Chapter: In the Red Deeps


The family sitting-room was a long room with a window at each end; one
looking toward the croft and along the Ripple to the banks of the
Floss, the other into the mill-yard. Maggie was sitting with her work
against the latter window when she saw Mr. Wakem entering the yard, as
usual, on his fine black horse; but not alone, as usual. Some one was
with him,--a figure in a cloak, on a handsome pony. Maggie had hardly
time to feel that it was Philip come back, before they were in front
of the window, and he was raising his hat to her; while his father,
catching the movement by a side-glance, looked sharply round at them
both.

Maggie hurried away from the window and carried her work upstairs; for
Mr. Wakem sometimes came in and inspected the books, and Maggie felt
that the meeting with Philip would be robbed of all pleasure in the
presence of the two fathers. Some day, perhaps, she could see him when
they could just shake hands, and she could tell him that she
remembered his goodness to Tom, and the things he had said to her in
the old days, though they could never be friends any more. It was not
at all agitating to Maggie to see Philip again; she retained her
childish gratitude and pity toward him, and remembered his cleverness;
and in the early weeks of her loneliness she had continually recalled
the image of him among the people who had been kind to her in life,
often wishing she had him for a brother and a teacher, as they had
fancied it might have been, in their talk together. But that sort of
wishing had been banished along with other dreams that savored of
seeking her own will; and she thought, besides, that Philip might be
altered by his life abroad,--he might have become worldly, and really
not care about her saying anything to him now. And yet his face was
wonderfully little altered,--it was only a larger, more manly copy of
the pale, small-featured boy's face, with the gray eyes, and the
boyish waving brown hair; there was the old deformity to awaken the
old pity; and after all her meditations, Maggie felt that she really
_should_ like to say a few words to him. He might still be melancholy,
as he always used to be, and like her to look at him kindly. She
wondered if he remembered how he used to like her eyes; with that
thought Maggie glanced toward the square looking-glass which was
condemned to hang with its face toward the wall, and she half started
from her seat to reach it down; but she checked herself and snatched
up her work, trying to repress the rising wishes by forcing her memory
to recall snatches of hymns, until she saw Philip and his father
returning along the road, and she could go down again.

It was far on in June now, and Maggie was inclined to lengthen the
daily walk which was her one indulgence; but this day and the
following she was so busy with work which must be finished that she
never went beyond the gate, and satisfied her need of the open air by
sitting out of doors. One of her frequent walks, when she was not
obliged to go to St. Ogg's, was to a spot that lay beyond what was
called the "Hill,"--an insignificant rise of ground crowned by trees,
lying along the side of the road which ran by the gates of Dorlcote
Mill. Insignificant I call it, because in height it was hardly more
than a bank; but there may come moments when Nature makes a mere bank
a means toward a fateful result; and that is why I ask you to imagine
this high bank crowned with trees, making an uneven wall for some
quarter of a mile along the left side of Dorlcote Mill and the
pleasant fields behind it, bounded by the murmuring Ripple. Just where
this line of bank sloped down again to the level, a by-road turned off
and led to the other side of the rise, where it was broken into very
capricious hollows and mounds by the working of an exhausted
stone-quarry, so long exhausted that both mounds and hollows were now
clothed with brambles and trees, and here and there by a stretch of
grass which a few sheep kept close-nibbled. In her childish days
Maggie held this place, called the Red Deeps, in very great awe, and
needed all her confidence in Tom's bravery to reconcile her to an
excursion thither,--visions of robbers and fierce animals haunting
every hollow. But now it had the charm for her which any broken
ground, any mimic rock and ravine, have for the eyes that rest
habitually on the level; especially in summer, when she could sit on a
grassy hollow under the shadow of a branching ash, stooping aslant
from the steep above her, and listen to the hum of insects, like
tiniest bells on the garment of Silence, or see the sunlight piercing
the distant boughs, as if to chase and drive home the truant heavenly
blue of the wild hyacinths. In this June time, too, the dog-roses were
in their glory, and that was an additional reason why Maggie should
direct her walk to the Red Deeps, rather than to any other spot, on
the first day she was free to wander at her will,--a pleasure she
loved so well, that sometimes, in her ardors of renunciation, she
thought she ought to deny herself the frequent indulgence in it.

