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A MERE CHANCE.
A NOVEL.
BY ADA CAMBRIDGE,
AUTHOR OF "IN TWO YEARS TIME," &c.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen,
NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1882.
_Right of Translation Reserved._
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
CHAPTER
I.--A Marshal Neil Rose
II.--Family Counsels
III.--Mr. Kingston's Question
IV.--The Answer
V.--So Soon!
VI.--A Rash Promise
VII.--Two Love Letters
VIII.--How Rachel Met "Him"
IX.--A Black Sheep
X.--Outside the Pale
XI.--Mr. Dalrymple has to Consult Gordon
XII.--"Oh, if they had!"
A MERE CHANCE.
CHAPTER I.
A MARSHAL NEIL ROSE.
A few years ago there was a young _debutante_ in Melbourne whose name
was Rachel Fetherstonhaugh. She had risen upon the social horizon
suddenly, like a new star--or, one might almost say, like a comet, so
unusually bright was she, and so much talked about; and no one quite
knew where she had come from. Mrs. Hardy had introduced her as her
niece--everyone knew that--but there were sceptics who, having never
heard of female relatives previously (except the three daughters, who
had married so well), declared that she might be "anybody," picked up
merely for matchmaking purposes--it being well understood that Mrs.
Hardy had for an unknown period sustained life, figuratively speaking,
upon the stimulus of matrimonial intrigues, and had now no more
daughters to provide for.
That this pretty creature had been unseen and unsuspected until the last
Miss Hardy, as Mrs. Buxton, was fairly away on her honeymoon, and almost
immediately after had been introduced to society as Mrs. Buxton's
successor, was a kind of circumstance that seemed, of course, bound to
have a mystery at the bottom of it. But, as a matter of fact, there was
no mystery. Rachel Fetherstonhaugh was a _bona-fide_ niece, and her
entrance into the Hardy family at a particular juncture could be quite
easily accounted for.
Her father had been Mrs. Hardy's brother--a good-for-nothing, unlucky
brother, whose clever brains could do anything but earn money, and whose
pockets could no more hold it than a sieve could hold water--a brother
whom, long ago, before she had become rich and fastidious, Mrs. Hardy
had loved, and served, and worked for, but whom, of late years, she
had--with some mild self-reproach for doing so--ignored as far as
possible.
This man had married a girl without a penny, as such a man was certain
to do; and his wife had left him a widower, with an only child, a few
years afterwards. Since then, for fifteen years, he had rambled about
from place to place, seeking his fortune in all kinds of visionary and
impracticable schemes, whose collapse one after the other, never
deterred him from fresh enterprises, until a sunstroke closed the list
of his life's many failures at the early age of forty-five.
A formal little note was sent by his orphan daughter to Mrs. Hardy to
announce this sad event; and for half an hour after receiving it the
bereaved sister was inconsolable, tormenting herself with unavailing
regrets for her neglect of "her own flesh and blood," and with
harrowing reminiscences of loving early years.
At the end of that time, however, she had made many generous plans for
her dead brother's child, which cheered and comforted her; and in time
these gave place to the prudent, unemotional dictates of worldly wisdom.
Mrs. Hardy dried her tears, bought herself a black bonnet, and stole out
of town in a surreptitious fashion, to see what manner of niece had been
thrown upon her hands.
She pictured to herself what the child's life had probably been--the
motherless child of a vagabond speculator, who had lived very
indifferently by his wits; and the most she hoped for was to find her a
raw bush girl, rudimentally educated, and uncontaminated by the low
society in which she had been brought up. For such a niece she had
mapped out what seemed to be a suitable career--that of a nursery
governess in some _distant_ colony; and she had resolved to be a good
friend to the girl, to set her up in clothes, and to see that she never
came to want or misfortune if by any reasonable means it could be
helped.
To her intense surprise her young relative turned out to be a remarkably
pretty and refined young woman, obviously accustomed to the decorous and
reticent poverty of people who had "seen better days" and appreciated
the fact, and not raw in any sort of sense, though diffident and shy;
the kind of young woman, indeed, who, it was evident at a glance, was
capable under good management of bringing honour and glory upon the
family.
The result was as above indicated. Rachel Fetherstonhaugh, instead of
being sent into obscurity to earn her bread, was adopted in the sight of
all men as a daughter of the house--that great white house at Toorak,
which had achieved local fame for its profuse entertainments, its social
diplomacies, and its three great marriages.
