A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 1

Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Hardy had a banquet of Melbourne news and scandal, in the discussion of which they incidentally glorified their respective connections, each for the other's edification, until a suggestion of Mrs. Hale's (to the effect that Mr. Kingston was not much better than he should be, in spite of his wealth) caused a slight coolness to arise between them.

Mrs. Thornley and Mrs. Digby, both young wives and mothers, with many tender interests in common, whispered pleasantly over their needlework, chiefly of their nursery affairs.

The two girls had no resource but to keep each other company. They went first to see the baby; but Miss Hale was not an enthusiast in babies. Then they had a little music; and here Rachel did not greatly distinguish herself.

After that they walked about the garden and talked. Rachel was told all about Mr. Lessel – how charming and how good he was – what his father meant to settle on him when he married – when the wedding was to be, and what the bridesmaids were to wear. Then she was enticed into a few reluctant confidences about her own engagement, which led to a detailed description of the new house, and an invitation to Miss Hale, when she should be Mrs. Lessel, to pay a visit there some day with her husband. And so the morning wore away, and luncheon-time came.

They waited luncheon until past two o'clock, and, to the sombre satisfaction of Mrs. Hale, the sportsmen did not return, and the made dishes were spoiled.

Then the mail arrived, and there was a letter for Rachel from her fiancé, begging her to write at once to relieve his mind of a fear that she was ill, and to tell him at the same time that she acquiesced in the arrangements he had proposed for their early marriage, and whether she preferred Sydney or Tasmania for the introductory wedding trip.

He particularly wanted her to settle these little matters without further delay, as the spring was so much the pleasantest time for travelling, and he had had the offer of a charming house in Sydney, on the shores of the bay, for the first two or three weeks in October, which would only be open for a few days.

When she had read this letter, she was in a frantic hurry to answer it. Holding it in her hand, she excused herself to her companions, who were all setting forth for a gentle walk; begging to be allowed to stay at home with an anxious eagerness that provoked significant and indulgent smiles, which said, "Oh, pray don't mind us," as plainly as smiles could speak.

So when they were gone, she made herself comfortable in the smoking-room, in one of the screened compartments of which there was a sort of public writing-table, supplied with great bowls of ink, and sheafs of pens, and reams of paper, on which "Adelonga" was printed – as if Adelonga had been a club – for the use of all-comers; and where there was always a glorious fire of big logs whenever there was the least excuse for a fire.

Here she began her second letter to Mr. Kingston – with effusive conciliatory excuses for having been such a very bad correspondent. She had really been so much engaged – time had slipped away, she didn't know how – the post had gone once or twice without her knowing it – yesterday they had been away from home; altogether, fate had been against her writing as often as she had intended, but she would promise him to be more regular in future.

Then followed a description of the races, and an enumeration of the guests they had brought back with them – who they all were, what they were like, and her estimation of them respectively. One was dismissed without comment – "and a Mr. Dalrymple, Mrs. Digby's brother" (and of course her dearest Graham remarked the extreme simplicity of this phrase, and was curious about the interesting details that were conspicuous by their absence). And then, after a few inquiries about the progress of the house, she plunged into the really important matter.

"I have been thinking about your proposal a great deal, and I want you, please, not to be angry with me if I cannot accede to it," she began in an abject and deprecating manner that was significant of her state of mind. "I want to stay a little longer with my dear aunt, to whom I have had so little opportunity as yet of making what return is in my power for all her kindness to me; and I want a little time to improve myself, too, for my future position as your wife, dear Graham. Lucilla is a beautiful housekeeper and is teaching me lots of things; and I am brushing up my French and German with Miss O'Hara, who said my accent (but it is much better now) was enough to set one's teeth on edge. Moreover, I am really too young to be married just yet. I am hardly nineteen, and Laura Buxton was nineteen and a half. Perhaps next year – "

At this point she was interrupted by the arrival of the sportsmen. They had been to the drawing-room, apparently, for they came in by way of the conservatory, through a door just opposite the writing-table. She put down her pen and rose in haste.

