CONSOLATION.
If it is true, as it is said, and as the observation of most of us seems
to testify, that the ideal marriage is hardly ever realised, and then
only when the rare and brief experience has been bought at untold cost
of precious years, it is, perhaps, equally true that the majority of
marriages wrongly and recklessly entered into, provided the contracting
parties are honestly disposed, turn out surprisingly and undeservedly
well.
Time, which solaces our disappointments and sanctifies our bereavements,
remedies also in a great measure even these criminal mistakes.
As Rachel truly said, there are "whole worlds of things" besides
love--_i.e._, "the love of man and woman when they love their best"--to
knit husbands and wives together; and, independently of the ties that
children create, and which, to the mother at least, are supremely and
eternally sacred, the innumerable soft webs of habit and association
that are woven in days and years of intimate companionship grow, like
ivy over a fissure in a wall, so strong as eventually not only to hide
the vacant place, but in some degree to supply artificially that element
of stability and permanence to the structure which in its essential
substance it lacked.
And so it was with Rachel. After a little time, when she had "settled
down," changed and aged, and sobered as she was, she really was not
unhappy.
She was always vastly conscious of her loss, but she was of too
wholesome a disposition to be embittered by it; and her simple sense of
duty and her characteristic unselfishness prompted her from the first to
wear a cheerful face for her husband, and never by word or deed to
reproach him, which course of conduct had the natural result of
comforting herself quite as much as it gratified him.
He was not a bad man, and in his easy fashion, he loved her; and
appreciating her gentle and dutiful behaviour, he put himself out of the
way to be kind to her, though, with all his attentions, he never was
what one would call a domestic husband.
Her demands upon him were not exorbitant. Indeed, she was true to her
creed in not demanding anything; but for such evidences of his affection
as he voluntarily bestowed upon her she showed herself always grateful
in a meek, pleased way that was very charming to a man vain of his own
importance, and she did not profess to be more so than, in her soft
heart, she really was.
She had no vocation for independence, nor for making herself--still less
for making others--miserable; and if she had married Bluebeard instead
of a well-intentioned gentleman, she must have twined herself about him
with her tender, deferential, delicately-caressing ways--which came as
naturally to her as breathing--and have found support and rest in doing
it.
When all signs of storm had cleared away, the apparently ill-matched
husband and wife settled down to a life together that, if not
rapturously delightful, was quite as placid and kindly and peaceful as
the married life of most of us.
They did not see a great deal of each other, to be sure; but the hours
that they spent together, being generally hours when Mr. Kingston was
tired or unwell, and wanted to be nursed and cheered, and to have the
papers read to him, had a homely sweetness and solace for Rachel not far
removed from happiness.
And then I am afraid it must be confessed that the house, and the wealth
and luxury belonging to it, _did_ comfort her a little.
She was excessively unpretentious in her habits, and pure and simple in
her tastes, but she had an intense appreciation of all those delicate
personal refinements which womanly women love, and only those who have
money, and plenty of it, can enjoy--of which years of sordid poverty had
taught her the grace and value; and it was not possible to her, with her
healthy sense of life, to refuse, even if she had wished, to absorb the
fragrance and brightness of her social and material surroundings.
She revelled in her beautiful garden and in her spacious and artistic
rooms; she loved her piano and her books and pictures, and her
innumerable pretty things; she enjoyed her drives and her rides, and her
visiting and her parties, and her operas and concerts, and her shopping
expeditions--upon which no limitations were placed by her husband, who
liked her to spend his money--with Laura and Beatrice.
And, more than all, she delighted in the power which her position gave
her of doing all kinds of helpful, unpretentious service to the poor and
miserable, whom she seemed, by a sort of divining-rod, to discover in
the most unexpected places.
Her husband would not allow her to make her large subscriptions to the
public charities anonymously, nor would he consent to her taking
invalids of the lower orders for drives, except upon unfrequented roads
and in a generally surreptitious manner; and he strongly objected to her
visiting poor people's cottages, and running risks of catching dirt and
fever.
But she might make frocks for ragged children, and babyclothes for
unprovided mothers, and scrap-books for the Alfred Hospital; she might
load her carriage with wine and chicken broth every time she went out;
she might spend a little fortune, as she did, in helping on benevolent
enterprises of all sorts; and he only laughed at her for being a
soft-hearted little goose, and triumphed over her when--as happened in
five cases out of ten--she was proved to have been more or less
flagrantly imposed upon and taken in.
Like most people who have badly known the want of money, she was
decidedly extravagant in spending it now that she had plenty; and,
unlike most husbands and wives in such circumstances, she and Mr.
Kingston had no pleasanter episodes in their domestic life than those
which had reference to her financial embarrassments.
It was charming to him (since his banking account was much too solid to
be easily affected by her operations) to see her come, with her timid
and anxious face, to confess that she had spent all her money, and to
ask him, with the sweetest wifely meekness, if he could spare her a
little more; and to her he never showed to better advantage than when he
declared, so obviously without meaning it, that she would ruin him, and
then gave her twice as much as she had asked for.
She always flushed and glowed with pleasure at this delicate and
generous, and gentlemanly way of doing things, and would put her arms
round his neck and kiss him; and, naturally, he would thereafter set
forth to his club, feeling proud of himself and pleased with things in
general, his young wife and he being so thoroughly in their right places
in their relation to one another.
