Book 7 - Chapter 1

The Return to the Mill

Between four and five o'clock on the afternoon of the fifth day from
that on which Stephen and Maggie had left St. Ogg's, Tom Tulliver was
standing on the gravel walk outside the old house at Dorlcote Mill. He
was master there now; he had half fulfilled his father's dying wish,
and by years of steady self-government and energetic work he had
brought himself near to the attainment of more than the old
respectability which had been the proud inheritance of the Dodsons and
Tullivers.

But Tom's face, as he stood in the hot, still sunshine of that summer
afternoon, had no gladness, no triumph in it. His mouth wore its
bitterest expression, his severe brow its hardest and deepest fold, as
he drew down his hat farther over his eyes to shelter them from the
sun, and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, began to walk up
and down the gravel. No news of his sister had been heard since Bob
Jakin had come back in the steamer from Mudport, and put an end to all
improbable suppositions of an accident on the water by stating that he
had seen her land from a vessel with Mr. Stephen Guest. Would the next
news be that she was married,--or what? Probably that she was not
married; Tom's mind was set to the expectation of the worst that could
happen,--not death, but disgrace.

As he was walking with his back toward the entrance gate, and his face
toward the rushing mill-stream, a tall, dark-eyed figure, that we know
well, approached the gate, and paused to look at him with a
fast-beating heart. Her brother was the human being of whom she had
been most afraid from her childhood upward; afraid with that fear
which springs in us when we love one who is inexorable, unbending,
unmodifiable, with a mind that we can never mould ourselves upon, and
yet that we cannot endure to alienate from us.

That deep-rooted fear was shaking Maggie now; but her mind was
unswervingly bent on returning to her brother, as the natural refuge
that had been given her. In her deep humiliation under the retrospect
of her own weakness,--in her anguish at the injury she had
inflicted,--she almost desired to endure the severity of Tom's
reproof, to submit in patient silence to that harsh, disapproving
judgment against which she had so often rebelled; it seemed no more
than just to her now,--who was weaker than she was? She craved that
outward help to her better purpose which would come from complete,
submissive confession; from being in the presence of those whose looks
and words would be a reflection of her own conscience.

Maggie had been kept on her bed at York for a day with that
prostrating headache which was likely to follow on the terrible strain
of the previous day and night. There was an