“Of course it’s from him,” said Rachel.
“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Ray, taking the unopened letter in her hand and looking at it. She spoke almost in a whisper, as though there were something terrible in the coming of the letter.
“Is it not odd,” said Rachel, “but I never saw his handwriting before? I shall know it now forever and ever.” She also spoke in a whisper, and still held the letter as though she dreaded to open it.
“Well, my dear,” said Mrs. Ray.
“If you think you ought to read it first, mamma, you may.”
“No, Rachel. It is your letter. I do not wish you to imagine that I distrust you.”
Then Rachel sat herself down, and with extreme care opened the envelope. The letter, which she read to herself very slowly, was as follows:—
My own dearest Rachel,
It seems so nice having to write to you, though it would be much nicer if I could see you and be sitting with you at this moment at the churchyard stile. That is the spot in all Baslehurst that I like the best. I ought to have written sooner, I know, and you will have been very angry with me; but I have had to go down into Northamptonshire to settle some affairs as to my father’s property, so that I have been almost living in railway carriages ever since I saw you. I am resolved about the brewery business more firmly than ever, and as it seems that “T”
—Mrs. Tappitt would occasionally so designate her lord, and her doing so had been a joke between Luke and Rachel—
will not come to reason without a lawsuit, I must scrape together all the capital I have, or I shall be fifty years old before I can begin. He is a pigheaded old fool, and I shall be driven to ruin him and all his family. I would have done—and still would do—anything for him in kindness; but if he drives me to go to law to get what is as much my own as his share is his own, I will build another brewery just under his nose. All this will require money, and therefore I have to run about and get my affairs settled.
But this is a nice love-letter—is it not? However, you must take me as I am. Just now I have beer in my very soul. The grand object of my ambition is to stand and be fumigated by the smoke of my own vats. It is a fat, prosperous, moneymaking business, and one in which there is a clear line between right and wrong. No man brews bad beer without knowing it—or sells short measure. Whether the fatness and the honesty can go together;—that is the problem I want to solve.
You see I write to you exactly as if you were a man friend, and not my own dear sweet girl. But I am a very bad hand at lovemaking. I considered that that was all done when you nodded your head over my arm in token that you consented to be my wife. It was a very little nod, but it binds you as fast as a score of oaths. And now I think I have a right to talk to you about all my affairs, and expect you at once to get up the price of malt and hops in Devonshire. I told you, you remember, that you should be my friend, and now I mean to have my own way.
You must tell me exactly what my mother has been doing and saying at the cottage. I cannot quite make it out from what she says, but I fear that she has been interfering where she had no business, and making a goose of herself. She has got an idea into her head that I ought to make a good bargain in matrimony, and sell myself at the highest price going in the market;—that I ought to get money, or if not money, family connection. I’m very fond of money—as is everybody, only people are such liars—but then I like it to be my own; and as to what people call connection, I have no words to tell you how I despise it. If I know myself I should never have chosen a woman as my companion for life who was not a lady; but I have not the remotest wish to become second cousin by marriage to a baronet’s grandmother. I have told my mother all this, and that you and I have settled the matter together; but I see that she trusts to something that she has said or done herself to upset our settling. Of course, what she has said can have no effect on you. She has a right to speak to me, but she has none to speak to you;—not as yet. But she is the best woman in the world, and as soon as ever we are married you will find that she will receive you with open arms.
You know I spoke of our being married in August. I wish it could have been so. If we could have settled it when I was at Bragg’s End, it might have been done. I don’t, however, mean to scold you, though it was your fault. But as it is, it must now be put off till after Christmas. I won’t name a day yet for seeing you, because I couldn’t well go to Baslehurst without putting myself into Tappitt’s way. My lawyer says I had better not go to Baslehurst just at present. Of course you will write to me constantly—to my address here; say, twice a week at least. And I shall expect you to tell me everything that goes on. Give my kind love
