MRS. RAY'S PENITENCE.
Another fortnight went by, and still nothing further was heard at
Bragg's End from Luke Rowan. Much was heard of him in Baslehurst.
It was soon known by everybody that he had bought the cottages; and
there was a widely-spread and well-credited rumour that he was going
to commence the necessary buildings for a new brewhouse at once. Nor
were these tidings received by Baslehurst with all that horror,--with
that loud clamour of indignation,--which Tappitt conceived to be due
to them. Baslehurst, I should say, as a whole, received the tidings
with applause. Why should not Bungall's nephew carry on a brewery of
his own? Especially why should he not, if he were resolved to brew
good beer? Very censorious remarks about the Tappitt beer were to
be heard in all bar-rooms, and were re-echoed with vehemence in the
kitchens of the Baslehurst aristocracy.
"It ain't beer," said Dr. Harford's cook, who had come from the
midland counties, and knew what good beer was. "It's a nasty muddle
of stuff, not fit for any Christian who has to earn her victuals over
a kitchen fire."
It came to pass speedily that Luke Rowan was expected to build a new
brewery, and that the event of the first brick was looked for with
anxious expectation. And that false report which had spread itself
through Baslehurst respecting him and his debts had taken itself off.
It had been banished by a contrary report; and there now existed in
Baslehurst a very general belief that Rowan was a man of means,--of
very considerable means,--a man of substantial capital, whom to
have settled in the town would be very beneficial to the community.
That false statement as to the bill at Griggs' had been sifted, and
the truth made known,--and somewhat to the disgrace of the Tappitt
faction. The only article supplied by Griggs to Rowan's order had
been the champagne consumed at Tappitt's supper, and for this Rowan
had paid ready money within a week of the transaction. It was Mrs.
Cornbury who discovered all this, and who employed means for making
the truth known in Baslehurst. This truth also became known at last
to Mrs. Ray,--but of what avail was it then? She had desired her
daughter to treat the young man as a wolf, and as a wolf he had been
hounded off from her little sheep-cot. She heard now that he was
expected back at Baslehurst;--that he was a wealthy man; that he was
thought well of in the town; that he was going to do great things.
With what better possible husband could any young woman have been
blessed? And yet she had turned him away from her cottage as though
he had been a wolf!
It was from Mrs. Sturt that Mrs. Ray first learned the truth. Mr.
Sturt was a tenant on the Cornbury estate, and Mrs. Sturt was of
course well known to Mrs. Cornbury. That lady, when she had sifted to
the bottom the story of Griggs' bill, and had assured herself that
Rowan was by no means minded to surrender his interest in Baslehurst,
determined that the truth should be made known to Mrs. Ray. But she
was not willing to call on Mrs. Ray herself, nor did she wish to
present herself before Rachel at the cottage, unless she could bring
with her some more substantial comfort than could be afforded by
simple evidence as to Rowan's good character. She therefore took
herself to Mrs. Sturt, and discussed the matter with her.
"I suppose she does care about him," said Mrs. Cornbury, sitting in
Mrs. Sturt's little parlour that opened out upon the kitchen garden.
Mrs. Sturt was also seated, leaning on the corner of the table, with
the sleeves of her gown tucked up, ready for work when the Squire's
lady should be gone, but very willing to postpone her work as long as
the Squire's lady would stay and gossip with her.
"Oh! that she do, Mrs. Butler,--in her heart of hearts. If I know
anything of true love, she do love that young man."
"And he did offer to her? There can be no doubt about that, I
suppose."
"Not a doubt on earth, Mrs. Butler. She never told me so
outright,--nor yet didn't her mother;--but if he didn't, I'll give my
head for a cream cheese. Laws love you, Mrs. Butler, I know what's
what well enough. I know when a girl's wild and flighty, and thinks
of things as she oughtn't;--and I know when she's proper behaved, and
gives a young man encouragement only when it becomes her."
"Of course you do, Mrs. Sturt."
"It isn't for me, Mrs. Butler, to say anything against your papa.
Nobody can have more respect for their clergyman than Sturt has and
I; and before it was all settled like, Sturt never had a word with
Mr. Comfort about tithes; but, Mrs. Butler, I think your papa was
wrong here. As far as I can learn, it was he that told Mrs. Ray that
this young man wasn't all that he should be."
