"Oh, don't you think, then, as they say," cried the young unfortunate, "that it's a fine thing to work for other people? That's what they all say—to do good to the lower class that haven't our advantages."
"And in what way did you think you could do good to the lower class?" said John, grimly: but he did not pursue his subject. He kept the young man in view, and soothed him, which was perhaps better, and saw him off next day in somewhat better spirits, and with a certain sense that he was a martyr to his principles stealing into his soul—which he was able to communicate to his mother, at least, consoling, nay, making that poor lady proud, even of the sending down.
John had quite enough to do, however, with his own difficulties, which he had brought on himself as he well knew. He too had gone speechifying in his time, and tried to do good to the lower classes, carried on by the whirl of the movement of the others, whose sense of the high superiority of the Oxford man, and his certain effect upon the world, he had not perhaps ever seriously, certainly never enthusiastically, shared. To do good to the lower classes, to make a transformation by his mere presence, to influence the whole fabric of life and the rolling of its wheels—John asked himself with a blush which there was no one to perceive, what there was in him to do all this? and the very direction which his feet took, almost against his will, gave him the information he sought. Where was he going? he was turning mechanically towards the road in which he knew another person—a person very easily influenced indeed, and one who had taken too much the impressions of his mind, unconsciously at first, perhaps unwillingly to himself—was likely to be found. It was not an appointment: that would have alarmed her as well as him; though he was not now so sure of that as he had been. Was it possible that perhaps little Mary, innocent little girl as she seemed and was, was playing for what were to her high stakes, and risking a good deal in the spirit of the gamester? He did not allow this, and yet it came in. But that did not in the least extenuate his guilt or explain how his footsteps sought that way and no other in those early twilights, now wan with the November chill. What game was he playing? Was it to lose—everything—his head, his feet, his self-command in some whirl of foolish feeling which was not passion or anything real at all? or was it to win—in any shameful way? Certainly not that, certainly not that. He said it over to himself raising his head, setting down his foot with a stamp upon the ground. But while he made this vow to himself, once more against the pale background of the willows and the dusk of the damp fields that little figure rose, with its air of fictitious surprise. "Oh, Mr Rushton! are you really walking this way again?" she said.
CHAPTER IV.
"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——"