“BUT, MY DEAR little Mary, your mother, who is a kind woman, will never press you to marry him — if you don’t like him,” John said.
“Oh, Mr Rushton, you don’t know what mother is. She says it’s for my good. They always think it is for our good when they go against us. She says I’d be a deal better with a house of my own and a man to work for me, instead of slaving in the bar drawing beer, and forced to laugh and talk with all you gentlemen.”
This was a new view of the matter to John. “Were you forced to laugh and talk to us?” he said, with a sort of rueful chuckle. “That was perhaps a pity on all sides.”
“Oh, Mr Rushton!” cried Mary, “that’s what mother says. It’s not what I think — don’t you believe that.”
“It might have been better, however, if you had thought it,” John said.
“Oh, don’t say so!” cried the girl. “Then I never should have known anything better. When I think of you with your nice clean ways, and your white shirtfronts, and your soft clothes — and Jim comes in all as he has been working — —”
Mary paused with a little shudder, thinking of that honourable dew of labour which Scarfield had gently suggested might be washed off. It gave John the most curious, whimsical sensation of universal misunderstanding and general topsy-turvy to hear the girl’s statement of that influence which his friends had been discussing with so much more exalted ideas of its power.
“But surely you could get him to wash?” he said, with a laugh.
“It ain’t so easy as you think,” said Mary. “When you’re only keeping company they’ll do it, and keep themselves tidy; but when they are married men! — then they think only of what’s comfortable,” the girl said, with a sigh. Her head inclined almost upon John’s shoulder as she made her plaint, which was half ludicrous to him, not wholly touching as she hoped. “Oh, Mr Rushton, how can I ever make up my mind to such a fate?” Mary said.
“But, my little girl,” he said, “you know there is always one way out of it. You needn’t marry at all — at least, I mean just at present,” he added, hastily.
“What, and ‘ave mother nagging at me from morning to night?” said Mary, hastily; and then in a softened tone, “I’d wait — ah, for twenty years! — for one as I was really fond of,” she said.
And then there was a pause, and they went on together arm in arm: and the silence thrilled with meaning to poor little Mary, and perhaps to the young man, too, half carried out by the tide with which he had been so long dallying, half upon the dry ground to which he held with a sort of desperation— “One foot on sea and one on shore.” John was not of the kind of those who are “to one thing constant never”: yet he felt very strongly the force of this statement of his position. He could not bear to break her poor little heart, to fling her off into the arms of the unwashed Jim; but what could he do? To marry the daughters of the masses was not perhaps the way in which Oxford men could best influence those masses for good — and yet why not so if all their theories were true? He did not speak, though it was he who ought to have spoken. It was she who, after that moment of thrilling suspense which again came to nothing, took the word.
“I’ve been brought up too particular,” she said. “We shouldn’t be perhaps when it’s only to end in that. I’ve been brought up so that I’m only fit for another spear.”
“And what sphere is that, Mary?” He was a little amused, but he did, there was no denying, press to his side a little slender hand that clung to his arm.
“Oh, Mr Rushton, what you said yourself that time. Don’t you remember, just after you came up, you said, ‘Would you like to marry a gentleman?’” She began to cry softly in the dark, clinging to him. “Oh, Mr Rushton, when you said that it was like opening the gate just a little bit — to see heaven!”
“Did it look like that?” he said; his voice trembled a little. “It would be a poor heaven, Mary. I fear it wouldn’t be happy for you at all. Think! You would have to give up your own people — your mother and everything.”
“Well,” she said, “that’s only like what’s in the Bible— ‘Forget thine own people and thy father’s house.’”
“And his people, don’t you know, would be very angry, and perhaps would not — be civil. It may be very bad, but that is what they would do.”
“Oh, Mr Rushton!” she cried, clinging closer: “but if he should have no people — like — like — some gentlemen?” Mary did not venture yet to say “like you.”
“Everybody has some one,” he said, hastily, offended by this imputation, and feeling for the moment a strong impulse to push her away — which, however, was impossible to him. “My dear, you wouldn’t like it,” he said; “you wouldn’t be a bit happy; you would be out of it on both sides. And then, fancy if the man was poor — as most of us are when we offend our people. You think marrying a gentleman means having plenty of money, getting everything you wish, and nice dresses and a nice house, and all that; but it would be far worse to be poor as a gentleman’s wife than as — than in a different sphere.”
His taste revolted from saying “as Jim’s wife,” which were the natural words. John was not æsthetic, but to speak of a girl, even the maid of the inn, balancing thus between two men, was more than he could do.
“Oh, Mr Rushton,” she said, again, “what should I mind being poor if — if he loved me?” Her head touched his breast with a little soft sensation as of a — dreadful thought, for which he loathed himself! — a little soft cat rubbing itself against him. But yet it moved him all the same. Then Mary said, very low, raising the whiteness of her face towards him— “But, oh, Mr Rushton! — oh, Jack! — you’re not poor!”
