“If you said anything I shouldn’t mind it so much; but I can’t bear to see you with that unhappy look. I’m sure I only wish to do what’s best. You can’t think it right that you should be writing letters to a gentleman without being sure that it is proper.”
“Oh, mamma, don’t talk about it!”
“You don’t like me to ask your sister; and I’m sure it’s natural I should want to ask somebody. He’s nearly seventy years old, and he has known you ever since you were born. And then he’s a clergyman, and therefore he’ll be sure to know what’s right. Not that I should have liked to have said a word about it to Mr. Prong, because there’s a difference when they come from one doesn’t know where.”
“Pray, mamma, don’t. I haven’t made any objection to Mr. Comfort. It isn’t nice to be talked over in that way by anybody, that’s all.”
“But what was I to do? I’m sure I liked the young man very much. I never knew a young man who took his tea so pleasant. And as for his manners and his way of talking, I had it in my heart to fall in love with him myself. I had indeed. As far as that goes, he’s just the young man that I could make a son of.”
“Dear mamma! my own dearest mamma!” and Rachel, jumping up, threw herself upon her mother’s neck. “Stop there. You shan’t say another word.”
“I’m sure I didn’t mean to say anything unpleasant.”
“No, you did not; and I won’t be impatient.”
“Only I can’t bear that look. And you know what his mother said—and Mrs. Tappitt. Not that I care about Mrs. Tappitt; only a person’s mother is his mother, and he shouldn’t have called her a goose.”
It must be acknowledged that Rachel’s position was not comfortable; and it certainly would not have been improved had she known how many people in Baslehurst were talking about her and Rowan. That Rowan was gone everybody knew; that he had made love to Rachel everybody said; that he never meant to come back any more most professed to believe. Tappitt’s tongue was loud in proclaiming his iniquities; and her follies and injuries Mrs. Tappitt whispered into the ears of all her female acquaintances.
“I’m sorry for her,” Miss Harford said, mildly. Mrs. Tappitt was calling at the rectory, and had made her way in. Mr. Tappitt was an upholder of the old rector, and there was a fellow-townsman’s friendship between them.
“Oh yes;—very sorry for her,” said Mrs. Tappitt.
“Very sorry indeed,” said Augusta, who was with her mother.
“She always seemed to me a pretty, quiet, well-behaved girl,” said Miss Harford.
“Still waters run deepest, you know, Miss Harford,” said Mrs. Tappitt. “I should never have imagined it of her;—never. But she certainly met him halfway.”
“But we all thought he was respectable, you know,” said Miss Harford.
Miss Harford was thoroughly good-natured; and though she had never gone halfway herself, and had perhaps lost her chance from having been unable to go any part of the way, she was not disposed to condemn a girl for having been willing to be admired by such a one as Luke Rowan.
“Well;—yes; at first we did. He had the name of money, you know, and that goes so far with some girls. We were on our guard,”—and she looked proudly round on Augusta—“till we should hear what the young man really was. He has thrown off his sheep’s clothing now with a vengeance. Mr. Tappitt feels quite ashamed that he should have introduced him to any of the people here; he does indeed.”
“That may be her misfortune, and not her fault,” said Miss Harford, who in defending Rachel was well enough inclined to give up Luke. Indeed, Baslehurst was beginning to have a settled mind that Luke was a wolf.
“Oh, quite so,” said Mrs. Tappitt. “The poor girl has been very unfortunate no doubt.”
After that she took her leave of the rectory.
On that evening Mr. Comfort dined with Dr. Harford, as did also Butler Cornbury and his wife, and one or two others. The chances of the election formed, of course, the chief subject of conversation both in the drawing-room and at the dinner-table; but in talking of the election they came to talk of Mr. Tappitt, and in talking of Tappitt they came to talk of Luke Rowan.
It has already been said that Dr. Harford had been rector of Baslehurst for many years at the period to which this story refers. He had nearly completed half a century of work in that capacity, and had certainly been neither an idle nor an inefficient clergyman. But, now in his old age, he was discontented and disgusted by the changes which had come upon him; and though some bodily strength for further service still remained to him, he had no longer any aptitude for useful work. A man cannot change as men change. Individual men are like the separate links of a rotatory chain. The chain goes on with continuous easy motion as though every part of it were capable of adapting itself to a curve, but not the less is each link as stiff and sturdy as any other piece of wrought iron. Dr. Harford had in his time been an active, popular man—a man possessing even some liberal tendencies in politics, though a country rector of nearly half a century’s standing. In his parish he had been more than a clergyman. He had been a magistrate, and a moving man in municipal affairs. He had been a politician, and though now for many years he had supported the Conservative candidate, he had been loudly in favour of the Reform Bill when Baslehurst was a close borough in the possession of a great duke, who held property hard by. But liberal politics had gone on and had left Dr. Harford high and dry on the standing-ground which he had chosen for himself in the early days of
