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A MERE CHANCE.
A NOVEL.
BY ADA CAMBRIDGE,
AUTHOR OF "IN TWO YEARS TIME," &c.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen,
NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1882.
_Right of Translation Reserved._
CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
CHAPTER
I.--A Parable
II.--"When Yule is Cold."
III.--A Discovery
IV.--"To Meet Mr. and Mrs. Kingston."
V.--A Crisis
VI.--Mrs. Reade meets her Match
VII.--Good-bye
VIII.--Consolation
IX.--Reparation
X.--Fulfilment
XI.--Conclusion
A MERE CHANCE.
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 manoeuvres; 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 _tete-a-tete_ 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."