And then there came to Rachel that which to every true woman is the
greatest and dearest and best--save one--of all life's many good things,
and which to her must inevitably have made even the most loveless
marriage lovely:--
"On the 17th inst., at Toorak, the wife of Graham Kingston, Esq., of a
son."
This little notice appeared in "The Argus," of the 18th, and caused a
flutter and sensation in all well-regulated Melbourne households.
"Dear me, how nice! and a son, too. How pleased Mr. Kingston will be! An
heir to all that fine property at last! Dear me, how nice! We must call
and make inquiries."
And when kind inquiries resulted in the satisfactory information that
both mother and infant were progressing favourably, society
congratulated Mr. Kingston with effusive and impressive cordiality,
which that gentleman, deprecating a fuss with airs of smiling
indifference, felt to be by no means more than the occasion demanded.
Of course, the interesting event made a pleasant commotion in the great
Toorak house and in the Hardy family.
Mrs. Hardy assumed the functions of mother-in-law to Mr. Kingston, and
introduced him to his son and heir with a genuine maternal pride, that
could not have been more touching or more complimentary to either of the
delighted parents, had the featureless little atom been a lineal fifth
grandchild.
The stately matron, as is the habit of stately matrons under such
circumstances, put off her conventional armour and rustled softly about
the hushed rooms, clothed in all the homely womanliness of her own
baby-nursing youth; and Rachel, watching her from her tranquil nest of
pillows, forgave her--as she had long ago forgiven her husband--and
wondered that she had never understood before what a truly sweet and
loveable woman dear Aunt Elizabeth was.
And Laura came up to see the baby, bringing a wonderful high-art
coverlid for the cradle, and all sorts of wise advice (based upon her
exceptional experience as the mother of twins).
And Beatrice came--poor Beatrice, who had no babies!--and held the tiny
creature for a long time in her arms, looking with silent wistfulness at
its crumpled little face.
And by-and-bye, when Rachel was promoted to gorgeous dressing-gowns and
a sofa in her boudoir, Lucilla came to stay with her, full of importance
and responsibility (as the mother of the largest family of them all), to
instruct her in the newest and most improved principles upon which an
infant of quality should be reared.
As if Rachel wanted showing how to manage a baby! Some ladies, as the
nurse sagely remarked, never had any sense, but if Mrs. Kingston had
been a poor man's wife, which she hoped she would excuse her taking the
liberty of speaking of such a thing, she couldn't have took to the child
more naturally.
It speedily became apparent to others besides that experienced woman
that maternity was Rachel's vocation, and, when she found it, it seemed
that she had found a consolation, if not an actual compensation, at last
for the great want and sorrow of her woman's life.
Mrs. Hardy, watching the young mother's passion of tender solicitude for
the baby that she could hardly bear to have five minutes out of her
sight, told herself that, after all, the end _had_ justified the means;
and even Mrs. Reade, who was most interested in this latest experiment
of a benevolent Fate, came practically to the same conclusion.
One day she was alone with her cousin. Rachel had been entertaining a
small and select circle at afternoon tea in her own pretty room, and the
baby had been present, and she had been pointing out to its father what
lovely eyes it had, and what small ears, and what perfectly-shaped
hands, and how charming it was altogether--much to Mr. Kingston's
amusement, and obviously to his immense satisfaction also; and now he
had kissed her affectionately and gone out, and the baby was taking a
siesta, and she was resting on her sofa by the fireside, gazing at the
bright logs meditatively, with a half smile on her face.
"Tell me," said Beatrice, suddenly, crossing the hearth and kneeling
down beside her; "tell me, are you happy now, Rachel?"
Rachel lifted her soft eyes, shining with a sort of vague rapture.
"Oh, yes," she said, quickly; "indeed I am." And then in a moment her
face was overshadowed, and she looked in the fire again with eyes that
shone with tears. "I am _too_ happy," she said, under her breath, "while
he is alone and sad."
"Don't you think he will like you to be as happy as possible?"
"I know he will. But it lies on my heart that he is desolate while I
have so many consolations. Beatrice, I was reading some verses of Emily
Bronte's the other day, and they seemed to express exactly how it is
with me. Do you remember them?"
"Sweet love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world's tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes that obscure, but cannot do thee wrong."
"Oh my love!" she broke out suddenly, "I do not forget thee! And," she
added, more quietly, "I don't think my being happy can wrong him,
Beatrice."
"No, dear child, far from it," said Mrs. Reade.
The little woman was not shocked, nor was she dissatisfied with the
state of things that this naive revelation disclosed to her. She was
deeply thankful to know that Rachel, after all, was happy; but she was
not sorry to know also that she was to this extent faithful to her true
love, who had dealt so well by her.
It was at this very hour that the papers containing the announcement of
the baby's birth arrived at the Queensland bungalow, and that Roden
Dalrymple learned what a change had taken place, not only in the life
and welfare of his beloved, but in his own lonely and empty lot.
"The wife of Graham Kingston, of a son." He knew as well as
anybody--better even than Rachel herself--what that little notice meant.
It meant that the gulf already parting them had all at once widened to
an immeasurable extent.
He knew how it would be with that tender and clinging heart--it would be
able to solace itself now, even for the loss of him.
Yet he loved her well enough to be glad and thankful for the comfort
that had come to her, though the coming of it left him doubly bereaved.