It was all settled in a moment, before he himself knew what was being done, with the carelessness, the suddenness which sometimes decides an all-important event. Walter was seized just at the moment when his own evil fortune seemed overwhelming, when fate seemed to be laying hold on him, with a force which nothing could resist. He was seized by a kind impulse, a good-natured wish to be of use to somebody, to escape from himself in this most legitimate, most virtuous way, by doing something for another. He was pleased with himself for thinking of it. A sense of being good came into his mind, with a little surprise and even amusement such as only an hour ago would have seemed impossible to him. It was like what his mother or one of the girls might have done, but such impulses did not occur readily to himself. He walked round toward the gate by which Martha and her friend stood and whispered together. Martha he could see did not like it; she was shocked to think of her young master having the trouble. The trouble! that was the thing that made it pleasant. He felt for the moment delivered from himself.
“If I am walking too fast for you, tell me,” he said, when he found himself upon the road with the small, timid figure keeping a respectful distance at his side.
“Oh, no, sir,” but with a little pant of breathlessness, she said.
“I am going too fast—how thoughtless of me! Is that better? And so you are not used to country roads?”
“I am only a little cockney, sir. I have never been out of London before. It’s a bad time to come to the country in the winter: for one forgets how short the days are, and it’s silly to be frightened. I am silly, I suppose.”
“Let us hope not about other things,” said Walter. “The road is very dark, to be sure.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, with a little shiver, drawing closer. They were still in the hollow and the hedges were high on either side, and the darkness was complete upon their path, though a little way above the moon penetrated, and made the ascent as white as silver and as light almost as day.
“Should you like,” he said, with a little laugh of embarrassment, yet an impulse which gave him a curious pleasure, such as he was quite unfamiliar with, “to hold on by me?—would you like to take my arm?”
“Oh, no, sir!”
The suggestion seemed to fill her with alarm, and she shrunk away after coming so close. Walter was, on the whole, relieved that she did not take his offer, but he was pleased with himself for having made it, and immensely interested in this little modest unknown, who was unseen as well—this little mysterious being by his side in the dark.