His heart gave a startled leap, and then subsided. He laughed aloud, which broke the spell of the darkness and the whispering tones. “No, Mary,” he said; “I’m not poor. I’ll give you a little dot to make you happy with Jim. You shall have enough to set up in a Barley Mow of your own, where Jim, will make short work with the gentlemen. Have nothing more to do with the gentlemen, Mary. Now, come, let’s step out, and I’ll see you home.”
“Oh, Jack!” she cried; “Jack!” — still clinging to his arm.
“No more of that, my dear little girl; no more of that. It would be a great mistake for both of us. Play is very nice, but not when it goes too far. Come, you shall have a nice little fortune, which will be far better for you” (he remembered that she would not know what dot meant); “and marry Jim, and make him wash, and keep him up to the mark. He is a fine strong fellow; he looks very nice in his Sunday clothes. Come, little Mary, look up and don’t cry. Tell your mother she’s to come and see me to-morrow. We’ll do it all honestly and above board. We’ve nothing to be ashamed of, thank God! I’ll always think of you as a sweet little friend, very kind to me; and you’ll think of me, Mary — —”
“Oh, Mr Rushton! — oh, Mr Rushton!” she cried, drooping from his arm, still hanging on tight: but with something different in the hold, something — John felt it almost with a pang — which meant perhaps that she had been able to keep her footing, too, in spite of the dragging of the tide, which had almost, yet more nearly, carried himself away. Then Mary had a sudden little access of pride, and let his arm drop. “If you think I’m not good enough, after — after saying such things and making me believe! But you’re all the same; you are nothing but deceivers, as mother says. Or if you think I care for your money! I want none of your money! — as if it was got out of you for a breach of promise or something to buy me off! I go into court on a breach of promise to get money out of you! I would rather die!”
“And there’s no question of promise, breached or otherwise,” said John. “Here we are, Mary, in sight of your home; and you’ll send your mother to me to-morrow. Good-bye, my dear, and good-bye — —”
“I won’t!” she murmured, but it was under her breath. And John stood and watched till she had reached the spot where the lights of the little tavern shone out upon the road. Then he turned and walked quickly home. He was not very comfortable, poor fellow. It had cost him something to drop poor Mary’s clinging hands, and something more to hurt her feelings, which he sadly feared he must have done. It was brutal, he felt. If it had been a lady to whom he had spoken so, what flogging would have been too much for him? And yet, what else — what else could he have done? Suppose he had married her instead? The suggestion filled him with consternation. He said hurriedly to himself that it would not, could not have made her happy. And yet he felt that he was ashamed of himself as he marched home. He had played a poor part. It was heroic in its way, if the truth were known; but of that wretched kind of heroism which felt almost like shame. To treat a woman badly! He never thought, whatever censure he might incur, that such a thing as that would ever be said of him. And the dot, which had occurred to him on the spur of the moment to quiet his conscience — no doubt it would be flung back to him in his teeth, filling him with double shame.
He was still uncertain and excited about this when Mrs Brown, the landlady of the Old Hatchet, appeared in his rooms next day. His heart began to beat at the sight of her. He was no cynic. He thought it just as likely as not, and almost hoped for the sake of some foolish ideal — that she was coming to fling his promise back in his throat. But Mrs Brown was very friendly, with no warlike ideas. “My Mary said as I was to come to see you, sir,” she said. “I doubt she’s got some nonsense in her head, for it don’t sound likely: but something about a present, as she said you was a-going to give her for her wedding — I’m sure it’s most wonderful kind of you, if it’s true.”
“It is quite true, Mrs Brown,” said John, with a curious sick sensation, something between disappointment and relief. The ground seemed somehow cut from beneath his feet, leaving him faintly struggling for standing. Neither indignation nor lamentation — neither the moan of injured love nor the resentment of virtue assailed. A wedding-present! how much more rational, how much better every way to call it that — but he made a gasp for his breath before he went on. “Yes, Mrs Brown, it is quite true. I admire your daughter very much. I am sure she is as good as gold.”
“That she is, sir,” cried the good woman, with energy; “and a girl had need be that, I can tell you, to see all you gentlemen so familiar and paying her such compliments and never to give way, not a step.”
“It’s very creditable, indeed,” said John, with a smile, which was a little rueful. He would have liked to laugh, but dared not — nor did he feel at all like laughing if truth must be told. “I am going to leave Oxford,” he said, “and I’d like to show my appreciation. I hope you are quite sure that the young man is worthy of her,” he added, as he pulled his cheque-book out of its drawer.
“Oh, sir, he’s worthy of her if ever a man was — and they’ve kep’ company so long, ever since she was a little slip of a girl. I’m not a bit afraid of that. Lord, Mr Rushton, you don’t mean to say as this is all for my Mary! A hundred pound! if it had been a matter of ten to buy her her wedding-gown —— Sir, sir,” cried the good woman, getting up from her chair, “there was nothing between you but good-day and good-night, for the Lord’s sake tell me that!”
“Never!” said John, the blood flushing to his face— “on my honour, and as God hears me: nothing but friendship and admiration for as good a little girl as there is in the world.”
