A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 3

CHAPTER VIII.
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 Brontë'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 naïve 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.

CHAPTER IX.
REPARATION

BUT, after all, Fate willed that this marriage should be but the chief episode in the story, and not the story itself, of Rachel's life.

One day, when she was flitting about her great drawing-room, with a basket of flowers on her arm, singing soft airs from "Don Giovanni" under her breath as she busied herself with the arrangement of little groups of leaves and flowers in sundry precious receptacles here and there, a footman entered with a telegram.

"That is from your master," said Rachel, lifting it from the salver and tearing off the envelope.

"Wait a moment, James, until I see if there are any orders for you to take out."

She put down her flowers on the piano, read the brief message tranquilly, and then lifted her face with a smile.

"Ask Wilkinson to have the carriage ready at three o'clock," she said; "not the brougham, if it keeps as fine as it is now, the open carriage. And tell cook I want to speak to her in half an hour.

"Your master is coming home to-day instead of Friday."

James said "Yes'm" and retired, and his mistress continued her occupation of arranging the flowers with more haste and eagerness than before.

Mr. Kingston had gone from home a few days previously to meet some distinguished foreign visitors at a friend's house in the country, a thing he did not often do, and she had stayed behind because little Alfred seemed to have symptoms of a bad cold coming on – which, however, had been happily checked at that stage.

She had not expected her lord's return just yet, but she concluded that he had not found the party amusing, or had been bored in some way, and so had excused himself from prolonging his visit; and she was glad of the accident, whatever it was, that was bringing him back so soon.

In the afternoon she went upstairs to get ready to go to the station to meet him. It was winter, and she clothed herself in rich furs – sealskin and sable, with the sealskin cap of old days on her shining head – against which the soft roundness of her cheek and throat, and the blush-rose delicacy of her complexion was particularly distinct and striking, and also the evident fact that, far from pining away, she had developed in health and strength quite as much as in beauty during the five or six years of her married life.

When she was dressed she went to the nursery, where her little boy ran to meet her, begging her to take him with her wherever she was going.

She caught him up in her arms and looked irresolutely at the imposing nurse, who was responding to his appeal in an official and determined manner, telling him that he must not cry to go in the carriage to-day; he must go for a nice walk with his nursey, because his dear papa did not like to be bothered with little boys when he was driving with his dear mamma (which was very true).

"Never mind, Alfy," said Rachel, hugging him to her maternal bosom, and covering his fair little face – which was very like her own – with kisses; "You shall go with mother next time, my sweet. Don't cry, dear little man! Suppose mother brings him home a pretty new toy? What shall mother bring Alfy home, nurse, eh?"

"I don't want toys, I want to go with you, mother," wailed Alfy.

"Oh, well, I think he might," said Rachel, weakly. "It is a fine afternoon, and he would enjoy it so! And his father hasn't seen him for four days. Dress him quickly, nurse, and I'll take him. You needn't come to-day, I can look after him quite well by myself for once."

Alfy was accordingly dressed, his nurse performing that operation silently, with a mien of severe disapproval, and his mother kneeling on the floor and helping her.

When he was ready – looking, Rachel thought, more nearly like an angel than ever child looked before – he was carried downstairs in her own caressing arms, resting his curly head on her sable collar, and clasping his mites of hands round her white throat; and she placed him in the carriage beside her, and tucked up his little legs in the soft bearskin, and they set forth together to Spencer Street in a state of beatific satisfaction and enjoyment, slightly qualified by Rachel's well-founded apprehension that her husband would scold her for spoiling the child and making a nursemaid of herself.

When Mr. Kingston arrived at the station, closely muffled in overcoat and comforters, it was evident to Rachel's experienced eye – or ear rather, for as she knew he would object to her waiting unattended on the platform, she stayed in the carriage and sent the footman to meet him at the train and to take his baggage, and so heard him before she saw him – that he was in anything but a good temper.

