On what a mere chance does destiny depend.
If Mrs. Hardy's evening had been triumphant and prosperous – if she had not torn her best lace, and torn it in consequence of Rachel's carelessness – she would probably have received the girl's touching confidence as a tender mother should. As it was, she felt that after all her fatigues and worries, this was really too much.
"What nonsense are you talking, child?" she exclaimed angrily. "Is it any fault of Mr. Kingston's if Miss Hale behaves like an idiot? She is nothing but a vulgar flirt, and he knows it as well as you do – only it is his way to be attentive to all women."
"Miss Hale!" repeated Rachel vaguely; "I'm not thinking of Miss Hale. I am not blaming anybody – only myself. I was very wrong to accept Mr. Kingston at the first – oh, aunt, you know we are not suited to each other! He ought to marry somebody older and grander, and I – I thought I should like to be rich, and to live in that house – and I thought I should come to love him in time; but now I know it was all a mistake. Do – do let me break it off before it goes any further! Let me stay with you – I shall be quite happy to stay with you and Uncle Hardy, if you'll only let me!"
"You are dreaming," replied her aunt, giving her a slight shake in the extremity of her dismay and mortification; "you talk like a baby. Do you think a man is to be taken up one day and thrown away the next? And it is worse than that to jilt a man – and Mr. Kingston of all people – after being engaged to him for months, as you have been, and after leading him into all sorts of preparations and expense. The bare idea is monstrous! And all for nothing at all, but some ridiculous sudden fancy! You may have seen things of that sort done amongst the people you have been brought up with, but no lady would think of disgracing herself and her family by such conduct."
"Oh, aunt!" moaned Rachel piteously, as if she had had an unexpected blow.
"I don't like to speak harshly to you, my dear," Mrs. Hardy proceeded, in a rather more gentle, but still irritated tone. "Only you must not vex me with such absurd and childish notions. I know it is only a passing whim – you are over-tired, and you are hurt because Mr. Kingston paid Miss Hale so much attention, though it is only what he does to all women, without meaning anything whatever; but still it is a serious and horrible thing – breaking an engagement, a really happy engagement, as yours is – jilting a kind, good man, after giving him every encouragement – even to think of! Don't let me hear you mention it again, unless you want to break my heart altogether. And after all I have done for you – I don't want to boast, but I have been a good aunt to you, Rachel, and you would have been in a poor place but for me – the least you can do is to respect my wishes, especially as you know I wish nothing but what is for your real good and welfare."
Rachel wandered back to her bed, laid her head gently on the pillow, and closed her eyes. Mrs. Hardy in the dead silence that presently ensued, was relieved to think that she had "settled off" at last; but it was not sleep that kept her so quiet – it was the calmness of defeat and despair.
CHAPTER V.
RACHEL'S FIRST VISIT IN MELBOURNE
IN the last week of August, when the place was looking its loveliest – the rustic gables of the pretty house all hung with wistaria, and the shrubberies full of fragrant bushes of purple and white lilac – Mrs. Hardy, Mr. Kingston, and Rachel took their departure from Adelonga. It was to one of them a truly heart-breaking business.
Rachel stood on the verandah while the horses were being put to, clasping Lucilla and the baby alternately to her heart, and wept without restraint, until her eyes were swollen, and her delicate colour resolved into unbecoming red patches, and there was scarcely a trace of her beauty and brightness left.
No one but herself was at all able to realise what this moment cost her. She was not only leaving a place where she had spent the happiest period of her youth; not only parting from friends with whom she had established the most tender and sympathetic relations; she was closing a chapter, or rather a brief passage, which was the one inspired poem of her life; and she was saying good-bye to Hope.
As long as she was at Adelonga, there was the chance that Mr. Dalrymple might come back – at any rate, notwithstanding the Queensland arrangements, there was a constant impression that he was near. And as long as she was at Adelonga she had felt bold to strive, by various feeble and ineffectual devices, to extricate herself from her engagement.
Now she was going where it seemed to her her lover would never be allowed to reach her, and where in a hard world of money and fashion, and under the terrible dominion of "the house," she would be a helpless victim in the hands of Fate.
"Good-bye, darling Lucilla!" she sobbed; "thank you so much – I have been so happy here – I am so sorry to go away!"
The gentle woman was inexpressibly touched, and of course cried for company. Mrs. Hardy had her own maternal reluctance to face an indefinite term of separation from her daughter. And altogether Mr. Kingston was not without justification for his unusually irritable frame of mind.
