. If I tell him, he’ll lie before you an’ watch you, as still⁠—just as he watches my pack. You’d better let me leave him a bit; he’ll get fond on you. Lors, it’s a fine thing to hev a dumb brute fond on you; it’ll stick to you, an’ make no jaw.”

“Yes, do leave him, please,” said Maggie. “I think I should like to have Mumps for a friend.”

“Mumps, lie down there,” said Bob, pointing to a place in front of Maggie, “and niver do you stir till you’re spoke to.”

Mumps lay down at once, and made no sign of restlessness when his master left the room.

It was soon known throughout St. Ogg’s that Miss Tulliver was come back; she had not, then, eloped in order to be married to Mr. Stephen Guest⁠—at all events, Mr. Stephen Guest had not married her; which came to the same thing, so far as her culpability was concerned. We judge others according to results; how else?⁠—not knowing the process by which results are arrived at. If Miss Tulliver, after a few months of well-chosen travel, had returned as Mrs. Stephen Guest, with a post-marital trousseau, and all the advantages possessed even by the most unwelcome wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St. Ogg’s, as else where, always knew what to think, would have judged in strict consistency with those results. Public opinion, in these cases, is always of the feminine gender⁠—not the world, but the world’s wife; and she would have seen that two handsome young people⁠—the gentleman of quite the first family in St. Ogg’s⁠—having found themselves in a false position, had been led into a course which, to say the least of it, was highly injudicious, and productive of sad pain and disappointment, especially to that sweet young thing, Miss Deane. Mr. Stephen Guest had certainly not behaved well; but then, young men were liable to those sudden infatuated attachments; and bad as it might seem in Mrs. Stephen Guest to admit the faintest advances from her cousin’s lover (indeed it had been said that she was actually engaged to young Wakem⁠—old Wakem himself had mentioned it), still, she was very young⁠—“and a deformed young man, you know!⁠—and young Guest so very fascinating; and, they say, he positively worships her (to be sure, that can’t last!), and he ran away with her in the boat quite against her will, and what could she do? She couldn’t come back then; no one would have spoken to her; and how very well that maize-coloured satinette becomes her complexion! It seems as if the folds in front were quite come in; several of her dresses are made so⁠—they say he thinks nothing too handsome to buy for her. Poor Miss Deane! She is very