A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 3

CHAPTER XI.

CONCLUSION

MRS. THORNLEY was a little scandalised like her mother, at first, not by Rachel's desire to marry again – for that she should do so, as a rich young widow of twenty-five, "left" by a husband just forty years her senior, was generally anticipated as a matter of course – but by the too early announcement of those wishes and intentions which conventional decorum forbade a woman to dream of until "the year" was up.

Very speedily, however, she forgot to be shocked by anything of this kind, and devoted herself ardently to the furtherance of her cousin's happiness.

She had had Mr. Dalrymple at Adelonga after his accident, and had nursed him for about a month of his convalescence; and since that time both she and John had had a strong feeling of friendship for him, not much less than that which they had always had for their favourite, Mrs. Digby.

They had condoned all the errors of his earlier years (even the great duel, which Mr. Gordon had assured them was the worst episode in a reckless but not dishonourable career, and was in itself unstained by any mean or vicious motives), and they had proved the sincerity of their respect and regard for him by allowing their son Bruce to "chum" with him in Queensland.

And now, being put in possession of all the facts relating to his and Rachel's love affairs, Lucilla entered eagerly into the arrangements which Rachel herself, without a blush of shame, suggested for bringing the long-parted lovers together again.

"Oh, yes, my darling," she wrote hurriedly, by return of post, "pray do come and spend all the summer with us. Mamma says that as it is so very, very soon we must be careful to keep it quite quiet, but John wishes me particularly to tell you that, in his opinion, you are quite right.

"We both like Mr. Dalrymple very much, and we think he has behaved so very well. And John says he is not at all a spendthrift now, whatever he may have been once, and he thinks really that he will take care of your money and not squander it away (only he says you must let him arrange things for you on your marriage – which must take place at Adelonga – so as to be quite on the safe side); for they have had both floods and droughts very badly at their place in Queensland, and yet they have made it pay, which John says he never expected. Bruce thinks so much of the property and the way it has been managed, that I am sure he will want to go in with Mr. Gordon if Mr. Dalrymple will let us buy him out (perhaps he won't now the meat-freezing is going to do such great things.) But these are details to talk of presently. We must get you here first.

"If you can come on Tuesday, do. John will meet you at the train. I have written to Mr. Dalrymple to come the next day, for you must not be excited and upset until you have had time for a good rest after your journey. I am having the blue south room got ready for you – the one you used to like – and the large dressing-room next to it for dear little Alfy. I don't think you ought to send away your maid. Won't it look odd after being used to one for so long? I have plenty of room for her as well as for the nurse, &c., &c."

On the Tuesday, Rachel, with Alfy and his nurse, arrived, having dismissed some of her servants and put the rest on board wages, having packed up her most precious china and art treasures, and swathed her splendid upholstery in sheets of brown holland, prepared to spend any length of time at Adelonga that circumstances would admit of.

It was a beautiful day in January, rather too hot for travelling in comfort, but pleasant and breezy about the Adelonga-hills and the bosky garden that sheltered the old house. It was the same old house still, Rachel was thankful to see. Mr. Thornley had been building with brick and stone in town, and so had been content to leave to his country seat, the picturesque charm of its wooden walls and its medley of low roofs and gables; and now it stood embowered in cool vine leaves and sweet-scented creepers, with great trees of pink oleander, which loved the sultry midsummer, nestling up against it, and making broad splashes of sunny colour amid the sombre richness of evergreen shrubs – a sort of earthly paradise in Rachel's eyes. Lucilla was standing on the verandah, surrounded by all her family (except her grown-up step daughter, Isabel, who had been sent on a visit to an aunt in Sydney to be "out of the way") waiting to greet her welcome guest; and Rachel, jumping down from the buggy, and flinging herself into those faithful arms, felt that she had been a wandering prodigal in strange countries for half a dozen years, and was on the threshold of home again.

"But, oh," she said to herself, when having seen little Alfy tucked up in his cot, and having, maidless, with her own hands, laid away her clothes in drawers and wardrobes, she began to dress for dinner, "what could have made Lucilla imagine that waiting for him for twenty-four hours would rest me?"

The long hours passed, however, as the longest hours do, and the evening of Wednesday drew on with a flaming crimson sunset; and Rachel listened for the sound of buggy wheels on distant bush tracks, and was deafened by the noise of her own loud-beating heart.

"They are coming," whispered Lucilla, creeping with the stealth of a conspirator into her cool, dim drawing-room, where the young widow stood, bright-eyed and pale, in her black gown, steadying herself with a hand on the piano.

"Shall I send him in to you by himself, dear, or would he think that was bad taste – a too open and vulgar way of recognising the state of affairs?"

"Oh, no, he would think not it vulgar," replied Rachel, smiling slightly through her air of solemn and rapt abstraction. "You must send him by himself, Lucilla, please – this once."

The buggy came into the garden and passed the window. Lucilla, outside on the verandah, welcomed her guest with effusive inquiries after Mrs. Digby's health and welfare, and that of all the little Digbys' respectively; Mr. Thornley gave loud directions to the servants about the portmanteau that was to be carried to the green gable room. And then the buggy went to the stable-yard; there was a few minutes' silence; and the door of the drawing-room opened quietly, and Roden Dalrymple came in.