He did not like to see women crying; he was particularly annoyed that Rachel should exercise so little command over herself, and that she should have red eyes and a swollen nose; and he was uneasy about the untoward episode which had been the first hitch in the smooth current of his engagement, and wondered whether it could be possible that a lingering fancy for that Dalrymple fellow was making her so unwilling to return to her Melbourne life.
Moreover, he hated country travelling – long drives over rough bush roads, and bivouacs at country inns, where the food was badly cooked and the wine detestable; and he was suspicious about the behaviour of the Adelonga horses, whose little traits of character came out rather strongly in the invigorating air of spring; and he had a nasty touch of gout.
However, the day was fine, and the drive was lovely. As she was carried along, with the soft air blowing in her face, full of the delicious fragrance of golden wattle, Rachel ceased to cry – becoming calm, and pensive, and pretty again – and took to meditation; wondering, for the most part, what Queensland was like, and how it was she could ever have thought Melbourne, as a place of residence, preferable to the bush.
They passed a charming little farmhouse, more picturesque in the simple elegance of its slab walls and brown bark roof than any Toorak villa of them all, set in its little patch of garden, with fields of young green corn and potatoes, neatly fenced in, behind it. It had its little rustic outbuildings, its bright red cart in the shed, its tidy strawyard, its cows and pigs and poultry feeding in the bush close by.
The farmer was working in his garden; the farmer's wife, on her knees beside him, was weeding and trimming the borders of thyme that ringed the little flower beds. They both paused to gaze at the imposing equipage crashing along with its four strong horses, and at the ladies and gentlemen perched so high above them; and Rachel, looking down from her box-seat, thought she had never seen such a picture of rural and domestic peace. She had suddenly ceased to regard material wealth and splendour as in any way essential to happiness.
To live in some such home as this (provided one had enough to live on and to pay one's way), working with one's own hands for the man one loved – that seemed to her at this moment the ideal lot in life.
Having started from Adelonga an hour before noon, the horses were taken out at two o'clock to be fed and watered, and the little party camped beside a shady water-hole for lunch.
Lucilla had put up a bounteous basket of good things, and all the materials for afternoon tea; and the fun of arranging the grassy table first, and of making a fire and boiling the kettle afterwards – not to speak of the very satisfactory meal that intervened – had its natural effect upon our impressionable heroine of eighteen.
Her fiancé, much revived by a tumbler of dry champagne, carefully cooled in the water-hole, was also in improved spirits and temper, and he set himself to be very kind to his little sweetheart, and forgave her all her misdeeds.
Between three and four, having had their tea, the horses were put to, and they started on their way again; and just at nightfall they arrived at the railway, and at the inn where they were to spend the night.
Here they found dinner awaiting them, of which Rachel partook in sleepy silence; and she went to bed soon afterwards, and slept too soundly even to dream of trouble.
In the morning they parted from Mr. Thornley, and started by the first train to town; at noon they lunched in a railway refreshment-room; and in the middle of the afternoon they found themselves once more in Toorak, being helped out of the family brougham by good-natured Ned, and welcomed into the green satin drawing-room by his bright-faced wife.
"And so you are back again at last!" exclaimed Beatrice gaily, as she took her young cousin into her arms. "And how are you, dear child? Why you look quite pale. Take off your hat and sit down at once, and have some tea. Mr. Kingston, I don't think this country air that they talked so much about has done anything very wonderful after all. Rachel is not looking so well as she was when she left."
Rachel blushed a lovely rose-colour immediately, of course, and Mr. Kingston looked up at her with vague anxiety.
"I don't think she is, myself," he said; "I noticed it as soon as I got up there. But she will be all right now she is home again."
"I am only tired," murmured Rachel.
"A girl like you has no business to be tired," retorted the little woman brusquely.
It did not escape her sharp eyes that something was the matter, and she determined to take the earliest opportunity to find out what it was.
"I do hope to goodness," she said to herself, "that it is not her engagement that she is tired of – and everything going on so nicely!"
And then she took off Rachel's sealskin cap and jacket, settled her by the fireside, furnished her with a cup of fragrant tea and some thin bread and butter, and left her to herself while she attended to her mother's wants.
Beatrice and her tea had a generally cheering and invigorating effect.
Mr. Kingston, making himself comfortable in a very easy chair, grew talkative and witty upon the news of the day and the latest items of fashionable gossip; in the society of this charming little woman of the world —his world – the satisfaction of being in town again began to creep over him pleasantly.
He stayed for half an hour – outstaying Ned, who retired modestly at the end of twenty minutes; then he led Rachel into the hall, kissed her, told her to go to bed early and come out with him for a ride in the morning, and went off to his club – sorry to leave his little lady-love, but glad to be able to get his letters, to hear what was going on in Melbourne, and to read his "Argus" on the day of publication again.