"Hullo, Rachel! Good-morning, my dear. Don't get up – we won't disturb you," shouted Mr. Thornley, cheerily. "Come in, Lessel – come in, Dalrymple. Here's where the guns go."

"What sport have you had? And are you not very hungry?" she asked, moving away from her chair and standing on the hearthrug. According to her primitive ideas of propriety, she was bound to stay a little while and see to their hospitable entertainment, there being no proper hostess available.

"Hungry? I should think so. And we had very good sport, though not much to show for it," responded Mr. Thornley. "Only five ducks to five guns, and Dalrymple shot four of them. They are wild enough at the best of times; but at the end of the season there is no getting near them."

"You must be a very good shot," she said, lifting her eyes meekly to Mr. Dalrymple's face. And then, the moment the words were spoken, she would have given worlds to recall them, and looked at him again with a dumb entreaty to be forgiven.

He smiled gently, reading her like a book.

"Oh, no," he said; "I was only lucky in having the birds."

They all came round her as she stood on the hearthrug, except Mr. Thornley, who had gone to order some bread and cheese and beer; and they looked pleased with the situation.

Mr. Digby began to tell her what a lovely day it was, and to ask her why she had not gone out for a walk, too; and then, when she explained that she had had letters to write, and found herself, unfortunately, unable to do so without blushing over it (blushing because she feared she was going to blush), Mr. Hale broke in; and Mr. Hale in conversation was, in his very different way, worse than Mrs. Hale.

"To Melbourne, I presume?" insinuated this little monster, with an arch smile. Rachel, the colour of a peony, lifted her head an inch nearer to the ceiling.

"I only heard last night," he continued, rubbing his hands, and looking a whole volume of vulgar pleasantries, "that the redoubtable Kingston has been vanquished at last, and that it is to your bow and spear that he has fallen. Allow me to congratulate you, Miss Fetherstonhaugh."

"To congratulate him, I should think you mean," broke in Mr. Dalrymple, who was studying the effect of sunset on a picture of the Adelonga homestead and pulling his moustaches violently. "Hadn't we better go and wash our hands, Digby, and make ourselves more fit for ladies' company?"

"To congratulate him, too, certainly," said Mr. Hale; "very much so, of course. But still it is a great conquest on the part of Miss Fetherstonhaugh. Perhaps you don't know Kingston?"

"I have not that honour," replied Mr. Dalrymple stiffly; and the tone of his voice strongly implied that he did not in the least degree desire it.

"Well, I do; and I know that he has openly defied the combined powers of her charming sex for – I am afraid to say how many years – as long as I can remember."

"I daresay that has not distressed them," said Mr. Dalrymple.

"Come, come, Hale," said Mr. Digby, who thought his kinsman's allusion to Mr. Kingston's age a terrible slip of the tongue; "let us go and wash our hands. Come along, Lessel."

"And my wife tells me," continued the irrepressible little man, "that the – a – the interesting event is to take place very shortly!"

Rachel came out of her majestic reticence with a rush that astonished everybody.

"Oh, no, Mr. Hale – not for a long time – not for a year, at the very least! Who could have told Mrs. Hale such a thing? I assure you it is quite, quite wrong! Do you know who told her? Was it my aunt?"

She looked at him with an earnest, imploring look that aroused Mr. Dalrymple to regard her with considerably sharpened interest. The alarming thought had struck her that her lover might have privately enlisted Mrs. Hardy's support for his new scheme; and if so, how should she be able to resist so formidable a pressure?

"I think it was Mrs. Thornley told Mrs. Hale. She had a letter from her sister, Mrs. Reade, yesterday; and Mrs. Reade had mentioned it. Ladies' gossip, Miss Fetherstonhaugh! – ladies never can keep secrets, you know. They tell everything to one another, and then to us. And we – we tell them nothing. We know better, eh, Digby?"

"Come along," said Digby, who was getting a little savage, "and don't talk like a fool."

