A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 1

"It is all very well," Mrs. Hale was saying in an aggressive manner, "but it was nothing short of murder in cold blood. And if you had been in any other quarter of the globe when you did it, you would not have escaped to tell the tale to us here."

"My dear Mrs. Hale – excuse me – I am not telling the tale to you here. I have not the slightest intention of doing so."

"But everybody knows it, of course."

"I think not," said Mr. Dalrymple.

"That you had a quarrel with a man who had once been your friend," proceeded Mrs. Hale, with a vulgar woman's unscrupulousness about trespassing on sacred ground; "and that you hunted him round the world, and then, when you met him in that Californian diggings place, shot him across a billiard-table where he stood, without a moment's warning."

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Dalrymple, calmly; "he had plenty of warning – five years at least."

"Not five minutes after you met him. Mr. Gordon was there, and said that he was a dead man five minutes after you came into the room and recognised him."

"Gordon can tell you, then, that I satisfied all the laws of honour. The meeting had been arranged and expected; there were no preliminaries to go through – except to borrow a couple of revolvers and get somebody to see fair play. There were at least a dozen to do that; Gordon was one."

"Poor fellow," ejaculated Mrs. Hardy with solemn indignation. "And he fired in the air, I suppose?"

"He would have fired in the air, I daresay, if he had any hope that I would do so," replied Mr. Dalrymple, with a face as hard as flint, and a deep blaze of passion in his eyes. "But he well knew that there was no chance of that. He was obliged to shoot his best in self-defence."

"Then you might have been killed yourself! – and what then?"

"That was a contingency I was quite prepared for, of course. What then? – I should have done my duty."

"Don't say 'duty,' Roden," interposed Mrs. Digby, very gently and gravely.

"My dear Lily, the word has no arbitrary sense; we all interpret it to suit our own views. It was my idea of duty."

"Poor fellow!" exclaimed Mrs. Hardy again. "It is a dreadful story. And did he leave any family?"

"I would rather not pursue the subject, Mrs. Hardy – if you have no objection."

"I wonder you are not afraid to go to bed," Mrs. Hale persisted, undeterred by the darkness of his face. "The ghost of that poor wretch would haunt me night and day. I should never know what it was to sleep in peace."

Rachel listened to this fragment of a conversation, which had evidently been going on for some time; and her heart grew cold within her. Mr. Dalrymple happened to turn his head, and saw her looking at him with her innocent young face scared and pale; and he was almost as much shocked as she. A swift change in himself – a straightening of his powerful, tall frame, and a flash of angry surprise and pain in his imperious eyes – aroused a general attention to her presence.

"You here, my dear?" exclaimed Mrs. Hardy, much discomposed by the circumstance. "That is the worst of these irregular shaped rooms – with so many doors and corners, one never sees people go out and come in."

"How is baby?" inquired Mrs. Thornley eagerly, thankful for the diversion. "Is he sleeping nicely?"

Mr. Dalrymple strode across the room and wheeled up a chair. "Won't you sit down, Miss Fetherstonhaugh?" he said, looking at her with a little appeal in his still stern face. "You must be tired after your long day."

"Thank you," said she; and she sat down. But she felt incapable of talking – incapable of sitting still, with her hands before her. General conversation of a more comfortable and conventional kind than that which she had interrupted was set going all around her.

The lovers resumed their tête-à-tête in the corner; the chess-players continued their game; Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Hardy, suffering from a very justifiable suspicion that they had been a trifle rude, endeavoured to make themselves particularly entertaining. But she sat silent and miserable with downcast eyes, picking at the embroidery on her dress, and wishing the evening over – this disappointing evening which had counteracted all the brightness and pleasure of the day – so that she could slip away to bed.

"You have had no tea," said Mr. Dalrymple presently, when all the married ladies were absorbed in discussing the merits of their respective cooks. "It came in while you were out of the room. Won't you have some now?"

Grateful for any interruption of the spell of embarrassment which was holding her painfully under his watchful eyes, she thanked him, and rising hastily went over to one of the numerous recesses of that charmingly arranged room, where the evening tea-table usually stood between a curtained archway and a glass door that led into the conservatory.

