Rachel Ray Part 16

"And if so, it may be that you would wish time for consideration before you give me an answer."

"Perhaps that will be best, Mr. p.r.o.ng."

"Let it be so. On what day shall we say? Will Friday suit you? If I come to you on Friday morning, perhaps Miss Pucker will be there."

"Yes, she will."

"And in the afternoon."

"We shall be at the Dorcas meeting."

"I don't like to trouble you to come here again."

Mrs. Prime herself felt that there was a difficulty. Hitherto she had entertained no objection to calling on Mr. p.r.o.ng at his own house.

His little sitting-room had been as holy ground to her,--almost as part of the church, and she had taken herself there without scruple.

But things had now been put on a different footing. It might be that that room would become her own peculiar property, but she could never again regard it in a simply clerical light. It had become as it were a bower of love, and she could not take her steps thither with the express object of a.s.senting to the proposition made to her,--or even with that of dissenting from it. "Perhaps," said she, "you could call at ten on Sat.u.r.day. Miss Pucker will be out marketing." To this Mr.

p.r.o.ng agreed, and then Mrs. Prime got up and took her leave. How fearfully wicked would Rachel have been in her eyes, had Rachel made an appointment with a young man at some hour and some place in which she might be found alone! But then it is so easy to trust oneself, and so easy also to distrust others.

"Good-morning," said Mrs. Prime; and as she went she gave her hand as a matter of course to her lover.

"Good-bye," said he; "and think well of this if you can do so. If you believe that you will be more useful as my wife than you can be in your present position,--then--"

"You think it would be my duty to--"

"Well, I will leave that for you to decide. I merely wish to put the matter before you. But, pray, understand this; money need be no hindrance." Then, having said that last word, he let her go.

She walked away very slowly, and did not return by the most direct road to Miss Pucker's rooms. There was much to be considered in the offer that had been made to her. Her lot in life would be very lonely if this separation from her mother and sister should become permanent. She had already made up her mind that a continued residence with Miss Pucker would not suit her; and although, on that very morning, she had felt that there would be much comfort in living by herself, now, as she looked forward to that loneliness, it had for her very little attraction. Might it not be true, also, that she could do more good as a clergyman's wife than could possibly come within her reach as a single woman? She had tried that life once already, but then she had been very young. As that memory came upon her, she looked back to her early life, and thought of the hopes which had been hers as she stood at the altar, now so many years ago.

How different had been everything with her then! She remembered the sort of love she had felt in her heart, and told herself that there could be no repet.i.tion of such love on Mr. p.r.o.ng's behalf. She had come round in her walk to that very churchyard stile at which she had seen Rachel standing with Luke Rowan, and as she remembered some pa.s.sages in her own girlish days, she almost felt inclined to forgive her sister. But then, on a sudden, she drew herself up almost with a gasp, and went on quickly with her walk. Had she not herself in those days walked in darkness, and had it not since that been vouchsafed to her to see the light? In her few months of married happiness it had been given to her to do but little of that work which might now be possible to her. Then she had been married in the flesh; now she would be married in the spirit;--she would be married in the spirit, if it should, on final consideration, seem good to her to accept Mr.

p.r.o.ng's offer in that light. Then unconsciously, she began to reflect on the rights of a married woman with regard to money,--and also on the wrongs. She was not sure as to the law, and asked herself whether it would be possible for her to consult an attorney. Finally, she thought it would not be practicable to do so before giving her answer to Mr. p.r.o.ng.

And she could not even ask her mother. As to that, too, she questioned herself, and resolved that she could not so far lower herself under existing circ.u.mstances. There was no one to whom she could go for advice. But we may say this of her,--let her have asked whom she would, she would have at least been guided by her own judgment. If only she could have obtained some slight amount of legal information, how useful it would have been!

CHAPTER X.

LUKE ROWAN DECLARES HIS PLANS AS TO THE BREWERY.

"The truth is, T., there was some joking among the young people about the wine, and then Rowan went and ordered it." This was Mrs.