You may see her now, as she walks down the favorite turning and enters
the Deeps by a narrow path through a group of Scotch firs, her tall
figure and old lavender gown visible through an hereditary black silk
shawl of some wide-meshed net-like material; and now she is sure of
being unseen she takes off her bonnet and ties it over her arm. One
would certainly suppose her to be farther on in life than her
seventeenth year--perhaps because of the slow resigned sadness of the
glance from which all search and unrest seem to have departed; perhaps
because her broad-chested figure has the mould of early womanhood.
Youth and health have withstood well the involuntary and voluntary
hardships of her lot, and the nights in which she has lain on the hard
floor for a penance have left no obvious trace; the eyes are liquid,
the brown cheek is firm and round, the full lips are red. With her
dark coloring and jet crown surmounting her tall figure, she seems to
have a sort of kinship with the grand Scotch firs, at which she is
looking up as if she loved them well. Yet one has a sense of
uneasiness in looking at her,--a sense of opposing elements, of which
a fierce collision is imminent; surely there is a hushed expression,
such as one often sees in older faces under borderless caps, out of
keeping with the resistant youth, which one expects to flash out in a
sudden, passionate glance, that will dissipate all the quietude, like
a damp fire leaping out again when all seemed safe.

But Maggie herself was not uneasy at this moment. She was calmly
enjoying the free air, while she looked up at the old fir-trees, and
thought that those broken ends of branches were the records of past
storms, which had only made the red stems soar higher. But while her
eyes were still turned upward, she became conscious of a moving shadow
cast by the evening sun on the grassy path before her, and looked down
with a startled gesture to see Philip Wakem, who first raised his hat,
and then, blushing deeply, came forward to her and put out his hand.
Maggie, too, colored with surprise, which soon gave way to pleasure.
She put out her hand and looked down at the deformed figure before her
with frank eyes, filled for the moment with nothing but the memory of
her child's feelings,--a memory that was always strong in her. She was
the first to speak.

"You startled me," she said, smiling faintly; "I never meet any one
here. How came you to be walking here? Did you come to meet _me?_"

It was impossible not to perceive that Maggie felt herself a child
again.

"Yes, I did," said Philip, still embarrassed; "I wished to see you
very much. I watched a long while yesterday on the bank near your
house to see if you would come out, but you never came. Then I watched
again to-day, and when I saw the way you took, I kept you in sight and
came down the bank, behind there. I hope you will not be displeased
with me."

"No," said Maggie, with simple seriousness, walking on as if she meant
Philip to accompany her, "I'm very glad you came, for I wished very
much to have an opportunity of speaking to you. I've never forgotten
how good you were long ago to Tom, and me too; but I was not sure that
you would remember us so well. Tom and I have had a great deal of
trouble since then, and I think _that_ makes one think more of what
happened before the trouble came."

"I can't believe that you have thought of me so much as I have thought
of you," said Philip, timidly. "Do you know, when I was away, I made a
picture of you as you looked that morning in the study when you said
you would not forget me."

Philip drew a large miniature-case from his pocket, and opened it.
Maggie saw her old self leaning on a table, with her black locks
hanging down behind her ears, looking into space, with strange, dreamy
eyes. It was a water-color sketch, of real merit as a portrait.

"Oh dear," said Maggie, smiling, and flushed with pleasure, "what a
queer little girl I was! I remember myself with my hair in that way,
in that pink frock. I really _was_ like a gypsy. I dare say I am now,"
she added, after a little pause; "am I like what you expected me to
be?"

The words might have been those of a coquette, but the full, bright
glance Maggie turned on Philip was not that of a coquette. She really
did hope he liked her face as it was now, but it was simply the rising
again of her innate delight in admiration and love. Philip met her
eyes and looked at her in silence for a long moment, before he said
quietly, "No, Maggie."

