A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 2

It was not the sort of farewell he had hoped for – several of the ladies came straggling about them before they could exchange half a dozen words – but it was infinitely better than none.

"Are you going to Queensland?" Rachel asked, in a tone which said plainly – "Are you going away from me?"

"I must go," he replied; "but I shall not stay – I shall come back as quickly as possible. And you – what will you do?"

She flushed scarlet and dropped her eyes, and her lips began to quiver. The rustle of Mrs. Hardy's majestic skirts was heard approaching. It was too late for confidences.

"I hope, when I come back, I shall find you free," he whispered hurriedly, emphasising the significance of the words with the crushing clasp of his hand over hers and the eager desire in his eyes; and then he took off his cap, included all the ladies in one last silent adieu, remounted his horse, and departed.

As he rode through the bush this lovely spring morning, near enough to the waggonette to open the gates for it, but far enough away to indulge in his meditations undisturbed, he pondered many things; and particularly he wondered, with a devouring anxiety, what Rachel had been doing and thinking of since she left him so abruptly at midnight, after practically giving herself to him.

If he could have known it is doubtful if he would have felt so certain of her as he was, though nothing would have deterred him now from making the best fight in his power for the possession of her.

When, in terror of the consequences of what she had done, she broke away from him and escaped out of the ball-room, she rushed to her own room, forgetting until she dashed into the middle of an untidy litter of open boxes and portmanteaus which Miss Hale had left on the floor, that it was not hers to-night; and then she turned and sped down one of the innumerable passages into the quiet starlight outside, and sought refuge in that lonely arbour at the bottom of the garden, which already, not many hours before, had given sanctuary to these new emotions.

That she courted bronchitis and consumption, exposing her bare warm arms and bosom to the chill of a frosty night, was a trivial circumstance quite unworthy of consideration.

In this arbour she abandoned herself to the full luxury of that passion which was neither joy nor grief, and yet had the pain and ecstasy of both in the sharpest degree.

She knelt on the damp floor, and leaned her arms on the dusty bench, regardless of panic-stricken ants and enterprising black beetles, and she shook from head to foot with sobs.

"Oh my love!" she murmured to herself. "Oh, my love!"

And then presently lifting herself up and appealing to the star-worlds far away, and the immutable universe in general:

"Oh, what shall I do? Oh, what can I do?"

By and bye she sat down on the bench, clasped her hands on her knees, and tried her best to compose herself.

The keen air made her shiver, and perhaps it did something to cool her agitation and brace her nerves as well.

Slowly she gathered her wits together, made tremulous efforts to school herself to be womanly and courageous, and at last crept back to the lighted and crowded house, hugging a brave but terrible resolution.

She went to the nearest fire to warm herself. It was in a little room adjoining the dining-room, where the last preparations for supper were going on.

As she knelt on the hearthrug, extending her white arms to the blaze, Mr. Kingston came behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders, so silently and unexpectedly that she gave a little startled cry.

"Did I frighten you, my pet?" said he, gaily; "I beg your pardon. I couldn't think where you were gone to. I am afraid you are tired. You have been waltzing too much. That fellow Dalrymple does go round at a killing pace with his long legs. Poor Miss Hale couldn't stand him at all – she nearly fainted. Ah, naughty child! Didn't I tell you not to dance with him? And you never paid the least heed! If this is how you defy me now, what am I to expect after we are married, eh?"

She looked up in his face with guilty, bewildered eyes. He was not by any means so cool as he assumed to be, but it was evident that he intended to ignore her offence, and was not going to scold her.

He was not young and rash, if she was; and the few minutes he had taken for reflection, during her absence in the garden, had shown him where the path of wisdom lay. Her first sensation was one of extreme relief; and then she became slowly conscious of a vague sinking at her heart.

Once more she sighed to herself – feeling discouraged and overpowered, and unequal to the formidable vastness of her resolution – "Oh, what shall I do?"

It would have been much better – much easier – if he had scolded her.