Tappitt's explanation about the champagne, made to her husband on the night of the ball, before she was allowed to go to sleep. But this by no means satisfied him. He did not choose, as he declared, that any young man should order whatever he might think necessary for his house. Then Mrs. Tappitt made it worse. "To tell the truth, T., I think it was intended as a present to the girls. We are doing a great deal to make him comfortable, you know, and I fancy he thought it right to make them this little return." She should have known her husband better. It was true that he grudged the cost of the wine; but he would have preferred to endure that to the feeling that his table had been supplied by another man,--by a young man whom he wished to regard as subject to himself, but who would not be subject, and at whom he was beginning to look with very unfavourable eyes. "A present to the girls? I tell you I won't have such presents. And if it was so, I think he has been very impertinent,--very impertinent indeed.

I shall tell him so,--and I shall insist on paying for the wine. And I must say, you ought not to have taken it."

"Oh, dear T., I have been working so hard all night; and I do think you ought to let me go to sleep now, instead of scolding me."

On the following morning the party was of course discussed in the Tappitt family under various circ.u.mstances. At the breakfast-table Mrs. Rowan, with her son and daughter, were present; and then a song of triumph was sung. Everything had gone off with honour and glory, and the brewery had been immortalized for years to come. Mrs. Butler Cornbury's praises were spoken,--with some little drawback of a sneer on them, because "she had made such a fuss with that girl Rachel Ray;" and then the girls had told of their partners, and Luke had declared it all to have been superb. But when the Rowans' backs were turned, and the Tappitts were alone together, others besides old Tappitt himself had words to say in dispraise of Luke. Mrs. Tappitt had been much inclined to make little of her husband's objections to the young man while she hoped that he might possibly become her son-in-law. He might have been a thorn in the brewery, among the vats, but he would have been a flouris.h.i.+ng young bay-tree in the outer world of Baslehurst. She had, however, no wish to encourage the growth of a thorn within her own premises, in order that Rachel Ray, or such as she, might have the advantage of the bay-tree. Luke Rowan had behaved very badly at her party. Not only had he failed to distinguish either of her own girls, but he had, as Mrs. Tappitt said, made himself so conspicuous with that foolish girl, that all the world had been remarking it.

"Mrs. Butler Cornbury seemed to think it all right," said Cherry.

"Mrs. Butler Cornbury is not everybody," said Mrs. Tappitt. "I didn't think it right, I can a.s.sure you;--and what's more, your papa didn't think it right."

"And he was going on all the evening as though he were quite master in the house," said Augusta. "He was ordering the musicians to do this and that all the evening."

"He'll find that he's not master. Your papa is going to speak to him this very day."

"What!--about Rachel?" asked Cherry, in dismay.

"About things in general," said Mrs. Tappitt. Then Mary Rowan returned to the room, and they all went back upon the glories of the ball. "I think it was nice," said Mrs. Tappitt, simpering. "I'm sure there was no trouble spared,--nor yet expense." She knew that she ought not to have uttered that last word, and she would have refrained if it had been possible to her;--but it was not possible.

The man who tells you how much his wine costs a dozen, knows that he is wrong while the words are in his mouth; but they are in his mouth, and he cannot restrain them.

Mr. Tappitt was not about to lecture Luke Rowan as to his conduct in regard to Rachel Ray. He found some difficulty in speaking to his would-be partner, even on matters of business, in a proper tone, and with becoming authority. As he was so much the senior, and Rowan so much the junior, some such tone of superiority was, as he thought, indispensable. But he had great difficulty in a.s.suming it. Rowan had a way with him that was not exactly a way of submission, and Tappitt would certainly not have dared to encounter him on any such matter as his behaviour in a drawing-room. When the time came he had not even the courage to allude to those champagne bottles; and it may be as well explained that Rowan paid the little bill at Griggs's, without further reference to the matter. But the question of the brewery management was a matter vital to Tappitt. There, among the vats, he had reigned supreme since Bungall ceased to be king, and for continual mastery there it was worth his while to make a fight. That he was under difficulties even in that fight he had already begun to know. He could not talk Luke Rowan down, and make him go about his work in an orderly, every-day, business-like fas.h.i.+on. Luke Rowan would not be talked down, nor would he be orderly,--not according to Mr. Tappitt's orders. No doubt Mr. Tappitt, under these circ.u.mstances, could decline the partners.h.i.+p; and this he was disposed to do; but he had been consulting lawyers, consulting papers, and looking into old accounts, and he had reason to fear, that under Bungall's will, Luke Rowan would have the power of exacting from him much more than he was inclined to give.