The light died out a little from Maggie's face, and there was a slight
trembling of the lip. Her eyelids fell lower, but she did not turn
away her head, and Philip continued to look at her. Then he said
slowly:

"You are very much more beautiful than I thought you would be."

"Am I?" said Maggie, the pleasure returning in a deeper flush. She
turned her face away from him and took some steps, looking straight
before her in silence, as if she were adjusting her consciousness to
this new idea. Girls are so accustomed to think of dress as the main
ground of vanity, that, in abstaining from the looking-glass, Maggie
had thought more of abandoning all care for adornment than of
renouncing the contemplation of her face. Comparing herself with
elegant, wealthy young ladies, it had not occurred to her that she
could produce any effect with her person. Philip seemed to like the
silence well. He walked by her side, watching her face, as if that
sight left no room for any other wish. They had passed from among the
fir-trees, and had now come to a green hollow almost surrounded by an
amphitheatre of the pale pink dog-roses. But as the light about them
had brightened, Maggie's face had lost its glow.

She stood still when they were in the hollows, and looking at Philip
again, she said in a serious, sad voice:

"I wish we could have been friends,--I mean, if it would have been
good and right for us. But that is the trial I have to bear in
everything; I may not keep anything I used to love when I was little.
The old books went; and Tom is different, and my father. It is like
death. I must part with everything I cared for when I was a child. And
I must part with you; we must never take any notice of each other
again. That was what I wanted to speak to you for. I wanted to let you
know that Tom and I can't do as we like about such things, and that if
I behave as if I had forgotten all about you, it is not out of envy or
pride--or--or any bad feeling."

Maggie spoke with more and more sorrowful gentleness as she went on,
and her eyes began to fill with tears. The deepening expression of
pain on Philip's face gave him a stronger resemblance to his boyish
self, and made the deformity appeal more strongly to her pity.

"I know; I see all that you mean," he said, in a voice that had become
feebler from discouragement; "I know what there is to keep us apart on
both sides. But it is not right, Maggie,--don't you be angry with me,
I am so used to call you Maggie in my thoughts,--it is not right to
sacrifice everything to other people's unreasonable feelings. I would
give up a great deal for _my_ father; but I would not give up a
friendship or--or an attachment of any sort, in obedience to any wish
of his that I didn't recognize as right."

"I don't know," said Maggie, musingly. "Often, when I have been angry
and discontented, it has seemed to me that I was not bound to give up
anything; and I have gone on thinking till it has seemed to me that I
could think away all my duty. But no good has ever come of that; it
was an evil state of mind. I'm quite sure that whatever I might do, I
should wish in the end that I had gone without anything for myself,
rather than have made my father's life harder to him."

"But would it make his life harder if we were to see each other
sometimes?" said Philip. He was going to say something else, but
checked himself.

"Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't like it. Don't ask me why, or anything about
it," said Maggie, in a distressed tone. "My father feels so strongly
about some things. He is not at all happy."

"No more am I," said Philip, impetuously; "I am not happy."

"Why?" said Maggie, gently. "At least--I ought not to ask--but I'm
very, very sorry."

Philip turned to walk on, as if he had not patience to stand still any
longer, and they went out of the hollow, winding amongst the trees and
bushes in silence. After that last word of Philip's, Maggie could not
bear to insist immediately on their parting.

"I've been a great deal happier," she said at last, timidly, "since I
have given up thinking about what is easy and pleasant, and being
discontented because I couldn't have my own will. Our life is
determined for us; and it makes the mind very free when we give up
wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and doing
what is given us to do."

"But I can't give up wishing," said Philip, impatiently. "It seems to
me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly
alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and
we _must_ hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them
until our feelings are deadened? I delight in fine pictures; I long to
be able to paint such. I strive and strive, and can't produce what I
want. That is pain to me, and always _will_ be pain, until my
faculties lose their keenness, like aged eyes. Then there are many
other things I long for,"--here Philip hesitated a little, and then
said,--"things that other men have, and that will always be denied me.
My life will have nothing great or beautiful in it; I would rather not
have lived."

