A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 3

CHAPTER I.

A PARABLE

IT was about a month after the foregoing conversation took place, that Melbourne society was fluttered by a rumour that the engagement between Mr. Kingston and Miss Fetherstonhaugh, which had been unaccountably broken off, was "on" again, and that the long-delayed wedding was to take place immediately. Rumour for once in the way, was perfectly correct.

People went to call at Toorak, and found the aunt serene and radiant, and the bride-elect wearing all the honours of her position – not shyly as of yore, but with a quiet candour and dignified self-possession that was not generally considered becoming under the circumstances.

It was thought that a little humility would be proper in a young person who was going to enjoy such altogether undeserved good fortune.

It happened while she was staying at South Yarra. How it happened nobody quite knew. Gossip attributed it to Mrs. Reade's manœuvres; but Mrs. Reade, far from encouraging anything of the sort, set herself steadily against it, and warned Mr. Kingston of probable consequences in the most terse and trenchant manner (she had taken a very different view of the situation since her return from Adelonga).

Gossip likewise attributed it to the seductions of the new house, which was beginning to shadow forth in Palladio-gingerbread of the most ambitious pattern, the magnificence of the establishment that was to be; but gossip was equally misinformed in this respect.

Rachel was as ready as ever to admire the house, and the beautiful tiles, and carvings, and hangings, and upholstery, that were constantly being designed and produced for its adornment; she fully understood how much they represented for whoever was to possess and enjoy them. But they had not a featherweight of value in her eyes as compared with the happiness she had hoped for and lost; they did not suggest the idea of compensation or consolation in even a slight degree. The fact was that Mr. Kingston was determined to have her.

Of late he had seemed – not to Rachel, but to Mrs. Reade – to have a sort of half-sullen doggedness in his determination, indicating that he was as much bent upon winning the game as upon winning the stakes – that he meant, before all things, not to be beaten in the enterprise upon which he had set his heart.

And in this frame of mind he waited upon opportunity; and in the end, opportunity, as so often happens in such cases, served him.

One day Beatrice and her husband went out of town to lunch, and Rachel had a long, lonely afternoon. It came on to rain, and it was grey and chilly. Dull weather always sent her spirits down several degrees below the normal temperature, and just now she was morbidly sensitive to its influence.

If Beatrice had been at home there would have been a fire in no time, summer though it was; in her absence Rachel did not like to take upon herself to order one. She lay on a sofa with a shawl over her feet, and listened to the rain pattering on the window, and felt cold, and dismal, and deserted.

At five o'clock she was pining for her tea, and thinking it had been forgotten, rang for it; and the smart young parlour-maid, interrupted in an interesting tête-à-tête with the next door coachman, and blessed with few opportunities for the indulgence of a naturally restive temper, brought it in with a protesting nonchalance, a teapotful of nasty liquid, made with water that had not boiled, and a couple of slices of bread and butter that would have charmed a hungry schoolboy – such as would never have been presented to the mistress of the house, as Rachel well knew.

This small indignity, so very small as it was, greatly aggravated the vague sense of desolation and orphanhood – the feeling that she was a person of no consequence to anybody – which possessed her just now. And while she was in the lowest depths of despondency, in the deepest indigo of blues, Mr. Kingston calling, discovered her solitude and came in, tenderly deferential, full of solicitude for her health and comfort, stooping from his higher sphere of social importance to pay homage to her still in her forlorn insignificance.

For the space of half-an-hour perhaps she felt that it would be good to be married to somebody – to anybody – who would love and take care of her, and make the servants treat her with proper respect; and a mere chance enabled Mr. Kingston to take advantage of that accident.

Looking back afterwards she never could understand how it was that she had felt disposed to re-accept him; but the causes were as distinct as causes usually are. Badly-made tea, and the want of a fire in dull weather are, amongst the multifarious factors of human destiny, greatly underrated.

Having said the fatal "yes" – or, rather, having failed at the proper moment to say "no," which Mr. Kingston justly took to mean the same thing – Rachel was allowed no more opportunities for what her aunt called "shilly-shallying."