Of course he followed her. The curtains were looped back so as to permit the glow of lamps and firelight to stream in from the room, and on the other side a full moon shone palely down through a network of flowering shrubs and fern trees. They could hear the conversation of the rest distinctly – particularly Mrs. Hale's share of it. But it was a very retired place.

"You had better sit down," said Mr. Dalrymple, "and let me pour it out for you. Yes – I do it every night for my sister. She, too, likes to have the teapot brought in. But I doubt if it is fit to drink; it has been in half an hour. I thought you were tired and had gone to bed."

"Did you?"

"Yes; I am afraid you are very tired. You ought not to have come back."

"I – I wish I had not," she said, hardly above a whisper, as she took the cup from his hands. She looked into his face for a moment with her timid, troubled eyes, and then looked down hastily and blushed her brightest scarlet.

"I know, I know," he replied, in a low tone of emotion that had a touch of fierceness in it. "I saw how shocked you were, and I could have bitten my tongue out. But I should never have spoken of that if Mrs. Hale had not badgered me into it. If it had been one of the men – but they know better! A woman, though she may be the most prodigious fool, is privileged. I am very sorry. I can't tell you how sorry I am."

"It is not hearing it that matters," stammered Rachel, stirring her tea with wild and tremulous splashes; "it is knowing – it is thinking – of its being true."

He paused for a moment, and looked at her with a look that she was afraid to meet, but which she felt through all her shrinking consciousness: and then he said quietly. "Drink your tea, and let us go into the conservatory for five minutes."

It was a bold proposal under the circumstances; but it did not occur to her to question it. She drank her tea hastily, and put down her cup; and Mr. Dalrymple opened the glass door, which swung on noiseless hinges, and passing out after her, coolly closed it behind them both. It was very dim and still out there. The steam of the warm air, full of strong earthy and piney odours, clung to the glass roofs through which the moon was shining, and made the light vague and misty. The immense brown stems of the tree ferns, barnacled with stag horns, and the great green feathers spreading and drooping above them, took all kinds of phantom shapes.

Rachel herself looked like a ghost in her white dress, as she flitted down the dim alleys by that tall man's side, tapping the tiled floor with her slippered feet with no more noise than a woodpecker.

"Is that the lapageria?" asked Mr. Dalrymple, when he thought they had gone far enough for privacy, pausing beside a comfortable seat, and pointing upward to a lattice-work of dark leaved shoots, from which hung clusters of dusky flower bells. "How well it grows here, to be sure!"

"Everything grows well here," responded Rachel, relieved from some restraint by this harmless opening of their clandestine tête-à-tête; "and that creeper is Mr. Thornley's favourite. The flowers are the loveliest red in daylight."

"Now I want to tell you a little about that story you heard just now," he proceeded gravely. "Sit down; it won't take long."

"You said you would rather not talk about it," murmured Rachel.

"I would much rather not. There is nothing I would not sooner do – except let you go away thinking so badly of me as you do now. I don't usually care what people think of me," he added; "I am sure I don't know why I should care now. But you looked so terribly shocked! It hurts me to see you looking at me in that way. And I should like to try if I could to make you believe that I am not necessarily a bad man, more than other men, though bad enough, because I fought a duel once and killed my adversary."

"Meaning to kill him," interposed Rachel. "That is the dreadful part of it!"

"Yes; I meant to kill him. I staked my own life on the same chance, if that is any justification, but – oh, yes, I meant to kill him, if I could. I had a reason for that, Miss Fetherstonhaugh. Shall I tell you what it was?"

"Yes," whispered Rachel. "But how could there be any sufficient reason for such a terrible crime?"

"Don't call it a crime," he protested. "That is how they speak of it who know nothing about it – that is how they will represent all my life, which has been different from theirs – to make you shun and shrink from me as if I had the small-pox. Wait till you know a little more."

He was leaning forward with an elbow on his knee, and looking into her face. She met his eyes now in the uncertain moonlight, which was shining on her and not on him; and he saw no sign of shrinking yet.

