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 – "
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 – "