A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 1
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"Oh, do you ride?" interposed Mr. Kingston, eagerly.
"I used to ride. I like it very much. My father gave me a beautiful mare once; but afterwards he rode a steeplechase with her, and she fell and broke her back. I can ride very well," she added, smiling and blushing. "I can jump fences without being afraid. But Uncle Hardy keeps only carriage horses, and none of the family ride."
"But you must have a horse, of course. I must speak to your uncle about it," said Mr. Kingston. "Indeed, I think I have one that would suit you admirably, and I'll lend him to you to try, with pleasure, if you'll allow me."
"Oh, will you? Oh, how delightful! When will you let me try him? But I forgot – I have no habit!"
"That is a difficulty soon got over. I'll speak to your aunt," said this influential autocrat.
And here a bell rang, and the curtain rose upon a fresh scene. Mrs. Reade and her mother had had an absorbing tête-à-tête, and now turned to see what their charge was doing. Mr. Reade, redolent of something that was not eau de cologne, came back to his seat; and Rachel began to watch the proceedings of the prima donna, who was solemnly marching across the stage. Mr. Kingston was aware, however, that the girl's thoughts were not with the spectacle before her. She was evidently preoccupied about those promised rides.
"I shall have no one to go with me," she whispered presently, in the pauses of a song.
"I shall be proud to be your escort," he whispered back. "And there will always be the groom, you know," he added, seeing the colour of the oleander blossom suddenly appear. "Do not be anxious. I will manage it all for you."
"You are very kind," she said, looking up into his face with that shy blush, and a charming friendliness in her eyes, "and I am very grateful to you; but please do not try to persuade Aunt Elizabeth against her wish." And she did not say much more to him. From this point she became silent and thoughtful.
When they reached Toorak, however, Mr. Kingston redeemed his promise faithfully in his own way, and at considerable trouble to himself. Mr. and Mrs. Hardy both liked to do things, as they called it, "handsomely," but at the same time without any unnecessary expense; and neither of them could see his proposal in the light of a paying enterprise.
Rachel was driven out in the carriage daily; she appeared at all places of fashionable resort; she took abundant exercise. A riding-horse would be expensive, and so would a saddle and habit, not to speak of the addition to the stable necessities; and what would there be to show for it? But while the uncle, and still more the aunt, were delicately fencing with the proposition, Mrs. Reade struck in and swept all objections away.
"Of course the child ought to ride if she has been used to riding," said this imperious small person. "You send your horse here, Mr. Kingston, and Ned shall come round and see what she can do with it." This was in the hall, where he was supposed to be saying good-night; and Rachel had gone upstairs to bed.
"Thank you, Mrs. Reade – if I may," he said, with an eager gratitude that amused himself. "I am sure it would be a great pleasure to her – and it would be so good for her health. Why don't you ride too? It is such splendid exercise."
"I would in a minute, if I had a figure like hers," laughed Mrs. Reade. "Mamma, we must get her a good habit to set off that figure. I'll come round in the morning, and go with you to have her measured. Are you going, Mr. Kingston, without a cup of hot coffee? Good-night, then; mind you send your horse."
The servant shut the door behind him; and he went out into the solemnity of the autumn night. The wind was rustling and whispering through the shrubberies round the house; it had the scent in it of untimely violets, mingled with a faint fragrance of the distant sea.
Above, the stars were shining brilliantly; below, the teeming city lay silent in the lap of darkness, with a thousand lamplights sprinkled over it. In the foreground he could dimly see the lines of gravelled paths and grassy terraces, and the gleam of great bunches of pale chrysanthemums swaying to and fro in the cool air.
"It is a splendid site," he said to himself; "but I think, if anything, mine is better."
He stood for some time, looking away over the illuminated valley to the milky streak on the horizon where in three or four hours the waters of Port Philip Bay would shine; and then he sauntered down to the lodge, and found his hansom waiting for him.
"Go up to my land there, will you?" said he, pointing his thumb over his shoulder as he got in. "I'm going to set the men on soon, and I want to have a look at it."
The driver, wondering whether he had had more champagne than usual, said, "All right, Sir," and drove him the few dozen yards that intervened between Mr. Hardy's gates and the place where his own were designed to be.
