A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 1

"Lucilla!"

"What, dear?"

"Why do you all speak of him in that hard way? You are so kind to everybody else, but for him nobody seems to have a good word. I think it is so cruel!" she broke out with sudden passion. "The way Mrs. Hale insulted him the other night – a man like that, whom she was not fit to associate with – and all of you sitting round and letting her do it – I think it is dreadful!"

"Oh, my dear," responded Mrs. Thornley, with tremulous earnestness, a little frightened at the vehemence that she was too dull to understand, and deeply shocked by the implied reflection on her hospitality, "you don't suppose we encouraged or defended Mrs. Hale? We were as vexed as you were at her gross want of taste – of common courtesy, one might say. John was excessively angry – with dear Mrs. Digby sitting by to hear it all; he said at first that he would never have her in his house again."

"But he is going to have her?"

"Yes. Well, they are old neighbours you see, and related to the Digbys. And I daresay she knows no better."

"She is a horrid woman," said Rachel, viciously; "and so is her husband."

"A horrid woman?" laughed Lucilla. "Oh, no, dear, be just – he is not so bad as that. And you know, Rachel" – becoming gently argumentative – "it is not surprising that people object to a man who has had such a career as Mr. Dalrymple's. You know what he has done?"

"Only fought a duel," said Rachel. "No, I am not defending him, Lucilla, but how many men have done the same in old days, without being objected to?"

"It was a very bad duel," said Lucilla gravely. "There were circumstances connected with it that were very disreputable – so they say."

"You shouldn't trust to hearsay," protested the girl eagerly. "Why don't you go by the evidence of your own senses? Does he look like the man to do disreputable things?"

"He looks like a man who could never do anything mean or underhand," said Mrs. Thornley; "I admit that. He has a noble face; and he has perfect manners; and he is clever. But, oh! Rachel, when a man has been in the dock, and for such a crime as that – "

"Do you mean he has been in prison?"

"Of course. He was arrested and put on his trial for murder, or manslaughter – I forget which it was called. He was acquitted we know, but by the merest accident. Popular feeling was with him, strange to say, and Mr. Gordon fought hard for him. They were not over particular in California, I suppose, and there was a flaw somewhere. But he might have been hung, Rachel! That is where it is – he was tried for murder, and he might have been hung!"

Rachel was leaning against the wall, and looking into the recess that made a passage to the conservatory. She was calling up a vision of that memorable night, which was the birthnight of her womanhood, so recently come and gone – the fern-tree canopy, letting the moonlight through, the little bench, set in a bower of cork and maidenhair, where she sat alone with him in a world of brooding shadows – the strong, proud face, bending forward to look at her, darkly distinct in the soft, green gloom.

And she heard his voice again, incisive, imperious, yet melting her very heart within her as he told her the simple history of this terrible episode in his life. He might have been hung! – he did not tell her that. She stole away from her cousin, and walked up and down the long alleys of the conservatory, pale and passionate with her fierce indignation. Would they indeed have dared to hang him? And if they had – oh, if they had!

Some thirty miles away Mr. Dalrymple was riding by his own short cuts through the bush, with his peaked cap drawn over his eyes. His beautiful horse, tall and stately like himself, with glossy dark coat, and a white star on his forehead, paced with long strides through saplings and brushwood, swinging his head slowly up and down on the loose rein with a rhythmical movement that betokened ease of body and content of mind.

His master gazed heedfully at the brilliant parrots flashing about with long, rushing darts over his head, and at the myriads of wild flowers crushed and trampled under foot. He wore a sprig of epacris in his button-hole, and carried a sheaf of delicate orchids with their stalks tucked under the saddle in front of him.

He hummed a Strauss waltz as he went along through the sunshine and shadows of the waning day, and thought of the time when he would go back to Adelonga and carry that girl with the sweet eyes away in his arms, on the wings of just such a dreamy measure, into the only realisable Utopia of this world.

And perhaps he was more glad of his life than he had ever been since the day when he so nearly lost it – caring not much whether he did so or not.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME