Rachael — Hard Times

Stephen comes home through the rain expecting dread and finds Rachael sitting by his wife's bed. She has cleaned the room, screened the ruined woman from his eyes, and stayed because she will not let even this outcast die alone. Stephen thinks bitterly that death is dealt with an unequal hand while his wife still lives and Rachael tends her.

Rachael speaks of their girlhood work together and quotes scripture: let him who is without sin cast the first stone. Stephen sees two bottles on the table, reads the label on one, and is seized by horror at what despair might have made him do. He trembles, dreams a church wedding that turns into public execution under his loom, and wakes in terror that he may never look on Rachael's face again. His wife rises, chooses the poison bottle, and lifts it to her lips. Rachael wakes, struggles, and takes the cup just in time. At three o'clock she breaks the bottle on the hearth.

Stephen goes to his knee on the stairs and calls her an angel. He confesses the poison-bottle fright that nearly broke him after Bounderby called his trouble unreasonable. Rachael stops his mouth gently. He vows that evermore he will see her beside the bed, never the wife alone, and will try to trust the time when they may walk together beyond the deep gulf. She leaves in the wind. He stands bare-headed in the road watching her go. As the shining stars were to the heavy candle in the window, so Rachael is to the common experiences of his life.