Anthony Trollope

“ 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. ”

“ Rachel was weaker, more worldly, given terribly to vain desires and thoughts that were almost wicked; but then it was so pleasant to live with her! And Rachel, though weak and worldly and almost wicked, was so very good and kind and sweet! As Mrs. Ray thought of this she began to doubt whether, after all, the world was so very bad a place, and whether the wickedness of tea and toast, and of other creature comforts, could be so very great. "I wonder what sort of a young man he is," she said to herself. ”

“ After all was he not a young man; and might he not, even yet, be a wolf? She was horrorstricken at the idea of sending Rachel over to see a lover, and looked back at the cottage window, towards Mrs. Prime, as though to see whether she was being watched in her iniquity. "Oh, Mrs. Sturt!" she said, "why didn't you give us time to think about it?"
"Give you time! How could I give you time, and he here on the spot? There's been too much time to my thinking. When young folk are agreeable and the old folk are agreeable too, there can't be too little time. ”

“ Rachel asked.
"A speech, my dear, made at the election."
"And who made it, mamma?"
Mrs. Ray hesitated for a moment before she answered, thereby letting Rachel know full well who made the speech before the word was spoken. But at last she did speak the word—"Mr. Rowan, my dear."
"Oh!" said Rachel; she longed to get hold of the newspaper, but she would utter no word expressive of such longing. Since that evening on which she had been bidden to look at the clouds she had regarded Luke as a special hero, cleverer than other men around her, as a man born to achieve things and make himself known. ”

“ Comfort's verdict might be in the young man's favour. If he would only say that the young man was not a wolf,—if he would only take upon his own clerical shoulders the responsibility of trusting the young man,—Mrs. Ray would become for the moment one of the happiest women in Devonshire. With what a beaming face,—with what a true joy,—with what smiles through her tears, would she then have welcomed Rachel back from the farm-house! How she would have watched her as she came across the green, beckoning to her eagerly, and telling all her happy tale beforehand by the signs of her joy! ”

“ What is it, Dolly?"
"We have been talking," said Dorothea. "Things in this world are not so pleasant in themselves that they can always be spoken of without tears,—either outward tears or inward. People are too apt to think that there is no true significance in their words when they say that this world is a vale of tears."
"All the same. I don't like to see mamma crying like that."
"Don't mind it, Rachel," said Mrs. Ray. "If you will not regard me I shall be better soon."
"I was saying that I thought I would come back to the cottage," said Mrs. Prime; "that is, if mother likes it." ”

“ Ray, in her quiet way, expressed much joy that Mr. Comfort's son-in-law should have been successful, and that Baslehurst should not have disgraced itself by any connexion with a Jew. To her it had appeared monstrous that such a one should have been even permitted to show himself in the town as a candidate for its representation. To such she would have denied all civil rights, and almost all social rights. For a true spirit of persecution one should always go to a woman; and the milder, the sweeter, the more loving, the more womanly the woman, the stronger will be that spirit within her. ”

“ If it was to be always thus between them, what would the world be to her for the remainder of her days? She could have borne to part with Rachel, had Rachel married, as in parting with her she would have looked forward to some future return of her girl's caresses; and in such case she would at least have felt that her loss had come from no cessation of the sweet loving nature of their mutual connexion. She would have wept as she gave Rachel over to a husband, but her tears would have been sweet as well as bitter. ”

“ Even between her and her daughters there was no longer any utterance of Rachel's name. She had once declared to Augusta, with irrepressible energy, that the man was a greater fool than she had ever believed possible, but after that it had been felt that the calamity would be best endured in silence.
When that interview in the dining-room was over, Rowan saw no more of Mrs. Tappitt. Business made it needful that he should be daily about the brewery, and there occasionally he met the poor departing man wandering among the vats and empty casks like a brewer's ghost. ”

“ In the first flush of our wretchedness, let the outward signs of our grief be what they may, we promise to ourselves the support of some inner strength which shall suffice to us at any rate as against the eyes of the outer world. But anon, and that inner staff fails us; our pride yields to our tears; our dignity is crushed beneath the load with which we have burdened it, and then with loud wailings we own ourselves to be the wretches which we are. But now Rachel was in the hour of her pride, and as she came down from her room she resolved that her sorrow should be buried in her own bosom. ”

“ It was a foolish subterfuge; a vain, silly attempt.
"Oh dear no," said he; "I always walk somewhere every day, and you shall see me again before long." Then he turned to Rachel. "Shall you be at Mr. Tappitt's to-morrow?"
"I don't quite know," said Rachel.
"I suppose I might as well tell you the truth and have done with it," said Luke, laughing. "I hate secrets among friends. The fact is Mr. Tappitt has turned me out of his house."
"Turned you out?" said Mrs. Ray.
"Oh, Mr. Rowan!" said Rachel.
"That's the truth," said Rowan. "It's about that horrid brewery. ”

“ Tappitt. "We never did it when I was young. Did we, Mrs. Rowan?"
"I don't think there's much change," said Mrs. Rowan; "we used to be very glad to get the young men when we could, and to do without them when we couldn't."
"And that's just the way with us," said Cherry.
"Speak for yourself," said Augusta.
During all this time Mr. Tappitt spoke never a word. He also sipped his glass of wine, and as he sipped it he brooded over his wrath. Who were these Rowans that they should have come about his house and premises, and forced everything out of its proper shape and position? ”

“ As for him, and these new tidings which had come to the cottage respecting him, she would have cared for them not a jot. Mrs. Cornbury had cautioned her not to believe all that she heard; but she had already declined,—had altogether declined to believe any of it. It was to her, whether believed or disbelieved, matter altogether irrelevant. A wife does not cease to love her husband because he gets into trouble. She does not turn against him because others have quarrelled with him. She does not separate her lot from his because he is in debt! ”

“ At nine o'clock exactly on that much to be remembered Tuesday the Cornbury carriage stopped at the gate of the cottage at Bragg's End, and Rachel, ready dressed, blushing, nervous, but yet happy, came out, and mounting on to the step was almost fearful to take her share of the seat. "Make yourself comfortable, my dear," said Mrs. Cornbury, "you can't crush me. Or rather I always make myself crushable on such occasions as this. I suppose we are going to have a great crowd?" Rachel merely said that she didn't know. She supposed there would be a good many persons. ”

“ No one knows, only me, what your father has gone through in that brewery."
"But why doesn't he take Mr. Rowan's offer?" said Cherry.
"Everybody seems to say now that Rowan is ever so rich," said Augusta.
"I suppose papa doesn't like the feeling of being turned out," said Martha.
"He wouldn't be turned out, my dear; not the least in the world," said Mrs. Tappitt. "I don't choose to interfere much myself because, perhaps, I don't understand it; but certainly I should like your papa to retire. I have told him so; but gentlemen sometimes don't like to be told of things." ”

“ Tappitt, "your papa might accept his offer by retiring with a very handsome income for us all. Your papa has been in business for a great many years, working like a galley-slave. Nobody knows how he has toiled and moiled, except me. It isn't any joke being a brewer,—and having it all on himself as he has had. And if young Rowan ever begins it, I wish him joy of it." ”

“ Ray could not quite repress in her heart a slight feeling of anger against the vicar. She remembered the words,—so different not only in their meaning, but in the tone in which they were spoken,—in which he had sanctioned Rachel's going to the ball: "Young people get to think of each other," he had then said, speaking with good-humoured, cheery voice, as though such thinking were worthy of all encouragement. He had spoken then of marriage being the happiest condition for both men and women, and had inquired as to Rowan's means. ”

“ 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. ”