The day of the marriage was fixed at once, and the preparations for her trousseau simultaneously set on foot.

The girl had hardly come to realise the extraordinary thing that she had done when she found herself being measured for all sorts of wearing apparel, and consulted about the arrangements for her honeymoon tour. Then she set herself to do her duty in the state of life to which she imagined herself "called," with a kind of hopeless resignation. She recognised the fact that this second mistake was not revocable like the first; and therefore she understood that it was not to be considered a mistake.

All her life and energy now had to be dedicated to the task of making it justifiable to her own conscience and in the eyes of all men.

And so she was sweet and gentle to her affianced husband, promising him that, though she could not love him first and best, if he was content to have her as she was (and he assured her he was quite content), she would do all in her power to prove herself a good and true wife to him; and she was tractable and obedient in the hands of her aunt, and ready to fall in with all the arrangements that were made for her.

But, as the wedding-day drew near, the dread of it showed itself to Mrs. Reade, if to no one else, in the dumb eloquence of the sensitive, truth-telling face. That little person who had such a talent for managing, stood aside at this crisis, and did not intermeddle with the strange course of events.

In none of the affairs that she had promoted and directed and brought to successful terminations, had she taken such a deep and painful interest as she now felt in this, which she had been powerless to control; but, for the first time in her life, she was afraid to speak to her young cousin of the thoughts that both their minds were full of, lest she might be called upon to advise where she found it was impossible to decide what was for the best, and only waited helplessly upon Fate, like an ordinary incapable woman.

On the night before the wedding – a soft, bright, early autumn night – Rachel gave her a distinct intimation if she had wanted it, that the marriage however it might turn out eventually, was by no means undertaken as marriages should be.

The girl stole away from the drawing-room while the others were temporarily absorbed in the preparations that were going on for the great ceremonial, and Mrs. Reade, hunting for her anxiously, found her standing in the moonlight by the kitchen-garden gate.

"Looking at that house again!" the little woman exclaimed. "Why, you must know every stick and stone by heart. I never miss you that I don't find you here."

"I am like our poor Jenny and the tank," said Rachel, gazing still at the imposing pile before her, sharply black and white against the soft light of the sky.

"Who is Jenny, may I ask?"

"A dear cat we used to have. She fell into a deep tank one day when father and I were not at home, and for two days she was struggling at the edge of the water clinging to a bit of brickwork, and no one came to help her. Some men heard her cries, but did not know where she was. As soon as we came home, of course I found it all out; and I got a large bough of wattle and lowered it down, and so she was saved when she was very nearly gone. Oh, poor thing, what a state she was in! I sat up with her all night. But she never got over it. She was not exactly mad, but she was never in her right mind afterwards."

"Well?" said Mrs. Reade who was greatly mystified. "I can't see the drift of your allegory so far."

"No; I was going to tell you. Ever after this happened, we had to keep a constant watch upon her to prevent her from throwing herself into the tank again. If she heard the sound of the lid being moved, she would rush to it in a sort of frenzy. A bricklayer was doing something to it one day, and we had to lock her up, she was in such a frantic state. She would be gentle and quiet at other times, but as soon as she thought the lid was being opened, she got quite mad to go to it. And at last a new servant, who did not know of this, left the lid off one day, and poor Jenny seized her chance, and jumped in and drowned herself."

"And that is your well, you mean?" said Mrs. Reade, pointing to the house. "And you are immolating yourself, like Jenny? Oh, Rachel, what are you talking about!"

"I am talking nonsense, I know," said Rachel, with an impressive air of artificial composure; "but somehow Jenny happened to come into my head. Beatrice, do you know I have been thinking of something."

"Of what? Oh, dear me, I wish to goodness you would think like a sensible girl, who knew her own mind sometimes."

"I have been thinking what I ought to do. I ought to just put on my hat and jacket and run away. I could go to a friend, a poor widow, who used to be very kind to me in the old days, and she would let me stay with her until I could get a situation. No, don't scold me – it is ten o'clock, isn't it? It is too late for a girl to be out at night alone. I can't do it, if I would."

"And would you, indeed if you could?" demanded Mrs. Reade, holding her by her wrists and looking imploringly into her face. "Do you really mean that you have a mind to do such a thing, Rachel?"

Rachel was silent for a few seconds and then she began to cry bitterly.

"Oh, I don't know – I don't know!" she said, turning her head wildly from side to side. "Sometimes I feel one way and sometimes another. I want somebody – somebody strong, like Roden – to tell me what it is right to do!"

For a moment Mrs. Reade weighed the merits of the proposition, and all that lay against it, with as near an approach to impartial judgment as true friendship and human fallibility allowed. And the thought of Rachel's weakness of purpose and inability to take care of herself, and of Mr. Dalrymple's traditional character, turned the scale.

"You cannot go back now," she said. "My darling, you have doubly given yourself to Mr. Kingston, and you must try to make yourself happy with him – much can be done by trying, if you will only make up your mind!"

It was the last chance that Rachel had, and she accepted the fate that deprived her of it with characteristic meekness.

"Yes, I will try," she said, wiping her eyes. "It is too late to go back now."

CHAPTER II.

"WHEN YULE IS COLD."

RACHEL, when she did at last get married, had a very stately wedding, if that was any comfort to her. The weather was beautiful, to begin with; a lovelier autumn morning even Australia could not have furnished, to be an omen of good luck for the future years.

Each of the eight young Melbourne belles who had been invited to assist at the interesting ceremony took care to point out the significance of sunshine and a cloudless sky when offering their congratulations to the bride and to the bridegroom also.

The bridegroom on this occasion by no means filled the humble office which tradition and custom assigned to him. There was not a bridesmaid of them all who did not feel that she was much more Mr. Kingston's bridesmaid than Mrs. Kingston's.

Not only were they better acquainted and on more friendly terms generally with him than with her, but he had far more to say to them, and practically far more to do with them, in the course of the day and in the discharge of his and their official duties.

He was the prince of bridegrooms, indeed. He had made magnificent settlements upon his wife (though the credit of that really belonged to Mr. Hardy, who, for once in a way, had to be reckoned with in the progress of these arrangements); and his wedding presents were on an equally noble scale.

The bridesmaids' bracelets were solid evidences of his worth in every sense of the term, and inasmuch as each bracelet slightly differed from the rest, though all were equally costly, of the excellence of his taste and tact. They were valued thereafter by their respective recipients rather as parting keepsakes from their bachelor friend than as mementoes of his auspicious marriage.

And the diamond necklace that was his special wedding-day gift to his bride, and which lay just under the ruffled lace encircling her white throat – a dazzling ring of shifting lights and colours – a magnet to the eyes of all spectators – was worthy to have been a gift from Solomon to the Queen of Sheba.

There was not a servant in the house, nor near it, who did not receive some token of the princely fashion in which he improved this great occasion, and who did not participate in the general impression that he more than rivalled, in popularity and importance, the beautiful young lady whom he had won.

Of the company, all were charmed with his gaiety, his affability, and his delightful sang-froid. He was never for a moment embarrassed. He overflowed with airy courtesies, not only to his bride, but to all her maids and friends.

He made a brilliant speech, that exactly hit the happy medium between tearful pathos and unfeeling jocularity, and that was full of well-bred witticisms, provocative of gentle, well-bred laughter. He was, in short, all that a bridegroom ought to be, and so very seldom is. He covered himself with honour.

Rachel, on the contrary, seemed to have been mesmerised into temporary lifelessness. It was expected that she would be shy and fluttered, and bathed in blushes; but she was not agitated at all, and she did not blush at all. She bore herself generally with a statuesque composure that was thought by some to be very dignified, and by others very wooden and stupid, and that was a little depressing to witness from either point of view. From the beginning of the day she wore this unnatural calmness.

Mrs. Reade had been in terror lest she should give way to unbecoming excitement at some stage of the ceremonies, and was prepared to combat the first symptoms of hysteria with such material and moral remedies as were most likely to be efficacious.