"Oh, Philip," said Maggie, "I wish you didn't feel so." But her heart
began to beat with something of Philip's discontent.

"Well, then," said he, turning quickly round and fixing his gray eyes
entreatingly on her face, "I should be contented to live, if you would
let me see you sometimes." Then, checked by a fear which her face
suggested, he looked away again and said more calmly, "I have no
friend to whom I can tell everything, no one who cares enough about
me; and if I could only see you now and then, and you would let me
talk to you a little, and show me that you cared for me, and that we
may always be friends in heart, and help each other, then I might come
to be glad of life."

"But how can I see you, Philip?" said Maggie, falteringly. (Could she
really do him good? It would be very hard to say "good-by" this day,
and not speak to him again. Here was a new interest to vary the days;
it was so much easier to renounce the interest before it came.)

"If you would let me see you here sometimes,--walk with you here,--I
would be contented if it were only once or twice in a month. _That_
could injure no one's happiness, and it would sweeten my life.
Besides," Philip went on, with all the inventive astuteness of love at
one-and-twenty, "if there is any enmity between those who belong to
us, we ought all the more to try and quench it by our friendship; I
mean, that by our influence on both sides we might bring about a
healing of the wounds that have been made in the past, if I could know
everything about them. And I don't believe there is any enmity in my
own father's mind; I think he has proved the contrary."

Maggie shook her head slowly, and was silent, under conflicting
thoughts. It seemed to her inclination, that to see Philip now and
then, and keep up the bond of friendship with him, was something not
only innocent, but good; perhaps she might really help him to find
contentment as she had found it. The voice that said this made sweet
music to Maggie; but athwart it there came an urgent, monotonous
warning from another voice which she had been learning to obey,--the
warning that such interviews implied secrecy; implied doing something
she would dread to be discovered in, something that, if discovered,
must cause anger and pain; and that the admission of anything so near
doubleness would act as a spiritual blight. Yet the music would swell
out again, like chimes borne onward by a recurrent breeze, persuading
her that the wrong lay all in the faults and weaknesses of others, and
that there was such a thing as futile sacrifice for one to the injury
of another. It was very cruel for Philip that he should be shrunk
from, because of an unjustifiable vindictiveness toward his
father,--poor Philip, whom some people would shrink from only because
he was deformed. The idea that he might become her lover or that her
meeting him could cause disapproval in that light, had not occurred to
her; and Philip saw the absence of this idea clearly enough, saw it
with a certain pang, although it made her consent to his request the
less unlikely. There was bitterness to him in the perception that
Maggie was almost as frank and unconstrained toward him as when she
was a child.

"I can't say either yes or no," she said at last, turning round and
walking toward the way she come; "I must wait, lest I should decide
wrongly. I must seek for guidance."

"May I come again, then, to-morrow, or the next day, or next week?"

"I think I had better write," said Maggie, faltering again. "I have to
go to St. Ogg's sometimes, and I can put the letter in the post."

"Oh no," said Philip eagerly; "that would not be so well. My father
might see the letter--and--he has not any enmity, I believe, but he
views things differently from me; he thinks a great deal about wealth
and position. Pray let me come here once more. _Tell_ me when it shall
be; or if you can't tell me, I will come as often as I can till I do
see you."

"I think it must be so, then," said Maggie, "for I can't be quite
certain of coming here any particular evening."

Maggie felt a great relief in adjourning the decision. She was free
now to enjoy the minutes of companionship; she almost thought she
might linger a little; the next time they met she should have to pain
Philip by telling him her determination.

"I can't help thinking," she said, looking smilingly at him, after a
few moments of silence, "how strange it is that we should have met and
talked to each other, just as if it had been only yesterday when we
parted at Lorton. And yet we must both be very much altered in those
five years,--I think it is five years. How was it you seemed to have a
sort of feeling that I was the same Maggie? I was not quite so sure
that you would be the same; I know you are so clever, and you must
have seen and learnt so much to fill your mind; I was not quite sure
you would care about me now."

