A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 2

CHAPTER XIII.

RACHEL ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF MARRIAGE

PROBABLY no girl of nineteen – probably no man or woman of any age – ever died of a broken heart, unless when that complaint was complicated and aggravated by the presence of physical disease of some sort.

Rachel's constitution was sound, albeit her nervous organisation was extremely delicate, and she did not die, neither under this bitter first blow, nor later on, when she had still sharper provocations.

A little tender petting and coddling at the hands of her cousin Beatrice, who was now her devoted ally and friend, did more to restore her than all the doctor's medicines and all her aunt's jellies and broths.

The very talking of her troubles eased and soothed her, and gave her a sense of refreshment and rest, and though Beatrice offered her no encouragement on Mr. Dalrymple's behalf – and indeed hinted pretty broadly that the terrible thing which had happened was an inevitable sequel and corrective to a lapse of reason that partook of the character of temporary insanity, to say the least of it – she was heartily if not demonstratively sympathetic.

Within a fortnight of her cousin's return she reached that stage of convalescence which made the removal to South Yarra justifiable, and in the doctor's opinion expedient.

Mrs. Reade had great difficulty in carrying out this little enterprise. Her mother had never shown herself so impracticable.

She was determined not to let Rachel out of her sight, she said; and she stuck to that determination against many artful manœuvres so steadily that the powerful small woman, little accustomed to be thwarted, and still less to own to it, nearly made up her mind to confess herself beaten, and to break the disappointment to Rachel.

Mrs. Hardy, however, relented in a sudden and unexpected manner. She received a consignment of furniture and bric-à-brac from her travelling daughter, together with most interesting and bewildering advices.

Laura wrote to say that the Toorak House, if it had any respect for itself, must immediately get rid of its pierglasses, its whitewash, and its aniline colours; and poor Mrs. Hardy, who had ever walked with the complacent dignity of a priestess and oracle in the sacred regions of household art, was too much excited and disturbed by the humiliating discovery that she was old-fashioned and behind the times, and by her agonising desire to recover her proper position, to pay the customary attention even to Rachel's business.

While she was absorbed in beginning the mighty task of re-adjusting her ideas of taste and the details of her domestic environment, which, after a few years of painful struggle with the impracticabilities of Eastlake mediævalism, was to result in the existing combination of Chippendale and the Japanesque, she felt that it would be a relief to divest herself of superfluous cares.

So she laid her daughter under solemn obligations to protect Rachel's interests and the honour of the family, and allowed her to take the invalid away with her for a week or two, that so she might give her undivided attention to the choice of new coverings for the drawing-room furniture, and the question what should be done to the ceiling.

The two young women were very grateful for the chance which set them free to follow their own devices. Mrs. Reade brought her new brougham – a propitiatory offering from Ned after he had scandalously disgraced himself by going to a public dinner and coming home in a dishevelled condition at noon next day – and conveyed her charge to South Yarra in a nest of soft cushions, and laid her on a pillowy sofa in the brightest of homely boudoirs, where they discussed the situation and afternoon tea with much content and cheerfulness.

Rachel was strangely peaceful and amiable at this time. She puzzled her companion excessively. She had, indeed, a sort of exalted transcendentalism about her that was almost aggravating to that practical and most unsentimental person. Her way of moralising upon love and lovers, after such an experience as she had had, was very naïve and touching, but eminently preposterous, Mrs. Reade considered – and she did not at all mind saying so.

"A lover who is unfaithful does the deadliest dishonour that is possible to love, in my opinion," said she, with her customary air of decision. "To break any pledge is bad enough, but to break that pledge ought to disqualify a man from ever again calling himself a man."

"I do not think there should be any pledges in love, either given or asked for," said Rachel softly. "Love is not a thing to be tied and bound. Fancy a man feeling that he had to keep a promise if he did not wish to do it! And, oh! fancy a woman letting him – being deceived into letting him make a sacrifice for her! It would be an outrage and a degradation to both of them. I think Roden – Mr. Dalrymple – is above that, Beatrice."

