A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 3

And so he fell back insensibly into many of his old self-indulgent habits, and the pleasures of his bachelor life grew more than ever pleasant. This was particularly the case after his return to Melbourne, where his face became as familiar to club men as in the ante-nuptial days. Some excuse for this independence was supposed to lie in the fact that he and his wife had not yet settled down to housekeeping.

The Toorak mansion was being furnished and decorated with the treasures of art and upholstery that they had brought out with them; and until everything was completed, and the entire establishment was in proper order for their reception, and for the giving of that magnificent house-warming to which the world of Melbourne fashion was looking forward, they were inhabiting a suite of rooms in an hotel, and domestic life, consequently, was to a certain extent disorganised.

On this night of which we are speaking, Rachel thought it was very kind and attentive of him to come home to her a full hour before he needed to have done. It never occurred to her, any more than to him, that he neglected her.

The servants of the hotel, who were on the watch for a sight of her as she went to her carriage, thought her not only one of the most lovely, but one of the most fortunate of women; and so did the majority of the gay company at the Town Hall, when she made her appearance amongst them.

She had come back from Europe and all her sea-voyaging, in excellent physical health, and the last year or two of her life, in spite of sorrowful vicissitudes, had ripened and developed her beauty in a very marked degree.

She was dressed in white, but with great richness, of course – her husband had seen to that; covered with precious lace, that was as attractive to the eyes of the Melbourne ladies as the delicacy of her pure complexion was to those of the men. And she wore her necklace of diamond stars, and diamonds on her arms, and on her bosom, and in her hair; and she was altogether very magnificent, and made a great sensation.

Amongst her many admirers she noticed, when she had been in the room a little while, a short, stout man, of about forty or fifty years of age, apparently, who was a stranger to her, regarding her with much attention.

He had rather an air of distinction about him in spite of his low stature, and a noticeable absence of beauty; and she had a dim – very dim – impression that she had seen him, or someone like him, before.

He wore a fair moustache but no beard or whiskers, and his florid face was marked down one side with the puckered white scar of an old wound.

His eyes were quick and bright, and the keen observation that he brought to bear upon her through an eyeglass that he put into one of them whenever she came near, obviously with the intention of studying her to the best advantage, was a little disconcerting even to an acknowledged beauty.

She was waltzing with Mr. Buxton – it was her second waltz, and he danced very well – when suddenly, high in the air over her head, the great clock chimed eleven, and all the associations of that sacred hour gathered like ghosts around her, Roden Dalrymple holding the lighted match to his watch, while she sheltered the little flame from the wind – her head touching his cheek and his huge moustache as they looked down together to see the time – the mystic light and stillness of the peaceful night, through which the sound of the city bells came up to them, to warn them that their happiness was a thing too good to last.

"Eleven p.m.," he had called it; and "you must go home, little one," he had said. Could it have been at that moment that he meant to send her away so far, and never to take her back to his arms and his heart again?

"Aw – what's the matter? Are you dizzy?" asked her partner, feeling a break and a jar in the rhythm of the measure that had been flowing so very harmoniously.

"A little," she whispered. "I should like to sit down for a few minutes – we'll go on again, if you like, presently."

He led her to a retired bench, and while she rested stood beside her, silently watching the people who continued to revolve before them. She had hardly sat down, and was beginning mechanically to fan herself, when the stranger with the eyeglass came up, with a lady, who was also unknown to her, on his arm.

"Here's a seat," said the little stout man; and his partner, an elderly and amiable matron, sat down, bestowing the deprecatory smile of old-fashioned courtesy upon the two already in possession.

He took the end of the bench himself, and chatted away to her – she was his aunt, apparently – leaning a little forward, with an elbow on his knee; and Rachel, dreamily occupied as she was, was quite conscious that his keen eyes dwelt persistently, not upon his neighbour's face, but upon her own.

"Why don't you go and get a partner, James?" said the elderly matron. "You don't want to dance attendance upon me, my dear – I shall do very well here until Lucy wants me. Go and find some pretty young lady, and enjoy yourself like the rest of them."