"Why did you do it?" she asked sorrowfully.

"Long ago," he said, after a pause, "he and I fell in love with – some one; and she loved him best. At least I think she did – I don't know. Sometimes I fancy she would have cared most for me, if we had had our chances. But we had no chances; I had to give my word of honour not to stand between her and him – not to try to win her, unless she distinctly showed a preference for me."

"I understand," whispered Rachel. She knew this part of the story already.

"At any rate," he continued, "she made choice of him. He sold out of the service, and they went away together. I had sold out myself not long before, and went away too – travelling about the world. I was very lonely at that time; I didn't much care where I went or what became of me. It was several years before I saw or heard of her again."

"Yes?"

"And one night, when I had come back home to look after my property, I met her in London streets. It was the middle of winter – it was raining – she was all alone – she was almost in rags – "

"Don't tell me any more!" implored Rachel, beginning to tremble and cry.

"No," he said, and he drew a deep long breath, "I can't tell you any more. Only this – she died. I did all I could to save her, but it was too late. She died of consumption – brought on by exposure and want, and misery of all sorts – a week or two after I found her. And now you know why I killed him. That was why!"

There was a long pause, broken once or twice by Rachel's audible emotion. She had still her own views as to the right and justice of what he had done; but she did not dream of the presumption of giving them now.

This tremendous tragedy of love and revenge dwarfed all her theories of life to the merest trivialities. She could only wonder, and tremble, and cry.

"It is an old story now," said Mr. Dalrymple, more gently. "And I try not to think too much of it. It was all fair, thank Heaven! – I comfort myself with that. I could have shot him once before in Canada; but he was unprepared then. He did not see me, and I would not take him at a disadvantage. I try not to think of it now. I don't want you to think of it either – after to-night. Will you try not to? And try not to let them persuade you that I am quite a fiend in human shape?"

Rachel blew her nose for the last time, put her handkerchief in her pocket, and smiled a tearful smile.

"I am afraid you are not very good," she said, shaking her head, "but I know you can't be a really wicked man."

"How do you know it?" he asked eagerly.

"How? I'm sure I don't know – I feel it."

"Thank you, thank you," he said, in a low, rapid under tone. "You don't know how I thank you for saying that. At any rate, I have some rudimental morality. I am honest, to the best of my power. I tell no lies to myself, or to any man – or woman. What I say I mean, and what I do I own to – if called upon, that is. You may trust me that far. And I hope you will."

"I will," said Rachel, without a moment's hesitation.

How often they thought afterwards of their first strange talk, all alone in that shadowy place. It was as if they had known one another in some other world, and had met after long absence; they felt – widely unlike as they were – so little as strangers usually do beginning a conventional acquaintance in the conventional way. However, it did occur to both of them that it would be as well to go back to the drawing-room before they should be missed.

"I am glad to have had this opportunity," said Mr. Dalrymple, who rose first. "I shall hope – I shall feel sure – that you will not let yourself be prejudiced unfairly by anything you may hear. For the rest, I hope you will try not to think of this painful story again."

And he began to saunter back, and she to saunter beside him.

As they entered the drawing-room by the glass door, they heard Mrs. Hardy calling:

"Rachel! Rachel! Why, where is Rachel gone to?"

The girl glided into the broad, warm light, a little confused and dazzled, and, of course, dyed in blushes, which deepened to the deepest pink of oleanders – nay, to the still richer red of that lapageria which had attracted Mr. Dalrymple's attention just now – as she became conscious of the curious observation of the assembled guests, who, she well knew, would not regard this characteristic demonstration as lightly as those did who knew her.

"I am here, Aunt Elizabeth," she replied, in an abject voice, as if she had been caught in something very disgraceful.

"Oh!" responded Mrs. Hardy, "I thought you were gone to bed." She looked sharply at the girl's downcast face, and then more sharply at Mr. Dalrymple, who met her eyes with a stately and distant air of not putting himself to the trouble of remembering who she was that she found very offensive and aggravating. "You had better go, my dear," she said peremptorily. "It is late, and you have had a tiring day. I shall be having Mr. Kingston complaining if I let you knock yourself up."