Before the revels of the night were quite over, Mrs. Hardy sent her to bed, noticing that she was looking unusually quiet and pale. She was very glad to go, and made haste to hide herself in the little impromptu nest that had been prepared for her on a couch in her aunt's room, before that lady should require the use of her apartment.

She was wide awake, however, when Mrs. Hardy joined her, and too restless to disguise it; and the elder woman, who knew nothing of the girl's entanglements with her two lovers – who had, indeed, congratulated herself on the prudent abstinence which had been unexpectedly practised with reference to "that objectionable young man" who was such a dangerously delightful dancer – gossiped and grumbled over the little events of the evening, chiefly of the accident to her lace and the absurdities of Miss Hale and Mr. Lessel, who were publicly known to have had a serious misunderstanding, unaware of her listener's pre-occupation, until the candles were finally extinguished.

About an hour later, as she was anxiously cogitating what steps she should take towards the repairing of her own mishap, Mrs. Hardy thought she heard a suspicious sound in the silence of the room.

"Rachel," she called, softly; "is that you, child?"

No answer. Only a rustle of drapery, indicating that Rachel had turned over in her bed. She listened a few minutes, and the suspicious sound was repeated. Raising herself on her elbow, she called more loudly.

"You are not crying, Rachel, are you?"

The girl flung herself out of bed, ran across the room, a little white ghost in the faint dawn, and threw her arms round her aunt's neck. She had no mother, poor little thing, to tell her troubles to; and she wanted a mother now.

"Oh, dear Aunt Elizabeth," she sobbed passionately, "do help me – I am so miserable! I don't want to marry Mr. Kingston! I don't love him – I have made a mistake! I didn't think enough about it, and now I know we should never suit each other. Won't you tell him I was too young, and that I made a mistake? Won't you – oh, please do! – help me to break it off?"

On what a mere chance does destiny depend.

If Mrs. Hardy's evening had been triumphant and prosperous – if she had not torn her best lace, and torn it in consequence of Rachel's carelessness – she would probably have received the girl's touching confidence as a tender mother should. As it was, she felt that after all her fatigues and worries, this was really too much.

"What nonsense are you talking, child?" she exclaimed angrily. "Is it any fault of Mr. Kingston's if Miss Hale behaves like an idiot? She is nothing but a vulgar flirt, and he knows it as well as you do – only it is his way to be attentive to all women."

"Miss Hale!" repeated Rachel vaguely; "I'm not thinking of Miss Hale. I am not blaming anybody – only myself. I was very wrong to accept Mr. Kingston at the first – oh, aunt, you know we are not suited to each other! He ought to marry somebody older and grander, and I – I thought I should like to be rich, and to live in that house – and I thought I should come to love him in time; but now I know it was all a mistake. Do – do let me break it off before it goes any further! Let me stay with you – I shall be quite happy to stay with you and Uncle Hardy, if you'll only let me!"

"You are dreaming," replied her aunt, giving her a slight shake in the extremity of her dismay and mortification; "you talk like a baby. Do you think a man is to be taken up one day and thrown away the next? And it is worse than that to jilt a man – and Mr. Kingston of all people – after being engaged to him for months, as you have been, and after leading him into all sorts of preparations and expense. The bare idea is monstrous! And all for nothing at all, but some ridiculous sudden fancy! You may have seen things of that sort done amongst the people you have been brought up with, but no lady would think of disgracing herself and her family by such conduct."

"Oh, aunt!" moaned Rachel piteously, as if she had had an unexpected blow.

"I don't like to speak harshly to you, my dear," Mrs. Hardy proceeded, in a rather more gentle, but still irritated tone. "Only you must not vex me with such absurd and childish notions. I know it is only a passing whim – you are over-tired, and you are hurt because Mr. Kingston paid Miss Hale so much attention, though it is only what he does to all women, without meaning anything whatever; but still it is a serious and horrible thing – breaking an engagement, a really happy engagement, as yours is – jilting a kind, good man, after giving him every encouragement – even to think of! Don't let me hear you mention it again, unless you want to break my heart altogether. And after all I have done for you – I don't want to boast, but I have been a good aunt to you, Rachel, and you would have been in a poor place but for me – the least you can do is to respect my wishes, especially as you know I wish nothing but what is for your real good and welfare."