From all she had heard, Mrs. Reade was decidedly disposed to think so too.

"He says that they are a curse upon people's lives – those engagements that are kept," continued Rachel, looking solemnly out of the window with her pensive eyes.

"Did he tell you that? Dear me, he must be a most extraordinary man."

"I understand it perfectly – I know what he means. When we love one another we are not responsible; something in us makes us do it. When we leave off loving – when we get dissatisfied – we can't help it either. It is nature that tells us to do the one as well as the other; and nature should be obeyed, Roden says."

Mrs. Reade made no comment upon this, but thought to herself that it was a remarkably wise provision of nature – under the circumstances – that her devotee was endowed with the courage of his convictions.

"It is very hard for me now, but it is the truest kindness and gentleness on his part," the girl went on, with a tremor in her quiet voice. "He knows we understand each other better than any one else can do. I think some day he will come and tell me all about it – when he thinks I can bear it; how he could not help it; that that other woman's memory was more to him than any new love a few days old could be, and how he was true to her and to himself, and to me, not to wrong any of us any further to gratify my foolishness. It will be something of that sort, I know; it will be nothing that is a disgrace to him. Ah, Beatrice, you think I am talking childish nonsense, I see it in your face."

"I certainly do, my dear. I think you are fully qualified for admission into the Yarra Bend, if you wish for the candid truth."

"No; you don't know him, and I do. I am puzzled, I don't deny that I am puzzled a little; but I trust him. He may do what he likes; I shall never think that he will do anything wrong. Some day it will be explained, and I shall see that he was right. I shall love him the more for not being afraid to break off with me when he felt it was a mistake. Under any circumstances I love him too well not to be thankful I am spared the misery of seeing him suffer from an irksome marriage that could not satisfy him. And love – as he and I understand love – would be degraded by vulgar efforts to keep it under lock and key."

"I don't know whether it occurs to you," remarked Beatrice, with her head on one side; "but it is a very dangerous doctrine that you and Mr. Dalrymple seem to believe in. Logically worked out, it leads – goodness knows where it doesn't lead to."

The blood flew over the girl's pale face. She was the most sensitively delicate, the most maidenly, of girls; and she scented a meaning in her cousin's words that shocked her terribly.

"I am sure that cannot be," she said, with a majestic gentleness that was full of severe reproach.

"You don't imply that husbands and wives, when they are tired of each other – or even when only one is tired – are at liberty to make fresh combinations?"

"You know I am not alluding to married people, Beatrice. They are like nuns who have taken the veil; they have nothing to do with – with – such things as we have been speaking of."

"Oh, indeed – haven't they?"

"They are in a sacred place. They are out of the common world – out of the arena, so to speak. They have taken their prizes, and gone to sit with the spectators. Even if they do marry wrongly, and do not love each other afterwards, in the fullest way, after such a dedication as they have made – with such ties and confidences, and intimacies between them, so sacred, and so close, and so delicate, and so – so – oh, Beatrice, don't look at me like that! You know what I mean."

"I am trying to follow you, dear."

"You are married yourself, and you know how it is – better than I do. Yet I know, too. If I were married – if I were Roden's wife – "

"You would lie down at his feet and let him clean his boots on you, if there did not happen to be a door-mat handy – oh, yes, I quite understand that."

"I would never make demands upon him that he should love me always," the girl proceeded, with a gentle solemnity that this kind of flippant witticism could not discompose. "I would never even ask him if he loved me. It would seem to me a coarse and insulting question, and it would tempt him to doubt whether he did. If he went away from me, I would never say to him, 'Write to me often – write me long letters.' It is so stupid of people to do that! Of course, if he wanted to, he would; and if he did it because he was asked, his letters would be valueless, and worse. He should never have to think of me as a mortgage on his life and his happiness – he should do as he liked – he should love me as he liked. And if ever he left off loving me, I should know he could not help it – I should not blame him – I should not ask him why. I should feel it in a moment – I am sure, long before he did – as one feels a chill in the air when the sun goes in, even if one's eyes are shut; but I should never say a word about it. And yet – "

"And yet it would never occur to him, you think, to provide himself with a more congenial companion?"