"Papa meant it for the best. There were strange things said about
him, you know."
"I never believes one word of what I hears, and never will. People
are such liars; bean't they, Mrs. Butler? And I didn't believe a word
again him. He's as fine a young man as you'd wish to see in a hundred
years, and of course that goes a long way with a young woman. Well,
Mrs. Butler, I'll tell Mrs. Ray what you say, but I'm afeard it's too
late; I'm afeard it is. He's of a stubborn sort, I think. He's one
of them that says, 'If you will not when you may, when you will you
shall have nay.'"
Mrs. Cornbury still entertained hope that the stubbornness of the
stubborn man might be overcome; but as to that she said nothing to
Mrs. Sturt.
Mrs. Sturt, with what friendly tact she possessed, made her
communication to Mrs. Ray, but it may be doubted whether more harm
than good was not thus done. "And he didn't owe a shilling then?"
asked Mrs. Ray.
"Not a shilling," said Mrs. Sturt.
"And he is going to come back to Baslehurst about this brewery
business?"
"There's not a doubt in life about that," answered Mrs. Sturt. If
these tidings could have come in time they would have been very
salutary; but what was Mrs. Ray to do with them now? She felt that
she could not honestly withhold them from Rachel; and yet she knew
not how to tell them without adding to Rachel's misery. It was very
improbable that Rachel should hear anything about Rowan from other
lips than her own. It was clear that Mrs. Sturt did not intend to
speak to her, and also clear that Mrs. Sturt expected that Mrs. Ray
would do so.
Rachel's demeanour at this time was cause of great sorrow to Mrs.
Ray. She never smiled. She sought no amusement. She read no books.
She spoke but little, and when she did speak her words were hard and
cold, and confined almost entirely to household affairs. Her mother
knew that she was not ill, because she ate and drank and worked. Even
Dorothea must have been satisfied with the amount of needlework which
she produced in these days. But though not ill, she was thin and
pale, and unlike herself. But perhaps of all the signs which her
mother watched so carefully, the signs which tormented her most were
those ever-present lines on her daughter's forehead,--lines which
Mrs. Ray had now learned to read correctly, and which indicated some
settled inward purpose, and an inward resolve that that purpose
should become the subject of no outward discussion. Rachel had
formerly been everything to her mother;--her friend, her minister,
her guide, her great comfort;--the subject on which could be lavished
all the soft tenderness of her nature, the loving object to whom
could be addressed all the little innocent petulances of her life.
But now Mrs. Ray did not dare to be either tender with Rachel, or
petulant. She hardly dared to speak to her on subjects that were not
indifferent. On this matter of Luke Rowan she did not dare to speak
to her. Rachel never upbraided her with words,--had never spoken
one word of reproach. But every moment of their passing life was an
unspoken reproach, so severe and heavy that the poor mother hardly
knew how to bear the burden of her fault.
As Mrs. Ray became more afraid of her younger daughter she became
less afraid of the elder. This was occasioned partly, no doubt, by
the absence of Mrs. Prime from the cottage. When there she only
came as a visitor; and no visitor to a house can hold such dominion
there as may be held by a domestic tyrant, present at all meals, and
claiming an ascendancy in all conversations. But it arose in part
also from the overwhelming solicitude which filled Mrs. Ray's heart
from morning to night, as she watched poor Rachel in her misery. Her
bowels yearned towards her child, and she longed to give her relief
with an excessive longing. Had the man been a very wolf indeed,--such
were her feelings at present,--I think that she would have welcomed
him to the cottage. In ordering his repulse she had done a deed of
which she had by no means anticipated the consequences, and now she
repented in the sackcloth and ashes of a sorrow-stricken spirit. Ah
me! what could she do to relieve that oppressed one! So thoroughly
did this desire override all others in her breast, that she
would snub Mrs. Prime without dreading or even thinking of the
consequences. Her only hopes and her only fears at the present moment
had reference to Rachel. Had Rachel proposed to her that they should
both start off to London and there search for Luke Rowan, I doubt
whether she would have had the heart to decline the journey.
