Rachel Ray Part 15

"I think I would rather be alone, if I do not return to them at the cottage. I would fain return if only they--"

"If only they would return too. Yes! That would be a glorious end to the struggle you have made, if you can bring them back with you from following after the Evil One! But you cannot return to them now, if you are to countenance by your presence dancings and love-makings in the open air,"--why worse in the open air than in a close little parlour in a back street, Mr. p.r.o.ng did not say,--"and loud revellings, and the absence of all good works, and rebellion against the Spirit." Mr. p.r.o.ng was becoming energetic in his language, and at one time had raised himself in his chair, and opened his eyes. But he closed them at once, and again fell back. "No, my friend," said he, "no. It must not be so. They must be rescued from the burning; but not so,--not so." After that for a minute or two they both sat still in silence.

"I think I shall get two small rooms for myself in one of the quiet streets, near the new church," said she.

"Ah, yes, perhaps so,--for a time."

"Till I may be able to go back to mother. It's a sad thing families being divided, Mr. p.r.o.ng."

"Yes, it is sad;--unless it tends to the doing of the Lord's work."

"But I hope;--I do hope, that all this may be changed. Rachel I know is obstinate, but mother means well, Mr. p.r.o.ng. She means to do her duty, if only she had good teaching near her."

"I hope she may, I hope she may. I trust that they may both be brought to see the true light. We will wrestle for them,--you and me.

We will wrestle for them,--together. Mrs. Prime, my friend, if you are prepared to hear me with attention, I have a proposition to make which I think you will acknowledge to be one of importance." Then suddenly he sat bolt upright, opened his eyes wide, and dressed his mouth with all the solemn dignity of which he was the master. "Are you prepared to listen to me, Mrs. Prime?"

Mrs. Prime, who was somewhat astonished, said in a low voice that she was prepared to listen.

"Because I must beg you to hear me out. I shall fail altogether in reaching your intelligence,--whatever effect I might possibly have upon your heart,--unless you will hear me to the end."

"I will hear you certainly, Mr. p.r.o.ng."

"Yes, my friend, for it will be necessary. If I could convey to your mind all that is now pa.s.sing through my own, without any spoken word, how glad should I be! The words of men, when taken at the best, how weak they are! They often tell a tale quite different from that which the creature means who uses them. Every minister has felt that in addressing his flock from the pulpit. I feel it myself sadly, but I never felt it so sadly as I do now."

Mrs. Prime did not quite understand him, but she a.s.sured him again that she would give his words her best attention, and that she would endeavour to gather from them no other meaning than that which seemed to be his. "Ah,--seemed!" said he. "There is so much of seeming in this deceitful world. But you will believe this of me, that whatever I do, I do as tending to the strengthening of my hands in the ministry." Mrs. Prime said that she would believe so much; and then as she looked into her companion's face, she became aware that there was something of weakness displayed in that a.s.suming mouth. She did not argue about it within her own mind, but the fact had in some way become revealed to her.

"My friend," said he,--and as he spoke he drew his chair across the rug, so as to bring it very near to that on which Mrs. Prime was sitting--"our destinies in this world, yours and mine, are in many things alike. We are both alone. We both of us have our hands full of work, and of work which in many respects is the same. We are devoted to the same cause: is it not so?" Mrs. Prime, who had been told that she was to listen and not to speak, did not at first make any answer.

But she was pressed by a repet.i.tion of the question. "Is it not so, Mrs. Prime?"

"I can never make my work equal to that of a minister of the Gospel,"

said she.

"But you can share the work of such a minister. You understand me now. And let me a.s.sure you of this; that in making this proposition to you, I am not self-seeking. It is not my own worldly comfort and happiness to which I am chiefly looking."

"Ah," said Mrs. Prime, "I suppose not." Perhaps there was in her voice the slightest touch of soreness.

"No;--not chiefly to that. I want a.s.sistance, confidential intercourse, sympathy, a congenial mind, support when I am like to faint, counsel when I am pressing on, aid when the toil is too heavy for me, a kind word when the day's work is over. And you,--do you not desire the same? Are we not alike in that, and would it not be well that we should come together?" Mr. p.r.o.ng as he spoke had put out his hand, and rested it on the table with the palm upwards, as though expecting that she would put hers within it; and he had tilted his chair so as to bring his body closer to hers, and had dropped from his face his a.s.sumed look of dignity. He was quite in earnest, and being so had fallen away into his natural dispositions of body.

"I do not quite understand you," said Mrs. Prime. She did however understand him perfectly, but thought it expedient that he should be required to speak a little further before she answered him. She wanted time also to arrange her reply. As yet she had not made up her mind whether she would say yes or no.

"Mrs. Prime, I am offering to make you my wife. I have said nothing of love, of that human affection which one of G.o.d's creatures entertains for another;--not, I can a.s.sure you, because I do not feel it, but because I think that you and I should be governed in our conduct by a sense of duty, rather than by the poor creature-longings of the heart."

"The heart is very deceitful," said Mrs. Prime.

"That is true,--very true; but my heart, in this matter, is not deceitful. I entertain for you all that deep love which a man should feel for her who is to be the wife of his bosom."

"But Mr. p.r.o.ng--"

"Let me finish before you give me your answer. I have thought much of this, as you may believe; and by only one consideration have I been made to doubt the propriety of taking this step. People will say that I am marrying you for,--for your money, in short. It is an insinuation which would give me much pain, but I have resolved within my own mind, that it is my duty to bear it. If my motives are pure,"--here he paused a moment for a word or two of encouragement, but received none,--"and if the thing itself be good, I ought not to be deterred by any fear of what the wicked may say. Do you not agree with me in that?"