Rachel wandered back to her bed, laid her head gently on the pillow, and closed her eyes. Mrs. Hardy in the dead silence that presently ensued, was relieved to think that she had "settled off" at last; but it was not sleep that kept her so quiet – it was the calmness of defeat and despair.

CHAPTER V.

RACHEL'S FIRST VISIT IN MELBOURNE

IN the last week of August, when the place was looking its loveliest – the rustic gables of the pretty house all hung with wistaria, and the shrubberies full of fragrant bushes of purple and white lilac – Mrs. Hardy, Mr. Kingston, and Rachel took their departure from Adelonga. It was to one of them a truly heart-breaking business.

Rachel stood on the verandah while the horses were being put to, clasping Lucilla and the baby alternately to her heart, and wept without restraint, until her eyes were swollen, and her delicate colour resolved into unbecoming red patches, and there was scarcely a trace of her beauty and brightness left.

No one but herself was at all able to realise what this moment cost her. She was not only leaving a place where she had spent the happiest period of her youth; not only parting from friends with whom she had established the most tender and sympathetic relations; she was closing a chapter, or rather a brief passage, which was the one inspired poem of her life; and she was saying good-bye to Hope.

As long as she was at Adelonga, there was the chance that Mr. Dalrymple might come back – at any rate, notwithstanding the Queensland arrangements, there was a constant impression that he was near. And as long as she was at Adelonga she had felt bold to strive, by various feeble and ineffectual devices, to extricate herself from her engagement.

Now she was going where it seemed to her her lover would never be allowed to reach her, and where in a hard world of money and fashion, and under the terrible dominion of "the house," she would be a helpless victim in the hands of Fate.

"Good-bye, darling Lucilla!" she sobbed; "thank you so much – I have been so happy here – I am so sorry to go away!"

The gentle woman was inexpressibly touched, and of course cried for company. Mrs. Hardy had her own maternal reluctance to face an indefinite term of separation from her daughter. And altogether Mr. Kingston was not without justification for his unusually irritable frame of mind.

He did not like to see women crying; he was particularly annoyed that Rachel should exercise so little command over herself, and that she should have red eyes and a swollen nose; and he was uneasy about the untoward episode which had been the first hitch in the smooth current of his engagement, and wondered whether it could be possible that a lingering fancy for that Dalrymple fellow was making her so unwilling to return to her Melbourne life.

Moreover, he hated country travelling – long drives over rough bush roads, and bivouacs at country inns, where the food was badly cooked and the wine detestable; and he was suspicious about the behaviour of the Adelonga horses, whose little traits of character came out rather strongly in the invigorating air of spring; and he had a nasty touch of gout.

However, the day was fine, and the drive was lovely. As she was carried along, with the soft air blowing in her face, full of the delicious fragrance of golden wattle, Rachel ceased to cry – becoming calm, and pensive, and pretty again – and took to meditation; wondering, for the most part, what Queensland was like, and how it was she could ever have thought Melbourne, as a place of residence, preferable to the bush.

They passed a charming little farmhouse, more picturesque in the simple elegance of its slab walls and brown bark roof than any Toorak villa of them all, set in its little patch of garden, with fields of young green corn and potatoes, neatly fenced in, behind it. It had its little rustic outbuildings, its bright red cart in the shed, its tidy strawyard, its cows and pigs and poultry feeding in the bush close by.

The farmer was working in his garden; the farmer's wife, on her knees beside him, was weeding and trimming the borders of thyme that ringed the little flower beds. They both paused to gaze at the imposing equipage crashing along with its four strong horses, and at the ladies and gentlemen perched so high above them; and Rachel, looking down from her box-seat, thought she had never seen such a picture of rural and domestic peace. She had suddenly ceased to regard material wealth and splendour as in any way essential to happiness.

To live in some such home as this (provided one had enough to live on and to pay one's way), working with one's own hands for the man one loved – that seemed to her at this moment the ideal lot in life.

