Tom, after a while, started the idea that Maggie was
gone home (without thinking it necessary to state
that it was what he should have done himself under
the circumstances), and the suggestion was seized
as a comfort by his mother.
“Sister, for goodness’ sake let ’em
put the horse in the carriage and take me home; we
shall perhaps find her on the road. Lucy can’t
walk in her dirty clothes,” she said, looking
at that innocent victim, who was wrapped up in a shawl,
and sitting with naked feet on the sofa.
Aunt Pullet was quite willing to take the shortest
means of restoring her premises to order and quiet,
and it was not long before Mrs. Tulliver was in the
chaise, looking anxiously at the most distant point
before her. What the father would say if Maggie
was lost, was a question that predominated over every
other.
Maggie Tries to Run away from Her Shadow
Maggie’s intentions, as usual, were on a larger
scale than Tom imagined. The resolution that
gathered in her mind, after Tom and Lucy had walked
away, was not so simple as that of going home.
No! she would run away and go to the gypsies, and
Tom should never see her any more. That was by
no means a new idea to Maggie; she had been so often
told she was like a gypsy, and “half wild,”
that when she was miserable it seemed to her the only
way of escaping opprobrium, and being entirely in
harmony with circumstances, would be to live in a
little brown tent on the commons; the gypsies, she
considered, would gladly receive her and pay her much
respect on account of her superior knowledge.
She had once mentioned her views on this point to Tom
and suggested that he should stain his face brown,
and they should run away together; but Tom rejected
the scheme with contempt, observing that gypsies were
thieves, and hardly got anything to eat and had nothing
to drive but a donkey. To-day however, Maggie
thought her misery had reached a pitch at which gypsydom
was her refuge, and she rose from her seat on the
roots of the tree with the sense that this was a great
crisis in her life; she would run straight away till
she came to Dunlow Common, where there would certainly
be gypsies; and cruel Tom, and the rest of her relations
who found fault with her, should never see her any
more. She thought of her father as she ran along,
but she reconciled herself to the idea of parting with
him, by determining that she would secretly send him
a letter by a small gypsy, who would run away without
telling where she was, and just let him know that
she was well and happy, and always loved him very much.