In these days Mrs. Prime came to the cottage regularly twice a
week,--on Wednesdays and Saturdays. On Wednesday she came after tea,
and on Saturday she drank tea with her mother. On these occasions
much was, of course, said as to the prospect of her marriage with
Mr. Prong. Nothing was as yet settled, and Rachel had concluded, in
her own mind, that there would be no such wedding. As to Mrs. Ray's
opinion, she, of course, thought there would be a wedding or that
there would not, in accordance with the last words spoken by Mrs.
Prime to herself on the occasion of that special conversation.
"She'll never give up her money," Rachel had said, "and he'll never
marry her unless she does."
Mrs. Prime at this period acknowledged to her mother that she was not
happy.
"I want," said she, "to do what's right. But it's not always easy to
find out what is right."
"That's very true," said Mrs. Ray, thinking that there were
difficulties in the affairs of other people quite as embarrassing as
those of which Mrs. Prime complained.
"He says," continued the younger widow, "that he wants nothing for
himself, but that it is not fitting that a married woman should have
a separate income."
"I think he's right there," said Mrs. Ray.
"I quite believe what he says about himself," said Mrs. Prime. "It is
not that he wants my money for the money's sake, but that he chooses
to dictate to me how I shall use it."
"So he ought if he's to be your husband," said Mrs. Ray.
These conversations usually took place in Rachel's absence. When Mrs.
Prime came Rachel would remain long enough to say a word to her, and
on the Saturdays would pour out the tea for her and would hand to her
the bread and butter with the courtesy due to a visitor; but after
that she would take herself to her own bedroom, and only come down
when Mrs. Prime had prepared herself for going. At last, on one of
these evenings, there came a proposition from Mrs. Prime that she
should return to the cottage, and live again with her mother and
sister. She had not said that she had absolutely rejected Mr. Prong,
but she spoke of her return as though it had become expedient because
the cause of her going away had been removed. Very little had been
said between her and her mother about Rachel's love affair, nor was
Mrs. Prime inclined to say much about it now; but so much as that
she did say. "No doubt it's all over now about that young man, and
therefore, if you like it, I don't see why I shouldn't come back."
"I don't at all know about it's being all over," said Mrs. Ray, in a
hurried quick tone, and as she spoke she blushed with emotion.
"But I suppose it is, mother. From all that I can hear he isn't
thinking of her; and I don't suppose he ever did much."
"I don't know what he's thinking about, Dorothea; and I ain't sure
that there's any good talking about it. Besides, if you're going to
have Mr. Prong at last--"
"If I did, mother, it needn't prevent my coming here for a month or
two first. It wouldn't be quite yet certainly,--if at all. And I
thought that perhaps, if I am going to settle myself in that way,
you'd be glad that we should be altogether again for a little while."
"So I should, Dorothea,--of course. I have never wanted to be divided
from my children. Your going away was your own doing, not mine. I'm
sure it made me so wretched I didn't know what to do at the time.
Only other things have come since, that have pretty nearly put all
that out of my mind."
"But you can't think I was wrong to go when I felt it to be right."
"I don't know how that may be," said Mrs. Ray. "If you thought it
right to go I suppose you were right to go; but perhaps you shouldn't
have had such thoughts."
"Well, mother, we won't go back to that."
"No; we won't, if you please."
"This at any rate is certain, that Rachel, in departing from our
usual ways of life, has brought great unhappiness upon herself. I'm
afraid she is thinking of this young man now more than she ought to
do."
"Of course she is thinking of him. Why should she not think of him?"
"Why, mother! Surely it cannot be good that any girl should think of
a man who thinks nothing of her!"
Then Mrs. Ray spoke out,--as perhaps she had never spoken before.
"What right have you to say that he thinks nothing of her? Who can
tell? He did think of her,--as honestly as any man ever thought of
the woman he wished to mate with. He came to her fairly, and asked
her to be his wife. What can any man do more by a girl than that? And
she didn't say a word to him to encourage him till those she had a
right to look to had encouraged him too. So she didn't. And I don't
believe any woman ever had a child that behaved better, or truer, or
more maidenly than she has done. And I was a fool, and worse than a
fool, when I allowed any one to have an evil thought of her for a
moment."