In the darkness he clambered over the fence, made his way to the highest ground in the enclosure, and stood once more to look at the lamp-spangled city and the dim and distant bay.
"Yes," he said, "I am higher here. I shall get a better view." And he began to build his house in fancy – to see it towering over all his neighbours', with great white walls and colonnades, and myriad windows full of lights, and lovely gardens full of flowers and fountains. "I must begin at once," he said. "I must see the contractors to-morrow. I must not put it off any longer, or I shall be an old man before I can begin to enjoy it."
And after long musing over the details of his project, he stumbled back, through saplings, and tussocks, and broken bottles, to the fence; tore his dress-coat on a nail getting over it; and subsiding into his cab, lit a cheroot, and stared intently into vacancy all the way to his club.
When he reached this bachelor's home he did not know what to do with himself. He thought he would write to a celebrated firm of contractors to make an appointment for the morning; but it was past twelve o'clock, and the letters had been collected.
Some men called him to come and play loo, but he was not in the mood for cards. He tried billiards, and found his hand unsteady; he went into the smoking-room, but it was hot and noisy. He had always liked his club, and maintained against all comers that it was a glorious institution; but now he began to see that after all a middle-aged gentleman of ample fortune might find himself pleasanter lodgings. He went out of doors, where the air was so sweet and cool, rustling up and down an ivied wall, and over a strip of lawn that lay deep in shadow below it; and looking at the clear dark sky and the clear pale stars, he put to himself a momentous question, for which he had a half-shaped answer ready:
"Who shall I ask to be the mistress of my house?"
CHAPTER IV.
THE ANSWER
A girl of eighteen is popularly supposed to be grown up – to have all wisdom and knowledge necessary for her guidance and protection through the supreme difficulties of a woman's lot. When one gets ten years older, one is apt to think that this is a mistake. Life is not so easy to learn. The treasures of love, like visions of the Holy Grail, are not revealed to those who have known none of the waiting, and yearning, and suffering, and sacrifice that teach their divine nature and their immeasurable worth.
And to all the vast meanings and solemn mysteries that surround the great question of right and wrong – the great question of human life – the spiritual eyesight is blind, or worse than blind, until the experience of years of mistakes and disillusions brings, little by little, dim apprehensions of light and truth.
Rachel Fetherstonhaugh, with the snare of her beauty and her sensuous love of luxurious surroundings newly laid about her feet, entered upon her kingdom more than ordinarily unprepared.
Poor little, helpless, foolish child! How was she to know that marriage meant something better than a richly-appointed house and a kind protector? How could she be held accountable for the commission, or contemplation, of a crime against her youth and womanhood of whose nature and consequences she was absolutely ignorant?
She was flitting in and out through the French windows of the drawing-room one fine morning, with a basket of flowers on her arm, busily engaged in rearranging the numerous little bouquets that she made it her business to keep in perennial freshness all about the house, when Mr. Kingston was announced.
She had seen him several times since the night of the opera; he had left his card twice when she had been away from home; and Mrs. Hardy had had polite messages respecting the horse, which had been duly sent for her approval. He came in now, with his light and jaunty step, bowing low, and smiling so that his white teeth shone under his Napoleonic moustache, carrying a large roll of paper in his hand.
"Good morning, Miss Fetherstonhaugh," he exclaimed gaily. "I must apologise for this early call; but I can never find you at home after lunch these fine days."
Rachel, who had not seen his approach nor heard him enter the house, whose hall-door was standing open for her convenience, turned round with her hands full of flowers. In the sunshine of the morning she looked more fair and refined than he had ever seen her, he thought. The plainest little black gown showed her graceful shape to perfection; her complexion, always so delicate, was flushed and freshened with the wind and her embarrassment.
As for her hair, half-covered with a shabby garden hat on the back of her head, it was the central patch of light and colour in the bright-hued room; he was sure he had never seen hair so silky in texture and so rich in tint.