"I don't believe in pretty young ladies," replied the little man, rather bluntly. "Except Lucy – and she is engaged for the whole night, as far as I can make out."

Here ensued some comments upon Lucy, who appeared to be the lady's daughter, generally favourable to that young person. And the little man then began to inveigh against the abstract girl of the period with trenchant vigour – obviously to the great embarrassment of his companion, who tried her best, but vainly, to divert him to other topics.

"In fact, there are no girls nowadays," he remarked coolly; "they are all calculating, selfish, heartless, worldly women – always excepting Lucy, of course – as soon as they cease to be children. They have only one object in life, and that is to marry a man – no, not a man necessarily, a forked stick will do – who has plenty of money."

"My dear, that is a popular sentiment, I know, and supposed to be full of wit and wisdom, but it always seems to me that it is just a little vulgar," replied his companion, frowning surreptitiously, and giving uneasy sidelong glances at Rachel. "There are girls and girls, of course, just as there are men and men; we see bad and good in every class. How beautifully this place lights up, to be sure!"

"They like a fellow to dance with them and dangle after them, and make love to them, and break his heart for them – nothing pleases them better – when they have no serious business on hand," the little man proceeded, with unabashed composure, and still gazing steadily at Rachel; "but when it comes to marriage – "

"My dear James, I am not recommending marriage to you – only a harmless waltz."

"Then they are for sale to the highest bidder, whoever he may happen to be. The poor, impecunious lover – be he ever so much a lover, and the best fellow that walks the earth into the bargain – must take himself off – and cut his throat for all she cares."

At this sudden change from the plural to the singular, and at something personal and impertinent that she recognised in the tone and look of the speaker, a deep blush flooded Rachel's face, and she rose from her seat with dignity, but trembling in all her limbs.

"Aw – who the dickens is that fellow?" Mr. Buxton whispered, with a scowl – supposing, however, that he could only be a disappointed aspirant for Rachel's hand. "He's an impudent brute, whoever he is, and I have a good mind to tell him so. What's his name, eh?"

"I don't know," said Rachel. But as she spoke, and was about to move away, the stranger rose and stood with an air of courteous deference to let her pass him – an air that somehow indicated the breeding and manners of a gentleman; and all at once it flashed across her where and when she had seen him before. He was the man who had called at Toorak and been closeted with her aunt at the time when Roden Dalrymple had promised to come for her, nearly two years ago. She had gone out into the garden, thinking he might possibly have been Roden, to intercept him as he was going away. She had had only a distant glimpse of him – of his short, square figure, and the lower part of his face – but she recognised now that this was the same man. She had not gone many steps into the room, feeling strangely overwhelmed by her discovery, when a pair of exhausted waltzers went trailing by, and one of them said to the other, "Didn't somebody say Jim Gordon was here to-night? Where is the old fellow hiding himself? I should like to see him again."

The little man with the eyeglass was – of course he was – Roden Dalrymple's friend and partner.

She drew her hand from her cousin's arm, turned round, and walked deliberately back to the seat she had just quitted.

"No," she said to her pursuing cavalier, "do not come. Go and dance with somebody, and fetch me presently."

"My dear Rachel, you must allow me – aw, I couldn't really – "

"I want to speak to Mr. Gordon," she said, pausing in front of that gentleman. "Mr. Gordon, I want to ask you something. Will you kindly take me out to the lobbies – somewhere where it is quiet – if this lady will excuse you for a few minutes?"

Mr. Buxton was utterly bewildered, as well he might be. He stared, stiffened himself, and then went off to find Laura, and to tell her of the extraordinary proceedings of her cousin "with some insolent beggar whose name she said she didn't know, though she addressed him by it almost in the same breath," and to intimate (merely by way of soothing his own injured dignity) that there seemed to him something "rather fishy" going on.

And Mr. Gordon, after losing his presence of mind for about half a minute, and then only partially recovering it, silently offered his arm to the lady who had made that strange appeal to him. He had never seen her until to-night; he had hoped he never should see her, or have anything to do with her. She had been, in his imagination of her, the embodiment of all that was detestable in woman. But now something in the candid young face, unnaturally set and pale, and in the suppressed passion and purpose of her manner, gave him compunctious misgivings, and a vague but alarming impression that there had been some blundering somewhere.