"Do you mean me, mother?"
"I don't mean anybody except myself; so I don't." Mrs. Ray as she
spoke was weeping bitterly, and rubbing the tears from her red eyes
with her apron. "I've behaved like a fool to her,--worse than a
fool,--and I've broken her heart. Not think of him! How's a girl
not to think of a man day and night when she loves him better than
herself? Think of him! She'll think of him till she's in her grave.
She'll think of him till she's past all other thinking. I hate such
cruelty; and I hate myself for having been cruel. I shall never
forgive myself, the longest day I have to live."
"You only did your duty, mother."
"No; I didn't do my duty at all. It can't be a mother's duty to break
her child's heart and to be set against her by what anybody else can
say. She was ever and always the best child that ever lived; and
she came away from him, and strove to banish him from her thoughts,
and wouldn't own to herself that she cared for him the least in the
world, till he'd come here and spoken out straight, like a man as he
is. I tell you what, Dorothea, I'd go to London, on my knees to him,
if I could bring him back to her! I would. And if he comes here, I
will go to him."
"Oh, mother!"
"I know he loves her. He's not one of your inconstant ones that take
up with a girl for a week or so and then forgets her. But she has
offended him, and he's stubborn. She has offended him at my bidding,
and it's my doing;--and I'd humble myself in the dust to bring him
back to her;--so I would. Never tell me of her not thinking of him.
I tell you, Dorothea, she'll think of him always not because she has
loved him, but because she has been brought to confess her love."
Mrs. Ray was so strong in her mingled passion and grief, that Mrs.
Prime made no attempt to rebuke her. The daughter was indeed quelled
by her mother's vehemence, and felt that for the present the subject
of Rachel's love and Rachel's lover was not a fitting one for the
exercise of her own talents as a preacher. The tragedy had progressed
beyond the reach of her preaching. Mrs. Ray protested that Rachel
had been right throughout, and that she herself had been wrong only
when she had opposed Rachel's wishes. Such a view of the matter was
altogether at variance with that entertained by Mrs. Prime, who was
still of opinion that young people shouldn't be allowed to please
themselves, and who feared the approach of any lover who came with
lute in hand, and with light, soft, loving, worldly words. Men
and women, according to her theory, were right to marry and have
children; but she thought that such marriages should be contracted
not only in a solemn spirit, but with a certain dinginess of
solemnity, with a painstaking absence of mirth, that would divest
love of its worldly alloy. Rachel had gone about her business in a
different spirit, and it may almost be said that Mrs. Prime rejoiced
that she had failed. She did not believe in broken hearts; she did
believe in the efficacy of chastisement; and she thought that on the
whole the present state of affairs would be beneficial to her sister.
Had she been possessed of sufficient power she would now, on this
occasion, have preached her sermon again as she had preached it
before; but her mother's passion had overcome her, and she was unable
to express her convictions.
"I hope that she will be better soon," she said.
"I hope she will," said Mrs. Ray.
At this moment Rachel came down from her own room and joined them in
the parlour. She came in with that same look of sad composure on her
face, as though she were determined to speak nothing of her thoughts
to any one, and sat herself down near to her sister. In doing so,
however, she caught a glimpse of her mother's face, and saw that she
had been crying,--saw, indeed, that she was still crying at that
moment.
"Mamma," she said, "what is the matter;--has anything happened?"
"No, dear, nothing;--nothing has happened."
"But you would not cry for nothing. What is it, Dolly?"
"We have been talking," said Dorothea. "Things in this world are not
so pleasant in themselves that they can always be spoken of without
tears,--either outward tears or inward. People are too apt to think
that there is no true significance in their words when they say that
this world is a vale of tears."
"All the same. I don't like to see mamma crying like that."
"Don't mind it, Rachel," said Mrs. Ray. "If you will not regard me I
shall be better soon."
"I was saying that I thought I would come back to the cottage," said
Mrs. Prime; "that is, if mother likes it."
"But that did not make mamma cry."
"There were other things arose out of my saying so." Then Rachel
asked no further questions, but sat silent, waiting till her sister
should go.
