“They say,” Rachel had written in her letter, “they say that as the business here about the brewery is so very unsettled, they think it probable that you will not have to come back to Baslehurst any more.”
In that had been the offence. They had doubted his stability, and, beyond that, had almost doubted his honesty. He would punish them by taking them at their word till both should be put beyond all question. He knew well that the punishment would fall on Rachel, whereas none of the sin would have been Rachel’s sin; but he would not allow himself to be deterred by that consideration.
“It is her letter,” he said to himself, “and in that way will I answer her. When I do go there again they will all understand me better.”
It had been, too, a matter of pride to him that Mr. Comfort and Mrs. Butler Cornbury should thus be made to understand him. He would say nothing of himself and his own purposes to any of them. He would speak neither of his own means nor his own steadfastness. But he would prove to them that he was steadfast, and that he had boasted of nothing which he did not possess. When Mrs. Butler Cornbury had spoken to him down by the Cleeves, asking him of his purpose, and struggling to do a kind thing by Rachel, he had resolved at once that he would tell her nothing. She should find him out. He liked her for loving Rachel; but neither to her, nor even to Rachel herself, would he say more till he could show them that the business about the brewery was no longer unsettled.
But up to this moment—this moment in which he was standing on the bridge, he had not determined what he would say to Rachel or to Rachel’s mother. He had never relaxed in his purpose of making Rachel his wife since his first visit to the cottage. He was one who, having a fixed resolve, feels certain of their ultimate success in achieving it. He was now going to Bragg’s End to claim that which he regarded as his own; but he had not as yet told himself in what terms he would put forward his claim. So he stood upon the bridge thinking.
He stood upon the bridge thinking, but his thoughts would only go backwards, and would do nothing for him as to his future conduct. He remembered his first walk with her, and the churchyard elms with the setting sun, and the hot dances in Mrs. Tappitt’s house; and he remembered them without much of the triumph of a successful lover. It had been very sweet, but very easy. In so saying to himself he by no means threw blame upon Rachel. Things were easy, he thought, and it was almost a pity that they should be so. As for Rachel, nothing could have been more honest or more to his taste, than her mode of learning to love him. A girl who, while intending to accept him, could yet have feigned indifference, would have disgusted him at once. Nevertheless he could not but wish that there had been some castles for him to storm in his career. Tappitt had made but poor pretence of fighting before he surrendered; and as to Rachel, it had not been in Rachel’s nature to make any pretence. He passed from the bridge at last without determining what he would say when he reached the cottage, but he did not pass on till he had been seen by the scrutinizing eyes of Miss Pucker.
“If there ain’t young Rowan going out to Bragg’s End again!” she said to herself, comforting herself, I fear, or striving to comfort herself, with an inward assertion that he was not going there for any good. Striving to comfort herself, but not effectually; for though the assertion was made by herself to herself, yet it was not believed. Though she declared, with well-pronounced mental words, that Luke Rowan was going on that path for no good purpose, she felt a wretched conviction at her heart’s core that Rachel Ray would be made to triumph over her and her early suspicions by a happy marriage. Nevertheless she carried the tidings up into Baslehurst, and as she repeated it to the grocer’s daughters and the baker’s wife she shook her head with as much apparent satisfaction as though she really believed that Rachel oscillated between a ruined name and a broken heart.
He walked on very slowly towards Bragg’s End, as though he almost dreaded the interview, swinging his stick as was his custom, and keeping his feet on the grassy edges of the road till he came to the turn which brought him on to the green. When on the green he did not take the highway, but skirted along under Farmer Sturt’s hedge, so that he had to pass by the entrance of the farmyard before he crossed over to the cottage. Here, just inside her own gate, he encountered Mrs. Sturt standing alone. She had been intent on the cares of her