At this critical juncture Mr. Thornley appeared to announce that there was bread and cheese in the dining-room for anybody who was hungry. Whereupon the men trooped out – all but Mr. Dalrymple, who apparently was not hungry. He was lounging at Rachel's side, with an elbow on the mantelpiece, pulling his moustache meditatively; and he did not move.

Rachel was fluttered and excited.

"How do people get hold of those things?" she exclaimed, with a vexed, embarrassed laugh. "It is very true that everybody knows one's business better than one does one's self. I hate that kind of impertinent gossip. No one has the least ground for supposing that I am going to be married shortly. I have no intention of being married for ever so long."

"Why do you care what people say?" said Mr. Dalrymple. "I never care. It is much the best plan."

"I would not, if I could help it; but I can't," she responded, turning round and mechanically spreading her pink palms to the fire.

"And, after all," he continued, slowly, "all the talking in the world can't make you marry if you don't want to."

She did not look up, but the blood flew over her face.

"I did not say I didn't want to," she murmured. "Of course I want to – not yet, for a long time, but some day – or I should not be engaged."

"I don't think that always follows, Miss Fetherstonhaugh. I think many people engage themselves, and live to think better of it. And then, if they don't refuse to consummate an admitted mistake, they – well, they ought to, that's all. Forgive me, I am speaking in the abstract of course. I have had a great deal of experience, you know."

"Of broken engagements?" queried Rachel, smiling faintly at the fire.

"No, not of them – not personally. The curse of my life was an engagement that was kept. And I have seen so much misery, such everlasting wreck and ruin, come upon people I have known and cared for – people who kept the letter of the law of honour and disregarded the spirit – who preferred sacrificing all that made life worth having, for certainly two people, and probably four, to breaking an engagement that had no longer any sense or reason in it."

"But surely an engagement – it is the initial marriage ceremony – should be kept sacred," protested Rachel, daring at last to look up, in defence of pious principles.

"Yes," he said, "certainly – when it is really the initial marriage ceremony."

"And how – what – what is the proof of that?"

"Shall I tell you what I think it is? When the people who are engaged long and weary for the consummation – for the time to be over which keeps them from one another."

There was a dead silence. Rachel continued to gaze into the fire, but her eyes were dim, and all her pretty colour sank out of her face. He had given her a great shock, and she had to take a little time to recover. Presently she looked up, pale and grave, with a fuller and more open look than she had ever given him.

"You should not have told me," she said gently; "you should not talk to me so."

"No – you are right – I should not – forgive me," he replied, speaking low and hurriedly, with something new and strange in his voice. And then they became simultaneously aware of the dangerous ways into which their discussion had led them, and, by tacit consent, turned back. Rachel moved away to the writing-table, and began to gather her papers together; Mr. Dalrymple brought his arm down from the chimney-piece and looked at his watch.

"It is five o'clock," he said; "the ladies are having a long walk, are they not?"

"No; it was nearly four when they started. They will be in directly for their tea."

Then, without looking to right or left, Rachel hurried out of the room; and Mr. Dalrymple, after silently holding the door for her, strode away to the dining-room, where he was still in time for some bread and cheese.

The first thing Rachel did on reaching her room, was to sit down and cry – why or wherefore she never asked herself. She had not yet learned the art of analysing her emotions.

She felt vaguely perplexed and hurt, and ashamed and indignant; and a few tears were necessary to put her to rights. They were very few, and soon over.

In less than ten minutes she had again addressed herself to Mr. Kingston's letter, which she finished up with the suggestion that their marriage should take place "next year," and a profusion of unwonted endearments.

At dusk she went to the drawing-room, where the reunited guests were having tea in the pleasant firelight, the gentlemen lounging about in their knickerbockers and leggings, the ladies sitting with hats tilted on the back of their heads, Mrs. Hale victorious over her subdued husband. Miss Hale happy with her recovered beau. She sat a little outside the circle and talked in under-tones to Lucilla; Mr. Dalrymple stood far away on the other side of the room, and talked to nobody.