"Of course we shall be very glad to have you back again if it suits
you to come," said Mrs. Ray. "I don't think it at all nice that a
family should be divided,--that is, as long as they are the same
family." Having received so much encouragement with reference to her
proposed return, Mrs. Prime took her departure and walked back to
Baslehurst.
For some minutes after they had been so left, neither Mrs. Ray nor
Rachel spoke. The mother sat rocking herself in her chair, and the
daughter remained motionless in the seat which she had taken when she
first came into the room. Their faces were not turned to each other,
but Rachel was so placed that she could watch her mother without
being observed. Every now and again Mrs. Ray would put her hand up to
her eyes to squeeze away the tears, and a low gurgling sound would
come from her, as though she were striving without success to repress
her sobs. She had thought that she would speak to Rachel when Mrs.
Prime was gone,--that she would confess her error in having sent
Rowan away, and implore her child to pardon her and to love her once
again. It was not, however, that she doubted Rachel's love,--that she
feared that Rachel was casting her out from her heart, or that she
was learning to hate her. She knew well enough that her child still
loved her. It was this,--that her life had become barren to her,
cold, and altogether tasteless without those thousand little signs of
ever-present affection to which she had been accustomed. If it was to
be always thus between them, what would the world be to her for the
remainder of her days? She could have borne to part with Rachel, had
Rachel married, as in parting with her she would have looked forward
to some future return of her girl's caresses; and in such case she
would at least have felt that her loss had come from no cessation of
the sweet loving nature of their mutual connexion. She would have
wept as she gave Rachel over to a husband, but her tears would have
been sweet as well as bitter. But there was nothing of sweetness
in her tears as she shed them now,--nothing of satisfaction in her
sorrow. If she could get Rachel to talk with her freely on the
matter, if she could find an opportunity for confessing herself to
have been wrong, might it not be that the soft caresses would be
restored to her,--caresses that would be soft, though moistened with
salt tears? But she feared to speak to her child. She knew that
Rachel's face was still hard and stern, and that her voice was not
the voice of other days. She knew that her daughter brooded over
the injury that had been done to her,--though she knew also that no
accusation was made, even in the girl's own bosom, against herself.
She thoroughly understood the state of Rachel's mind, but she was
unable to find the words that might serve to soften it.
"I suppose we may as well go to bed," she said at last, giving the
matter up, at any rate for that evening.
"Mamma, why were you crying when I came into the room?" said Rachel.
"Was I crying, my dear?"
"You are crying still, mamma. Is it I that make you unhappy?"
Mrs. Ray was anxious to declare that the reverse of that was
true,--that it was she who had made the other unhappy; but even
now she could not find the words in which to say this. "No," she
said; "it isn't you. It isn't anybody. I believe it's true what Mr.
Comfort has told us so often when he's preaching. It's all vanity and
vexation. There isn't anything to make anybody happy. I suppose I cry
because I'm foolisher than other people. I don't know that anybody is
happy. I'm sure Dorothea is not, and I'm sure you ain't."
"I don't want you to be unhappy about me, mamma."
"Of course you don't. I know that. But how can I help it when I see
how things have gone? I tried to do for the best, and I have--"
broken my child's heart, Mrs. Ray intended to say; but she failed
altogether before she got as far as that, and bursting out into a
flood of tears, hid her face in her apron.
Rachel still kept her seat, and her face was still hard and unmoved.
Her mother did not see it; she did not dare to look upon it; but she
knew that it was so; she knew her daughter would have been with her,
close to her, embracing her, throwing her arms round her, had that
face relented. But Rachel still kept her chair, and Mrs. Ray sobbed
aloud.
"I wish I could be a comfort to you, mamma," Rachel said after
another pause, "but I do not know how. I suppose in time we shall get
over this, and things will be as they used to be."
"They'll never be to me as they used to be before he came to
Baslehurst," said Mrs. Ray, through her tears.
"At any rate that is not his fault," said Rachel, almost angrily.
"Whoever may have done wrong, no one has a right to say that he has
done wrong."
"I'm sure I never said so. It is I that have done wrong," exclaimed
Mrs. Ray. "I know it all now, and I wish I'd never asked anybody but
just my own heart. I didn't mean to say anything against him, and I
don't think it. I'm sure I liked him as I never liked any young man
the first time of seeing him, that night he came out here to tea; and
I know that what they said against him was all false. So I do."
