"Ah! I knew I'd fetch you so!" cried the other. "Well, I'll tell you what it is. There's a little person there that wants to see you very badly – and a very pretty little person too. She says, 'Ain't Mr Rushton up this year? – ain't Mr Rushton a-coming out to see us? Me and mother thinks a deal of Mr Rushton. He ain't a bit like the rest of you gentlemen.'"
"Well?" said John, red, but fierce.
"Well! I told her I'd tell you. It's a poor compliment for the rest of us, Jack: but you've only to go in and win."
"Stuff," said John, "and fudge and bosh, and whatever else there is that's silly. I understand what she means. I have some respect for a woman, whoever she is."
"Oh, respect!" said Brunton; "I expect she would like something a little warmer than that. And she says you promised to bring her something the very first day you were up – and you've been up a week – hence those tears."
"I promised to bring her something?" said John, with confusion: and then he became fiery red once more.
"Don't you think you'd like a stroll?" he added; "don't you think you'd like a game at billiards? there's always some one about that has nothing to do. It's a pity to lose the whole afternoon here."
"That's a broad hint, anyhow," cried the other, laughing. "Well, I'll go – but don't forget the Hatchet, old fellow, and the arbour in the garden, and the maid of the inn. Oh, I'm off. You need not spoil your books throwing them at me."
When he was alone John put down his pen again and took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. His countenance was crimson and the blood all a-boil in his veins. "What a fool I am, what a double-dashed fool I have been," he said to himself. And it was some time before he could resume the work at which he had so laboured and struggled. This was a greater interruption than anything made by the comrades who had thronged and troubled him. Yet after a while he surmounted this also, and betook himself to his work with such energy that he did at last struggle through. Well! it was not very much when it was done: probably no less valuable piece of work ever took so much time before. It had cost him a great deal of trouble, and now that it was completed it was of less than no use to anybody. The unfortunate tutor to whom he would have to read it would groan his head off before it was finished, and then it would be flung with relief into the fire. And yet he had spent all these days at it, cudgelled his brains, and almost cudgelled some of the idle fellows who had tried to stop him – for this wretched thing that was nothing, which was less than worthless! Few can perhaps see this so distinctly and with so powerful an apprehension as John did. He put it away in his desk with a grim smile, and then just as twilight was coming on he went out – to stretch his limbs and fill his lungs with that damp Oxford air which is perhaps just better than no air at all.
He was swinging along over Maudlin Bridge on his walk, "thinking hard," as he would have said, when there came suddenly up out of the twilight a little figure, which stopped and clasped its hands at sight of him, with a little cry. "Oh, is it really you, Mr Rushton?" which chimed in, in a very troublous and distressing manner, with John's thoughts.
"And is this you, Miss – Miss Millar," he said, perturbed, "so far from home?"
"Yes," she said, "it's a bit late. I've been in town doin' two or three little things for mother, and I see it was getting dark, and started runnin' – and then I thought that would just make folks stare – and then I saw as it was you – Oh, Mr Rushton, you've never been to see us – though you promised – "
"I have only been up a very little time. I – I have had a great deal to do."
"Ah," said the girl, "I know what you gentlemen has to do – just to find out every day something new to amuse yourselves – not like us as has to work."
"I assure you, Mary, it was work with me – real work, though you may not believe it," he said.
She came a little nearer to him at the sound of her own name, and, looking up, said in a subdued tone, "I'd believe anything you said."
Fiercely red once more became John, hot as with a furnace-blast: but nobody saw this, not even the pair of eyes that were for a moment lifted to his.
"I'm afraid I don't deserve as much as that," he said, humbly. "I say things I don't mean, just like the rest."
"I wouldn't believe anybody but yourself as said so. Perhaps you didn't mean it then, Mr Rushton, when you promised me that."
"What did I promise you, Mary?"
"Oh, Mr Rushton, you can't – you can't have forgotten! You promised me a nice gold locket with your picture in it."
They were walking on now side by side in the growing dimness, and John had not even daylight to protect him, or the expression of his face.