He rated an unfortunate porter who drove a barrow in his way in unnecessarily violent terms, and then he demanded angrily of his servant why the dickens they hadn't brought the brougham for him on such a bitter day.

"Oh, Graham," said Rachel, stretching out her hand, "how do you do, dear? I am so sorry! – but I thought you would like the open carriage best. It was beautifully mild when we started – it has been quite a warm day. And here is Alfy come to meet you. He is quite well, again, you see, and such a good little boy, aren't you, Alfy? He is taking care of his mother to-day, and sitting so quietly."

"Why did you bring him out in the cold?" responded the father snappishly. "And where's the nurse? At home? Upon my word, Rachel, we might as well be spared the expense of servants altogether, for all the use you make of them. No, I won't kiss him – I might give him a sore throat."

"Have you a sore throat, dear?" inquired Rachel meekly, tucking the child into her own corner of the carriage, and whispering to him to sit very still.

"I should rather say so – not so much a sore throat, perhaps, as a general bad cold – the most confounded bad cold I ever had in my life. I'm regularly seedy and done up," grumbled Mr. Kingston, climbing into his seat beside her.

"Oh, dear, I'm so sorry!"

"That is why I have come home to-day," he added. "It's the most wretched thing to be in other people's houses when you don't feel well."

"Indeed it is," assented Rachel sympathetically; "and I am very glad you came back. How did you catch it, do you think?"

"I think I must have got it before I started. But that idiot Lambert sent an open trap to meet me – you know what a pouring wet day it turned out? – and I had to sit and be soaked for an hour and a half. Umbrellas were no good in that rain, and there was a sharp wind, too, and before we reached the house – great, cold barrack of a place, with stingy little coal fires – fancy coal fires! – shows what an idiot the fellow is, and she's worse – before we got there I was thoroughly wet through, and chilled to the bone. I never was so cold in my life. I took a hot bath before I dressed for dinner, and I got Lambert to send me up some brandy, but it was no use – it seemed to have regularly struck into me. I couldn't get warm – not till about the middle of the night, and then I felt as if I'd got a fever. I believe I have too."

"Oh, Graham, I hope not."

"It has settled on my chest," he went on. "I haven't been able to sleep for coughing – you know I have never had a cough in my life – and I can't draw a breath without feeling as if I was dragging something up by the roots. Can't you hear how I breathe? You never heard me breathe like that before did you?"

Rachel turned her blooming face, now grave and anxious, to listen to his respiration, which certainly was strangely quick and laboured, and noisy, and she was struck by a great change in his since she had seen it four days ago. It had become all at once wrinkled, and hollow, and haggard – the face of an old man.

"Oh, my dear," she exclaimed, in an accent of genuine distress, "you have got a bad cold, indeed! Hadn't you better call on the doctor at once – it won't be much out of our way – and see what he says about it? It may be nothing, but I think it seems like bronchitis, and it is best to be on the safe side."

"I think I will," said Mr. Kingston, covering his mouth with his wraps again. "It seems worse than it was when I started – the cold day, I suppose. Hang it, I wish you had brought the brougham – it is colder than ever!"

And he shivered under an accumulation of great-coats and furs that one would have thought sufficient for the temperature of polar regions.

The carriage was stopped in Collins Street, and remained in the doctors' quarter until little Alfy fell asleep, and was temporarily put to bed under the long, soft skirt of his mother's jacket. Then, as the dusk was falling, Mr. Kingston came back to his place, and tremulously commanded the coachman to drive home as fast as he possibly could.

"He says it is inflammation of the lungs, Rachel," he whispered excitedly, "and that I must go to bed at once. Only a touch he called it, but he didn't look as if he thought it a touch. He is coming up to-night to do something. He says I ought to have come home the first day, and not have let it run on. Inflammation of the lungs – that is a dreadful thing, isn't it? I have never had it, but I have heard of it – it's a most dangerous complaint!"