"I have never had any doubt that you would be the same, whenever I
might see you," said Philip,--"I mean, the same in everything that made
me like you better than any one else. I don't want to explain that; I
don't think any of the strongest effects our natures are susceptible
of can ever be explained. We can neither detect the process by which
they are arrived at, nor the mode in which they act on us. The
greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child; he
couldn't have told how he did it, and we can't tell why we feel it to
be divine. I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that
our understandings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains
of music affect me so strangely; I can never hear them without their
changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would
last, I might be capable of heroisms."

"Ah! I know what you mean about music; _I_ feel so," said Maggie,
clasping her hands with her old impetuosity. "At least," she added, in
a saddened tone, "I used to feel so when I had any music; I never have
any now except the organ at church."

"And you long for it, Maggie?" said Philip, looking at her with
affectionate pity. "Ah, you can have very little that is beautiful in
your life. Have you many books? You were so fond of them when you were
a little girl."

They were come back to the hollow, round which the dog-roses grew, and
they both paused under the charm of the faery evening light, reflected
from the pale pink clusters.

"No, I have given up books," said Maggie, quietly, "except a very,
very few."

Philip had already taken from his pocket a small volume, and was
looking at the back as he said:

"Ah, this is the second volume, I see, else you might have liked to
take it home with you. I put it in my pocket because I am studying a
scene for a picture."

Maggie had looked at the back too, and saw the title; it revived an
old impression with overmastering force.

"'The Pirate,'" she said, taking the book from Philip's hands. "Oh, I
began that once; I read to where Minna is walking with Cleveland, and
I could never get to read the rest. I went on with it in my own head,
and I made several endings; but they were all unhappy. I could never
make a happy ending out of that beginning. Poor Minna! I wonder what
is the real end. For a long while I couldn't get my mind away from the
Shetland Isles,--I used to feel the wind blowing on me from the rough
sea."

Maggie spoke rapidly, with glistening eyes.

"Take that volume home with you, Maggie," said Philip, watching her
with delight. "I don't want it now. I shall make a picture of you
instead,--you, among the Scotch firs and the slanting shadows."

Maggie had not heard a word he had said; she was absorbed in a page at
which she had opened. But suddenly she closed the book, and gave it
back to Philip, shaking her head with a backward movement, as if to
say "avaunt" to floating visions.

"Do keep it, Maggie," said Philip, entreatingly; "it will give you
pleasure."

"No, thank you," said Maggie, putting it aside with her hand and
walking on. "It would make me in love with this world again, as I used
to be; it would make me long to see and know many things; it would
make me long for a full life."

"But you will not always be shut up in your present lot; why should
you starve your mind in that way? It is narrow asceticism; I don't
like to see you persisting in it, Maggie. Poetry and art and knowledge
are sacred and pure."

"But not for me, not for me," said Maggie, walking more hurriedly;
"because I should want too much. I must wait; this life will not last
long."

"Don't hurry away from me without saying 'good-by,' Maggie," said
Philip, as they reached the group of Scotch firs, and she continued
still to walk along without speaking. "I must not go any farther, I
think, must I?"

"Oh no, I forgot; good-by," said Maggie, pausing, and putting out her
hand to him. The action brought her feeling back in a strong current
to Philip; and after they had stood looking at each other in silence
for a few moments, with their hands clasped, she said, withdrawing her
hand:

"I'm very grateful to you for thinking of me all those years. It is
very sweet to have people love us. What a wonderful, beautiful thing
it seems that God should have made your heart so that you could care
about a queer little girl whom you only knew for a few weeks! I
remember saying to you that I thought you cared for me more than Tom
did."

"Ah, Maggie," said Philip, almost fretfully, "you would never love me
so well as you love your brother."

"Perhaps not," said Maggie, simply; "but then, you know, the first
thing I ever remember in my life is standing with Tom by the side of
the Floss, while he held my hand; everything before that is dark to
me. But I shall never forget you, though we must keep apart."

