Book 4 - Chapter 2 - Page 2

have happened
to her which had not happened to other women remained an insoluble
question by which she expressed her perpetual ruminating comparison of
the past with the present. It was piteous to see the comely woman
getting thinner and more worn under a bodily as well as mental
restlessness, which made her often wander about the empty house after
her work was done, until Maggie, becoming alarmed about her, would
seek her, and bring her down by telling her how it vexed Tom that she
was injuring her health by never sitting down and resting herself. Yet
amidst this helpless imbecility there was a touching trait of humble,
self-devoting maternity, which made Maggie feel tenderly toward her
poor mother amidst all the little wearing griefs caused by her mental
feebleness. She would let Maggie do none of the work that was heaviest
and most soiling to the hands, and was quite peevish when Maggie
attempted to relieve her from her grate-brushing and scouring: "Let it
alone, my dear; your hands 'ull get as hard as hard," she would say;
"it's your mother's place to do that. I can't do the sewing--my eyes
fail me." And she would still brush and carefully tend Maggie's hair,
which she had become reconciled to, in spite of its refusal to curl,
now it was so long and massy. Maggie was not her pet child, and, in
general, would have been much better if she had been quite different;
yet the womanly heart, so bruised in its small personal desires, found
a future to rest on in the life of this young thing, and the mother
pleased herself with wearing out her own hands to save the hands that
had so much more life in them.

But the constant presence of her mother's regretful bewilderment was
less painful to Maggie than that of her father's sullen,
incommunicative depression. As long as the paralysis was upon him, and
it seemed as if he might always be in a childlike condition of
dependence,--as long as he was still only half awakened to his
trouble,--Maggie had felt the strong tide of pitying love almost as an
inspiration, a new power, that would make the most difficult life easy
for his sake; but now, instead of childlike dependence, there had come
a taciturn, hard concentration of purpose, in strange contrast with
his old vehement communicativeness and high spirit; and this lasted
from day to day, and from week to week, the dull eye never brightening
with any eagerness or any joy. It is something cruelly incomprehensible
to youthful natures, this sombre sameness in middle-aged and elderly
people, whose life has resulted in disappointment and discontent, to
whose faces a smile becomes so strange that the sad lines all about
the lips and brow seem to take no notice of it, and it hurries away
again for want of a welcome.