He had changed a little in the four years since she had seen him last; his ruddy moustache was a little more grizzled, and the lines in his sun-tanned forehead were stronger and deeper.

She was changed, too; there was a matronly grace and maturity in the roundness of her shapely figure and in the reposeful softness of her face, that had been wanting in the beauty, fresh and delicate as he remembered it, of her earlier girlish years.

But the only change they recognised in one another was their deeper capacity for understanding the worth and the meaning of such an experience as this, when, with his back against the closed door, and her hands about his neck, he held her in both arms clasped close to his breast, and they drank together in one moment of speechless passion the solace and the sweetness of all the kisses that they should have had.

In the evening Lucilla sat down to the piano, to play some of Beethoven's sonatas to her husband. It was a lovely moonshiny summer night, and some of the windows stood open, letting in the fragrance of jessamine and tobacco, and a quantity of tiny moths and gnats.

Mr. Thornley, having taken his coffee and his cigarette upon the verandah, lying all along on a bamboo easy chair, stayed there to listen and doze in obscurity, with his handkerchief thrown over his bald head to keep off the mosquitoes.

For a few minutes Mr. Dalrymple stood behind his hostess; but, finding that she played from memory, and therefore did not want leaves turned over for her, he left the piano, and crossing the room, stooped down to Rachel as she sat in a low chair dreamily fanning herself.

"Rachel," he whispered, "is the lapageria in blossom now?"

"I don't know, Roden – I don't think so," she replied.

"Shall we go and see?"

She rose at once, and they went together into the curtained alcove and through the noiseless swing door.

"Where is our seat?" he said, taking her hand as soon as they were alone, and leading her down the dim alleys, over-arched with fern trees, and filled with broken shadows of the gigantic fronds. "I hope it is in the same place."

It was in the same place, but the place was stiller and darker than it used to be – built all round and about with gnarled masses of cork, feathered in every crevice with maiden hair, and roofed with drooping leaves.

There was just moonlight enough to enable them to find it, and when they found it they sat down side by side, and Rachel laid her head on one of her lover's broad shoulders and her hand on the other; and they remained there for several minutes without moving or speaking, listening to the far-off sound of the piano, more perfectly at rest than either of them had ever imagined it possible to be in this world.

Mr. Dalrymple spoke first, drawing a long breath.

"Must we be separated any more, Rachel? Can't we be married now – this week – to-morrow – and go away from everybody quietly? It seems like tempting Providence to lose sight of one another again – to lose one hour more than we can help of what we have been kept out of all this time."

"It does – it does," assented Rachel. "But I promised Aunt Elizabeth that I would be a widow for a year."

"You were a widow for me – how many years?"

"I know, Roden, I know. I do not do it willingly. But other people – other things – have to be considered."

"Six months more! Child, no one has any right to demand such an enormous sacrifice of us. Who knows how long we may live to be together as we want to be together? Can we afford to throw away six months on the top of six years for the sake of mere sham propriety, knowing the worth of every hour as we do?"

"Roden," said Rachel gently, after a pause, "it shall be just as you like. If you think we ought not to wait, we will not. I can explain to Aunt Elizabeth."

And then he recognised his responsibilities.

"No," he said, "I think perhaps we had better wait – though there is no sense or justice in it. We'll pay Mrs. Grundy the heaviest price that she has swindled honest people of for many a day, and then we'll take it out with interest. But you will do something for me in the meantime?"

"There is nothing I could do for you that I should not want to do for myself, Roden."

"You won't go quite away, will you? You'll stay here till I have to leave, and then you'll come and stay a long while with Lily? You'll let me have sight of you, and keep watch over you, until the waiting time is up?" There was no answer required for this question. What they could do for one another they would, as both well knew. He held her tightly in his arms, covering half her face with his great moustache. "And when the time is up we will not wait one hour – not one," he said, with sudden, strong passion. "That very day, Rachel, I shall take you away to Queensland, where nobody can reach us and nothing can interfere with us. When at last I do get you, I will have you – for a little while at all events – absolutely and wholly to myself."

And Rachel prayed that she might be permitted to live until that "little while" should come.

It seemed, in this moment of anticipation, something that it would be presumptuous for a mortal woman to hope for, much less to expect.

And should Love, when all is said and done, be the ruler and lord of all – supreme arbiter of the destinies of purblind creatures, not one in ten, perhaps not one in fifty, of whom have the faculty to see him and know him as he is?

Should the passion of wayward girls defy the wisdom and wishes of parents and guardians, who have learned in long years of costly experience something of the potentialities of this many-sided life?

Should all risks of poverty and social ignominy, with their long train of trials and temptations, involving the welfare of innocent relatives and unborn children, be dared in an irrevocable moment of enthusiasm for one's faith in the eternal fidelity of any man or woman?

Like many other questions that trouble us in this world, wherein nothing seems quite right and nothing altogether wrong, we are constrained to leave it for the history of future ages, that we shall never see, to answer.

Knowing only what we know, we must not say "yes" – we cannot say "no." We have not sufficient light for any such generalities.

But when one finds this unique treasure of human life, to whom it is, with respect to his tangible earthly possessions, what the pearl of great price was to the merchantman of Scripture, there seems no better thing for him to do than to sell all that he has to buy it, so long as he sells only what is absolutely his own, and none of the rights and privileges that belong to other people.