His ideal woman, hitherto, had been highly polished and elaborately appointed; she had been a woman of rank and fashion, in Parisian clothes, a queen of society, always moving about in state, with her crown on. But now, in the autumn of his years, all his theories of life were being overturned by an ignorant little country girl, sprung from nobody knew where; and a coronet of diamonds would not have had the charm of that old straw hat, with a wisp of muslin round it, which framed the sweetest face he had ever seen or dreamed of.
"My aunt is in her room," she stammered hastily; "I will send to tell her you are here. She will be very glad to see you."
And she called back the servant who had admitted him, and sent a message upstairs.
Mrs. Hardy, however, did not hurry herself. She was a thrifty housekeeper still, as in her early days, and devoted her forenoons religiously to her domestic affairs. Just now she was sorting linen that had returned from the wash; and, hearing that her niece was in the drawing-room, she had no scruple about remaining to finish her task.
"Say I will be down directly," she said. And she did not go down for considerably more than half an hour.
In the meantime Rachel tumbled her flowers into the basket, took off her hat, and seated herself demurely in a green satin chair.
"It is a lovely morning," she remarked.
"Oh, a charming morning – perfectly charming! You ought to be having a ride, you know. Have you tried Black Agnes yet?"
"No, not yet. My habit has not come home. They promised to send it last night, but they did not. I am very anxious to try her. She is the prettiest creature I ever saw. I – I," beginning to blush violently, "have not half thanked you for your kindness, Mr. Kingston."
"Pray don't mention it," he replied, waving his hand; "I shall be only too glad if I am able to give you a little pleasure."
"It is the greatest pleasure," she said, smiling. "But she is so good – so much too good – I am half afraid to take her out, for fear anything should happen to her. Uncle Hardy says she is a much better horse than he wants for me."
"Your uncle had better mind his own business," said Mr. Kingston, with sudden irritation. "If you are to have a horse at all, you must have one that is fit to ride, of course."
"But I think it is his business," suggested Rachel, laughingly.
"No; just now it is mine. I mean," he added hastily, a little alarmed at the expression and colour of her face, "that Black Agnes is mine. And while I lend her to you she is yours. And I trust you will use her in every way as if she were actually yours."
"Thank you; you are very kind. I hope nothing will happen to her. I shall take great care of her, of course. I will not jump fences or anything of that sort."
"Oh, pray do," urged Mr. Kingston. "She is trained to jump. She has carried a lady over fences scores of times." The fact was he had only bought her a few days before, and had selected her from a large and miscellaneous assortment on account of this special qualification. "I hope you will let me ride out with you, and show you my old cross-country hunting leaps. You will not mind jumping fences with her, if I am with you, and make you do it?"
"No," she said, "for I shall show you that it is not the fault of my riding if accidents happen."
"Exactly. I am sure it will not be your fault. But we will not have any accidents – I will take too good care of you. Can't we go out this afternoon? Oh, I forgot that habit. I'll call on your tailor, if you'll allow me, and 'exhort' him; shall I? I have done it before, on my own account, with the most satisfactory results."
"No, thank you," said Rachel, "I would not give you that trouble. He will send it home when it is ready, I suppose."
And she rose from her chair and began to move about the room, wondering whether her aunt was ever coming downstairs.
Mr. Kingston thought it would be expedient to change the conversation.
"I have brought you the plans of my house," he said, taking up his roll of papers, and beginning to spread great sheets on a table near him. "I meant to have asked your opinion before I began to build it, but – well, I took it for granted that you would like it as it was."
"Ah, yes," responded Rachel brightly, coming to his side. "Uncle Hardy said you had begun. And you know I can see all the men and carts from my window. Oh! oh!"
This enthusiastic exclamation greeted the unrolling of the "front elevation," which, in faint outlines, filled in with pale washes of grey and blue and pink, showed her the towers and colonnades of her ideal palace. When he heard it, Mr. Kingston's heart swelled. He was more charmed with his pretty creature than ever.
"This, you see," said he, "is the main entrance – fifteen steps. But won't you sit down? You will see better. And this wing is where the drawing-rooms are to be," he added, when she had seated herself, and he had taken a chair beside her. "There are three large rooms in a line, that can all be thrown together on occasions – when necessary. I have not decided about the furniture yet, nor the colours of the walls. You must help me with those things presently. The dados, which are being designed at home, are to be of carved wood, most of them; mantelpieces to match. Some of the dados will be of inlaid stone, tiles, and that sort of thing. I suppose you don't know what a dado is, do you?"
