He waited for her to go on; but she really had nothing more to say, and he
began: "I am not hoping for another charge elsewhere, at least not for the
present; but I am satisfied that my usefulness here is at an end, and I do
not think that my going away will make matters worse. Whether I go or stay,
the dissensions will continue. At any rate, I believe that there are those
who need help more, and whom I can help more, in another field--"
"Yes," she broke in, with a woman's relevancy to the immediate point,
"there is nothing to do here."
He went on as if she had not spoken: "I am going to Fall River to-morrow,
where I have heard that there is work for me--"
"In the mills!" she exclaimed, recurring in thought to what he had once
said of his work in them. "Surely you don't mean that!" The sight, the
smell, the tumult of the work she had seen that day in the mill with Lyra
came upon her with all their offence. "To throw away all that you have
learnt, all that you have become to others!"
"I am less and less confident that I have become anything useful to others
in turning aside from the life of toil and presuming to attempt the
guidance of those who remained in it. But I don't mean work in the mills,"
he continued, "or not at first, or not unless it seems necessary to my work
with those who work in them. I have a plan--or if it hardly deserves that
name, a design--of being useful to them in such ways as my own experience
of their life in the past shall show me in the light of what I shall see
among them now. I needn't trouble you with it."
"Oh yes!" she interposed.
"I do not expect to preach at once, but only to teach in one of the public
schools, where I have heard of a vacancy, and--and--perhaps otherwise. With
those whose lives are made up of hard work there must be room for willing
and peaceful service. And if it should be necessary that I should work in
the mills in order to render this, then I will do so; but at present I
have another way in view--a social way that shall bring me into immediate
relations with the people." She still tried to argue with him, to prove him
wrong in going away, but they both ended where they began. He would not or
could not explain himself further. At last he said: "But I did not come to
urge this matter. I have no wish to impose my will, my theory, upon any
one, even my own child."