"You are Mr. Gordon, are you not?" she began hurriedly, as soon as they were out of the crowd and glare of the ball-room. "Yes, I thought so; but I did not recognise you at first. I should have waited for an introduction, but I was afraid you might go away. I think you know who I am. What you were saying just now – had it not some reference to me?"

The little man began to stammer incoherently. He was completely overbalanced by the shock of this unexpected attack. Rachel, on the contrary, usually so fluttered by an emergency, had a sort of fierce, collected calm about her.

"I am sure it had," she said. "And I want to know what you meant?"

"I – a – perhaps you are aware that I am Mr. Dalrymple's friend, Mrs. Kingston. I am therefore, perhaps, something of a partisan – forgive me, if I forgot myself for the moment – "

"Ah," she broke out sharply, "there has been some great mistake! Tell me – quickly – before anyone is here to interrupt us – did you come to see my aunt that Christmas – the Christmas before last?"

"Certainly I came to see her and you," he replied.

"Did he send you?"

"Of course he did."

"Why?"

"Why!" he echoed angrily. "Do you mean to say you don't know why?"

"I know nothing," said Rachel. She stood before him shining in her satin and diamonds, without a trace of colour in her face; and the anguish of her beseeching eyes told him plainly that she spoke the truth.

"Oh, dear me, this is terrible!" he exclaimed, in a flurry of dismay and consternation. "Do you mean to say that you didn't know that he was ill? – that you didn't tell Mrs. Hardy to write that letter? – that it was all done without your knowing anything about it? Good Heavens! would anybody believe there were such malignant fiends in existence – and such fools!" he added bitterly.

Then he told her the whole story – how her lover had got hurt, and had lain insensible for many days, between life and death – how his first anxiety upon recovering consciousness was about his appointment with her – how he had deputed his friend to go to Melbourne and explain his inability to keep it; and how he (Mr. Gordon) had seen Mrs. Hardy and afterwards Mr. Kingston, and been led by them to an apparently unavoidable conclusion.

"She said you were not willing to see me, but that she would give you my messages and explanations," said the little man, thinking it would be best for his friend (and not much caring what it would be for other people) to have it all out at once, while he was as about it; "and that she would send me a note to the club, where I was staying, in the evening, or instruct you to do so. She had already told me that you were re-engaged to – a – your present husband. At night I got the letter, in which she repeated this assertion, stating that you had empowered her to do so."

"And you went and told him that?"

"I did not go and tell him that – for I did not want to kill him – until I had taken every possible precaution to get it corroborated."

"Yes?" ejaculated Rachel, breathlessly.

"I obtained an introduction to Mr. Kingston at the club, and I asked him on his honour to tell me if what Mrs. Hardy had said was true."

"You told him why you wanted to know?"

"I did."

She stood still for a few seconds to collect her strength; whole years of effort and agony were concentrated in that little interval.

"Shall you be going back to Queensland soon?" she asked quietly.

"I am going back to-morrow," he said – though he had not previously thought of doing so.

"Tell him when you see him – tell him from me – that I never knew anything– never, never, from the day I saw him last until to-night."

"It will break his heart to hear it, Mrs. Kingston."

"No – he will be glad to know that I was not utterly base. And I – I want him to know it."

"And shall I —can I – tell him that you were really not engaged when they said you were – when he thought you were waiting for him?"

She flushed deeply and drew herself up with a little stately gesture.

"He will not wish you to go into those particulars, Mr. Gordon. If you will give him my message simply, that is all I want you to do. He will understand it. Will you take me back to the ball-room now? I should like to find my cousin, Mrs. Reade."

CHAPTER V.