Her father's debts were paid; her wardrobe was supplemented with the
very best style of new clothes--less expensive, but more becoming, than
any that Mrs. Buxton and Mrs. Buxton's sisters had worn; and by and bye
when, having got over the first shock and grief of her father's death,
she made her appearance in public, and began to take an interest in her
new life, she found herself, to her great astonishment, a personage--if
not _the_ personage--in the society around her.
It must be said, and not to her discredit, I hope, that Miss
Fetherstonhaugh liked being a personage very much indeed. She had grown
up a sensitive little gentlewoman, full of delicate thoughts and tastes,
in the midst of dull, uncultured people of sordid cares and occupations,
and of uncongenial surroundings of all sorts; and the mere physical
enjoyment of her changed circumstances, in which everything was orderly,
and dainty, and plenteous, and "nice," was something like the enjoyment
that a flower must feel when the sun shines.
And the sudden discovery that certain shy conjectures about her
personal appearance (which she had hardly had leisure or heart to attend
to) were confirmed by the best authority--to know herself a pretty girl,
and to see that society paid her homage accordingly--this was an
experience that no woman born, being in possession of her faculties,
could help delighting in. And having all the grateful consciousness of
the value of life and its good things that nature gives to the young and
healthy, unspoiled by artificial sentiment, her delight was unbounded,
and consequently unconcealed.
Rachel Fetherstonhaugh was, as her uncle said, "A modest, good girl,
with no nonsense about her." All the same, she was proud and glad of her
fair, clear-cut features, and her pensive, large, sweet eyes that were
full of tender suggestions, for which no authority existed when she
lifted them meekly to an admirer's face; and that figure which with all
its slenderness had the curves of beauty everywhere, and those waves of
ruddy auburn hair.
"I am so glad I am not plain," she once said to her cousin, Mrs.
Thornley (who strange to say did not repeat the remark to all her
friends with disparaging comments, but responded confidentially with a
sympathising kiss, and said she could quite understand it). "I have
always thought that it must be the most charming thing in the world to
be a really pretty woman. And now I know it."
On a grey afternoon in the beginning of May this young lady was
enjoying the luxury of a slow drive up and down Collins Street,
shopping with her aunt. She nestled in a soft corner of a well-appointed
Victoria, with a great rug of native bearskins about her knees, showing
her delicate fresh face, like a well-hung picture, to the crowd of
passers-by on the pavement, and yet sitting just enough above them to
see into the shop-windows over their heads; and she felt--though she did
not formulate the sentiment--perfectly happy and satisfied.
If the truth must be told, she found the sight of more or less
well-dressed men and women, streaming up and down the busy street, more
interesting than the most lovely landscape she had ever seen. She took
as much pleasure in the exquisite fit of her gloves as in the exquisite
colour and fragrance of a Marshal Neil rose that she wore in her
button-hole; and she had never seen a moonrise or a sunset that had
fascinated her _more_ than that sealskin jacket in Alston and Brown's
window, which she observed was exactly the size for her. It is not,
therefore, to be supposed that she is a heroine unworthy of the name.
At Alston and Brown's Mrs. Hardy stepped out of her carriage for perhaps
the fifth time. She was a very large, masculine kind of woman, with a
remarkably fine Roman nose, of which she was excessively proud, and
justly, for it had been a valuable weapon to her in the battle of life,
literally carrying all before it. When he had got over the effect of her
nose, the beholder of Mrs. Hardy's person, as a rule, was pleasantly
impressed by it. It had a generous and a regal air.
"My dear," she said to her young companion, "I only want to match some
lace. Will you go in with me, or will you stay where you are?"
"I think I will stay, if you please, aunt," replied Rachel. "The
carriage is so comfortable, and I like to look at the street."
"Don't look too much," said Mrs. Hardy, smiling anxiously. "There are
all kinds of office clerks and people mixed up with the crowd at this
hour."
"I don't want to look at _men_," said Miss Fetherstonhaugh, with more
dignity than one would have given her credit for. "It is the ladies'
dresses I like to see--and the horses."
Mrs. Hardy marched into the shop with that imposing mien which became
more and more pronounced as she grew older and stouter, and her social
successes accumulated; and her niece sat still in her corner, and looked
for a long while at the sealskin jacket.
"All my cousins have sealskin jackets," she mused, "but I don't think
they had them until they were married. Perhaps I shall have one when I
am married. I can't expect my aunt to buy me one, of course; she has
bought me so many pretty things. How lovely and soft that brown fur is!