Mrs. Prime still did not answer. She felt that any word of a.s.sent, though given by her to a minor proposition, might be taken as involving some amount of a.s.sent towards the major proposition. Mr.

p.r.o.ng had enjoyed the advantage of thinking over his matrimonial prospects in undisturbed solitude, but she had as yet possessed no such advantage. As the idea had never before presented itself to her, she did not feel inclined to commit herself hastily.

"And as regards money," he continued.

"Well," said Mrs. Prime, looking down demurely upon the ground, for Mr. p.r.o.ng had not at once gone on to say what were his ideas about money.

"And as regards money,--need I hardly declare that my motives are pure and disinterested? I am aware that in worldly affairs you are at present better off than I am. My professional income from the pew-rents is about a hundred and thirty pounds a year."--It must be admitted that it was very hard work. By this time Mr. p.r.o.ng had withdrawn his hand from the table, finding that attempt to be hopeless, and had re-settled his chair upon its four feet. He had commenced by requesting Mrs. Prime to hear him patiently, but he had probably not calculated that she would have listened with a patience so cruel and unrelenting. She did not even speak a word when he communicated to her the amount of his income. "That is what I receive here," he continued, "and you are probably aware that I have no private means of my own."

"I didn't know," said Mrs. Prime.

"No; none. But what then?"

"Oh, dear no."

"Money is but dross. Who feels that more strongly than you do?"

Mr. p.r.o.ng in all that he was saying intended to be honest, and in a.s.serting that money was dross, he believed that he spoke his true mind. He thought also that he was pa.s.sing a just eulogium on Mrs.

Prime, in declaring that she was of the same opinion. But he was not quite correct in this, either as regarded himself, or as regarded her. He did not covet money, but he valued it very highly; and as for Mrs. Prime, she had an almost unbounded satisfaction in her own independence. She had, after all, but two hundred a year, out of which she gave very much in charity. But this giving in charity was her luxury. Fine raiment and dainty food tempted her not at all; but nevertheless she was not free from temptations, and did not perhaps always resist them. To be mistress of her money, and to superintend the gifts, not only of herself but of others; to be great among the poor, and esteemed as a personage in her district,--that was her ambition. When Mr. p.r.o.ng told her that money in her sight was dross, she merely shook her head. Why was it that she wrote those terribly caustic notes to the agent in Exeter if her quarterly payments were ever late by a single week? "Defend me from a lone widow," the agent used to say, "and especially if she's evangelical." Mrs. Prime delighted in the sight of the bit of paper which conveyed to her the possession of her periodical wealth. To her money certainly was not dross, and I doubt if it was truly so regarded by Mr. p.r.o.ng himself.

"Any arrangements that you choose as to settlements or the like of that, could of course be made." Mr. p.r.o.ng when he began, or rather when he made up his mind to begin, had determined that he would use all his best power of language in pressing his suit; but the work had been so hard that his fine language had got itself lost in the struggle. I doubt whether this made much difference with Mrs. Prime; or it may be, that he had sustained the propriety of his words as long as such propriety was needful and salutary to his purpose. Had he spoken of the "like of that" at the opening of the negotiation, he might have shocked his hearer; but now she was too deeply engaged in solid serious considerations to care much for the words which were used. "A hundred and thirty from pew-rents," she said to herself, as he endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to look under her bonnet into her face.

"I think I have said it all now," he continued. "If you will trust yourself into my keeping I will endeavour, with G.o.d's a.s.sistance, to do my duty by you. I have said but little personally of myself or of my feelings, hoping that it might be unnecessary."

"Oh, quite so," said she.

"I have spoken rather of those duties which we should undertake together in sweet companionship, if you will consent to--to--to be Mrs. p.r.o.ng, in short." Then he waited for an answer.

As she sat in her widow's weeds, there was not, to the eye, the promise in her of much sweet companionship. Her old c.r.a.pe bonnet had been lugged and battered about--not out of all shape, as hats and bonnets are sometimes battered by young ladies, in which guise, if the young ladies themselves be pretty, the battered hats and bonnets are often more becoming than ever they were in their proper shapes--but so as closely to fit her head, and almost hide her face. Her dress was so made, and so put on, as to give to her the appearance of almost greater age than her mother's. She had studied to divest herself of all outward show of sweet companionship; but perhaps she was not the less, on that account, gratified to find that she had not altogether succeeded.

"I have done with the world, and all the world's vanities and cares,"

she said, shaking her head.

"No one can have done with the world as long as there is work in it for him or her to do. The monks and nuns tried that, and you know what they came to."

"But I am a widow."

"Yes, my friend; and have shown yourself, as such, very willing to do your part. But do you not know that you could be more active and more useful as a clergyman's wife than you can be as a solitary woman?"

"But my heart is buried, Mr. p.r.o.ng."

"No; not so. While the body remains in this vale of tears, the heart must remain with it." Mrs. Prime shook her head; but in an anatomical point of view, Mr. p.r.o.ng was no doubt strictly correct. "Other hopes will arise,--and perhaps, too, other cares, but they will be sources of gentle happiness."

Mrs. Prime understood him as alluding to a small family, and again shook her head at the allusion.

"What I have said may probably have taken you by surprise."

"Yes, it has, Mr. p.r.o.ng;--very much."