After his departure Mrs. Hardy and Beatrice plunged fathoms deep in talk. Mrs. Hardy wanted to know how her husband and her servants, and her neighbours and her friends, had been conducting themselves during her absence, and Beatrice wanted minute particulars about Lucilla and the baby.
Rachel had no occasion to feel herself de trop; at the same time she saw she was not wanted. She sauntered softly round the room, laid some music scattered about over the piano in a neat pile, re-arranged some yellow pansies that were tumbling out of a green Vallauris bowl, and then stole noiselessly into the hall and out of the house.
The grounds of the Hardy domain were more beautiful with flowers now than she had ever seen them; but she did not stay amongst the flowers. She went down little lonely paths, intersecting vegetable beds and forcing-frames, to a gate at the bottom of the kitchen-garden, where she was within speaking distance of the workmen engaged on the new house, with nothing to impede a full view of their operations.
She was feverishly anxious to know how they were going on – whether they were still "pottering at the foundations," or whether the stage of walls had set in.
The working day was not yet over, and the well-known chinking and clinking of the stonemason's implements smote her ear. She thought, when she began to count them, that there were a great many more men than there used to be, and she wondered why this was.
The young man who was sent out by the architects to supervise the builders, and whose acquaintance she had made with Mr. Kingston, was walking about the dusty enclosure, and presently recognising her, he lifted his hat, and then seeing that she still lingered, came up to the gate to speak to her.
"How are you getting on, Mr. Moore?" she asked pleasantly. "Are you still doing the foundations?"
Mr. Moore assured her that they had completed the foundations, and that they were getting on splendidly.
"Won't you come out and have a look at what has been done?" he inquired.
She thanked him and said she would; and he opened the gate with alacrity, and escorted her through a labyrinth of bricks and stones, over ground strewn thickly with sharp-edged chips that cut holes in her boots, very well pleased to be the first to show her the progress that had been made in her absence.
She could see for herself that a great deal had been done. The trenches were filled up; great square blocks of stone ridged the outlines of the ground-floor rooms – little bits of rooms they looked, and not at all like the stately and spacious apartments of the architect's design; but it seemed to her that what had been done could not be a tenth or twentieth part of all that there was to do.
"I suppose," she said, "it takes a long time to build the walls and make such a quantity of windows?"
"Oh, dear, no," responded Mr. Moore cheerfully. "All the worst of the work is over now, as far as the shell is concerned; the walls will run up in no time. It is a big house, but there are plenty of men on it, and all materials ready. It is after the shell is done that the real tedious work commences."
"You mean after the roof is on?"
"Yes. The interior decorations are the chief thing about this house. The outside is not much."
"When do you expect the shell will be finished?" asked Rachel, in fear and trembling.
"Some time in the course of the summer – within the next two or three months probably."
"And the roof on?"
"Oh, yes; of course the roof on," he replied.
There was a pause; and then she said in a very small, thin voice:
"Thank you, Mr. Moore. I think I must go back now."
He escorted her back to the garden gate, lifted his hat, and bade her good evening; and it struck him suddenly – with far more force than it had struck Beatrice – that she was looking extremely unwell, and not at all like the bright and blooming creature that she was when she went away.
CHAPTER VI.
IN MRS. HARDY'S STORE-ROOM
RACHEL was very young, no doubt, but she was growing rapidly. To all intents and purposes she was at least five years older when she came home from Adelonga than she was when she went there; and the process of development by no means ceased or slackened at that point.
The blossoming of her womanhood had come suddenly, like the blossoming of the almond trees, in one warm burst of spring; but the inner heart, that budded in secret, continued to swell and ripen, in spite of – perhaps because of – the absence of sunshine in her spiritual life.
The physical change in her was noticeable to everybody. Her constitution was much too sound to be easily injured by mental wear and tear; but her health was necessarily affected in a greater or less degree, temporarily, for the better or for the worse, by the more powerful of those mental emotions to which her body was peculiarly sensitive and responsive at all times.
So she lost some of her delicate pinky colour, and her large eyes grew heavy and dreamy, and she looked generally faded and altered, in the dulness of these empty days. She had no more enthusiasm for Toorak life and Melbourne dissipations. She went into no raptures over jewels and dresses, or any pretty things; she had none of the old zest for operas and balls.
She was quiet, and silent, and preoccupied, moving about the house with a strange new dignity of manner (resulting from the total absence of self-consciousness), a sort of weary tolerance, as if she had lived in it all her life, and was tired of it.