How well it would suit my complexion! If my husband is rich, and asks me
what I should like for my first birthday present, I shall not have any
difficulty in making up my mind. I wonder _will_ he be rich? like Mr.
Thornley, and Mr. Buxton, and Mr. Reade. At any rate, he must not be
poor; if he is, I won't have him. I know enough of poverty"--with a
little shudder and a sudden solemnity in her face--"and I don't mean to
run into it again if I can help it."
Here she fell into a rather mournful reverie, thinking of her old life,
with its shifts and privations--of her poor father, who had been so
happy through it all, never feeling the weight of the petty debts and
dishonours that lay like lead on her--of her struggles to keep his
affairs straight--of her prayers that she might not live to despise and
desert him, which was a temptation that grew with her growing years--and
as she thought, she gazed absently, tenderly, pensively, not on the
sealskin jacket, but on the faces of the passers-by. She had no idea how
excessively interesting and pretty she looked to those passers-by with
that expression in her eyes.
However, a gentleman came by presently, a well-preserved young man of
fifty or sixty, with a waxed moustache, and a slender umbrella carried
musketwise over his shoulder; and his attention was violently arrested.
"Where _have_ I seen that charming creature?" he asked himself,
imploring his memory, which had a great store of miscellaneous
treasures, to be quick and help him. "Surely I have been introduced to
her somewhere. Oh, of course! it is old Hardy's niece, or ward, or
whatever she is. Good day, Miss Fetherstonhaugh," turning back when he
had nearly passed her, and making a profound obeisance with his hat off.
"Fine afternoon for a drive."
She recognised _him_ immediately. She had danced a quadrille with him at
her memorable first evening "out," and she had learned a great deal of
him since from the gossip of her aunt's circle. There was a time, she
had been told, when he was nearly becoming a member of the family
himself. He was a great merchant--or an ex-merchant rather--who had
dealt in some mysterious commodity that had brought enormous profits;
and he had risen by all kinds of good luck, from no one knew what depth
of social insignificance to the proud position of a man of fashion
about town, whom ladies delighted to honour.
"Good day, Mr. Kingston," she responded, looking very pink and bright,
and a little flurried as she returned his salutation. She had the
daintiest complexion that ever adorned a youthful face, and whenever she
was startled or embarrassed, however slightly, she blushed like a rose.
Mr. Kingston, accustomed to appraise the charms of his female friends
with an almost brutal impartiality, was unjustifiably touched and
flattered by this innocent demonstration. He was really very glad he had
remembered who she was before he had lost so good an opportunity for
looking at and talking to her.
"I don't think it _is_ a very fine afternoon," she remarked presently,
as the gentleman seemed to find himself for once a little at a loss for
a subject; and she smiled at him through her blushes, which went and
came suddenly and delicately, as if they were breathed over her by the
air somehow. "It has been looking grey, like rain, ever since we
started; and it is rather cold, don't you think?"
"Is it? Ah! so it is. But we must expect cold weather in May. I suppose
it is rather strange to you to be finding winter coming on at this
season?"
"No. Why should it be strange to me?"
"I thought--I am sure somebody told me--that you were recently out from
England."
"Oh, dear, no," she replied, frankly. "I was born in this colony, and
have lived in it all my life."
"In the name of fortune, where?"
"In different places; at Sandhurst, at Ballarat, and on the Upper
Murray, and in little townships here and there in the bush; and
sometimes in Melbourne."
"I am sure I never saw you in Melbourne until I met you at that dance
the other night," he protested earnestly. "I never should have forgotten
your face if I had once seen it."
"I daresay not," she said, and she was angry to find herself blushing
again. "I was but a child when I lived in Melbourne before, and--and my
home was not in Toorak then."
Mr. Kingston understood. She had been a poor relation in those days,
and the Misses Hardy were unmarried. He had a constitutional antipathy
to poor relations, and he was a little disappointed. For a few seconds
he kept silence, while he wondered what her antecedents could have been.
Then he looked at her again, and she was regarding him with a curious
gravity of demeanour, almost as if she had divined his thoughts. There
was a meek majesty about her that commanded his respect, and that he
considered was excessively becoming.
After all, what did it matter about her antecedents? Did she not look a
thoroughly well-bred little woman, sitting there in her furs and soft
cushions, with her head held so straight? Did he not hear other
men--better men than he from a genealogical point of view--singing her
praises wherever he went? Whatever she had been, she was a distinguished
personage now, whose acquaintance it behoved a veteran lady-killer to
cultivate, and that without delay.