A CRISIS

AS nature makes us, so to a great extent, the most of us remain, when education has done its very best, or its very worst, to modify the great mother's handiwork. Her patterns, of which no one ever saw the original designs, and that have been unknown centuries a-weaving, cannot be sensibly altered in the infinitesimal fragment that one human lifetime represents, though every thread of circumstance, in its right or wrong adjustment, must have its value in the ultimate product, whatever that unimaginable thing may be.

Still, in the individual man or woman, here and there, the type that he or she belongs to is temporarily obscured by accidental causes; the lines of character, laid down by many forefathers, are twisted or straightened by violent wrenchings of irresponsible fate – as in less important branches of nature's business her processes are interrupted by lightning and earthquakes, and other rebellious forces.

Rachel, from the hour when she discovered how it was that she and Roden Dalrymple had been defrauded of their "rights," was apparently quite changed (though – as she is still a very young woman – we are not prepared to suppose that she will never be her old weak and timid and clinging self again). She was turned, from a soft and shrinking girl, into a hard and fearless, if not a defiant, woman.

The immense strength of her love – always an incalculable "unknown quantity" in the elements of human character and the factors of human destiny – had already given force and point, and meaning and dignity, to her whole personality and her relations with life; but now the magnitude of her wrongs and misfortunes, and still more of his, seemed to dwarf and crush every feeble trait and sentiment in her.

She went back to the ball-room, very white and silent, on Mr. Gordon's arm; and the first person of her own party whom she met there was Mr. Reade, under whose protection she placed herself, dismissing her late escort with a quiet "good-night."

She asked to be taken to Beatrice; and Ned, who never knew from whom he had received her, piloted her through the crowd until he found his small wife, whose bright eyes no sooner rested on Rachel's face than they recognised a new calamity.

"Has she heard anything, I wonder?" she asked herself in dismay. "Are you ill?" she inquired aloud.

"I want to go home," said Rachel.

The little woman did not waste time asking useless questions. She took her cousin to the cloak-room, sent Ned for a cab, and in a few minutes the three were driving to the Kingstons' hotel.

When they reached Rachel's drawing-room, and Ned had been sent downstairs to see if her maid was on the premises, Mrs. Reade put her arms round her tenderly, and begged to know what was the matter with her.

But Rachel, singularly unresponsive to the rare caress, would not tell – would not talk at all. She would not betray the mother's crime to the daughter, and she would not mention the name of her beloved, even to her dearest friend, in these married days.

"I am not well," she said, gently but with an odd harshness in her face and voice. "I could not dance – I could not stay in that place. I shall be better here. Go back, Beatrice, and make excuses for me. Say I was not well."

"I shall do no such thing," said Beatrice bluntly. "I shall not leave you until Graham comes home."

Rachel begged and protested with a sharp peremptoriness that was very unusual to her. Beatrice, full of anxiety and consternation, was obdurate.

In the midst of their discussion, they heard Mr. Kingston coming upstairs, bustling along in great haste. He flung open the door, with an air of angry irritation.

"Oh, here you are!" he exclaimed loudly. "What on earth are you doing? Everybody is inquiring for you, Rachel. Aren't you well? Why didn't you tell me, and let me bring you home, if you wanted to come? You have set all the room talking and gossiping, slinking off before midnight in this way – as if you were a mere nobody, who would not be missed – and not letting me know. What's the matter, eh?"

Rachel, without changing her position by a hair's breadth, lifted her eyes steadily and looked at him, but she did not speak.

Mrs. Reade saw the look, and she needed no words to tell her that some crisis in the conjugal relations of this pair had come, which no outsider had any business to see or meddle with; and she guessed correctly what it was.

"I will go back, and make what explanations are necessary," said she; "and I will come round in the morning, Rachel."

And she went out quickly, and closed the door behind her. On the stairs she met Rachel's maid going up, and told her her mistress would ring when she wanted her; and in the lobby of the hotel she replied to her husband's anxious inquiries by declaring irrelevantly that she wished Mr. Kingston, and his house and his money, were all at the bottom of the sea.

That gentleman, meanwhile, after following her out upon the landing, and looking over the stairs to see that her natural protector was in attendance, returned to his wife with a vague presentiment of unpleasantness in some shape or other.