"No," said Rachel, meekly. Whereupon he entered into elaborate explanations.
"I think I should not like tiles on the wall," she ventured to remark; "they would feel very cold, wouldn't they?"
"They tell me tile is the proper thing," he replied; "and of course I want to have everything that is proper. But whatever my – my wife wishes shall be law, of course. In her own rooms, at any rate, she shall consult her own taste entirely."
Rachel stared at him, coloured and laughed. "Oh, you did not tell me about your wife before," she said. "I did not know you were engaged to be married. That is why you are making haste to build your house? I am very glad. I congratulate you."
"Do not; do not," he stammered earnestly. "I speak of a possible wife, because I hope to have a wife some day. I am not engaged. I wish I were."
"Oh!" she said, looking down bashfully, with oleander blossoms everywhere. "I beg your pardon."
"I wish I were," he repeated. "But I am going to get ready for that happy time against it does come. See, these are to be her rooms. They face the south, and I am going to have a rose garden below them. This is to be her boudoir. I thought of having the walls and the ceiling painted in coral. I have noticed that pink lights in a room are very becoming to a lady's complexion, rather pale on the walls, for the sake of the pictures. You said you liked plenty of pictures?"
"I? Oh, yes, I like pictures."
"And I did mean to have a dado of very fine, rich tiles to make a foundation of colour, you know; but you don't like tiles?"
"Oh, but I don't know anything about it, Mr. Kingston! You had better do what you said – furnish the other rooms, and leave your wife, when you get one, to choose the decorations of her own herself."
"She shall choose them herself. But, Miss Fetherstonhaugh – "
"Rachel, my dear, your habit has come," said Mrs. Hardy, appearing at this interesting moment. "Oh, how do you do, Mr. Kingston? Pray forgive me for leaving you so long. I hope you have come to lunch? Oh, yes, you must stay to lunch, of course. We'll take you into town afterwards, when we go out to drive."
Mr. Kingston stayed to lunch, and made himself very agreeable. But then he went into town by himself, and returned in an incredibly short space of time in riding costume, mounted on a powerful brown horse. During his absence, Rachel had put on her habit, and found that it fitted her beautifully; and Black Agnes had been caparisoned, and was pawing the gravel before the hall door. Mrs. Reade, magnificently attired for a series of state calls, had appeared upon the scene, and was regulating all these pleasant circumstances.
"Now then, Mr. Kingston, you must only take her along quiet roads. And she is not to jump any fences when Ned is not with her."
"Why, Ned?" inquired Mr. Kingston. "I am as learned in fences as Ned, don't you think?"
"Oh, yes, I know all about that. But it is the look of the thing. You remember, Rachel, you are not to jump fences."
"No, Beatrice, I won't."
"Have a good gallop, my dear, and enjoy it," the little woman added. "I'll take care of mamma; and when we have done all our calls we will come and meet you."
Mr. Kingston stepped jauntily to Black Agnes's side. He was an old steeplechase rider before he was a successful city merchant, and he looked ten years younger in his riding-dress. Rachel, with a radiant face, approached him, and laid her small foot on his proffered palm.
In a moment she was up like a feather, and sitting square and light in her saddle like a practised horsewoman as she was; and all her attendants, groom included, looked up at her admiringly. Even Mrs. Hardy forgot the expense she had been put to.
"The child certainly does look well on horseback," she remarked, resignedly, as Black Agnes's shining haunches disappeared round a clump of laurels. "What a figure she has, Beatrice!"
"Oh, dear me, yes!" assented the younger matron pettishly. "Why didn't we have figures like that!"
Meanwhile, the black mare and the big brown horse paced out into the road, and for a little while the riders contented themselves with friendly glances at one another. Rachel was crimson with pride and bashfulness, looking lovely and riding beautifully, as she could not but know she was. Mr. Kingston, sharing some measure of her elation and excitement, was absorbed in looking at and admiring her.