She had strictly enjoined Lucilla, who had brought the baby to the wedding, not to let that irresistible child appear upon any account, and bidden her restrict herself to the most perfunctory caresses until the public ordeal was over. But long ere this point was reached the little woman was longing to see some signs of the emotional weakness that she had deprecated, and there were none.

The bride was as beautiful as a sculptor's ideal, but as cold as the marble which dimly embodies it. She had apparently nerved herself for a sacrificial rite, or else the greatness of her suffering had numbed her; or she was calm with resignation and despair.

"I wish," said Mrs. Reade to herself, in the middle of the marriage service, "I wish I had stopped it last night. I have made a mistake."

But as this thought occurred to her, she was standing – a splendid little figure in ruby velvet and antique lace – in the midst of scores of other splendid figures, a helpless witness to the irrevocable consummation of her mistake, which after all was less hers than anybody's.

Rachel had given her "troth" to her husband, and he was putting the ring that was the sign and seal of it – the token and pledge of the solemn vow and covenant betwixt them made – upon her finger.

When the breakfast was over, that domestic pendant to the religious ceremony having "gone off" with great success, Mrs. Kingston, in due course, retired to put on her travelling dress.

The bridesmaids proper were dispensed with at this stage, and the two married cousins went upstairs with the bride.

It was Beatrice now who was tender and caressing; Lucilla, who did not see very far below the surface of anything, and was delighted with the pomp and circumstance of this new alliance in the family, and charmed, like all happy matrons, to welcome a new comer into the matrimonial ranks, overflowed with unwonted gaiety.

"Now we are all married!" she exclaimed, sinking upon a sofa in Rachel's room, and looking very fair and young – as if marriage had thoroughly agreed with her – in a pale blue French dress of the highest fashion. "And we have all married so well, haven't we? And we have all got such good husbands. Oh, how nice it will be when Rachel and Laura come back and begin housekeeping! John is going to let me have a house in town, too, as soon as Isabel and Bruce come home, so that we shall be down for part of the year; and then what a cosy little family circle we shall make! But Rachel will be at the head of us all. Ah, dear child, you will know now how nice it is to be a married woman – to have your own husband with you always – such a delightful, attentive husband, too, as I know he will be – and your own home – such a beautiful home – "

"You lock up her diamonds, Lucilla," Mrs. Reade interrupted, handing the starry necklace to her sister. "And, Rachel, dear, don't stand and tire yourself. Sit down, and let me dress you."

Rachel, when her bridal lace and satin had been taken off, sat down to be sponged and brushed, and to have her travelling boots laced up.

Beatrice performed her lady's-maid offices in silence, while Lucilla handed her what she wanted, and pleasantly chatted on; and when all was done, and the bride, in russet homespun, was ready for her departure, there were a few words whispered that Mrs. Thornley did not hear.

"My darling, you said you would try."

"Yes, Beatrice, dear; yes, I am trying."

"You are not finding it very hard – too hard – are you?"

"It will be easier in a little while."

"If you make an effort, Rachel – if you make up your mind – if you are kind and good to your husband, and try to keep him straight, and to make his home happy – "

"Yes, dear; yes. I am going to do all I can. But to-day I can only feel that I have lost —quite lost – Roden. I feel now as if he were dead. Even the memory of him I must not comfort myself with any more. That is what I feel hard. But I am trying to get over it. I have promised Mr. Kingston – Graham – all those solemn promises, and I must keep them – I will. It is only at first that I don't know how to bear it; but it will be easier by-and-bye. We must not talk about it, Beatrice; it is wrong to talk about it now. And, oh! I do so dread that I shall break down."

She did break down at last. When she descended the staircase into the hall she found all the company awaiting her, the front door open, and the carriage that was to take her away being packed with her travelling bags and wraps.

She shook hands with all the guests, and smiled a gentle response to their congratulatory farewells; she shook hands with John and his fellow-servants; she kissed her uncle and thanked him for all his kindness to her; she embraced Lucilla and Beatrice with silent fervour, and then her stately aunt, to whom she repeated her grateful acknowledgements for the home and care that had been given her.