"Oh, no, dear, not dangerous, except when people are careless," said Rachel soothingly, taking his hand under the fur rug and clasping it between her own. "And now you are home, with me to nurse you, you will soon get all right. Many people have it slightly – it is quite a common thing with a bad cold – but when they are well nursed and taken care of, they soon get all right again."

"Good little woman! you will take care of me, I know."

"Indeed I will," she responded, slipping up one hand under his arm, and resting her cheek on his coat-sleeve. "I wish you had come back to me before. But, once I get you fairly into my hands, I'll soon nurse you round."

However, though she did all that a woman and a wife, and one born to be the genius of a sick room, could do, she did not nurse him round. By the time he reached home, where the household was thrown into a panic of consternation, he was very ill indeed – his fright about himself helping very much to develop the bad symptoms rapidly; and the doctor, who next day summoned other doctors in consultation upon the case, pronounced him – not in words, but by unmistakable signs – to be in a serious and critical condition. The attack had been severe from the first; it had been allowed to run on for several days; and the constitution of the patient, enervated and shattered by years of unwholesome indulgence, was as little fitted to stand an illness as any constitution could be. The pain in breathing grew worse and worse, and the fever hotter and drier; and then stupor came on, and delirium, and exhaustion, and by-and-bye a filmy cloud over the sunken eyes, and a dusky pallor over the old, old, wrinkled face; and, in spite of all the doctors, and all the nurses, and all that money could do – in spite of the agonised devotion of his young wife, who never left him for more than five minutes at a time, taking snatches of sleep only when he slept, sitting by the bedside, and resting her tired head on the same pillow that she smoothed for his – it was over in less than a week. And a little paragraph appeared in "The Argus" one morning, to shock that small world of which he had so long been a distinguished ornament, with the incomprehensible intelligence that he was "gone," and would never be seen at a club mess or in a festive drawing-room again.

On the night of his death, when fever and pain and restlessness were sinking away with the sinking pulse, and when Rachel, watching beside him, thought he was past knowing anyone – even her – he looked at her with a gleam of loving recognition. "Good little woman!" he muttered in a struggling whisper. "Dear, good little woman!"

She stooped over him at once with a yearning passion of pity and vague remorse, and kissed him, and laid her white arms about him, raining tears on his dying face and his cold limp hands.

"Oh, Graham, Graham, I have not been good enough to you!" she cried. "And you have been so good – so kind – to me!"

He continued to look at her with dull wistful, pathetic eyes.

"Have I?" he gasped, feebly. "Have I?"

And then the gleam died out of his face in the shrouding darkness that was creeping over him. He was quiet for several minutes, and Rachel laid her cheek on the pillow beside him, and listened to the faint rattle which now and then told that the "step or two dubious of twilight" between sleep and death was not yet crossed, motioning the other watchers away from the bedside, that he and she might be alone together.

And suddenly he roused himself, and said – panting the words out slowly and huskily, but evidently with a perfect consciousness of their meaning – "Rachel – you can – have him – now."

Her arm was under his pillow, and she drew it back to her gently until his head lay next her breast.

"Hush – hush – hush!" she said, with choking sobs. But he went on steadily, as if he had not heard her.

"Only tell him – not to – not to – lead little Alfy – into bad ways."

After a pause, he said,

"Do you hear! – tell him – "

"He will not – he could not!" she broke out eagerly. "He is a good, good man, though people think he is not! He will take care of little Alfy, my darling – do not be afraid – he will never lead him into bad ways – never never!"

Ought she to have said it? Had she given him – she, who, at this moment, would have laid down her life to save his, if that had been possible – the comfort she had meant to give, or a most cruel, cruel stab, in his last conscious hour? She looked at him with agonised, imploring face, which mutely prayed him to try and understand her; and there came slowly into his sunken eyes a vague intelligence and a dim, dim smile. He did understand her – better, perhaps, than he had ever understood her before.

"Good little woman!" he murmured, "Good little girl – to tell the truth."