“A hundred years ago there wasn’t all this writing between young people, and these things were managed better then than they are now, as far as I can understand.”
“People couldn’t write so much then,” said Rachel, “because there were no railways and no postage stamps. I suppose I must answer it, mamma?” To this proposition Mrs. Ray made no immediate answer. “Don’t you think I ought to answer it, mamma?”
“You can’t want to write at once.”
“In the afternoon would do.”
“In the afternoon! Why should you be in so much hurry, Rachel? It took him four or five days to write to you.”
“Yes; but he was down in Northamptonshire on business. Besides he hadn’t any letter from me to answer. I shouldn’t like him to think—”
“To think what, Rachel?”
“That I had forgotten him.”
“Psha!”
“Or that I didn’t treat his letter with respect.”
“He won’t think that. But I must turn it over in my mind; and I believe I ought to ask somebody.”
“Not Dolly,” said Rachel, eagerly.
“No, not your sister. I will not ask her. But if you don’t mind, my dear, I’ll take the young man’s letter out to Mr. Comfort, and consult him. I never felt myself so much in need of somebody to advise me. Mr. Comfort is an old man, and you won’t mind his seeing the letter.”
Rachel did mind it very much, but she had no means of saving herself from her fate. She did not like the idea of having her love-letter submitted to the clergyman of the parish. I do not know any young lady who would have liked it. But bad as that was, it was preferable to having the letter submitted to Mrs. Prime. And then she remembered that Mr. Comfort had advised that she might go to the ball, and that he was father to her friend Mrs. Butler Cornbury.
XVII
Electioneering
And now, in these days—the days immediately following the departure of Luke Rowan from Baslehurst—the Tappitt family were constrained to work very hard at the task of defaming the young man who had lately been living with them in their house. They were constrained to do this by the necessities of their position; and in doing so by no means showed themselves to be such monsters of iniquity as the readers of the story will feel themselves inclined to call them. As for Tappitt himself, he certainly believed that Rowan was so base a scoundrel that no evil words against him could be considered as malicious or even unnecessary. Is it not good to denounce a scoundrel? And if the rascality of any rascal be specially directed against oneself and one’s own wife and children, is it not a duty to denounce that rascal, so that his rascality may be known and thus made of no effect? When Tappitt declared in the reading-room at the Dragon, and afterwards in the little room inside the bar at the King’s Head, and again to a circle of respectable farmers and tradesmen in the Corn Market, that young Rowan had come down to the brewery and made his way into the brewery-house with a ready prepared plan for ruining him—him, the head of the firm—he thought that he was telling the truth. And again, when he spoke with horror of Rowan’s intention of setting up an opposition brewery, his horror was conscientious. He believed that it would be very wicked in a man to oppose the Bungall establishment with money left by Bungall—that it would be a wickedness than which no commercial rascality could be more iniquitous. His very soul was struck with awe at the idea. That anything was due in the matter to the consumer of beer, never occurred to him. And it may also be said in Tappitt’s favour that his opinion—as a general opinion—was backed by those around him. His neighbours could not be made to hate Rowan as he hated him. They would not declare the young man to be the very Mischief, as he did. But that idea of a rival brewery was distasteful to them all. Most of them knew that the beer was almost too bad to be swallowed; but they thought that Tappitt had a vested interest in the manufacture of bad beer;—that as a manufacturer of bad beer he was a fairly honest and useful man;—and they looked upon any change as the work, or rather the suggestion, of a charlatan.
“This isn’t Staffordshire,” they said. “If you want beer like that you can buy it in bottles at Griggs’.”
“He’ll soon find where he’ll be if he tries to undersell me,” said young Griggs. “All the same, I hope he’ll come back, because he has left a little bill at our place.”
And then to other evil reports was added that special evil report—that Rowan had gone away without paying his debts. I am inclined to think that Mr. Tappitt can be almost justified in his evil thoughts and his evil words.
I cannot make out quite so good a case for Mrs. Tappitt and her two elder daughters;—for even Martha, Martha the just, shook her head in these days when Rowan’s name was mentioned;—but something may be said even for them. It must not be supposed that Mrs. Tappitt’s single grievance was her disappointment as regarded Augusta. Had there been no Augusta on whose behalf a hope had been possible, the predilection of the young moneyed stranger for such a girl as Rachel Ray would have been a grievance to such a woman as Mrs. Tappitt. Had she not been looking down on Rachel Ray and despising her for the last ten years? Had she not been wondering among her friends, with charitable volubility, as to what that poor woman at Bragg’s End was to do with her daughter? Had
