“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 anyone 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
