These words were wrung forth from Maggie’s deepest
soul, with an effort like the convulsed clutch of
a drowning man. Lucy trembled and was silent.
A gentle knock came at the door. It was Alice,
the maid, who entered and said,—
“I daren’t stay any longer, Miss Deane.
They’ll find it out, and there’ll be such
anger at your coming out so late.”
Lucy rose and said, “Very well, Alice,—in
a minute.”
“I’m to go away on Friday, Maggie,”
she added, when Alice had closed the door again.
“When I come back, and am strong, they will let
me do as I like. I shall come to you when I please
then.”
“Lucy,” said Maggie, with another great
effort, “I pray to God continually that I may
never be the cause of sorrow to you any more.”
She pressed the little hand that she held between
hers, and looked up into the face that was bent over
hers. Lucy never forgot that look.
“Maggie,” she said, in a low voice, that
had the solemnity of confession in it, “you
are better than I am. I can’t——”
She broke off there, and said no more. But they
clasped each other again in a last embrace.
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.