After watching her for a few days, secretly, and in much perplexed anxiety, Mrs. Reade made up her mind that something was seriously wrong, and that it was time for her to interfere to set it right. She went to her mother in the first place for information.
It was eleven o'clock in the morning, and Mrs. Hardy was in her store-room, counting out the day's allowance of eggs to an aggrieved and majestic cook.
The little woman stood by silently, watching the transaction with a smile in her brilliant eyes, thinking to herself what a great mistake it was, if poor mamma could but see it, to insist on an inflexible morality and economy in these petty matters; and when it was completed, after a little acrimonious discussion, she quietly shut the door, and addressed herself to her own business in her customary straightforward way.
"I want to know what is the matter with Rachel," she began, spreading her handkerchief on a keg of vinegar, and sitting down on it deliberately.
Mrs. Hardy mechanically sought repose in the one chair of the apartment, which stood in front of the little table where she was in the habit of making out her accounts.
"I'm sure that is more than I can tell you, my dear. What an insolent woman that is! – if she thinks I am going to let her have the run of my stores, as Mrs. Robinson did, she is very much mistaken."
"Something is wrong with Rachel," proceeded Mrs. Reade calmly; "and I want to find out what it is."
Mrs. Hardy made an effort to smooth her ruffled feathers down.
"I think the child must be fretting for Lucilla and the baby, Beatrice. She and Lucilla were bosom friends, and she just went wild about the baby – it was quite ridiculous to see her with it. And when she left them she cried as if she were completely heartbroken; and she has never been like herself since. I can't think what else ails her – unless she is out of sorts, and wants some medicine. I did give her some chamomilla yesterday, but it does not seem to have done her any good."
"No," said Mrs. Reade, with a sudden smile, "I don't think it is a case for chamomilla. She is not ill; she is unhappy – anyone can see that. You can see it, can't you?"
"I'm sure no girl has less cause to be unhappy," protested Mrs. Hardy evasively, in a fretful and anxious tone. "It is very ungrateful of her if she is."
"But what can have caused it? She was all right when she went to Adelonga. Something must have happened while she was there. She is not merely fretting after Lucilla and the baby – oh, no, it is a deeper matter than that. I am afraid – I really am seriously afraid, by the look of things – that it has something to do with Mr. Kingston." Her mother, though silent, was so obtrusively conscious and uneasy that she felt assured, the moment that she looked at her, of the correctness of her surmise. "Oh, do tell me what has happened!" she continued, eagerly. "Something has, I know. It is what I have been dreading all along – with these tiresome delays! They ought to have been married out of hand, and then there would have been no trouble."
"If there is anything wrong between them," Mrs. Hardy reluctantly admitted, "it is – I must say that for Rachel, though she is very trying with her silly childishness – it is Mr. Kingston's doings."
"Of course," assented Mrs. Reade, promptly.
"It was on the night of the ball. He rather neglected Rachel – the first time I ever knew him to do it – and he flirted in that foolish way of his – with Minnie Hale. You know Minnie Hale? – a great, fat, giggling creature – quite a common, vulgar sort of girl – not in the least his sort, one would have imagined. I don't wonder that Rachel was offended; I was extremely vexed with him myself, for he did it so openly – everybody noticed it. It was so bad, really, that the man that horrid girl was engaged to, Mr. Lessel, broke off with her on account of it. That will show you. She was a great deal worse than he was, of course. But he went great lengths. Perhaps he had been taking too much wine," she sighed, plaintively.
"No," said Mrs. Reade. "He has plenty of faults, but that is not one of them."
"Rachel was deeply hurt and shocked," Mrs. Hardy proceeded. "Naturally, for it was not a thing she had been used to, poor child. She took it very much to heart – so much that she wanted, like Mr. Lessel, to break off her engagement there and then." Here Mrs. Hardy went into details of poor Rachel's unsuccessful struggle for deliverance. "But of course I reasoned with the foolish child," she added conclusively; "I talked her out of that."
Mrs. Reade sat very still, tracing patterns on the floor with the point of her parasol.
"And did they have a quarrel?" she asked, vaguely. She was evidently thinking of something else.
"No. There was a coolness, of course, but – oh, no, I am sure they did not quarrel. He has seemed anxious to make up for it, and she has not shown any temper or resentment. But things have been uncomfortable if you can understand – very unsatisfactory and uncomfortable – ever since. I think she was disappointed in him, and cannot get over it. I have been hoping that it was all right, and that she was only unsettled and dispirited about leaving Adelonga. But now you mention it – yes, now I think of it – I'm afraid she is brooding over that other trouble still. Foolish child! she lives in a world of romantic ideals, I suppose."
"Why did Mr. Kingston flirt with Minnie Hale?" asked Mrs. Reade, looking up at her mother impressively.