"I am afraid I have not made much return to you for your goodness to me, dear Aunt Elizabeth," she said, with pathetic earnestness, but with no agitation of voice or manner.

To her intense surprise the majestic woman suddenly burst into tears.

"Oh, my child!" she said, tenderly, "I hope I have been as good an aunt to you as you have been a good niece to me. I hope you will be very, very happy, my darling. If you are not, I shall never forgive myself."

Mr. Kingston, of course, was standing by, and a frown fell like a cloud over his face. Mrs. Reade was also standing by, and she looked at him steadily for a few seconds with clear, bright eyes.

"Come, Rachel," he said, and he only looked at his wife; "we shall lose our train if we don't make haste."

Rachel withdrew herself from her aunt's arms, and Mr. Kingston took her by the hand and led her away, followed from the house to her carriage by all her train. She was a good deal shaken by the little incident that had so unexpectedly occurred.

There was no mystery to her in what Mrs. Hardy had said, but the thing she had done was very strange and very touching. It invested the Toorak House and all its belongings with a new charm that the orphan girl had never felt before with all the kindness that she had enjoyed there.

At no time in the fourteen or fifteen months that she had lived in it had it seemed so much her "home" as at this moment, when her aunt cried like a mother at parting from her – so desirable a place to stay in now that she had to go.

"Well," said Mr. Kingston, when the carriage was fairly out of the Hardy grounds, and he had waved a gracious adieu with the tips of his fingers to the woman at the lodge, who stood in her Sunday best and white satin cap-ribbons, smiling and curtseying, to see them pass; "well, that is a good thing over, isn't it? Of all the senseless institutions of this world, a wedding à la mode is about the most preposterous. You look knocked up already, when you ought to be fresh for your travels."

He spoke with a little nervous irritation, and Rachel did not answer him. Her heart was beating very fast, beating in her ears and in her throat, as well as in the place where its active operations were usually carried on.

All her powers were concentrated upon a desperate effort to postpone that breaking-down which she had dreaded, and which she felt was inevitable, until she could shut herself within four walls again. But she could not postpone it.

Her husband took her hand and asked her what was the matter with her – whether she felt ill, or whether she was regretting after all that she had married him; whether she was going to make him happy, as she had promised, or to curse his life with its bitterest disappointment – speaking half in love, half in anger, with a sudden outburst of protesting entreaty provoked by her irresponsive silence. And she began to cry – almost to scream – in the most violent and alarming manner.

"My dear love! my sweet child!" cried the bridegroom, aghast. "I did not mean to vex you, Rachel. I did not mean to blame you, my pet. Rachel, Rachel, hush! do hush! Don't let that confounded coachman go back and say – Rachel, do you hear?" – giving her a little shake – "there are people passing. For Heaven's sake don't make a scene in the street, whatever you do!"

Rachel was almost beside herself with excitement, but she was awake to the indecency of betraying her emotion to the servants and the passers-by. Moreover, something in her husband's voice steadied her.

By a strong effort she checked the headlong impulse to rave and scream that for a few seconds was almost overpowering, and held herself in with shut teeth and tight-locked hands, wildly sobbing under her breath, and by-and-bye, when the first rush of passion had spent itself, she became quiet and tractable, fortunately, before they reached the railway-station.

Mr. Kingston was terribly shocked and outraged by this behaviour. He would have given anything to be able to scold her – in a gentle and judicious manner, of course – but he was afraid to attempt such a thing, or even to speak of the probable causes that had led to such deplorable impropriety.

He rummaged for his spirit-flask, and made her drink a few drops of brandy, which nearly choked her; he found some eau-de-Cologne and bathed her face; he got her to put on a thicker veil, which happened to be amongst the luxuries that her aunt and cousins had stuffed into her travelling-bag; and he kissed her and petted her, and when she attempted to explain and excuse herself, bade her "Hush! till another time," and would not listen to her.