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 pig-headed 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, money-making 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 love-making. 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 connexion. 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 connexion, 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 to your mother.
Yours, dearest Rachel,
Most affectionately,Luke Rowan.
The letter was not quite what Rachel had expected, but, nevertheless, she thought it very nice. She had never received a love-letter before, and probably had never read one,—even in print; so that she was in possession of no strong preconceived notions as to the nature or requisite contents of such a document. She was a little shocked when Luke called his mother a goose;—she was a little startled when he said that people were "liars," having an idea that the word was one not to be lightly used;—she was amused by the allusion to the baronet's grandmother, feeling, however, that the manner and language of his letter was less pretty and love-laden than she had expected;—and she was frightened when he so confidently called upon her to write to him twice a week. But, nevertheless, the letter was a genial one, joyous, and, upon the whole, comforting. She read it very slowly, going back over much of it twice and thrice, so that her mother became impatient before the perusal was finished.
"It seems to be very long," said Mrs. Ray.
"Yes, mamma, it is long. It's nearly four sides."
"What can he have to say so much?"
"There's a good deal of it is about his own private affairs."
"I suppose, then, I mustn't see it."
"Oh yes, mamma!" And Rachel handed her the letter. "I shouldn't think of having a letter from him and not showing it to you;—not as things are now." Then Mrs. Ray took the letter and spent quite as much time in reading it as Rachel had done. "He writes as though he meant to have everything quite his own way," said Mrs. Ray.
"That's what he does mean. I think he will do that always. He's what people call imperious; but that isn't bad in a man, is it?"
Mrs. Ray did not quite know whether it was bad in a man or no. But she mistrusted the letter, not construing it closely so as to discover what might really be its full meaning, but perceiving that the young man took, or intended to take, very much into his own hands; that he demanded that everything should be surrendered to his will and pleasure, without any guarantee on his part that such surrendering should be properly acknowledged. Mrs. Ray was disposed to doubt people and things that were at a distance from her. Some check could be kept over a lover at Baslehurst; or, if perchance the lover had removed himself only to Exeter, with which city Mrs. Ray was personally acquainted, she could have believed in his return. He would not, in that case, have gone utterly beyond her ken. But she could put no confidence in a lover up in London. Who could say that he might not marry some one else to-morrow,—that he might not be promising to marry half a dozen? It was with her the same sort of feeling which made her think it possible that Mr. Prong might go to Australia. She would have liked as a lover for her daughter a young man fixed in business,—if not at Baslehurst, then at Totnes, Dartmouth, or Brixham,—under her own eye as it were;—a young man so fixed that all the world of South Devonshire would know of all his doings. Such a young man, when he asked a girl to marry him, must mean what he said. If he did not there would be no escape for him from the punishment of his neighbours' eyes and tongues. But a young man up in London,—a young man who had quarrelled with his natural friends in Baslehurst,—a young man who was confessedly masterful and impetuous,—a young man who called his own mother a goose, and all the rest of the world liars, in his first letter to his lady-love;—was that a young man in whom Mrs. Ray could place confidence as a lover for her pet lamb? She read the letter very slowly, and then, as she gave it back to Rachel, she groaned.