Rachel was only too glad to say good night and go. The other ladies began to rise and stir about, gathering up fans and fancy work, but she left the room before they had come to any unanimous decision about separating. Mr. Dalrymple held open the door for her. "Good night," she whispered hurriedly, not looking at him. He answered by a strong pressure of her hand in silence. She did not understand it then, but looking back afterwards she knew that that first brief hand-clasp stirred her erstwhile latent woman's soul to life. She was never the same afterwards.

Half an hour later, when she was sitting by her own fireside, dreamily brushing her long auburn hair over a blue dressing-gown (blue was her specially becoming colour), Mrs. Hardy tapped at her door, and entered.

"I have brought you a little wine and water, dear," said she, looking very friendly and amiable. "I know you seldom take it, but to-night it will do you good. And Lucilla says you are to be sure not to get up to breakfast if you feel tired in the morning."

"Oh, thank you, auntie, but you know I never lie in bed! And I am not in the very least tired. I have had a delightful day."

"Yes; it has been a pleasant day. I am glad you have enjoyed it so much. I am only sorry we had to bring that Mr. Dalrymple back with us. I consider him a most objectionable, a most disreputable, young man – not so very young either; he will never see forty again, unless I am much mistaken. But Lucilla and Mr. Thornley are both so much attached to Mrs. Digby; for her sake they are obliged to be civil to him."

Rachel was silent.

"You will, however, be careful, dear, I know, not to get more intimate with him than necessary," Mrs. Hardy continued. "Mr. Kingston would dislike it very much. He is a very wild young man – he has not at all a good character."

"You said Mr. Kingston was wild, auntie," the girl suggested timidly. It was her sole feeble effort in defence of her absent friend.

"Nonsense! I'm sure I said nothing of the kind. He is a man whom everybody looks up to. There is no question of comparison between them. At any rate," she added, with solemn severity, "Mr. Kingston has not taken a fellow-creature's life, as this man has. That is reason enough why we must none of us have more to do with him than is absolutely necessary. You will remember that, Rachel? Be civil to him, my dear, of course, but no more. I should not have allowed you to come into contact with such a man if I could have helped it, and we had no idea of seeing him to-day. However, they will all be gone after to-morrow, and you need not recognise him again. The Digbys are coming to the dance next week, but Mrs. Hale says he means to start again for Queensland on Monday. Let us hope they won't break their traces a second time. Good night, my dear; you will remember what I say? It is what Mr. Kingston would wish if he were here, I know."

And Mrs. Hardy kissed her niece affectionately and went away to bed, with a sense of having done her duty, and without the least suspicion that as a domestic diplomatist, she had covered herself with disgrace.

CHAPTER XI.

MR. DALRYMPLE HAS TO CONSULT GORDON

OF course it is well understood, without further explanation, that Mr. Dalrymple and Rachel were in the position of the Sleeping Beauty and her prince when the spell that held life in abeyance was – or was about to be – broken. At the same time it is not to be inferred that the man, with his years and experience, fell in love at first sight with a merely pretty face, nor that the girl was more than ordinarily impressionable and inconstant, or had any constitutional weakness for wild young men.

Perhaps it is not necessary to essay the difficult task of finding a theory to account for it. Everybody knows that if there is a law of nature that will not lend itself to system, it is that which governs these affairs.

The greatest force and factor in human life comes to birth by a mere chance – in Roden Dalrymple's case by the breaking of a trace, which was in itself the result of a whole series of trivial and quite avoidable circumstances; and then it thrives or languishes by the favour of petty accidents – until time and sanctifying associations put it beyond the reach of accident. That is its superficial history, taking a general average.

Quality and potency are questions of temperament; vigour of growth depends in great measure on what may be called climatic influences. But, as with some other great mysteries of this world, human understanding can make very little of it.

At the same time people do not fall in love with each other absolutely without rhyme or reason. And these two did not. Of course personal appearance had, in the first instance, something to do with it.

