CHAPTER 3
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The Wavering BalanceI SAID that Maggie went home that evening from the Red Deeps with a mental flict already begun. You have seen clearly enough in her interview<abbr></abbr> with Philip, what that flict was. Here suddenly ening in the rocky wall which shut in the narrow Valley of Humiliation, where all her prospect was the remote unfathomed sky; and some of the memory-hauntihly delights were no longer out of her reach. She might have books, verse, affe - she might hear tidings of the world from which her mind had not yet lost its sense of exile; and it would be a kio Philip too, who itiable - clearly not happy; and perhaps here portunity indicated for making her mind more worthy of its highest service - perhaps the , pletest devoutness could hardly exist without some width of knowledge: must she always live in this resigned impriso? It was so blameless, so good a thing that there should be friendship between her and Philip; the motives that forbade it were so unreasonable - so unchristian! - But the severe monotonous warning came again and again - that she was losing the simplicity and clearness of her life by admitting a ground of cealment, and that by forsaking the simple rule of renunciation, she was throwing herself uhe seductive guidance of illimitable wants. She thought she had won strength to obey the warning before she allowed herself the week to tureps in the evening to the Red Deeps. But while she was resolved to say an affeate farewell to Philip, how she looked forward to that evening walk iill, fleckered shade of the hollows, away from all that was harsh and unlovely; to the affeate admiring looks that would meet her; to the sense of radeship that childish memories would give to wiser, older talk; to the certainty that Philip would care to hear everything she said, whio one else cared for! It was a half hour that it would be very hard to turn her back upon, with the sehat there would be no other like it. Yet she said what she meant to say: she looked firm as well as sad. `Philip, I have made up my mind - it is right that we should give each other up, ihing but memory. I could not see you without cealment - say, I know what yoing to say - it is another peoples wrong feelings that make cealment necessary - but cealment is bad, however it may be caused: I feel that it would be bad for me, for us both. And then, if our secret were discovered, there would be nothing but misery - dreadful anger - and then we must part after all, and it would be harder, when we were used to seeing each other.
Philips face had flushed and there was a momentary eagerness of expression as if he had been about to resist this decision with all his might. But he trolled himself, and said with assumed ess, `Well, Maggie, if we must part, let us try and fet it for one half hour - let us talk together a little while - for the last time.
He took her hand, and Maggie felt no reason to withdraw it: his quietness made her all the more sure she had given him great pain, and she wao show him how unwillingly she had given it. They walked together hand in hand in silence.
`Let us sit down in this hollohilip, `where we stood the last time. See how the dog-roses have strewed the ground, and spread their opal petals over it!
They sat down at the roots of the slanting ash.
`Ive begun my picture of you among the Scotch firs, Maggie, said Philip, `so you must let me study your face a little, while you stay - since I am not to see it again. Please, turn your head this way.
This was said in areating voice, and it would have been very hard of Maggie to refuse. The full lustrous face with the bright black et, looked down like that of a divinity well pleased to be worshipped on the pale-hued, small-featured face that was turned up to it.
`I shall be sitting for my sed portrait, then, she said, smiling. `Will it be larger that the other?
`O yes, much larger. It is an oil-painting. You will look like at tall Hamadryad, dark and strong and noble, just issued from one of the fir-trees, wheems are casting their afternoon shadows on the grass.
`You seem to think more of painting that of anything now, Philip?
`Perhaps I do, said Philip, rather sadly, `but I think of too many things - sow all sorts of seeds, a no great harvest from any one of them. Im cursed with susceptibility in every dire, and effective faculty in none. I care for painting and music - I care for classic literature, and mediaeval literature and modern literature - I flutter all ways, and fly in none.
`But surely that is a happio have so many tastes - to enjoy so maiful things - when they are within your reach, said Maggie, musingly. `It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent - almost like a carrier-pigeon.
`It might be a happio have many tastes if I were like other men, said Philip, bitterly. `I might get some power and distin by mere mediocrity, as they do - at least I should get those middling satisfas which make men teo do without great ones. I might think society at St Oggs agreeable then. But nothing could make life worth the purchase-money of pain to me but some faculty that would lift me above the dead level of provincial existence. Yes - there is ohing: a passion answers as well as a faculty.
Maggie did not hear the last words: she was struggling against the scioushat Philips words had set her own distent vibrating again as it used to do.
`I uand what you mean, she said, `though I know so much less that you do. I used to think I could never bear life if it kept on being the same every day, and I must always be doing things of no sequence, and never k<strike>九九藏书</strike>now anything greater. But, dear Philip, I think we are only like children, that some one who is wiser is taking care of. Is it nht tn ourselves entirely, whatever may be denied us? I have found great pea that for the last two on three years - even joy in subduing my own will.
`Yes, Maggie, said Philip, vehemently, `and you are shutting yourself up in a narrow self-delusive fanaticism which is only a way of esg pain by starving into dulness all the highest powers of your nature. Joy and peace are nnatination is the willing endurance of a pain that is not allayed - that you dont expect to be allayed. Stupefa is nnation: and it is stupefa to remain in ignorao shut up all the avenues by which the life of your fellow-men might bee known to you. I am nned: I am not sure that life is long enough to learn that lesson. You are nned: you are only trying to stupefy yourself.
Maggies lips trembled; she felt there was some truth in hilip said, ahere was a deeper scioushat for any immediate application it had to her duct it was er than falsity. Her double impression correspoo the double impulse of the speaker. Philip seriously believed what he said, but he said it with vehemence because it made an argument against the resolution that opposed his wishes. But Maggies face, made more child-like by the gathering tears, touched him with a tenderer, less egoistic feeling. He took her hand and said gently--
`Do us think of such things in this short half hour, Maggie. Let us only care about being together... we shall be friends in spite of separation... we shall always think of each other. I shall be glad to live<code>99lib.</code> as long as you are alive, because I shall think there may always e a time when I - when you will let me help you in some way.