"Oh, my dear, you know him as well as I do."
"You think he was worn out with being good?"
"He has been good, Beatrice – very good – ever since his engagement."
"Yes, he has. But if he had had a mind to misbehave, I don't think his duty to Rachel would have stopped him. The fact is, since his engagement he has never wanted anyone but her. I have watched him closely, and wonderful as it seems, he has never shown the slightest disposition to flirt beyond the stage of pretty speeches – not even when she was away – not even with Sarah Brownlow."
"It is a great pity," sighed Mrs. Hardy. "I wish they were safely married."
"And at the worst of times," the younger lady proceeded thoughtfully, regardless of the interjection, "he was fastidious in his choice – he liked someone who was either pretty or clever, or decidedly attractive in some way. I never knew him take any notice of a girl of that sort before."
"There is no accounting for men's tastes, my dear."
"Oh, yes," Mrs. Reade replied promptly; "I know that Minnie Hale is not his taste. I know he did not go on with her as you say he did, merely for the pleasure of it to himself. I think it must have been to spite Rachel."
"Beatrice!"
"Yes, mother – that is what I think. It is the only reasonable motive he could have had."
"But why on earth should he wish to spite Rachel?"
"That is what I want you to tell me. You were in the house with them – try and think of all that happened just before the ball. I'm certain something was wrong between them, to begin with. Perhaps you did not notice it at the time, but you might remember little circumstances – " Mrs. Reade broke off, and watched her mother's disturbed face with bright attentiveness. "Rachel did not flirt with anybody, did she?"
"Now, my dear, you know the child is incapable of such a thing."
"Oh, I don't mean deliberately, of course. But she might do it accidentally, with those sentimental eyes of hers. And she is so charmingly pretty!"
"No, she certainly did not flirt," said Mrs. Hardy; "she has never given him any uneasiness on that score, pretty as she is, and never will, I am quite sure. But there was a man – "
"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Reade, laying her parasol across her knees, and folding her hands resignedly.
"Why do you say 'ah,' Beatrice, before you hear what I am going to tell you? There was a man there whom Mr. Kingston disliked very much. He gave himself airs, and they somehow came into collision, and Mr. Kingston was in rather a bad temper. That was all that went wrong before the ball, and Rachel had nothing to do with that."
"Do you think so? I am certain she had," the young lady replied deliberately.
"Well, if you think you know better than I do, who was there to see – "
"Go on, dear mamma. Tell me all about him. Who was he? What was he like?"
Mrs. Hardy, pocketing her dignity, proceeded to describe Mr. Dalrymple, with great amplitude of detail, as he had appeared from her point of view.
The result was a kind of superior Newgate villian, of good birth and distinguished presence, whom Mrs. Reade regarded with a sinking heart.
"Oh, dear me!" she sighed, blankly, "what a pity! What a grevious pity!"
"I can't see why you should look at it in this way, Beatrice. I tell you she had little or nothing to say to him, and she only danced with him once the whole evening. I took care to point out to her the kind of man he was, and to warn her against him."
"You ought not to have done that."
"My dear, you will allow me to be the best judge of what I ought to do. She was very good and obedient, and she acted in every way as I wished her."
"But she liked him, didn't she?" asked Mrs. Reade.
"Yes," Mrs. Hardy admitted, with evident reluctance, "I am afraid she did like him."
"I am sure she did," said Mrs. Reade, decisively. "And there is more than liking in the matter, unless I am much mistaken. I have never been in love myself," she remarked frankly, "but I fancy I know the symptoms when I see them. I feared from the first that it was something of that sort that was the matter with her. At any rate – " putting up her hand to stay the imminent protest on her mother's lips – "at any rate, if he has not made her love him, he has made her discontented with Mr. Kingston."
"Well, Beatrice," the elder woman exclaimed, with an impatient sigh, rising from her chair, "if such a thing should be – if such a misfortune should have happened after all my care – we must only do the best we can to mend it. Thank goodness he's gone. He is not at all likely to give her another thought. If he does – " Mrs. Hardy shut her mouth significantly, and her Roman nostrils dilated.
"You can't help his thinking what he likes," said Mrs. Reade, with a gleam of mockery in her bright eyes.
"I can help his doing anything further to disturb her. I can see that he never meets or speaks to her again."
Mrs. Reade continued to smile, looking at her majestic mother with her bird-like head on one side.
"I hope so," she said. "I'm sure I hope so, if you can do it without her knowledge. But if you should have to act, whatever you do, don't make martyrs of them."
"Don't talk nonsense," retorted Mrs. Hardy.