"Beatrice, I cannot talk to you, if you make those suggestions."

"I am only making your own suggestions, my dear. You said it was a degradation to love to keep it under lock and key."

"And I said I was not speaking of married people. You know there is something – whole worlds of things – besides love to be considered in their case."

"Married people are just as human as single people – and so, for the matter of that, are nuns who have taken the veil, I suppose. Vows, if I understand you rightly, are immoral; and the dictates of nature should be obeyed. Nature is uncommonly likely to dictate to man who is not in love with his wife that there might possibly exist a more desirable woman."

"I don't know how to explain myself," said Rachel, who felt herself in a distressing entanglement, and yet was conscious that her principles were being utterly misconstrued; "but I know that that– what you allude to – would be an impossibility."

"Well, I daresay it would," said Mrs. Reade, after a pause. She was suddenly struck with the impropriety of insisting upon strict logic in the discussion of these delicate matters, all things considered. Yet she was not quite content to leave off at this point.

"Put Mr. Dalrymple aside, Rachel. Suppose you were yourself married, not to him, but to someone you did not particularly care for?"

"That could never be," the girl replied quickly.

"Oh, I don't know. It was very nearly being, I may take leave to remind you. None of us can forsee what will happen, and 'never' is a ridiculous word for a child like you to use. You will not live an old maid for fifty or sixty years because you are disappointed in a lover whom you have known for a few days – don't you believe it."

"I will make no vows," said Rachel with a faint smile; "but I express to you my sincere conviction that I shall never marry anybody. If I do – and I can't say I wish to be an old maid – I shall tell the person, whoever he is, all about Roden, frankly."

"Of course you will. And very probably he will like you the better for that frankness, and be quite willing to take you on your own terms. But then, suppose after years of married life Mr. Dalrymple turned up again, and you found you felt towards him as you do now – what then?"

"What then?" repeated the girl, much disturbed and a little affronted; "I should not recognise that I felt so."

"But suppose – for the sake of argument – that you could not help yourself?"

"I hope I could help it, Beatrice. I should not allow him to remind me of the past."

"Would not the past suggest itself sufficiently? Ah, my dear, he is a very strong man! And you are as weak as – well, we needn't say anything about that. If he wanted your love back, and you had it in your heart – "

"If he did," interposed Rachel; "but I know he never would – I should love him no more."

"Would that be in accordance with the terms of your philosophy?"

"Yes, it would. For nature makes us with many capacities. Some of them counteract the others. Don't talk of these things any more, Beatrice – I don't like it."

"Very well, dear; I won't."

The little lady got up from her seat on the floor, opened a window, put the teacups on the table, and asked her cousin if she had seen the beautiful Persian tiles that Mr. Kingston had just had sent out to him for one of the dados in the new house.

Rachel responded absently, gazed for a little while in silence upon the sleepy garden full of flowers and humming bees, and as Mrs. Reade had expected, returned herself to the abandoned topic.

"At any rate," she said thoughtfully, "there is one thing I would always do. I would tell the truth. I would never have secrets. I would sooner do the wrongest thing, the wickedest crime, than hide it. If I feel things in my heart – well, my husband, if I have one, shall know all that I know. And I will never do anything that he – that the whole world – may not see."

"Does that seem to you so easy?" inquired Beatrice, settling a top-heavy rosebud in a slender Venetian vase. "Did you never have any secrets that you were afraid to tell?"

The girl was silent for several minutes. She was crimson to the throat, and her face was turned away from her companion.

"I will do what is sure to be right and – safe," she said at last, falteringly; "I will never marry anybody, if I do not marry Roden."