Book 7 - Chapter 5

The Last Conflict

In the second week of September, Maggie was again sitting in her
lonely room, battling with the old shadowy enemies that were forever
slain and rising again. It was past midnight, and the rain was beating
heavily against the window, driven with fitful force by the rushing,
loud-moaning wind. For the day after Lucy's visit there had been a
sudden change in the weather; the heat and drought had given way to
cold variable winds, and heavy falls of rain at intervals; and she had
been forbidden to risk the contemplated journey until the weather
should become more settled. In the counties higher up the Floss the
rains had been continuous, and the completion of the harvest had been
arrested. And now, for the last two days, the rains on this lower
course of the river had been incessant, so that the old men had shaken
their heads and talked of sixty years ago, when the same sort of
weather, happening about the equinox, brought on the great floods,
which swept the bridge away, and reduced the town to great misery. But
the younger generation, who had seen several small floods, thought
lightly of these sombre recollections and forebodings; and Bob Jakin,
naturally prone to take a hopeful view of his own luck, laughed at his
mother when she regretted their having taken a house by the riverside,
observing that but for that they would have had no boats, which were
the most lucky of possessions in case of a flood that obliged them to
go to a distance for food.

But the careless and the fearful were alike sleeping in their beds
now. There was hope that the rain would abate by the morrow;
threatenings of a worse kind, from sudden thaws after falls of snow,
had often passed off, in the experience of the younger ones; and at
the very worst, the banks would be sure to break lower down the river
when the tide came in with violence, and so the waters would be
carried off, without causing more than temporary inconvenience, and
losses that would be felt only by the poorer sort, whom charity would
relieve.

All were in their beds now, for it was past midnight; all except some
solitary watchers such as Maggie. She was seated in her little parlor
toward the river, with one candle, that left everything dim in the
room except a letter which lay before her on the table. That letter,
which had come to her to-day, was one of the causes that had kept her
up far on into the night, unconscious how the hours were going,
careless of seeking rest, with no image of rest coming across her
mind, except of that far, far off rest from which there would be no
more waking for her into this struggling earthly life.

Two days before Maggie received that letter, she had been to the
Rectory for the last time. The