"I am very glad your home is in Toorak now," he said gallantly. "I have
some land there myself, quite close to your uncle's place."
"Indeed," murmured Rachel.
"Yes, and I am going to build on it soon. I have just got the plans out
from home--capital plans. I shall bring them in for Mrs. Hardy's
opinion. When my house is built we shall be neighbours. You will have to
help me, you and your aunt, with the furnishing and all that sort of
thing that ladies understand."
"I don't think I understand much about it," she said; "but I shall like
to see it done. I am very fond of pretty furniture. Will your house be
very big?"
"Oh, nothing out of the way. I'm not going to spend _more_ than twenty
thousand pounds on it. My friends tell me I ought to do the thing
properly when I am about it; but I don't see the fun of locking up a lot
of money in bricks and mortar. I might want to change my residence any
day, you see."
Rachel looked at him with awe. There was a flippancy in the way he spoke
of that twenty thousand pounds which almost shocked her.
"If you are going to build a palace," she said, "don't talk of asking my
help. I have never had anything to do with that kind of thing."
"Oh, my dear Miss Fetherstonhaugh--really it will be nothing but an
ordinary good-sized, comfortable house, and I am sure your taste would
be perfect. At any rate, you will help me with the gardens? I mean to
have good grounds, whatever else I go without; and ladies always know
how to lay out beds and things better than we do."
"_I_ shouldn't know," she said, smiling; "but I think my aunt is very
clever at that. We have beautiful flowers--even so late as this."
"So I see." He glanced admiringly at the rose on her breast, and she
stuck her pretty chin into her throat and looked at it too. "What a
lovely bud that is! Marshal Neil, is it not? Oh, don't take it out--the
black fur on your jacket makes such a charming background for it."
Rachel already had it in her hand, and was stroking the velvety yellow
petals and the dark green leaves.
"We have plenty of them," she said; "there is a wonderful autumn bloom
of roses just now. This is a picture, isn't it? with that deep colour
like an apricot in the heart, and those scarlet stains streaking it
outside. Would you like to have it?" And she held it out with a frank
gesture and the most captivating smile; and then, as he took it with a
low bow and much ostentatious gratitude, she blushed the deepest crimson
to the roots of her golden hair.
At this moment Mrs. Hardy emerged from the shop, her ounce-weight of
purchases being carried behind her; and Mr. Kingston turned to receive
an effusive greeting.
"Oh, my dear Mr. Kingston, is it you?" the stately matron exclaimed.
"How _glad_ I am to see you--I have not met you for an age! Where _have_
you been? And when _are_ you coming to call on me again?"
"I will come whenever you will allow me," this illustrious person
replied, with an alacrity of demeanour that did not escape notice. "I
thought of coming this afternoon, and on my way I saw your carriage, and
your niece told me that you were shopping."
"No; I did not tell you that," interposed Rachel gravely.
He looked at her and laughed, and his laugh for some unaccountable
reason called her retreating blushes back. Mrs. Hardy glanced sharply
from one to the other, and then she also laughed, in decorous matronly
fashion.
"Well, come and dine with us to-night," the elder lady said, "and take
us to the opera. That would be a friendly thing to do, if you are
disposed to be friendly. Beatrice and Mr. Reade are coming--nobody else;
and you can take Mr. Hardy's ticket. He is always glad to get off
going."
"I will indeed--I will with pleasure," was the prompt response; and with
some further exchange of civilities, the friends separated.
Mr. Kingston walked away to his club, with his flower in his
button-hole, swinging his umbrella gently, and wondering to what class
of woman this pretty Miss Fetherstonhaugh belonged.
"Is she a coquette?" he asked himself over and over again; "or is she
charmingly fresh and simple?"
Mrs. Hardy rolled home in her little Victoria, and she also asked
herself questions which were by no means easy to answer, as she stole
furtive glances at the little black figure sitting, watchful and alert,
beside her.
"My dear," she said presently, breaking a long silence, "where is your
rosebud gone to?"
"I gave it to Mr. Kingston, aunt."
"You gave it to Mr. Kingston!" Mrs. Hardy almost shouted in the
vehemence of her surprise. Then, pausing for a moment while she stared,
not unkindly, at the torrent of blushes that flowed over her pretty
face, she ejaculated, almost in a tone of awe, "Good gracious!"