He, too, had been struck with the peculiar expression of Rachel's face, and a guilty conscience intimated at once that she had "found out something," though it did not suggest any catastrophe in particular. There were so many things that, by unlucky accident, she might find out.

"However, I am not going to be called to account by her," he said to himself, in that spirit of swagger which she had herself nursed and nourished by her excess of wifely meekness. "I am not Ned Reade, to submit to be dictated to and sat upon by my own wife – so she needn't begin it."

And he walked into the drawing-room in a lordly manner.

The reception that he met with staggered him considerably.

"Graham," said Rachel, in a very quiet voice, "did you send word to Mr. Roden Dalrymple that I was engaged to you that Christmas – you know when I mean – two years ago, when I was ill? Did you tell that lie to Mr. Gordon deliberately, when you knew how things were with us?"

He was silent – intensely silent – for a few minutes, amazed, ashamed, embarrassed, and savage. He did not know how to answer her. Then he gave a little short surly laugh.

"What about it? Who has been talking to you of those things? What is Mr. Dalrymple to you now, I should like to know?"

"Did you?" she persisted.

"And what if I did?" he retorted roughly, but still making a ghastly attempt at badinage. "All's fair in love and war, you know, my dear; and it was that aunt of yours who told the lie, as you elegantly term it – if it was a lie – not I; I merely did not contradict her."

She looked at him steadily, with that implacable hardness in her once soft eyes.

"I will never forgive you," she said; "I will never, never forgive you."

"I am sure I am very sorry to hear it; but I suppose I can manage to get on without your forgiveness," he began. And then he gave up trying to make a joke of it, and turned upon her savagely. "Have you been seeing that fellow, Rachel? Tell me this instant; I insist upon knowing."

"I have seen his friend," she said, quietly.

"And did he send his friend to make those explanations to you – to you?"

"No; he did not send him. It was by accident that I met Mr. Gordon to-night!"

"And what business had you to talk to Mr. Gordon – to talk to anybody – about your old love affairs? Do you forget that you are a married woman – that you are my wife? It was bad enough when you were single to be mixing yourself up with a disreputable scoundrel like that – "

"He is not a disreputable scoundrel," she interposed sternly. "He is the most upright gentleman – he is the most noble man – in the wide world. I might have known," she added, drawing herself up proudly, "that he would never have forsaken me! I might have been sure that he would never break his word; that whoever was to blame for what happened to me that time, he was not! But I let myself be twisted round anybody's fingers rather than trust in him. It serves me right, it serves me right! I was not worthy of him."

"Well – upon my word!"

"You need not look at me so, Graham. I have never deceived you. I told you before I married you exactly how it was with me. I have never had any secrets from you, and I never will have any. You know as well as I do that I loved him – ah! I did not love him enough, that is what has ruined us! – and so I shall while I live, if I live to be a hundred."

"You mean to say you can sit there and tell me that to my face?"

"I can only tell the truth," she replied, with the same hard deliberation. "I could no more help loving him, especially now I understand how things have been with us – no one will know it, but it will be in my heart – than I could help breathing. When I leave off breathing, then I shall forget him perhaps, not before."

Mr. Kingston was beside himself with passion – as, indeed, so was she.

"Forewarned is forearmed," he said, with a sort of sardonic snarl; "I shall know now what steps to take to protect my honour."

"You know perfectly well that your honour – what you call your honour – is safe," she replied proudly. "If I am not to be trusted, he is. Do not insult us any more. We have had enough cruelty; we shall have quite enough to bear – he and I."

And so they went on with these bitter and defiant recriminations – Mr. Kingston, of course, insisting upon giving due prominence to his own wrongs, which were very real ones in their way, and both of them making reckless proposals with respect to their domestic arrangements – until suddenly, without any apparent warning, Rachel went off into wild hysterics, and the doctor had to be sent for.

Perhaps it was the best thing that could have happened under all the circumstances. She was very ill for several hours; and in the morning, when passion was spent, and she was lying in her bed still and quiet, with her head swathed in wet bandages, her husband knelt down beside her and asked her to forgive him.