"What was all false, mamma?"
"About his going away in debt, and being a ne'er-do-well, and
about his going away from Baslehurst and not coming back any more.
Everybody has a good word for him now."
"Have they, mamma?" said Rachel. And Mrs. Ray learned in a moment,
from the tone of her daughter's voice, that a change had come over
her feeling. She asked her little question with something of the
softness of her old manner, with something of the longing loving
wishfulness which used to make so many of her questions sweet to her
mother's ears. "Have they, mamma?"
"Yes they have, and I believe it was those wicked people at the
brewery who spread the reports about him. As for owing anybody money,
I believe he's got plenty. Of course he has, or how could he have
bought our cottages and paid for them all in a minute? And I believe
he'll come back and live at Baslehurst; so I do; only--"
"Only what, mamma?"
"If he's not to come back to you I'd rather that he never showed his
face here again."
"He won't come to me, mamma. Had he meant it, he would have sent me a
message."
"Perhaps he meant that he wouldn't send the message till he came
himself," said Mrs. Ray.
But she made the suggestion in a voice so full of conscious doubt
that Rachel knew that she did not believe in it herself.
"I don't think he means that, mamma. If he did why should he keep me
in doubt? He is very true and very honest, but I think he is very
hard. When I wrote to him in that way after accepting the love he had
offered me, he was angered, and felt that I was false to him. He is
very honest, but I think he must be very hard."
"I can't think that if he loved you he would be so hard as that."
"Men are different from women, I suppose. I feel about him that
whatever he might do I should forgive it. But then I feel, also, that
he would never do anything for me to forgive."
"I'll never forgive him, never, if he doesn't come back again."
"Don't say that, mamma. You've no right even to be angry with
him, because it was we who told him that there was to be no
engagement,--after I had promised him."
"I didn't think he'd take you up so at the first word," said Mrs.
Ray;--and then there was again silence for a few minutes.
"Mamma," said Rachel.
"Well, Rachel."
Mrs. Ray was still rocking her chair, and had hardly yet repressed
that faint gurgling sound of half-controlled sobs.
"I am so glad to hear you say that you--respect him, and don't
believe of him what people have said."
"I don't believe a word bad of him, except that he oughtn't to take
huff in that way at one word that a girl says to him. He ought to
have known that you couldn't write just what letter you liked, as he
could."
"We won't say anything more about that. But as long as you don't
think him bad--"
"I don't think him bad. I don't think him bad at all. I think him
very good. I'd give all I have in the world to bring him back again.
So I would."
"Dear mamma!"
And now Rachel moved away from her chair and came up to her mother.
"And I know it's been all my fault. Oh, my child, I am so unhappy!
I don't get half an hour's sleep at night thinking of what I have
done;--I, that would have given the very blood out of my veins to
make you happy."
"No, mamma; it wasn't you."
"Yes, it was. I'd no business going away to other people after I had
told him he might come here. You, who had always been so good too!"
"You mustn't say again that you wish he hadn't come here."
"Oh! but I do wish it, because then he would have been nothing to
you. I do wish he hadn't ever come, but now I'd do anything to bring
him back again. I believe I'll go to him and tell him that it was my
doing."
"No, mamma, you won't do that."
"Why should I not? I don't care what people say. Isn't your happiness
everything to me?"
"But I shouldn't take him if he came in that way. What! beg him
to come and have compassion on me, as if I couldn't live without
him! No, mother; that wouldn't do. I do love him. I do love him. I
sometimes think I cannot live without his love. I sometimes feel as
though stories about broken hearts might be true. But I wouldn't have
him in that way. How could he love me afterwards, when I was his
wife? But, mamma, we'll be friends again;--shall we not? I've been so
unhappy that you should have thought ill of him!"
That night the mother and daughter shared the same bed together, and
Mrs. Ray was able to sleep. She would not confess to herself that
her sorrow had been lightened, because nothing had been said or done
to lessen that of her daughter; but on the morrow Rachel came and
hovered round her again, and the bitterness of Mrs. Ray's grief was
removed.