"I hope not," said Mr. Comfort, thinking of Rachel and her hopes.
"We all hope he isn't, of course," said the doctor. "But we can't prevent men being scamps by hoping. There are other scamps in this town in whom, if my hoping would do any good, a very great change would be made."—Everybody present knew that the doctor alluded especially to Mr. Prong, whose condition, however, if the doctor's hopes could have been carried out, would not have been enviable.—"But I fear this fellow Rowan is a scamp, and I think he has treated Tappitt badly. Tappitt told me all about it only this morning."
"Audi alteram partem," said Mr. Comfort.
"The scamp's party you mean," said the doctor. "I haven't the means of doing that. If in this world we suspend our judgment till we've heard all that can be said on both sides of every question, we should never come to any judgment at all. I hear that he's in debt; I believe he behaved very badly to Tappitt himself, so that Tappitt was forced to use personal violence to defend himself; and he has certainly threatened to open a new brewery here. Now that's bad, as coming from a young man related to the old firm."
"I think he should leave the brewery alone," said Mr. Comfort.
"Of course he should," said the doctor. "And I hear, moreover, that he is playing a wicked game with a girl in your parish."
"I don't know about a wicked game," said the other. "It won't be a wicked game if he marries her."
Then Rachel's chances of matrimonial success were discussed with a degree of vigour which must have been felt by her to be highly complimentary, had she been aware of it. But I grieve to say that public opinion, as expressed in Dr. Harford's dining-room, went against Luke Rowan. Mr. Tappitt was not a great man, either as a citizen or as a brewer: he was not one to whom Baslehurst would even rejoice to raise a monument; but such as he was he had been known for many years. No one in that room loved or felt for him anything like real friendship; but the old familiarity of the place was in his favour, and his form was known of old upon the High Street. He was not a drunkard, he lived becomingly with his wife, he had paid his way, and was a fellow-townsman. What was it to Dr. Harford, or even to Mr. Comfort, that he brewed bad beer? No man was compelled to drink it. Why should not a man employ himself, openly and legitimately, in the brewing of bad beer, if the demand for bad beer were so great as to enable him to live by the occupation? On the other hand, Luke Rowan was personally known to none of them; and they were jealous that a change should come among them with any view of teaching them a lesson or improving their condition. They believed, or thought they believed, that Mr. Tappitt had been ill-treated in his counting-house. It was grievous to them that a man with a wife and three daughters should have been threatened by a young unmarried man,—by a man whose shoulders were laden with no family burden. Whether Rowan's propositions had been in truth good or evil, just or unjust, they had not inquired, and would not probably have ascertained had they done so. But they judged the man and condemned him. Mr. Comfort was brought round to condemn him as thoroughly as did Dr. Harford,—not reflecting, as he did so, how fatal his condemnation might be to the happiness of poor Rachel Ray.
"The fact is, Butler," said the doctor, when Mr. Comfort had left them, and gone to the drawing-room;—"the fact is, your wife has not played her cards at the brewery as well as she usually does play them. She has been taking this young fellow's part; and after that I don't know how she was to expect that Tappitt would stand by you."
"No general can succeed always," said Cornbury, laughing.