Chapter: Maggie's Second Visit


This last breach between the two lads was not readily mended, and for
some time they spoke to each other no more than was necessary. Their
natural antipathy of temperament made resentment an easy passage to
hatred, and in Philip the transition seemed to have begun; there was
no malignity in his disposition, but there was a susceptibility that
made him peculiarly liable to a strong sense of repulsion. The ox--we
may venture to assert it on the authority of a great classic--is not
given to use his teeth as an instrument of attack, and Tom was an
excellent bovine lad, who ran at questionable objects in a truly
ingenious bovine manner; but he had blundered on Philip's tenderest
point, and had caused him as much acute pain as if he had studied the
means with the nicest precision and the most envenomed spite. Tom saw
no reason why they should not make up this quarrel as they had done
many others, by behaving as if nothing had happened; for though he had
never before said to Philip that his father was a rogue, this idea had
so habitually made part of his feeling as to the relation between
himself and his dubious schoolfellow, who he could neither like nor
dislike, that the mere utterance did not make such an epoch to him as
it did to Philip. And he had a right to say so when Philip hectored
over _him_, and called him names. But perceiving that his first
advances toward amity were not met, he relapsed into his least
favorable disposition toward Philip, and resolved never to appeal to
him either about drawing or exercise again. They were only so far
civil to each other as was necessary to prevent their state of feud
from being observed by Mr. Stelling, who would have "put down" such
nonsense with great vigor.

When Maggie came, however, she could not help looking with growing
interest at the new schoolfellow, although he was the son of that
wicked Lawyer Wakem, who made her father so angry. She had arrived in
the middle of school-hours, and had sat by while Philip went through
his lessons with Mr. Stelling. Tom, some weeks ago, had sent her word
that Philip knew no end of stories,--not stupid stories like hers; and
she was convinced now from her own observation that he must be very
clever; she hoped he would think _her_ rather clever too, when she
came to talk to him. Maggie, moreover, had rather a tenderness for
deformed things; she preferred the wry-necked lambs, because it seemed
to her that the lambs which were quite strong and well made wouldn't
mind so much about being petted; and she was especially fond of
petting objects that would think it very delightful to be petted by
her. She loved Tom very dearly, but she often wished that he _cared_
more about her loving him.

"I think Philip Wakem seems a nice boy, Tom," she said, when they went
out of the study together into the garden, to pass the interval before
dinner. "He couldn't choose his father, you know; and I've read of
very bad men who had good sons, as well as good parents who had bad
children. And if Philip is good, I think we ought to be the more sorry
for him because his father is not a good man. _You_ like him, don't
you?"

"Oh, he's a queer fellow," said Tom, curtly, "and he's as sulky as can
be with me, because I told him his father was a rogue. And I'd a right
to tell him so, for it was true; and _he_ began it, with calling me
names. But you stop here by yourself a bit, Maggie, will you? I've got
something I want to do upstairs."

"Can't I go too?" said Maggie, who in this first day of meeting again
loved Tom's shadow.

"No, it's something I'll tell you about by-and-by, not yet," said Tom,
skipping away.

In the afternoon the boys were at their books in the study, preparing
the morrow's lesson's that they might have a holiday in the evening in
honor of Maggie's arrival. Tom was hanging over his Latin grammar,
moving his lips inaudibly like a strict but impatient Catholic
repeating his tale of paternosters; and Philip, at the other end of
the room, was busy with two volumes, with a look of contented
diligence that excited Maggie's curiosity; he did not look at all as
if he were learning a lesson. She sat on a low stool at nearly a right
angle with the two boys, watching first one and then the other; and
Philip, looking off his book once toward the fire-place, caught the
pair of questioning dark eyes fixed upon him. He thought this sister
of Tulliver's seemed a nice little thing, quite unlike her brother; he
wished _he_ had a little sister. What was it, he wondered, that made
Maggie's dark eyes remind him of the stories about princesses being
turned into animals? I think it was that her eyes were full of
unsatisfied intelligence, and unsatisfied beseeching affection.

"I say, Magsie," said Tom at last, shutting his books and putting them
away with the energy and decision of a perfect master in the art of
leaving off, "I've done my lessons now. Come upstairs with me."

"What is it?" said Maggie, when they were outside the door, a slight
suspicion crossing her mind as she remembered Tom's preliminary visit
upstairs. "It isn't a trick you're going to play me, now?"

"No, no, Maggie," said Tom, in his most coaxing tone; "It's something
you'll like _ever so_."

He put his arm round her neck, and she put hers round his waist, and
twined together in this way, they went upstairs.

"I say, Magsie, you must not tell anybody, you know," said Tom, "else
I shall get fifty lines."

"Is it alive?" said Maggie, whose imagination had settled for the
moment on the idea that Tom kept a ferret clandestinely.

