A terrible alarm took possession of her.
`O, have we passed Luckreth - where we were to stop?' she exclaimed, looking back, to see if the place were out of sight.No village was to be seen.She turned round again, with a look of distressed questioning at Stephen.
He went on watching the water, and said, in a strange, dreamy, absence tone, `Yes - a long way.'
`O what shall I do?' cried Maggie, in an agony.`We shall not get home for hours - and Lucy - O God, help me!'
She clasped her hands and broke into a sob, like a frightened child:
she thought of nothing but of meeting Lucy, and seeing her look of pained surprise and doubt - perhaps of just upbraiding.
Stephen moved and sat beside her and gently drew down the clasped hands.
`Maggie,' he said, in a deep tone of slow decision, `let us never go home again - till no one can part us - till we are married.'
The unusual tone, the startling words, arrested Maggie's sob, and she sat quite still - wondering: as if Stephen might have seen some possibilities that would alter everything, and annual the wretched facts.
`See, Maggie, how everything has come without our seeking - in spite of all our efforts.We never thought of being alone together again - it has all been done by others.See how the tide is carrying us out - away from all those unnatural bonds that we have been trying to make faster round us - and trying in vain.It will carry us on to Torby, and we can land there, and get some carriage, and hurry on to York, and then to Scotland - and never pause a moment till we are bound to each other so that only death can part us.It is the only right thing - dearest - it is the only way of escaping from this wretched entanglement.Everything has concurred to point it out to us.We have contrived nothing, we have thought of nothing ourselves.'
Stephen spoke with deep, earnest pleading.Maggie listened - passing from her startled wonderment to the yearning after that belief that the tide was doing it all - that she might glide along with the swift, silent stream and not struggle any more.But across that stealing influence came the terrible shadow of past thoughts; and the sudden horror lest now at last the moment of fatal intoxication was close upon her, called up a feeling of angry resistance towards Stephen.
`Let me go!' she said, in an agitated tone, flashing an indignant look at him, and trying to get her hands free.`You have wanted to deprive me of any choice.You knew we were come too far - you have dared to take advantage of my thoughtlessness.It is unmanly to bring me into such a position.'
Stung at this reproach, he released her hands, moved back to his former place, and folded his arms, in a sort of desperation at the difficulty Maggie's words had made present to him.If she would not consent to go on, he must curse himself for the embarrassment he had led her into.But the reproach was the unendurable thing: the one thing worse than parting with her was, that she should feel he had acted unworthily towards her.
At last he said, in a tone of suppressed rage, `I didn't notice that we had passed Luckreth, till we had got to the next village - and then it came into my mind that we would go on.I can't justify it - I ought to have told you.It is enough to make you hate me - since you don't love me well enough to make everything else indifferent to you - as I do you.Shall I stop the boat, and try to get you out here?
I'll tell Lucy that I was mad - and that you hate me - and you shall be clear of me for ever.No one can blame you, because I have behaved unpardonably to you.'
Maggie was paralysed: it was easier to resist Stephen's pleading, than this picture he had called up of himself suffering, while she was vindicated - easier even to turn away from his look of tenderness than from this look of angry misery, that seemed to place her in selfish isolation from him.
He had called up a state of feeling in which the reasons which had acted on her conscience seemed to be transmuted into mere self-regard.The indignant fire in her eyes was quenched - and she began to look at him with timid distress.She had reproached him for being hurried into irrevocable trespass - she , who had been so weak herself.
`As if I shouldn't feel what happened to you - just the same' - she said, with reproach of another kind - the reproach of love, asking for more trust.This yielding to the idea of Stephen's suffering was more fatal than the other yielding, because it was less distinguishable from that sense of others' claims which was the moral basis of her resistance.
He felt all the relenting in her look and tone, - it was heaven opening again.He moved to her side, and took her hand, leaning his elbow on the back of the boat, and said nothing.He dreaded to utter another word -he dreaded to make another movement, that might provoke another reproach or denial from her.Life hung on her consent - everything else was hopeless, confused, sickening misery.They glided along in this way, both resting in that silence as in a haven - both dreading lest their feelings should be divided again, till they became aware that the clouds had gathered, and that the slightest perceptible freshening of the breeze was growing and growing, till the whole character of the day was altered.
`You will be chill, Maggie, in this thin dress.Let me raise the cloak over your shoulders.Get up an instant, dearest.'