A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 3

"Not you, dear – not you. And I can bear all my part of it, if only things go well with you."

"Why did you break that trace?" she exclaimed, with a touch of bitter passion. "But for that – but for two minutes lost – you would never have seen me, and then I should never have spoiled your life like this."

"But, dear, we are not going to regret that, I hope. We have got something 'saved from chance and change,' if not much, that to me at any rate – yes and to you too, I know – is worth even this heavy price that we are paying for it now. It need not spoil our lives, Rachel, to know – what we know. It is an agonising thing to see how blessed it might have been for us, and to be obliged to give it all up; but I shall never think of those two hours, when we belonged entirely to each other – only two hours, Rachel, out of our whole lives! – without being thankful for the chance which gave them to us. Yes, and I think we shall be the better for them – I don't say happier, because I really don't know what that word means – but I think life will somehow have a finer quality henceforth, whatever happens, on account of those two hours. Dear, I am forcing myself to give in to the hard fate that has done us out of our inheritance; but there is one thing that I don't think I could get reconciled to – and that is to thinking that you would ever live to wish that we had never known each other."

"I could not wish it," she whispered; "I could only try to persuade myself that I did."

"Do not try. You are under no obligation of duty to do that. Try to be happy with your husband – try not to fret over what is irrevocable, and not to hanker after what is hopeless. But don't try to turn me out of the only place in your life where I have a corner of my own. Let me keep the little of you that I have got – it is little enough! Do you remember what you said to me that night? – you said you had no rights in my past. He has no rights in our past. Keep it sacred, Rachel, for my sake. That will not hurt anybody. You are not afraid that such remembrances, if you shut them away in your heart, will militate against your efforts to do what is right by him? And you are not afraid that I will ever tempt or trouble you?"

"Oh, Roden, I am not afraid of you – you well know that!"

"Treat me as if I were dead," he said gently. "If I had been killed that time when I was thrown – if I were in my grave now – I know how you would think of me. You would not wish you had never seen me then. That is how I want you to think of me, Rachel."

"I know," she said, drawing a deep breath. "But to me – even if you had killed yourself – to me you could never be dead."

By this time they had sauntered slowly out of the deserted hall and through the empty vestibules, and were standing in the doorway, looking out upon the street below them.

The storm that had threatened in the morning was gathering up. Heavy clouds weighed upon the sultry air, and gusts of wind were beginning to blow the dust about ominously. Pedestrians were hurrying to gain shelter before the rain came on, but, as they passed, they took note of the lingering pair, who were apparently heedless of the warnings of the elements, with more or less curious eyes. Neither of them, it is needless to say, minded in the least who saw them. They had no desire to take even this last good-bye clandestinely.

And when Rachel, to whom it had not occurred to wonder why her carriage was not in attendance, saw it thundering along the street towards her, it was with as much relief as surprise that she recognised her husband in it, looking out of the window for her.

"We have said nothing," said Mr. Dalrymple, who perceived the approach of his old rival and enemy; "and we had so much to say."

"Perhaps it is better not to say much," said Rachel.

"Perhaps so. But one thing you must not mind my asking you – and I know you will tell me truly – are you getting along pretty well? Do you think you will be able to make anything of a happy life out of it? That is my great anxiety."

"Do not be anxious about me," she replied. "I shall get along. I know that you forgive me – that will help me more than anything."

"Don't talk about forgiveness, child – it implies a wider separation than I think has ever been between us. There can be no forgiveness in the case of people who never knowingly do one another wrong."

The carriage, with its high stepping, showy horses, began to slacken speed, and they descended the long flight of steps quietly, side by side.

"Is he good to you?" inquired Roden, quickly.

"Very," she replied; "very, indeed."

And then they reached the pavement, and the person referred to got out of the carriage and came to meet them.