That night Rachel was the first to go to dress; she was the last to come back when the gong announced dinner. And when she came she was arrayed in all her glory – pearl necklace, diamond pendant, diamond bracelet, jewelled fan – all her absent lover's love-gifts that good taste permitted her to wear, and a few more. And there was no repetition of the conservatory scene.

Mrs. Hardy was perfectly satisfied with the result of her diplomatic measures. Rachel sat by her aunt's side, and sewed industriously all the evening at a pinafore for her precious baby, who was about to be short-coated. Mr. Dalrymple sat rather apart, gnawing his moustache, apparently absorbed in a photographic album of Lucilla's, which he had discovered in a cabinet near him.

Two or three times, when Rachel stole a look across the room, unable to repress her restless curiosity to know what he was doing, she saw him gazing meditatively at this open book, and always on the first page of it. She wondered whose photographs they were that interested him so much, and she felt that she could not go to bed without satisfying her anxiety on this point.

When after tea, music and cards and other gentle entertainments were set going, and Mr. Dalrymple was at last enticed by his host from his corner and his album to make a fourth at the whist-table, she watched her opportunity and stole round to the chair on which he had been sitting. He had his back to her, but he was facing a mirror in which he could see her distinctly; and while he watched her movements, he trumped his partner's trick for the first time in his life, and otherwise disgraced a notorious reputation.

"I suppose," said Mrs. Hale, who was his partner, with considerable asperity, "that you don't trouble to play well if you haven't some great stake to play for."

"I beg your pardon," he replied, gravely bending his head. Rachel was stealing back to her aunt's side and her baby's pinafore, and he left off looking into the mirror and making mistakes.

Meanwhile Rachel had satisfied her curiosity. When she opened the album on the first page she saw two familiar faces – one of a young, bright girl, with pensive eyes, conspicuous for "that royalty which subjects kings;" the other angular, aquiline, hollow, full of the lines of age, and smirking with the sprightliness of youth – herself and Mr. Kingston, to whom, unknown to her, Lucilia had lately given this place of honour.

She stood still for a few minutes, looking down on them, with the colour deepening in her cheeks. She seemed to see for the first time how incongruous a pair they made, and how mean a presence her lover really bore.

It was a bad likeness of him, she said to herself; but in point of fact she was shocked by a faithful representation of his meagre features and his peculiar smile – which after all was too frivolous and artificial to be worthy of comparison with the smile of Mephistopheles.

She did not consciously judge his by the standard of that other face, which was so impressively dignified and resolute; but she had looked at this same photograph two days ago, and then it had not struck her unpleasantly, as it did now.

Without thinking what she was doing, she tore out her own likeness, and also the last photograph in the book, which was an old one of her Cousin Lucilla as a child, and she made them change places. Having effected which – surreptitiously, as she thought – she closed the album softly, laid it away in the cabinet, and returned to her seat by her aunt's side.

When the ladies were gone to bed, the first thing Mr. Dalrymple did was to get out that album again and look at it; and he had some very serious thoughts when he found out what she had done.

In the morning all the visitors left early, for they had a long distance to travel. Mr. Thornley was to take them part of the way home, and the break and the four horses were brought round at eight o'clock. Rachel came out to the verandah with her aunt and cousin to see them start.

"Good-bye, dear Mrs. Digby," said Lucilla, affectionately kissing her particular friend. "Good-bye, Mrs. Hale. Good-bye, Miss Hale. I am so sorry you could not stay longer, but we shall expect you back next week. Good-bye, Mr. Dalrymple, I hear you are off to Queensland again on Monday?"

Mr. Dalrymple shook hands and lifted his hat, and then said very quietly, but with great distinctness, "Not quite so soon as that, I think, Mrs. Thornley. I shall consult Gordon before I make another start."

"Oh, well, in that case we shall hope to see you again, too. Of course you'll come with your sister next week, if you should be still with her?"

"Thank you," said Mr. Dalrymple. "I shall be most happy."

Rachel was not looking at anybody in particular; and nobody was looking at her. But her rather pale and pensive face suddenly became of a colour that might have put even the lapageria rosea to shame.