By and bye they had a long canter, which carried them well out into the country, where there were no houses and no people, and where the shadows were beginning to rest on the peaceful autumn landscape. And then Mr. Kingston made her draw rein under a clump of trees, while she looked back at the city they had left behind, glorified in the light of the sinking sun.
"So now there is something else you like besides operas and balls?" he said, laying his hand upon the black mare's silky mane.
"Yes," she replied, drawing a long breath, "and I think this is best of all! She is like a swallow – she seems to skim the ground! And I – I don't know when I have felt so happy!"
All his years and his experience went for nothing under these circumstances, when she looked as sweet as she did now.
"You must keep Black Agnes," he said eagerly. "I will speak to your uncle. I will not have you riding low-bred brutes. Nothing but the best is fit for you; you, who know how to ride so well, and enjoy it so much! You will keep her, to please me?"
If she had been sitting in a green satin drawing-room she would probably have checked this ardent outburst at an apparently harmless stage. She would have blushed, and looked grave and majestic; but now she was, in a sense, intoxicated. She lifted a pair of radiant, grateful eyes to his face, and she held out her hand impulsively.
"How good you are to me!" she said. "How much pleasure you give me!"
And then, of course, he succumbed altogether.
"That is what I want to do, not now, but always," he said, drawing the mare's head to his knee, and the small, weak hand to his lips, which had kissed so many hands, though never with quite the same kind of kiss. "That is why I am building my house. It is you I wanted to be its mistress – didn't you know that? – to do just what you like with it, and with me, and with all I have!" And, when once he had fairly set it going, the flood of his eloquence, running in a well-channelled groove, flowed freely, and overwhelmed the poor little novice, who had never been made love to before.
"I – we – we have only seen each other a few times," she ventured to suggest at last, but not until her imagination had been captivated by the splendid prospect before her. She had the colour of a peony in her cheeks, and frightened tears in her soft child's eyes; but her experienced lover knew that his cause was gained.
"That has been enough for me," he said. "Once was enough for me." Then, after a long pause, "Well? Is it to be 'yes' or 'no?'"
"Oh, I don't know!" she stammered desperately, turning her head from side to side. "I have had no time. Let us wait until we know each other better."
"I know quite enough," he persisted, "and I am not so young as you are that I can afford to wait."
She trembled and panted, gathering up her reins and dropping them in an agony of embarrassment.
"Oh," she said at last, "what can I say? Won't you let me speak to Aunt Elizabeth?"
"Of course, as soon as you like after you get home. I am not afraid of Aunt Elizabeth. I know what she will say. But now, dear – while we are here by ourselves – I want you to tell me, of your own self, whether you like me – whether you would really like to come and live with me in my new house? You don't want anybody to help you to make up your mind about that?"
"No," she whispered, hanging her head, feeling at once terrified and elated, and wishing to goodness she could see Mrs. Hardy and Beatrice driving along the lonely empty road.
"You would like it? Turn your face to me and say 'Yes,' just once, and I won't bother you any more."
She turned her face, scarlet all over her ears and all down her throat, and she tried to meet his ardent eyes and could not. Her lips shaped themselves to say "Yes," but no sound would come. However, sound would have been, perhaps, less expressive than the silence which overwhelmed her in this proud but dreadful moment. At any rate, Mr. Kingston was satisfied.
CHAPTER V.
SO SOON!
THEY rode home sedately in the cool and quiet evening. Mr. Kingston, having accomplished the end for which he had contrived this unchaperoned expedition, was content to keep close to his pretty sweetheart's side, to look in her face occasionally with significant smiles, and to ruminate on his own good fortune.
Rachel, fluttered and dismayed at the situation in which she found herself, bestowed a wandering attention on the near-side fields and hedges, and discouraged conversation. It is needless to remark that the carriage did not come to meet them. The long shadows lengthened, the sun sank down below the glowing horizon, the glory of the evening faded away into the soft dusk of the autumn night.
Lamps were being lighted when they entered Toorak; the workmen who had begun at the foundations of the new house were "knocking off;" the gates of Mrs. Hardy's domain were standing open, and the woman at the lodge informed them that she had not returned from her drive.