It must be recorded, to Mr. Kingston's credit, that he behaved like a gentleman on this occasion. He was a little acid and supercilious, and not as composed as he assumed to be; but otherwise he conducted himself with propriety. "I took the carriage for half an hour," said he loudly. "I hope I haven't kept you waiting, my dear. Ah, Mr. Dalrymple, how do you do? I did not know you were in town. I hope you are quite well. Making a long stay?"

"A day or two only," said Roden, who stiffened in spite of himself, but spoke with studied courtesy. "I shall be starting back to Queensland to-night. I am glad to have had the opportunity of meeting Mrs. Kingston, and to see her looking well."

"Oh, yes, she is very well, I hope. Travelling did her good – it does everybody good. I felt quite set up by it myself. Dear me, was that a drop of rain? I think you had better be getting home, Rachel. There is a heavy storm coming directly. Good day, Mr. Dalrymple, good day. We can't set you down anywhere, I suppose?"

Mr. Dalrymple declined a seat in the carriage with thanks, and he held out his hand to Rachel.

"Good-bye," he said quietly.

"Good-bye," she replied, with an ash-white face. They looked at one another for a second; and then, lifting his hat gravely, Mr. Dalrymple turned and walked away down the street, and Mr. Kingston gave his arm to his wife, and led her to her carriage. Poor Rachel! she did not ask herself what would happen next – she did not wonder nor care whether she was to be scolded or not. For a few bitter, lonely moments, she had no recognisable future.

Then she turned to her husband, who was fanning the fuel of his wrath in silence, laid her hand on his arm, and said softly, "Graham?"

"Well – what?" he inquired, roughly.

"Do not be angry. I am never going to see him again."

"It's to be hoped not," he snarled, "if you have any regard for your reputation. Standing up there with him, in that public way, for all Melbourne to see!"

"You would not have wished me to meet Mr. Dalrymple in any way that was not public," she said, drawing herself up. "And I should be very sorry to do anything that all Melbourne might not see."

The rain began to sweep down heavily, and he turned to put up the window nearest him with an energy that threatened destruction to the glass.

And he said no more about Mr. Dalrymple.

Disturbed as he was, he was greatly relieved that the meeting he had always dreaded was over, and had taken place so quietly; and poor as was his estimation of the abstract woman, he had the most implicit faith in his wife's sincerity.

When she told him that she had bidden her old lover a final farewell, he believed her; and, though the sight and thought of the man made him ferocious, he was quite aware that difficulties were adjusting themselves more satisfactorily than he could have expected.

He did not feel that he had any excuse for upbraiding Rachel now, and he did not do it. But he had to put great restraint upon himself not to do it.

He got out of the carriage at his club, shutting the door with a bang behind him, and while his wife drove home by herself in a state of semi-consciousness, he went in to quarrel with some of his old friends who chanced to require his opinion upon the political situation. Politics, he promptly gave them to understand, were beneath his notice, likewise the people who concerned themselves therein. He wouldn't touch one of them with a pair of tongs. It wasn't for gentlemen and clubmen to mix themselves up with a lot of rogues and vagabonds. Let them alone and be hanged to them. That was what respectable people did in America. If Americans didn't care what riff-raff represented them, why should they?

As for the colony, if it liked to be dragged in the dirt – if it preferred, of its own free will, to go to the devil – let it, for all to him.

And so he worked off his savage temper harmlessly, and appeared in his own drawing-room at seven o'clock, irreproachably spruce, and with a flower in his button-hole, looking jaunty and amiable, as if nothing had happened.

Rachel, when he arrived, was sitting alone in the midst of her wealth and splendour, waiting for him.

She rose as he entered and went to meet him, looking lovely in her favourite black velvet, with red geraniums in her hair; and she laid her hand on his sleeve, and lifted a sad but peaceful face. "Kiss me, Graham," she said gently.

He put his arms round her at once.

"Dear little woman!" he responded. "I understand. I am not angry with you. It's all right. We won't say any more about it."

And he led her to the dining-room and placed her "at the head of the table," which was her social throne; and he plied her with dainty viands and rare wines with a fussy solicitude that was highly edifying to the servants who waited upon them, by way of showing her that he forgave her.

