Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any programme our fear has sketched out. Fear is almost always haunted by terrible dramatic scenes, which recur in spite of the best-argued probabilities against them; and during a year that Maggie had had the burthen of concealment on her mind, the possibility of discovery had continually presented itself under the form of a sudden meeting with her father or Tom when she was walking with Philip in the Red Deeps. She was aware that this was not one of the most likely events; but it was the scene that most completely symbolized her inward dread. Those slight indirect suggestions which are dependent on apparently trivial coincidences and incalculable states of mind, are the favorite machinery of Fact, but are not the stuff in which Imagination is apt to work.
Certainly one of the persons about whom Maggie’s fears were furthest from troubling themselves was her aunt Pullet, on whom, seeing that she did not live in St. Ogg’s, and was neither sharp-eyed nor sharp-tempered, it would surely have been quite whimsical of them to fix rather than on aunt Glegg. And yet the channel of fatality — the pathway of the lightning — was no other than aunt Pullet. She did not live at St. Ogg’s, but the road from Garum Firs lay by the Red Deeps, at the end opposite that by which Maggie entered.
The day after Maggie’s last meeting with Philip, being a Sunday on which Mr. Pullet was bound to appear in funeral hatband and scarf at St. Ogg’s church, Mrs. Pullet made this the occasion of dining with sister Glegg, and taking tea with poor sister Tulliver. Sunday was the one day in the week on which Tom was at home in the afternoon; and today the brighter spirits he had been in of late had flowed over in unusually cheerful open chat with his father, and in the invitation, “Come, Magsie, you come too!” when he strolled out with his mother in the garden to see the advancing cherry-blossoms. He had been better pleased with Maggie since she had been less odd and ascetic; he was even getting rather proud of her; several persons had remarked in his hearing that his sister was a very fine girl. To-day there was a peculiar brightness in her face, due in reality to an undercurrent of excitement, which had as much doubt and pain as pleasure in it; but it might pass for a sign of happiness.
“You look very well, my dear,” said aunt Pullet, shaking her head sadly, as they sat round the tea-table. “I niver thought your girl ‘ud be so good-looking, Bessy. But you must wear pink, my dear; that blue thing as your aunt Glegg gave you turns you into a crowflower. Jane never was tasty. Why don’t you wear that gown o’ mine?”
“It is so pretty and so smart, aunt. I think it’s too showy for me — at least for my other clothes, that I must wear with it.
“To be sure, it ‘ud be unbecoming if it wasn’t well known you’ve got them belonging to you as can afford to give you such things when they’ve done with ’em themselves. It stands to reason I must give my own niece clothes now and then — such things as I buy every year, and never wear anything out. And as for Lucy, there’s no giving to her, for she’s got everything o’ the choicest; sister Deane may well hold her head up — though she looks dreadful yallow, poor thing — I doubt this liver complaint ‘ull carry her off. That’s what this new vicar, this Dr. Kenn, said in the funeral sermon to-day.”
“Ah, he’s a wonderful preacher, by all account — isn’t he, Sophy?” said Mrs. Tulliver.
“Why, Lucy had got a collar on this blessed day,” continued Mrs. Pullet, with her eyes fixed in a ruminating manner, “as I don’t say I haven’t got as good, but I must look out my best to match it.”
“Miss Lucy’s called the bell o’ St. Ogg’s, they say; that’s a cur’ous word,” observed Mr. Pullet, on whom the mysteries of etymology sometimes fell with an oppressive weight.
“Pooh!” said Mr. Tulliver, jealous for Maggie, “she’s a small thing, not much of a figure. But fine feathers make fine birds. I see nothing to admire so much in those diminutive women; they look silly by the side o’ the men — out o’ proportion. When I chose my wife, I chose her the right size — neither too little nor too big.”
The poor wife, with her withered beauty, smiled complacently.
“But the men aren’t all big,” said uncle Pullet, not without some self-reference; “a young fellow may be good-looking and yet not be a six-foot, like Master Tom here.
“Ah, it’s poor talking about littleness and bigness — anybody may think it’s a mercy they’re straight,” said aunt Pullet. “There’s that mismade son o’ Lawyer Wakem’s, I saw him at church to-day. Dear, dear! to think o’ the property he’s like to have; and they say he’s very queer and lonely, doesn’t like much company. I shouldn’t wonder if he goes out of his mind; for we never come along the road but he’s a-scrambling out o’ the trees and brambles at the Red Deeps.”
This wide statement, by which Mrs. Pullet represented the fact that she had twice seen Philip at the spot indicated, produced an effect on Maggie which was all the stronger because Tom sate opposite her, and she was intensely anxious to look indifferent. At Philip’s name she had blushed, and the blush deepened every instant from consciousness, until the mention of the Red Deeps made her feel as if the whole secret were betrayed, and she dared not even hold her tea-spoon lest she should show how she trembled. She sat with her hands clasped under the table, not daring to look round. Happily, her father was seated on the same side with herself, beyond her uncle Pullet, and could not see her face without stooping forward. Her mother’s voice brought the first relief, turning the conversation; for Mrs. Tulliver was always alarmed when the name of Wakem was mentioned in her husband’s presence. Gradually Maggie recovered composure enough to look up; her eyes met Tom’s, but he turned away his head immediately; and she went to bed that night wondering if he had gathered any suspicion from her confusion. Perhaps not; perhaps he would think it was only her alarm at her aunt’s mention of Wakem before her father; that was the interpretation her mother had put in it. To her father, Wakem was like a disfiguring disease, of which he was obliged to endure the consciousness, but was exasperated to have the existence recognized by others; and no amount of sensitiveness in her about her father could be surprising, Maggie thought.
