“I’m sure I don’t know what she can have to say to me.” Mrs. Ray, as she spoke, was tying on her bonnet, and Rachel was standing close to her with her light summer shawl.
“It will be the old story, mamma, I’m afraid; my terrible iniquity and backslidings, because I went to the ball, and because I won’t go to Miss Pucker’s. She’ll want you to say that I shall go, or else be sent to bed without my supper.”
“That’s nonsense, Rachel. Dorothea knows very well that I can’t make you go.” Mrs. Ray was wont to become mildly petulant when things went against her.
“But, mamma, you don’t want me to go?”
“I don’t suppose it’s about Miss Pucker at all. It’s about that other thing.”
“You mean Mr. Rowan.”
“Yes, my dear. I’m sure I don’t know what’s for the best. When she gets me to herself she does say such terrible things to me that it quite puts me in a heat to have to go to her. I don’t think anybody ought to say those sort of things to me except a clergyman, or a person’s parents, or a schoolmaster, or masters and mistresses, or suchlike.” Rachel thought so too—thought that at any rate a daughter should not so speak to such a mother as was her mother; but on that subject she said nothing.
“And I don’t like going to that Miss Pucker’s house,” continued Mrs. Ray. “I’m sure I don’t want her to come here. I wouldn’t go, only I said that I would.”
“I would go now, if I were you, mamma.”
“Of course I shall go; haven’t I got myself ready?”
“But I would not let her go on in that way.”
“That’s very easy said, Rachel; but how am I to help it? I can’t tell her to hold her tongue; and if I did, she wouldn’t. If I am to go I might as well start. I suppose there’s cold lamb enough for dinner?”
“Plenty, I should think.”
“And if I find poultry cheap, I can bring a chicken home in my basket, can’t I?” And so saying, with her mind full of various cares, Mrs. Ray walked off to Baslehurst.
“I wonder when he’ll come.” Rachel, as she said or thought these words, stood at the open door of the cottage looking after her mother as she made her way across the green. It was a delicious midsummer day, warm with the heat of the morning sun, but not yet oppressed with the full blaze of its noonday rays. The air was alive with the notes of birds, and the flowers were in their brightest beauty. “I wonder when he’ll come.” None of those doubts which so harassed her mother troubled her mind. Other doubts there were. Could it be possible that he would like her well enough to wish to make her his own? Could it be that anyone so bright, so prosperous in the world, so clever, so much above herself in all worldly advantages, should come and seek her as his wife—take her from their little cottage and lowly ways of life? When he had first said that he would come to Bragg’s End, she declared to herself that it would be well that he should see in how humble a way they lived. He would not call her Rachel after that, she said to herself; or, if he did, he should learn from her that she knew how to rebuke a man who dared to take advantage of the humility of her position. He had come, and he had not called her Rachel. He had come, and taking advantage of her momentary absence, had spoken of her behind her back as a lover speaks, and had told his love honestly to her mother. In Rachel’s view of the matter no lover could have carried himself with better decorum or with a sweeter grace; but because he had so done, she would not hold him to be bound to her. He had been carried away by his feelings too rapidly, and had not as yet known how poor and lowly they were. He should still have opened to him a clear path backwards. Then if the path backwards were not to his mind, then in that case—. I am not sure that Rachel ever declared to herself in plain terms what in such case would happen; but she stood at the door as though she was minded to stand there till he should appear upon the green.
“I wonder when he’ll come.” She had watched her mother’s figure disappear along the lane, and had plucked a flower or two to pieces before she returned within the house. He will not come till the evening, she determined—till the evening, when his day’s work in the brewery would be over. Then she thought of the quarrel between him and Tappitt, and wondered what it might be. She was quite sure that Tappitt was wrong, and thought of him at once as an obstinate, foolish, pigheaded old man. Yes; he would come to her, and she would take care to be provided in that article of cream which he pretended to love so well. She would not have to run away again. But how lucky on that previous evening had been that necessity, seeing that it had given opportunity for that great display of a lover’s excellence on Rowan’s part. Having settled all this in her mind, she went into the house, and was beginning to think of her household work, when she heard a man’s steps in the passage. She went at once out from the sitting-room, and encountered Luke Rowan