He was much impressed by his own large magnanimity; and what was more to the purpose, so in her unselfish heart, was she. They spent the evening together, tête-à-tête by the fireside (for it was cold when the storm was over), in the most domestic manner, planning new schemes for the garden and for the arrangement of a pet cabinet of blue china; and when Rachel went to bed, lighting her way about the great corridors and staircases with a candle that her husband had lit for her, she felt that he was helping her to make a fair start upon the weary road which stretched, plain and straight – but, oh, so flat and bare! – before her.

And she was very grateful to him.

Mr. Dalrymple, meanwhile left town by an evening train, and travelled night and day until he reached his home in the Queensland wilderness, where, being human – and very much so, too – he unloosed his heart from the restraints that he had put upon it, and railed at ease over the injustices of fate in the very strongest language.

"Why should I have done it?" he demanded of his ancient friend and comrade as they lounged in restful attitudes under the grass-thatched verandah of their humble little house, smoking the pipe of peace in the cool of the summer day. "Why should I have given her up to him? What right has he to keep her, while I am lonely for the rest of my days? He has not the shadow of a right. She doesn't belong to him, and she never will. There is no binding force in any other contract that is entered into by fraud and false pretences; why should there be in this which she has been dragged into, and which deprives her as well as me, of all the flower and sweetness of her life? It is a monstrous sacrifice – and as immoral as it is monstrous.

"It isn't as if we had no end of years, no end of lives to throw away. Suppose, ages hence, if we should survive, with our human nature, and I, for one, don't want to survive without it – and we look back upon this precious bit of certain happiness that we might have had, and see that we voluntarily gave up the whole of it merely because of a wretched little paper law – a miserable little conventional prejudice – what shall we think of ourselves then? We shall say that we did not deserve a gift that we did not know how to value."

"Rave away," said Mr. Gordon. "It will do you good. All the same, you know, as well as I do, that it would be impossible for you to do less or more than you have done."

Of course it was impossible. Few people are better than they profess to be, but he was one of those few. And if he had had the happiness of twenty lives to lose, he would have lost it all twice over rather than have kept it at any cost of peace or honour to the woman he loved. He allowed himself the right to love her still, which, as he justly remarked, couldn't hurt anybody.

He thought of her as he rode about his lonely plains, looking after black boys and cattle, and dreamt of her as he lay out in the starlight nights, with a saddle for his pillow, and the red light of the camp-fire flickering through the darkness upon his face; and always with a sense that, spiritually and morally, she belonged, before all the world to him.

But he never at heart regretted either that he had seen her that day at the Town-hall, or that he had elected to see her no more. He had done the only thing that it had been in him to do.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONSOLATION

IF it is true, as it is said, and as the observation of most of us seems to testify, that the ideal marriage is hardly ever realised, and then only when the rare and brief experience has been bought at untold cost of precious years, it is, perhaps, equally true that the majority of marriages wrongly and recklessly entered into, provided the contracting parties are honestly disposed, turn out surprisingly and undeservedly well.

Time, which solaces our disappointments and sanctifies our bereavements, remedies also in a great measure even these criminal mistakes.

As Rachel truly said, there are "whole worlds of things" besides love —i. e., "the love of man and woman when they love their best" – to knit husbands and wives together; and, independently of the ties that children create, and which, to the mother at least, are supremely and eternally sacred, the innumerable soft webs of habit and association that are woven in days and years of intimate companionship grow, like ivy over a fissure in a wall, so strong as eventually not only to hide the vacant place, but in some degree to supply artificially that element of stability and permanence to the structure which in its essential substance it lacked.

And so it was with Rachel. After a little time, when she had "settled down," changed and aged, and sobered as she was, she really was not unhappy.

She was always vastly conscious of her loss, but she was of too wholesome a disposition to be embittered by it; and her simple sense of duty and her characteristic unselfishness prompted her from the first to wear a cheerful face for her husband, and never by word or deed to reproach him, which course of conduct had the natural result of comforting herself quite as much as it gratified him.