To a girl of Rachel's disposition (or, indeed, of any other disposition), nothing in the whole catalogue of manly graces could have been more captivating than that quiet air of power and dignity which was the chief characteristic of her hero's person and bearing.

And Mr. Dalrymple, who was not the kind of man to be at any time insensible to the charm of a sweet face, had had sufficient experience to understand and appreciate the peculiar charm of this one – its unaffected modesty and candour; and he had had, moreover, little of anything to charm him in his later wandering years.

And Rachel was not merely a pretty girl, by any means. Being of a most unselfish, unassuming, kindly nature, and having a subtle apprehension of the general fitness of things, her manners were exceedingly gracious and winning – not always conventional, perhaps, but always refined and modest; and that honest youthful enthusiasm for life and its good things, which more or less flavoured all she said and did, though inimical to the prejudices of the British matron, was a charming thing to men.

Then Mr. Dalrymple had the faculty to perceive what made her look at him with so peculiarly wistful and earnest a look; he recognised his friend, if not his love and mate, in the earliest hours of their acquaintance. A friend in so fair a shape was doubly a friend naturally; and the strong appetite that he had for friendship, as a rudimental phase of passion, had had little to feed on but bitter memories for more than a dozen years.

As for Rachel, it was almost inevitable that she should lose her heart to this hero of romance – this Paladin with a touch of the demon in him – whom circumstances combined to present to her under such singularly impressive auspices. If the truth must be told, she fell in love much more suddenly and hopelessly than he did; and the fates – incarnate in the persons of his enemies – did their best to precipitate the catastrophe.

On the morning following their strange interview in the conservatory – of which she had been dreaming all night – she awoke with a dim sense of something being wrong. It was so very dim a sense that she did not consciously apprehend it, and therefore made no investigation into its origin. But instead of jumping out of bed as usual, eager to plunge at once into the unknown joys of a new day, she lay still until obliged to get up to receive her tea, and gazed pensively into vacancy.

It was just such a morning as yesterday – the sun shining in through the white blind, the fresh wind rustling along the leafy verandahs, the magpies gossiping cheerily in great flocks about the garden; and there was that sweetest baby cooing like a little wood pigeon as he was carried past her door in his nurse's arms. But she was deaf to these erewhile potent influences.

"Your hot water, miss," quoth a housemaid in the passage.

"Thank you, Susan," she responded absently, and continued to gaze into vacancy.

"Your tea, miss," came, with another tap, presently.

And then it was she had to get out of bed. She took in her tea, set it down on a chair and forgot it; she put on her slippers and dressing-gown, and armed herself with towel and sponge, but had to make three visits to the bath-room before she could get in.

Then she woke up to the fact that she was late, and scampered excitedly about the room in her anxiety to make a becoming toilet in the shortest possible space of time. Finally, she went to breakfast five minutes after the gong was supposed to have assembled the family, and found that the gentlemen had all gone out early on a shooting expedition.

"Isn't it too bad?" exclaimed Miss Hale. "They arranged it in the smoking-room last night, after we were gone to bed; and Harold knew that we wanted to play croquet."

Croquet, it may be remarked, had not yet "gone out," and Harold was Mr. Lessel.

"They had their breakfast at six o'clock," said Mrs. Thornley, smiling. "And you know, dear Miss Hale, it is nearly the last day of the open season, and my husband has been trying to preserve those lagoons in the forest on purpose. There were a great many ducks there last week, and they will have good sport and enjoy themselves, I hope. They said they would be back to luncheon."

"Oh, don't you believe it!" snorted Mrs. Hale, who, having given her lord orders to stay at home, which had been grossly violated, was in an aggrieved and aggressive mood. "I know them! – never a thought will they give to luncheon, or to us either, until they are tired of their sport. If they are in time for dinner, that's quite as much as you can expect."

Rachel sat down, feeling fully as much as anybody the blank that the five gentlemen had left behind them. She did not exactly say to herself that it had been waste of time and trouble to put fresh frills into her dress, but that was the nature of her sentiments.

It was not a lively morning. None of them expected it would be, so they were not disappointed. The matrons beguiled the dull hours with sympathetic gossip on domestic themes.