Mrs Brown went away well pleased, with the cheque folded up very small in her purse. She drew her own conclusions — which were that John had endeavoured to establish other relations and had been confounded by Mary’s goodness and sense of her own place. “He’s been a-trying to carry on,” she said to herself, nodding her head, “and has just got as good a settin’ down as ever a gentleman had: or else he’s asked her to marry him, private-like, and she wouldn’t. Oh, trust my Mary for that! She’s one as knows her place, and wouldn’t consent to nothing of that sort: but he ‘as behaved ‘andsome for a disappointed man, and I never will hear a word against him,” Mrs Brown said.
John stood at his window for some time after she had gone, with his hands in his pockets, whistling loudly. He felt as if he were digging his heels very deep into the soil to keep himself from doing something or other which it would not have been very wise to do. The tide was very strong, and if it once caught him, he did not know what he might do. Nor did he know what he wanted to do. He was in that state in which Satan finds some mischief still for every idle hand. He might have been led to concoct a strike or preach revolution had that stream caught the foot which he was digging into his carpet: or he might have done — worse. He might very easily have been plunged into unmentionable things: or he might have flung himself at the feet of the first pretty barmaid he encountered, out of spite against this one who had — behaved so very nicely. It was not a moment to stand and consider, even with the advantage of digging out two round holes in the carpet. He snatched up his rag of a gown and his college cap — (I will not pretend that he usually wore these things out of doors; he did not: and had got into the hands of proctors, and been disapproved of by Dons in consequence more times than I can reckon. But when one goes to see the Warden one is bound to academical costume.) He went there as fast as his feet could carry him, — to do something quickly and at once was the only salvation for him.
He was received by the Warden with a sort of grim kindness. “I perceive, Mr Rushton,” that dignitary said, “that you have done the work the College required of you. It is done, but it is not at all well done, I am sorry to say.”
“I know it isn’t well done, sir,” said John, with a rueful recollection of how hard it had been to do it at all.
“You have read your books flying — probably not in the vacation at all — probably since you came up. And you have not understood very well what you read. The work is done, however, and I’ll say no more about how it was done. Let me ask you, however, Mr Rushton, what you think is the use of producing such an essay as that?”
“No use at all, sir,” cried John. “I thought so all the time: more than no use. It has only driven me half mad and disgusted you. It is fit for nothing but to put in the fire. It should never have been written at all.”
“Do you suppose, then, that you come to the University to amuse yourself, and that no work should be asked from you?”
“I don’t amuse myself a bit,” cried John. “And if you call that rot (I beg your pardon, sir) work —— Well, yes, I suppose it was work, it was such a horrible task to me.”
“Take care what you are saying, Mr Rushton: it’s as easy for me to send you down, remember, as to throw your essay into the fire.”
“I wish you would, sir,” cried John; “it would give me an excuse for going away. It would give me satisfaction to see that rot burning, and myself too almost, in one way or other. I thought once I’d paint a little picture and bring you that instead.”
“Oh, you can paint pictures?”
“I try,” said John. He smiled a little to think that while the Warden probably expected him to produce a daub like a schoolboy’s or schoolgirl’s, there were people quite as good as the Warden in their way who would have needed no further information than his name as to what he could do. He who could produce nothing better than that very bad essay; he —— Well, he had heard a picture of his recognised as a “little Rushton” once, by a man who knew. He laughed in a way which the Warden did not understand and thought silly, and then he grew grave. “I think, sir, on the whole,” he said, suddenly, “I will take the advice you were good enough to give me when I first came up.”
“And what was that?” said the Warden, with a faint smile. “I believe I have given you a great deal of good advice.”
“It was — to go down,” said John; and he felt a little attack of the wounded vanity which that advice had roused in him as he repeated the words, notwithstanding that he was making them his own.
“Oh,” said the Warden, with a little surprise, “was that my advice? — and why was it my advice?”
“It was chiefly, I think, because this miserable essay, which you think disgraceful, and so do I, had not been written — the writing of it has convinced me of the justice of what you said.”
“But not me,” said the Warden; “the essay is not very good, certainly” (he had tacitly allowed it to be “rot,” in its author’s forcible language, two minutes before); “still it is a piece of work creditably gone through with, though against the grain. That does not count in literature, perhaps, but it does in morals.”
“I don’t think so,” said the audacious John: few were the men who had dared to say so to the Warden before. “Bad work is bad work, sir, if it were done with the best motive in the world.”
The great man’s face wavered a little between wrath and approval. There was a spark of humour in him. “Thank you,” he said, “for the lesson” — while John’s countenance blazed like fire.
“Oh, sir, I hope you don’t think — —”
“You need not apologise. I thought a week or two ago you had better go down. I don’t think so now. I need not stand upon my consistency. You had better work out the problem for yourself.”
John stood before him doubtfully, shaking his head. “The tides outside are very strong,” he said; “they catch a man’s feet — —”
“And do you know, my young Daniel,” said the Warden, “any place where the tides outside are not strong?”
All I know is that John Rushton did take his degree — a mere pass, of course — and I don’t know that it was of the least use to him. But he was very strong in his sense that it was best not to be beaten, whatever the battle might be.