"My picture?" he said, in dismay. "Was I such a fool as all that? You shall have the gold locket and welcome, Mary; but you don't mean to say you would like my ugly mug inside?"
"Oh, ugly, indeed!" she said; "that's just what I should like best."
Poor John, not knowing what to say, overwhelmed with humiliation and shame, yet a little ruefully elated, too, that she should like his ugly mug, made a clumsy diversion by a total change of subject, and asked hurriedly whether anything had happened since he had been away.
"Oh, happened!" she cried, annoyed not to pursue the more interesting subject. "Nothing ever happens down Iffley way: at least no more than the old thing as mother is always at me to – marry: and I shouldn't wonder if I did some day, just for a change – "
"And who," said John, with that instant impulse to kick him, which is natural to his kind, "is the happy man?"
"Oh, you know, Mr Rushton. It's Jim Kington, as you've heard before. It's a bit hard," said the girl, with something like a suppressed sob, "after seeing so much of you gentlemen and your ways, to settle down for life with such a common man."
"Would you like, then, to marry – a gentleman?" John said. He did not know why he said it – unthinking, and yet not without a thought – wantonly, because it was dangerous, because he wanted to see what she would say.
"Oh, Mr Rushton!" she said, hanging her head: and suddenly, to his consternation, he felt a timid touch, her hand stealing within his arm.
"It wouldn't be for your good, Mary," he said, with energy. "You don't know what you would have to go through. How would you like to have people looking down upon you, laughing at you behind your back, perhaps mocking you before your face, and all your little faults made a fuss about, and nobody to be at ease with. I don't think you would find it a happy fate."
"If you think I have such bad manners, Mr Rushton! but not when I take pains. I know how to hold my head as high as the best, and give them back as good – And, besides, I am very quick at picking things up, and I'd soon learn – "
"Some things are not so easily learned," said John. "I don't think you'd find it a happy fate."
"Oh, Mr Rushton," she said, again hanging with a little weight upon his arm, holding it close, "why should I mind if he loved me? – I'd be 'appy anywhere, if I never saw a single soul, only to pass my life along of – 'im!"
She said "'im," but meant "you," plainer than words could say. And John for a moment stood still, planting his feet on the soil, feeling the whirl catch them, the quickening current, the sweep of a senseless flood: yet conscious to the very core that he did not love the girl – not the very least in the world.
CHAPTER III
It was not very long after this evening walk that John found himself in a company of the very élite of his college. They knew themselves to be the élite, and that was enough for them. Sometimes their claim to this place was rudely assailed by outsiders; sometimes it was the subject of mockery: but this mattered very little to the certainty which filled their youthful bosoms. They did not sit upon tables and hang out of windows like the others. The table in the centre of the room was strewn with prints, with photographs from pictures, and curiosities of all kinds. There was a little Tanagra figure on the mantelpiece, holding a central place in its little shrine of red velvet, and other ornaments of equal refinement arranged with the greatest care on either side. On the wall above, usually occupied by an imbecile mirror, was a round picture which Lord Scarfield, the owner of the rooms, who had a lisp, sometimes talked of as "my Tondo" and sometimes as "my Bottithelli." It was but a copy, I need not say, but it came a great deal into his conversation. He himself sat in an antique chair with a high back, at one side of the fireplace, and his little colourless head, with its very light hair, stood out almost like an ivory from the dark damask. He was aware of the fact and liked it, and so were the other habitués of these rooms aware of it, feeling themselves called upon to be struck by this, as they came in one by one, and nodded at their host, and sat down somewhere within reach of the table if they could, if not in twos and little groups round the wall, where a number of abstruse conversations went on, chiefly about art, but likewise upon social subjects. John had been drawn into this supreme company chiefly on the score that he knew something practically of art, though they thought in a rude way, without a due sense of its fine affinities and symbolisms – but yet with a vulgar, practical acquaintance which no doubt counted for something. When he went in Scarfield was giving a description of that meeting with the Warden which John's other friends had watched from the window.