He was not a bad man, and in his easy fashion, he loved her; and appreciating her gentle and dutiful behaviour, he put himself out of the way to be kind to her, though, with all his attentions, he never was what one would call a domestic husband.

Her demands upon him were not exorbitant. Indeed, she was true to her creed in not demanding anything; but for such evidences of his affection as he voluntarily bestowed upon her she showed herself always grateful in a meek, pleased way that was very charming to a man vain of his own importance, and she did not profess to be more so than, in her soft heart, she really was.

She had no vocation for independence, nor for making herself – still less for making others – miserable; and if she had married Bluebeard instead of a well-intentioned gentleman, she must have twined herself about him with her tender, deferential, delicately-caressing ways – which came as naturally to her as breathing – and have found support and rest in doing it.

When all signs of storm had cleared away, the apparently ill-matched husband and wife settled down to a life together that, if not rapturously delightful, was quite as placid and kindly and peaceful as the married life of most of us.

They did not see a great deal of each other, to be sure; but the hours that they spent together, being generally hours when Mr. Kingston was tired or unwell, and wanted to be nursed and cheered, and to have the papers read to him, had a homely sweetness and solace for Rachel not far removed from happiness.

And then I am afraid it must be confessed that the house, and the wealth and luxury belonging to it, did comfort her a little.

She was excessively unpretentious in her habits, and pure and simple in her tastes, but she had an intense appreciation of all those delicate personal refinements which womanly women love, and only those who have money, and plenty of it, can enjoy – of which years of sordid poverty had taught her the grace and value; and it was not possible to her, with her healthy sense of life, to refuse, even if she had wished, to absorb the fragrance and brightness of her social and material surroundings.

She revelled in her beautiful garden and in her spacious and artistic rooms; she loved her piano and her books and pictures, and her innumerable pretty things; she enjoyed her drives and her rides, and her visiting and her parties, and her operas and concerts, and her shopping expeditions – upon which no limitations were placed by her husband, who liked her to spend his money – with Laura and Beatrice.

And, more than all, she delighted in the power which her position gave her of doing all kinds of helpful, unpretentious service to the poor and miserable, whom she seemed, by a sort of divining-rod, to discover in the most unexpected places.

Her husband would not allow her to make her large subscriptions to the public charities anonymously, nor would he consent to her taking invalids of the lower orders for drives, except upon unfrequented roads and in a generally surreptitious manner; and he strongly objected to her visiting poor people's cottages, and running risks of catching dirt and fever.

But she might make frocks for ragged children, and babyclothes for unprovided mothers, and scrap-books for the Alfred Hospital; she might load her carriage with wine and chicken broth every time she went out; she might spend a little fortune, as she did, in helping on benevolent enterprises of all sorts; and he only laughed at her for being a soft-hearted little goose, and triumphed over her when – as happened in five cases out of ten – she was proved to have been more or less flagrantly imposed upon and taken in.

Like most people who have badly known the want of money, she was decidedly extravagant in spending it now that she had plenty; and, unlike most husbands and wives in such circumstances, she and Mr. Kingston had no pleasanter episodes in their domestic life than those which had reference to her financial embarrassments.

It was charming to him (since his banking account was much too solid to be easily affected by her operations) to see her come, with her timid and anxious face, to confess that she had spent all her money, and to ask him, with the sweetest wifely meekness, if he could spare her a little more; and to her he never showed to better advantage than when he declared, so obviously without meaning it, that she would ruin him, and then gave her twice as much as she had asked for.

She always flushed and glowed with pleasure at this delicate and generous, and gentlemanly way of doing things, and would put her arms round his neck and kiss him; and, naturally, he would thereafter set forth to his club, feeling proud of himself and pleased with things in general, his young wife and he being so thoroughly in their right places in their relation to one another.

