Rachel Ray

had envied those who slept while she was kept awake by her sorrow. She had often struggled to sleep as she sat in her chair, so that she might escape for a few moments from the torture of her waking thoughts. But why need she sleep now that every thought was a new pleasure? There was no moment that she had ever passed with him that had not to be recalled. There was no word of his that had not to be re-weighed. She remembered, or fancied that she remembered, her idea of the man when her eye first fell upon his outside form. She would have sworn that her first glance of him had conveyed to her far more than had ever come to her from many a day’s casual looking at any other man. She could almost believe that he had been specially made and destined for her behoof. She blushed even while lying in bed as she remembered how the gait of the man, and the tone of his voice, had taken possession of her eyes and ears from the first day on which she had met him. When she had gone to Mrs. Tappitt’s party, so consciously alive to the fact that he was to be there, she had told herself that she was sure she thought no more of him than of any other man that she might meet; but she now declared to herself that she had been a weak fool in thus attempting to deceive herself; that she had loved him from the first⁠—or at any rate from that evening when he had told her of the beauty of the clouds; and that from that day to the present hour there had been no other chance of happiness to her but that chance which had now been so wondrously decided in her favour. When she came down to breakfast on the next morning she was very quiet⁠—so quiet that her sister almost thought she was frightened at her future prospects; but I think that there was no such fear. She was so happy that she could afford to be tranquil in her happiness.

On that day Rowan came out to the cottage in the evening and was formally introduced to Mrs. Prime. Mrs. Ray, I fear, did not find the little tea-party so agreeable on that evening as she had done on the previous occasion. Mrs. Prime did make some effort at conversation; she did endeavour to receive the young man as her future brother-in-law; she was gracious to him with such graciousness as she possessed;⁠—but the duration of their meal was terribly long, and even Mrs. Ray herself felt relieved when the two lovers went forth together for their evening walk. I think there must have been some triumph in Rachel’s heart as she tied on her hat before she started. I think she must have remembered the evening on which her sister had been so urgent with her to go to the Dorcas meeting;⁠—when she had so obstinately refused that invitation, and had instead gone out to meet the Tappitt girls, and had met with them the young man of whom her sister had before been speaking with so much horror. Now he was there on purpose to take her with him, and she went forth with him, leaning lovingly on his arm, while yet close under her sister’s eyes. I think there must have been a gleam of triumph in her face as she put her hand with such confidence well round her lover’s arm.

Girls do triumph in their lovers⁠—in their acknowledged and permitted lovers, as young men triumph in their loves which are not acknowledged or perhaps permitted. A man’s triumph is for the most part over when he is once allowed to take his place at the family table, as a right, next to his betrothed. He begins to feel himself to be a sacrificial victim⁠—done up very prettily with blue and white ribbons round his horns, but still an ox prepared for sacrifice. But the girl feels herself to be exalted for those few weeks as a conqueror, and to be carried along in an ovation of which that bucolic victim, tied round with blue ribbons on to his horns, is the chief grace and ornament. In this mood, no doubt, both Rachel and Luke Rowan went forth, leaving the two widows together in the cottage.

“It is pretty to see her so happy, isn’t it now?” said Mrs. Ray.

The question for the moment made Mrs. Prime uncomfortable and almost wretched, but it gave her the opportunity which in her heart she desired of recanting her error in regard to Luke Rowan’s character. She wished to give in her adhesion to the marriage⁠—to be known to have acknowledged its fitness so that she could, with some true word of sisterly love, wish her sister well. In Rachel’s presence she could not have first made this recantation. Though Rachel spoke no triumph, there was a triumph in her eye, which prevented almost the possibility of such yielding on the part of Dorothea. But when the thing should have been once done, when she should once have owned that Rachel was not wrong, then gradually she could bring herself round to the utterance of some kindly expression.

“Pretty,” she said; “yes, it is pretty. I do not know that anybody ever doubted its prettiness.”

“And isn’t it nice too? Dear girl! It does make me so happy to see her lighthearted again. She has had a sad time of it, Dorothea, since we made her write that letter to him; a very sad time of it.”

“People here, mother, do mostly have what you call a sad time of it. Are we not taught that it is better for us that it should be so? Have not you and I, mother, had a sad time of it? It would be all sad enough if this were to be the end of it.”

“Yes, just so;