Having started from Adelonga an hour before noon, the horses were taken out at two o'clock to be fed and watered, and the little party camped beside a shady water-hole for lunch.

Lucilla had put up a bounteous basket of good things, and all the materials for afternoon tea; and the fun of arranging the grassy table first, and of making a fire and boiling the kettle afterwards – not to speak of the very satisfactory meal that intervened – had its natural effect upon our impressionable heroine of eighteen.

Her fiancé, much revived by a tumbler of dry champagne, carefully cooled in the water-hole, was also in improved spirits and temper, and he set himself to be very kind to his little sweetheart, and forgave her all her misdeeds.

Between three and four, having had their tea, the horses were put to, and they started on their way again; and just at nightfall they arrived at the railway, and at the inn where they were to spend the night.

Here they found dinner awaiting them, of which Rachel partook in sleepy silence; and she went to bed soon afterwards, and slept too soundly even to dream of trouble.

In the morning they parted from Mr. Thornley, and started by the first train to town; at noon they lunched in a railway refreshment-room; and in the middle of the afternoon they found themselves once more in Toorak, being helped out of the family brougham by good-natured Ned, and welcomed into the green satin drawing-room by his bright-faced wife.

"And so you are back again at last!" exclaimed Beatrice gaily, as she took her young cousin into her arms. "And how are you, dear child? Why you look quite pale. Take off your hat and sit down at once, and have some tea. Mr. Kingston, I don't think this country air that they talked so much about has done anything very wonderful after all. Rachel is not looking so well as she was when she left."

Rachel blushed a lovely rose-colour immediately, of course, and Mr. Kingston looked up at her with vague anxiety.

"I don't think she is, myself," he said; "I noticed it as soon as I got up there. But she will be all right now she is home again."

"I am only tired," murmured Rachel.

"A girl like you has no business to be tired," retorted the little woman brusquely.

It did not escape her sharp eyes that something was the matter, and she determined to take the earliest opportunity to find out what it was.

"I do hope to goodness," she said to herself, "that it is not her engagement that she is tired of – and everything going on so nicely!"

And then she took off Rachel's sealskin cap and jacket, settled her by the fireside, furnished her with a cup of fragrant tea and some thin bread and butter, and left her to herself while she attended to her mother's wants.

Beatrice and her tea had a generally cheering and invigorating effect.

Mr. Kingston, making himself comfortable in a very easy chair, grew talkative and witty upon the news of the day and the latest items of fashionable gossip; in the society of this charming little woman of the world —his world – the satisfaction of being in town again began to creep over him pleasantly.

He stayed for half an hour – outstaying Ned, who retired modestly at the end of twenty minutes; then he led Rachel into the hall, kissed her, told her to go to bed early and come out with him for a ride in the morning, and went off to his club – sorry to leave his little lady-love, but glad to be able to get his letters, to hear what was going on in Melbourne, and to read his "Argus" on the day of publication again.

After his departure Mrs. Hardy and Beatrice plunged fathoms deep in talk. Mrs. Hardy wanted to know how her husband and her servants, and her neighbours and her friends, had been conducting themselves during her absence, and Beatrice wanted minute particulars about Lucilla and the baby.

Rachel had no occasion to feel herself de trop; at the same time she saw she was not wanted. She sauntered softly round the room, laid some music scattered about over the piano in a neat pile, re-arranged some yellow pansies that were tumbling out of a green Vallauris bowl, and then stole noiselessly into the hall and out of the house.

The grounds of the Hardy domain were more beautiful with flowers now than she had ever seen them; but she did not stay amongst the flowers. She went down little lonely paths, intersecting vegetable beds and forcing-frames, to a gate at the bottom of the kitchen-garden, where she was within speaking distance of the workmen engaged on the new house, with nothing to impede a full view of their operations.

She was feverishly anxious to know how they were going on – whether they were still "pottering at the foundations," or whether the stage of walls had set in.

The working day was not yet over, and the well-known chinking and clinking of the stonemason's implements smote her ear. She thought, when she began to count them, that there were a great many more men than there used to be, and she wondered why this was.