And then there came to Rachel that which to every true woman is the greatest and dearest and best – save one – of all life's many good things, and which to her must inevitably have made even the most loveless marriage lovely: —

"On the 17th inst., at Toorak, the wife of Graham Kingston, Esq., of a son."

This little notice appeared in "The Argus," of the 18th, and caused a flutter and sensation in all well-regulated Melbourne households.

"Dear me, how nice! and a son, too. How pleased Mr. Kingston will be! An heir to all that fine property at last! Dear me, how nice! We must call and make inquiries."

And when kind inquiries resulted in the satisfactory information that both mother and infant were progressing favourably, society congratulated Mr. Kingston with effusive and impressive cordiality, which that gentleman, deprecating a fuss with airs of smiling indifference, felt to be by no means more than the occasion demanded.

Of course, the interesting event made a pleasant commotion in the great Toorak house and in the Hardy family.

Mrs. Hardy assumed the functions of mother-in-law to Mr. Kingston, and introduced him to his son and heir with a genuine maternal pride, that could not have been more touching or more complimentary to either of the delighted parents, had the featureless little atom been a lineal fifth grandchild.

The stately matron, as is the habit of stately matrons under such circumstances, put off her conventional armour and rustled softly about the hushed rooms, clothed in all the homely womanliness of her own baby-nursing youth; and Rachel, watching her from her tranquil nest of pillows, forgave her – as she had long ago forgiven her husband – and wondered that she had never understood before what a truly sweet and loveable woman dear Aunt Elizabeth was.

And Laura came up to see the baby, bringing a wonderful high-art coverlid for the cradle, and all sorts of wise advice (based upon her exceptional experience as the mother of twins).

And Beatrice came – poor Beatrice, who had no babies! – and held the tiny creature for a long time in her arms, looking with silent wistfulness at its crumpled little face.

And by-and-bye, when Rachel was promoted to gorgeous dressing-gowns and a sofa in her boudoir, Lucilla came to stay with her, full of importance and responsibility (as the mother of the largest family of them all), to instruct her in the newest and most improved principles upon which an infant of quality should be reared.

As if Rachel wanted showing how to manage a baby! Some ladies, as the nurse sagely remarked, never had any sense, but if Mrs. Kingston had been a poor man's wife, which she hoped she would excuse her taking the liberty of speaking of such a thing, she couldn't have took to the child more naturally.

It speedily became apparent to others besides that experienced woman that maternity was Rachel's vocation, and, when she found it, it seemed that she had found a consolation, if not an actual compensation, at last for the great want and sorrow of her woman's life.

Mrs. Hardy, watching the young mother's passion of tender solicitude for the baby that she could hardly bear to have five minutes out of her sight, told herself that, after all, the end had justified the means; and even Mrs. Reade, who was most interested in this latest experiment of a benevolent Fate, came practically to the same conclusion.

One day she was alone with her cousin. Rachel had been entertaining a small and select circle at afternoon tea in her own pretty room, and the baby had been present, and she had been pointing out to its father what lovely eyes it had, and what small ears, and what perfectly-shaped hands, and how charming it was altogether – much to Mr. Kingston's amusement, and obviously to his immense satisfaction also; and now he had kissed her affectionately and gone out, and the baby was taking a siesta, and she was resting on her sofa by the fireside, gazing at the bright logs meditatively, with a half smile on her face.

"Tell me," said Beatrice, suddenly, crossing the hearth and kneeling down beside her; "tell me, are you happy now, Rachel?"

Rachel lifted her soft eyes, shining with a sort of vague rapture.

"Oh, yes," she said, quickly; "indeed I am." And then in a moment her face was overshadowed, and she looked in the fire again with eyes that shone with tears. "I am too happy," she said, under her breath, "while he is alone and sad."

"Don't you think he will like you to be as happy as possible?"

"I know he will. But it lies on my heart that he is desolate while I have so many consolations. Beatrice, I was reading some verses of Emily Brontë's the other day, and they seemed to express exactly how it is with me. Do you remember them?"