`What a dear, good brother you would have been Philip, said Maggie, smiling through the haze of tears. `I think you would have made as much fuss about me, and been as pleased for me to love you, as would have satisfied even me. You would have loved me well enough to bear with me, and five me everything. That was what I always lohat Tom should do. I was never satisfied with a little of anything. That is why it is better for me to do without earthly happiness altogether... I never felt that I had enough music - I wanted more instruments playing together - I wanted voices to be fuller and deeper. Do you ever sing now, Philip? she added abruptly, as if she had fotten what went before.
`Yes, he said, `every day, almost. But my voice is only middling - like everything else in me.
`O sing me something - just on song. I may listen to that, before I go - something you used to sing a Lorton on a Saturday afternoon, when we had the drawing-room all to ourselves, and I put my apron over my head, to listen.
`I knohilip, and Maggie buried her fa her hands, while he sang, sotto voce `Love in her eyes sits playing, and then said, `Thats it, isnt it?
`O no, I wont stay, said Maggie, starting up. `It will only haunt me. Let us walk, Philip. I must go home.
She moved away, so that he was obliged to rise and follow her.
`Maggie, he said, in a tone of remonstrance, `Dont persist in this wilful senseless privation. It makes me wretched to see you benumbing and cramping your nature in this way. You were so full of life when you were a child - I thought you would be a brilliant woman - all wit and bright imagination. And it flashes out in your face still, until you draw that veil of dull quiesce over it.
`Why do you speak so bitterly to me, Philip? said Maggie.
`Because I foresee it will not end well; you ever carry on this self-torture.
`I shall have strength given me, said Maggie, tremulously.
`No, you will not, Maggie: no one has strength given to do what is unnatural. It is mere cowardice to seek safety iions. No character bees strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world some day, and then every rational satisfa of your nature that you deny now, will assault you like a savage appetite.
Maggie started a paused, looking at Philip with alarm in her face.
`Philip, how dare you shake me in this way? You are a tempter.
`No, I am not; but love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me - let me supply you with books. Do let me see you sometimes - by your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be itting this long suicide.
Maggie felt uo speak. She shook her head and walked on in sileill they came to the end of the Scotch firs, and she put out her hand in sign of parting.
`Do you banish me from this place for ever, then, Maggie? Surely I may e and walk in it sometimes. If I meet you by ce, there is no cealment in that?
It is the moment when our resolution seems about to bee irrevocable - wheal iron gates are about to close upon us - that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm vi, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles and bring us the defeat that we love better t<var>九九藏书</var>hat victory.
Maggie felt her heart leap at this subterfuge of Philips, and there passed over her face that almost impercepti<cite>99lib.</cite>ble shock which apanies any relief. He saw it, and they parted in silence.
Philips sense of the situation was too plete for him not to be visited with glang fears lest he had been intervening too presumptuously iion of Maggies sce - perhaps for a selfish end. But no! - he persuaded himself his end was not selfish. He had little hope that Maggie would ever returrong feeling he had for her; and it must be better fgies future life, when these petty family obstacles to her freedom had disappeared, that the present should not be entirely sacrificed, and that she should have some opportunity of culture, some interge with a mind above the vulgar level of those she was now o live with. If we only look far enough off for the sequences of our as, we always find some point in the bination of results by which those as be justified: by adopting the point of view of a Providence whes results or of a philosopher who traces them, we shall find it possible to obtain perfepla choosing to do what is most agreeable to us in the present moment. And it was in this way that Philip justified his subtle efforts to overaggies true prompting against a cealment that would introduce doubleness into her own mind and might cause new misery to those who had the primary natural claim on her. But there was a surplus of passion in him that made him half indepe of justifying motives. His longing to see Maggie and make a in her life, had in it some of that savage impulse to snat offered joy which springs from a life in which the mental and bodily stitution have made pain predominate. He had not his full share in the on good of men: he could not even pass muster with the insignifit, but must be singled out for pity, and excepted from what was a matter of course with others. Even to Maggie he was an exception: it was clear that the thought of his being her lover had never entered her mind.
Do not think too hardly of Philip. Ugly and deformed people have great need of unusual virtues, because they are likely to be extremely unfortable without them: but the theory that unusual virtues spring by a direct seque of personal disadvantages, as animals get thicker wool in severe climates, is perhaps a little overstraihe temptations of beauty are much dwelt upon, but I fancy they only bear the same relation to those of ugliness, as the temptation to excess at a feast, where the delights are varied for eye and ear as well as palate, bears to the temptations that assail the desperation of hunger. Does not the Huower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what is human in us?
Philip had never been soothed by that mothers love which flows out to us in the greater abundance because our need is greater, which gs to us the more tenderly because we are the less likely to be winners in the game of life; and the sense of his fathers affe and indulgeowards him was marred by the keener perception of his fathers faults. Kept aloof from all practical life as Philip had been, and by nature half feminine iiveness, he had some of the womans i repulsion towards worldliness and the deliberate pursuit of sensual enjoyment, and this orong natural tie in his life - his relation as a son - was like an ag limb to him. Perhaps there is iably something morbid in a human being who is in any way unfavourably excepted from ordinary ditions until the good force has had time to triumph, and it has rarely had time for that at two-and-twenty. That force resent in Philip in much strength, but the sun himself looks feeble through the m mists.
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