"Don't say so, Maggie," said Philip. "If I kept that little girl in my
mind for five years, didn't I earn some part in her? She ought not to
take herself quite away from me."

"Not if I were free," said Maggie; "but I am not, I must submit." She
hesitated a moment, and then added, "And I wanted to say to you, that
you had better not take more notice of my brother than just bowing to
him. He once told me not to speak to you again, and he doesn't change
his mind--Oh dear, the sun is set. I am too long away. Good-by." She
gave him her hand once more.

"I shall come here as often as I can till I see you again, Maggie.
Have some feeling for _me_ as well as for others."

"Yes, yes, I have," said Maggie, hurrying away, and quickly
disappearing behind the last fir-tree; though Philip's gaze after her
remained immovable for minutes as if he saw her still.

Maggie went home, with an inward conflict already begun; Philip went
home to do nothing but remember and hope. You can hardly help blaming
him severely. He was four or five years older than Maggie, and had a
full consciousness of his feeling toward her to aid him in foreseeing
the character his contemplated interviews with her would bear in the
opinion of a third person. But you must not suppose that he was
capable of a gross selfishness, or that he could have been satisfied
without persuading himself that he was seeking to infuse some
happiness into Maggie's life,--seeking this even more than any direct
ends for himself. He could give her sympathy; he could give her help.
There was not the slightest promise of love toward him in her manner;
it was nothing more than the sweet girlish tenderness she had shown
him when she was twelve. Perhaps she would never love him; perhaps no
woman ever _could_ love him. Well, then, he would endure that; he
should at least have the happiness of seeing her, of feeling some
nearness to her. And he clutched passionately the possibility that she
_might_ love him; perhaps the feeling would grow, if she could come to
associate him with that watchful tenderness which her nature would be
so keenly alive to. If any woman could love him, surely Maggie was
that woman; there was such wealth of love in her, and there was no one
to claim it all. Then, the pity of it, that a mind like hers should be
withering in its very youth, like a young forest-tree, for want of the
light and space it was formed to flourish in! Could he not hinder
that, by persuading her out of her system of privation? He would be
her guardian angel; he would do anything, bear anything, for her
sake--except not seeing her.

 One day Philip comes to the mill with his father. Maggie hurries upstairs, for she does not want to meet Philip in the presence of their fathers, where it would be impossible for them to be friendly. Maggie would like to "say a few kind words to him," for she feels that he would appreciate her kindness. Maggie is seventeen now and darkly beautiful. She has stood well the "involuntary and voluntary hardships of her lot." The one pleasure she allows herself is a daily walk. It is on such a walk to the Red Deeps, a wooded rise near her home, that she meets Philip. Philip admits that he has waited there on the chance of seeing her. When Maggie says she is glad he came, Philip shows her a picture of her which he has painted, a sketch "of real merit as a portrait." Maggie is pleased, but remarks that she "really was like a gypsy." When she asks if she is now like what Philip expected, he replies that she is much more beautiful. Maggie tells Philip that she wishes they could be friends, but that everything is too changed. Philip sees her point, but says that while he would give up a great deal for his father, he would not give up a friendship in obedience to a wish that was not right. Maggie says she would give up anything rather than make her father's life harder, for he is "not at all happy." Philip replies that he is not happy either. When Maggie says she is happier since she gave up wishing, Philip answers that there are things "we must hunger after . . . ." He says he could be content if he could see her sometimes. Maggie is inclined to think that such meetings might "help him to find contentment, as she had found it," and that this new interest would help "to vary the days." But along with the "sweet music" of the voice that says this comes another voice warning her that secrecy would be necessary, and that would make it wrong. At last she declines to say yes or no, but agrees to allow him to meet her there to receive her answer. She then lets herself linger awhile, and they talk of books and music. She refuses his offer of a book, and he tells her it is wrong to "starve your mind." After Maggie leaves, Philip goes home feeling that if she could never love him, he will endure that for "the happiness of seeing her." It is obvious to him that Maggie does not think of him as someone to love, but she might someday, and if not, he still might help her by "persuading her out of her system of privation."