"You'd better take him into the concern," the lawyer had said. "A young head is always useful."

"Not when the young head wants to be master," Tappitt had answered.

"If I'm to do that the whole thing will go to the dogs." He did not exactly explain to the lawyer that Rowan had carried his infatuation so far as to be desirous of brewing good beer, but he did make it very clear that such a partner would, in his eyes, be anything but desirable.

"Then, upon my word, I think you'll have to give him the ten thousand pounds. I don't even know but what the demand is moderate."

This was very bad news to Tappitt. "But suppose I haven't got ten thousand pounds!" Now it was very well known that the property and the business were worth money, and the lawyer suggested that Rowan might take steps to have the whole concern sold. "Probably he might buy it himself and undertake to pay you so much a year," suggested the lawyer. But this view of the matter was not at all in accordance with Mr. Tappitt's ideas. He had been brewer in Baslehurst for nearly thirty years, and still wished to remain so. Mrs. Tappitt had been of opinion that all difficulties might be overcome if only Luke would fall in love with one of her girls. Mrs. Rowan had been invited to Baslehurst specially with a view to some such arrangement. But Luke Rowan, as it seemed to them both now, was an obstinate young man, who, in matters of beer as well as in matters of love, would not be guided by those who best knew how to guide him. Mrs. Tappitt had watched him closely at the ball, and had now given him up altogether.

He had danced only once with Augusta, and then had left her the moment the dance was over. "I should offer him a hundred and fifty pounds a year out of the concern, and if he didn't like that let him lump it," said Mrs. Tappitt. "Lump it!" said Mr. Tappitt. "That means going to a London lawyer." He felt the difficulties of his position as he prepared to speak his mind to young Rowan on the morning after the party; but on that occasion his strongest feeling was in favour of expelling the intruder. Any lot in life would be preferable to working in the brewery with such a partner as Luke Rowan.

"I suppose your head's hardly cool enough for business," he said, as Luke came in and took a stool in his office. Tappitt was sitting in his customary chair, with his arm resting on a large old-fas.h.i.+oned leather-covered table, which was strewed with his papers, and which had never been reduced to cleanliness or order within the memory of any one connected with the establishment. He had turned his chair round from its accustomed place so as to face Rowan, who had perched himself on a stool which was commonly occupied by a boy whom Tappitt employed in his own office.

"My head not cool!" said Rowan. "It's as cool as a cuc.u.mber. I wasn't drinking last night."

"I thought you might be tired with the dancing." Then Tappitt's mind flew off to the champagne, and he determined that the young man before him was too disagreeable to be endured.

"Oh, dear, no. Those things never tire me. I was across here with the men before eight this morning. Do you know, I'm sure we could save a third of the fuel by altering the flues. I never saw such contrivances. They must have been put in by the coal-merchants, for the sake of wasting coal."

"If you please, we won't mind the flues at present."

"I only tell you; it's for your sake much more than my own. If you won't believe me, do you ask Newman to look at them the first time you see him in Baslehurst."

"I don't care a straw for Newman."

"He's got the best concerns in Devons.h.i.+re, and knows what he's about better than any man in these parts."

"I dare say. But now, if you please, we won't mind him. The concerns, as I have managed them, have done very well for me for the last thirty years;--very well I may say also for your uncle, who understood what he was doing. I'm not very keen for so many changes.

They cost a great deal of money, and as far as I can see don't often lead to much profit."

"If we don't go on with the world," said Rowan, "the world will leave us behind. Look at the new machinery they're introducing everywhere.

People don't do it because they like to spend their money. It's compet.i.tion; and there's compet.i.tion in beer as well as in other things."

For a minute or two Mr. Tappitt sat in silence collecting his thoughts, and then he began his speech. "I'll tell you what it is, Rowan, I don't like these new-fangled ways. They're very well for you, I dare say. You are young, and perhaps you may see your way.

I'm old, and I don't see mine among all these changes. It's clear to me that you and I could not go on together as partners in the same concern. I should expect to have my own way,--first because I've a deal of experience, and next because my share in the concern would be so much the greatest."

"Stop a moment, Mr. Tappitt; I'm not quite sure that it would be much the greatest. I don't want to say anything about that now; only if I were to let your remark pa.s.s without notice it would seem that I had a.s.sented."