A Mere Chance Volume III Part 21

"Did he send you?"

"Of course he did."

"Why?"

"Why!" he echoed angrily. "Do you mean to say you don't know why?"

"I know _nothing_," said Rachel. She stood before him s.h.i.+ning in her satin and diamonds, without a trace of colour in her face; and the anguish of her beseeching eyes told him plainly that she spoke the truth.

"Oh, dear me, this is terrible!" he exclaimed, in a flurry of dismay and consternation. "Do you mean to say that you didn't know that he was ill?--that you didn't tell Mrs. Hardy to write that letter?--that it was all done without your knowing anything about it? Good Heavens! would anybody believe there were such malignant fiends in existence--and such fools!" he added bitterly.

Then he told her the whole story--how her lover had got hurt, and had lain insensible for many days, between life and death--how his first anxiety upon recovering consciousness was about his appointment with her--how he had deputed his friend to go to Melbourne and explain his inability to keep it; and how he (Mr. Gordon) had seen Mrs. Hardy and afterwards Mr. Kingston, and been led by them to an apparently unavoidable conclusion.

"She said you were not willing to see me, but that she would give you my messages and explanations," said the little man, thinking it would be best for his friend (and not much caring what it would be for other people) to have it all out at once, while he was as about it; "and that she would send me a note to the club, where I was staying, in the evening, or instruct you to do so. She had already told me that you were re-engaged to--a--your present husband. At night I got the letter, in which she repeated this a.s.sertion, stating that you had empowered her to do so."

"And you went and told him that?"

"I did not go and tell him that--for I did not want to kill him--until I had taken every possible precaution to get it corroborated."

"Yes?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Rachel, breathlessly.

"I obtained an introduction to Mr. Kingston at the club, and I asked him on his honour to tell me if what Mrs. Hardy had said was true."

"You told him why you wanted to know?"

"I did."

She stood still for a few seconds to collect her strength; whole years of effort and agony were concentrated in that little interval.

"Shall you be going back to Queensland soon?" she asked quietly.

"I am going back to-morrow," he said--though he had not previously thought of doing so.

"Tell him when you see him--tell him from me--that I never knew _anything_--never, never, from the day I saw him last until to-night."

"It will break his heart to hear it, Mrs. Kingston."

"No--he will be glad to know that I was not utterly base. And I--I want him to know it."

"And shall I--_can_ I--tell him that you were really not engaged when they said you were--when he thought you were waiting for him?"

She flushed deeply and drew herself up with a little stately gesture.

"He will not wish you to go into those particulars, Mr. Gordon. If you will give him my message simply, that is all I want you to do. He will understand it. Will you take me back to the ball-room now? I should like to find my cousin, Mrs. Reade."

CHAPTER V.

A CRISIS.

As nature makes us, so to a great extent, the most of us remain, when education has done its very best, or its very worst, to modify the great mother's handiwork. Her patterns, of which no one ever saw the original designs, and that have been unknown centuries a-weaving, cannot be sensibly altered in the infinitesimal fragment that one human lifetime represents, though every thread of circ.u.mstance, in its right or wrong adjustment, must have its value in the ultimate product, whatever that unimaginable thing may be.

Still, in the individual man or woman, here and there, the type that he or she belongs to is temporarily obscured by accidental causes; the lines of character, laid down by many forefathers, are twisted or straightened by violent wrenchings of irresponsible fate--as in less important branches of nature's business her processes are interrupted by lightning and earthquakes, and other rebellious forces.

Rachel, from the hour when she discovered how it was that she and Roden Dalrymple had been defrauded of their "rights," was apparently quite changed (though--as she is still a very young woman--we are not prepared to suppose that she will never be her old weak and timid and clinging self again). She was turned, from a soft and shrinking girl, into a hard and fearless, if not a defiant, woman.

The immense strength of her love--always an incalculable "unknown quant.i.ty" in the elements of human character and the factors of human destiny--had already given force and point, and meaning and dignity, to her whole personality and her relations with life; but now the magnitude of her wrongs and misfortunes, and still more of _his_, seemed to dwarf and crush every feeble trait and sentiment in her.

She went back to the ball-room, very white and silent, on Mr. Gordon's arm; and the first person of her own party whom she met there was Mr.

Reade, under whose protection she placed herself, dismissing her late escort with a quiet "good-night."

She asked to be taken to Beatrice; and Ned, who never knew from whom he had received her, piloted her through the crowd until he found his small wife, whose bright eyes no sooner rested on Rachel's face than they recognised a new calamity.

"Has she heard anything, I wonder?" she asked herself in dismay. "Are you ill?" she inquired aloud.

"I want to go home," said Rachel.

The little woman did not waste time asking useless questions. She took her cousin to the cloak-room, sent Ned for a cab, and in a few minutes the three were driving to the Kingstons' hotel.

When they reached Rachel's drawing-room, and Ned had been sent downstairs to see if her maid was on the premises, Mrs. Reade put her arms round her tenderly, and begged to know what was the matter with her.

But Rachel, singularly unresponsive to the rare caress, would not tell--would not talk at all. She would not betray the mother's crime to the daughter, and she would not mention the name of her beloved, even to her dearest friend, in these married days.

"I am not well," she said, gently but with an odd harshness in her face and voice. "I could not dance--I could not stay in that place. I shall be better here. Go back, Beatrice, and make excuses for me. Say I was not well."

"I shall do no such thing," said Beatrice bluntly. "I shall not leave you until Graham comes home."

Rachel begged and protested with a sharp peremptoriness that was very unusual to her. Beatrice, full of anxiety and consternation, was obdurate.

In the midst of their discussion, they heard Mr. Kingston coming upstairs, bustling along in great haste. He flung open the door, with an air of angry irritation.

"Oh, here you are!" he exclaimed loudly. "What on earth are you doing?

Everybody is inquiring for you, Rachel. Aren't you well? Why didn't you tell me, and let me bring you home, if you wanted to come? You have set all the room talking and gossiping, slinking off before midnight in this way--as if you were a mere n.o.body, who would not be missed--and not letting me know. What's the matter, eh?"

Rachel, without changing her position by a hair's breadth, lifted her eyes steadily and looked at him, but she did not speak.

Mrs. Reade saw the look, and she needed no words to tell her that some crisis in the conjugal relations of this pair had come, which no outsider had any business to see or meddle with; and she guessed correctly what it was.

"I will go back, and make what explanations are necessary," said she; "and I will come round in the morning, Rachel."

And she went out quickly, and closed the door behind her. On the stairs she met Rachel's maid going up, and told her her mistress would ring when she wanted her; and in the lobby of the hotel she replied to her husband's anxious inquiries by declaring irrelevantly that she wished Mr. Kingston, and his house and his money, were all at the bottom of the sea.

That gentleman, meanwhile, after following her out upon the landing, and looking over the stairs to see that her natural protector was in attendance, returned to his wife with a vague presentiment of unpleasantness in some shape or other.

He, too, had been struck with the peculiar expression of Rachel's face, and a guilty conscience intimated at once that she had "found out something," though it did not suggest any catastrophe in particular.

There were so many things that, by unlucky accident, she might find out.