"Oh, I sha'n't tell you," said he. "Now you go into that corner and
hide your face, while I reach it out," he added, as he locked the
bedroom door behind them. "I'll tell you when to turn round. You
mustn't squeal out, you know."

"Oh, but if you frighten me, I shall," said Maggie, beginning to look
rather serious.

"You won't be frightened, you silly thing," said Tom. "Go and hide
your face, and mind you don't peep."

"Of course I sha'n't peep," said Maggie, disdainfully; and she buried
her face in the pillow like a person of strict honor.

But Tom looked round warily as he walked to the closet; then he
stepped into the narrow space, and almost closed the door. Maggie kept
her face buried without the aid of principle, for in that
dream-suggestive attitude she had soon forgotten where she was, and
her thoughts were busy with the poor deformed boy, who was so clever,
when Tom called out, "Now then, Magsie!"

Nothing but long meditation and preconcerted arrangement of effects
would have enabled Tom to present so striking a figure as he did to
Maggie when she looked up. Dissatisfied with the pacific aspect of a
face which had no more than the faintest hint of flaxen eyebrow,
together with a pair of amiable blue-gray eyes and round pink cheeks
that refused to look formidable, let him frown as he would before the
looking-glass (Philip had once told him of a man who had a horseshoe
frown, and Tom had tried with all his frowning might to make a
horseshoe on his forehead), he had had recourse to that unfailing
source of the terrible, burnt cork, and had made himself a pair of
black eyebrows that met in a satisfactory manner over his nose, and
were matched by a less carefully adjusted blackness about the chin. He
had wound a red handkerchief round his cloth cap to give it the air of
a turban, and his red comforter across his breast as a scarf,--an
amount of red which, with the tremendous frown on his brow, and the
decision with which he grasped the sword, as he held it with its point
resting on the ground, would suffice to convey an approximate idea of
his fierce and bloodthirsty disposition.

Maggie looked bewildered for a moment, and Tom enjoyed that moment
keenly; but in the next she laughed, clapped her hands together, and
said, "Oh, Tom, you've made yourself like Bluebeard at the show."

It was clear she had not been struck with the presence of the
sword,--it was not unsheathed. Her frivolous mind required a more
direct appeal to its sense of the terrible, and Tom prepared for his
master-stroke. Frowning with a double amount of intention, if not of
corrugation, he (carefully) drew the sword from its sheath, and
pointed it at Maggie.

"Oh, Tom, please don't!" exclaimed Maggie, in a tone of suppressed
dread, shrinking away from him into the opposite corner. "I _shall_
scream--I'm sure I shall! Oh, don't I wish I'd never come upstairs!"

The corners of Tom's mouth showed an inclination to a smile of
complacency that was immediately checked as inconsistent with the
severity of a great warrior. Slowly he let down the scabbard on the
floor, lest it should make too much noise, and then said sternly,--

"I'm the Duke of Wellington! March!" stamping forward with the right
leg a little bent, and the sword still pointing toward Maggie, who,
trembling, and with tear-filled eyes, got upon the bed, as the only
means of widening the space between them.

Tom, happy in this spectator of his military performances, even though
the spectator was only Maggie, proceeded, with the utmost exertion of
his force, to such an exhibition of the cut and thrust as would
necessarily be expected of the Duke of Wellington.

"Tom, I _will not_ bear it, I _will_ scream," said Maggie, at the
first movement of the sword. "You'll hurt yourself; you'll cut your
head off!"

"One--two," said Tom, resolutely, though at "two" his wrist trembled a
little. "Three" came more slowly, and with it the sword swung
downward, and Maggie gave a loud shriek. The sword had fallen, with
its edge on Tom's foot, and in a moment after he had fallen too.
Maggie leaped from the bed, still shrieking, and immediately there was
a rush of footsteps toward the room. Mr. Stelling, from his upstairs
study, was the first to enter. He found both the children on the
floor. Tom had fainted, and Maggie was shaking him by the collar of
his jacket, screaming, with wild eyes. She thought he was dead, poor
child! and yet she shook him, as if that would bring him back to life.
In another minute she was sobbing with joy because Tom opened his
eyes. She couldn't sorrow yet that he had hurt his foot; it seemed as
if all happiness lay in his being alive.

 Tom and Philip are no longer speaking and only talk to one another when Mr. Stelling is around. Maggie shows up and Tom is glad. Maggie instantly likes Philip since she pities him. Tom runs upstairs, telling Maggie that he has a surprise for her and that he'll show it to her later that day. The boys and Maggie gather in the school room to do homework. Philip is instantly charmed by Maggie and wishes that he had a nice sister like her. Tom then drags Maggie upstairs for his big surprise. He makes Maggie close her eyes and, when she opens them, she sees Tom, dressed up with a fake mustache, holding a real sword. Tom starts swinging the sword around and Maggie freaks out and says he'll hurt himself. Maggie was right, since Tom quickly drops the swords and stabs himself in the foot. Maggie starts screaming and the whole household is in turmoil.

