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,