The young man who was sent out by the architects to supervise the builders, and whose acquaintance she had made with Mr. Kingston, was walking about the dusty enclosure, and presently recognising her, he lifted his hat, and then seeing that she still lingered, came up to the gate to speak to her.

"How are you getting on, Mr. Moore?" she asked pleasantly. "Are you still doing the foundations?"

Mr. Moore assured her that they had completed the foundations, and that they were getting on splendidly.

"Won't you come out and have a look at what has been done?" he inquired.

She thanked him and said she would; and he opened the gate with alacrity, and escorted her through a labyrinth of bricks and stones, over ground strewn thickly with sharp-edged chips that cut holes in her boots, very well pleased to be the first to show her the progress that had been made in her absence.

She could see for herself that a great deal had been done. The trenches were filled up; great square blocks of stone ridged the outlines of the ground-floor rooms – little bits of rooms they looked, and not at all like the stately and spacious apartments of the architect's design; but it seemed to her that what had been done could not be a tenth or twentieth part of all that there was to do.

"I suppose," she said, "it takes a long time to build the walls and make such a quantity of windows?"

"Oh, dear, no," responded Mr. Moore cheerfully. "All the worst of the work is over now, as far as the shell is concerned; the walls will run up in no time. It is a big house, but there are plenty of men on it, and all materials ready. It is after the shell is done that the real tedious work commences."

"You mean after the roof is on?"

"Yes. The interior decorations are the chief thing about this house. The outside is not much."

"When do you expect the shell will be finished?" asked Rachel, in fear and trembling.

"Some time in the course of the summer – within the next two or three months probably."

"And the roof on?"

"Oh, yes; of course the roof on," he replied.

There was a pause; and then she said in a very small, thin voice:

"Thank you, Mr. Moore. I think I must go back now."

He escorted her back to the garden gate, lifted his hat, and bade her good evening; and it struck him suddenly – with far more force than it had struck Beatrice – that she was looking extremely unwell, and not at all like the bright and blooming creature that she was when she went away.

CHAPTER VI.

IN MRS. HARDY'S STORE-ROOM

RACHEL was very young, no doubt, but she was growing rapidly. To all intents and purposes she was at least five years older when she came home from Adelonga than she was when she went there; and the process of development by no means ceased or slackened at that point.

The blossoming of her womanhood had come suddenly, like the blossoming of the almond trees, in one warm burst of spring; but the inner heart, that budded in secret, continued to swell and ripen, in spite of – perhaps because of – the absence of sunshine in her spiritual life.

The physical change in her was noticeable to everybody. Her constitution was much too sound to be easily injured by mental wear and tear; but her health was necessarily affected in a greater or less degree, temporarily, for the better or for the worse, by the more powerful of those mental emotions to which her body was peculiarly sensitive and responsive at all times.

So she lost some of her delicate pinky colour, and her large eyes grew heavy and dreamy, and she looked generally faded and altered, in the dulness of these empty days. She had no more enthusiasm for Toorak life and Melbourne dissipations. She went into no raptures over jewels and dresses, or any pretty things; she had none of the old zest for operas and balls.

She was quiet, and silent, and preoccupied, moving about the house with a strange new dignity of manner (resulting from the total absence of self-consciousness), a sort of weary tolerance, as if she had lived in it all her life, and was tired of it.

After watching her for a few days, secretly, and in much perplexed anxiety, Mrs. Reade made up her mind that something was seriously wrong, and that it was time for her to interfere to set it right. She went to her mother in the first place for information.

It was eleven o'clock in the morning, and Mrs. Hardy was in her store-room, counting out the day's allowance of eggs to an aggrieved and majestic cook.

The little woman stood by silently, watching the transaction with a smile in her brilliant eyes, thinking to herself what a great mistake it was, if poor mamma could but see it, to insist on an inflexible morality and economy in these petty matters; and when it was completed, after a little acrimonious discussion, she quietly shut the door, and addressed herself to her own business in her customary straightforward way.