But Tom was too keen-sighted to rest satisfied with such an interpretation; he had seen clearly enough that there was something distinct from anxiety about her father in Maggie’s excessive confusion. In trying to recall all the details that could give shape to his suspicions, he remembered only lately hearing his mother scold Maggie for walking in the Red Deeps when the ground was wet, and bringing home shoes clogged with red soil; still Tom, retaining all his old repulsion for Philip’s deformity, shrank from attributing to his sister the probability of feeling more than a friendly interest in such an unfortunate exception to the common run of men. Tom’s was a nature which had a sort of superstitious repugnance to everything exceptional. A love for a deformed man would be odious in any woman, in a sister intolerable. But if she had been carrying on any kind of intercourse whatever with Philip, a stop must be put to it at once; she was disobeying her father’s strongest feelings and her brother’s express commands, besides compromising herself by secret meetings. He left home the next morning in that watchful state of mind which turns the most ordinary course of things into pregnant coincidences.
That afternoon, about half-past three o’clock, Tom was standing on the wharf, talking with Bob Jakin about the probability of the good ship Adelaide coming in, in a day or two, with results highly important to both of them.
“Eh,” said Bob, parenthetically, as he looked over the fields on the other side of the river, “there goes that crooked young Wakem. I know him or his shadder as far off as I can see ’em; I’m allays lighting on him o’ that side the river.”
A sudden thought seemed to have darted through Tom’s mind. “I must go, Bob,” he said; “I’ve something to attend to,” hurrying off to the warehouse, where he left notice for some one to take his place; he was called away home on peremptory business.
The swiftest pace and the shortest road took him to the gate, and he was pausing to open it deliberately, that he might walk into the house with an appearance of perfect composure, when Maggie came out at the front door in bonnet and shawl. His conjecture was fulfilled, and he waited for her at the gate. She started violently when she saw him.
“Tom, how is it you are come home? Is there anything the matter?” Maggie spoke in a low, tremulous voice.
“I’m come to walk with you to the Red Deeps, and meet Philip Wakem,” said Tom, the central fold in his brow, which had become habitual with him, deepening as he spoke.
Maggie stood helpless, pale and cold. By some means, then, Tom knew everything. At last she said, “I’m, not going,” and turned round.
“Yes, you are; but I want to speak to you first. Where is my father?”
“Out on horseback.”
“And my mother?”
“In the yard, I think, with the poultry.”
“I can go in, then, without her seeing me?”
They walked in together, and Tom, entering the parlor, said to Maggie, “Come in here.”
She obeyed, and he closed the door behind her.
“Now, Maggie, tell me this instant everything that has passed between you and Philip Wakem.”
“Does my father know anything?” said Maggie, still trembling.
“No,” said Tom indignantly. “But he shall know, if you attempt to use deceit toward me any further.”
“I don’t wish to use deceit,” said Maggie, flushing into resentment at hearing this word applied to her conduct.
“Tell me the whole truth, then.”
“Perhaps you know it.”
“Never mind whether I know it or not. Tell me exactly what has happened, or my father shall know everything.”
“I tell it for my father’s sake, then.”
“Yes, it becomes you to profess affection for your father, when you have despised his strongest feelings.”
“You never do wrong, Tom,” said Maggie, tauntingly.
“Not if I know it,” answered Tom, with proud sincerity.
“But I have nothing to say to you beyond this: tell me what has passed between you and Philip Wakem. When did you first meet him in the Red Deeps?”
“A year ago,” said Maggie, quietly. Tom’s severity gave her a certain fund of defiance, and kept her sense of error in abeyance. “You need ask me no more questions. We have been friendly a year. We have met and walked together often. He has lent me books.”
“Is that all?” said Tom, looking straight at her with his frown.
Maggie paused a moment; then, determined to make an end of Tom’s right to accuse her of deceit, she said haughtily:
“No, not quite all. On Saturday he told me that he loved me. I didn’t think of it before then; I had only thought of him as an old friend.”
“And you encouraged him?” said Tom, with an expression of disgust.
“I told him that I loved him too.”
Tom was silent a few moments, looking on the ground and frowning, with his hands in his pockets. At last he looked up and said coldly —
“Now, then, Maggie, there are but two courses for you to take — either you vow solemnly to me, with your hand on my father’s Bible, that you will never have another meeting or speak another word in private with Philip Wakem, or you refuse, and I tell my father everything; and this month, when by my exertions he might be made happy once more, you will cause him the blow of knowing that you are a disobedient, deceitful daughter, who throws away her own respectability by clandestine meetings with the son of a man that has helped to ruin her father. Choose!” Tom ended with cold decision, going up to the large Bible, drawing it forward, and opening it at the fly-leaf, where the writing was.
It was a crushing alternative to Maggie.
“Tom,” she said, urged out of pride into pleading, “don’t ask me that. I will promise you to give up all intercourse with Philip, if you will let me see him once, or even only write to him and explain everything — to give it up as long as it would ever cause any pain to my father. I feel something for Philip too. He is not happy.”
“I don’t wish to hear anything of your feelings; I have said exactly what I mean. Choose, and quickly, lest my mother should come in.”
“If I give you my word, that will be as strong a bond to me as if I laid my hand on the Bible. I don’............