GOOD-BYE.
OON that same day, at a little after four o'clock in the afternoon, Mrs. Kingston might have been seen—shewasseen, in fact—going into the Town Hall by herself, having left her carriage in the street below. She mounted the stone steps lightly, with the train of her dress held up in her hand, looking exquisitely fresh and dainty in the dusty sultriness that everywhere prevailed; and she glided through the vestibule as if timewere precious, paid her sixpence, and entered the hall, where she took a solitary seat under the shadow of the gallery at the lower end.
The organist was interpreting Mozart to some hundreds of receptive citizens, making the great organ sing like a choir of angels in the "Gloria" of the Twelfth Mass, "et in terra pax, pax, pax hominibus; bonæ, bonæ voluntatis." All the spacious place was flooded with the impassioned harmonies of that inspired theme.
Rachel was not what is popularly called musical, but in the dulness of her empty life her soul slacked its thirst in this way, as a soul of a lower order, which had been denied its natural nourishment, might have found comfort in the emotional stimulus of champagne or brandy.
She could not play well herself, but she was like a fine instrument to be played upon; not one sweet phrase of melody passed from her listening ear to her sensitive heart without wakening an echo that had the very divine afflatus in it in response. And in this resonance of enthusiasms and aspirations, dumb and suffocated in the bondage of her artificial life—in the sense of breathing spiritual air, and freedom, though with a passion of enjoyment that filled her with far more pain than peace—she found the one true luxury of her much-envied lot.
Long ago—oh, so long ago!—the music of a violin had led her into enchantment, as the Pied Piper of Hamelin led away the children. To-day the music of the Town Hall organ, speaking now in Mozart'sdramatic choruses, and again in Baptiste's Andante in G, was a similar but a sadder incantation.
She sat solitary in her far-away chair, with her feet on the rung of the one in front of her, her hands, gloved to perfection, folded in her lap, her delicate, neat dress daintily adjusted, much as she might have sat in the pew at church, a model of matronly grace and propriety.
But who could tell, from the expression of her quietposeand her dreamy eyes, what ineffable raptures and fancies, what infinite longings and yearnings—nameless, even to her own consciousness, but all reminiscent of the blessed past—soared out of captivity on the wings of those alluring harmonies!
Who could see that in her heart shewas crying—crying bitterly—for the poetry and the beauty that were lost out of her life!
There was an interval of silence, during which she sat quite still, looking at the great organ-pipes, and seeing nothing; and then there grew out of the hush the delicious rhythm of the "Faust" waltz, beating like a soft pulse through the summer air.
What spell is there in the "Faust" waltz, or in any waltz, for one whose heart is capable of receiving and responding to the inspired message of Mozart?
How can we tell? But this we know, that those whose hearts are warm and young—who understand how to love and how to dance, and have done the two things at the self-same moment—have seldom any more power than they havehonest inclination to resist the subtle wiles of this simple measure.
There is a vox humana stop out in whatever organ plays it, magnetic to the human passions that memory and imagination keep. Rachel did not ask why it was, but she felt, as soon as the air began to unwind itself from a confusion of sweet sounds, and she heard the slow time throbbing softly in her ears, that she did not know how to bear it.
It filled her soul with a great wave of suffocating emotion—it ran like an electric current over all her sensitive nerves—it contracted her white throat with a choking pain that was like incipient hysteria—it set abnormal pulses bounding in her brain. She did not think of Adelonga, and the hour when she and her true love had their first and last waltz together.
No definite picture of the past arose at the magician's bidding, or if it did, she shut her eyes to it. But she could not help the forlorn rapture of longing for that nameless something that was the most precious of her woman's rights, which fate and fraud had taken from her, when the notes of this dreamy waltz measure, so charged with passionate and poetic associations, pulsed from the heart of the organ into her warm young blood.
"Oh, my love! my love!"—that was the burden of the music which was not set to words.
And she turned her face a little, and saw Roden Dalrymple standing in the doorway. He had come in quietly, and was waiting, with his hat in his hand, apparently for a pause in the performance,which he did not wish to interrupt, but really until he could find where some one whom he was looking for was sitting.
It was the first time she had seen him since that October night when they had parted in the moonlight under the walls of the house that was now her home; but she had been, unknown to herself, expecting him, and there was no shock in her surprise.
She knew that he was looking for her, when she saw his eyes travelling over the rows of occupied chairs in the upper division of the hall, and she longed to call out to him,
"Roden, Roden, here I am!"
But not a dozen seconds passed before he saw her far away from him in her shadowy corner; and when he saw her,with that solemn eagerness in her face, he knew—but he said to himself he had already known—that, though she had forsaken him, she had never done him wrong.
Of course before the day was over it was reported in various circles, more or less select, that pretty Mrs. Kingston, who had married an old fogey for his money, was in the habit of coming to the organ recitals alone and unbeknown to her husband, in order to enjoy clandestine flirtations with younger and more fascinating men.
It was also darkly whispered that the favoured individual was a person who made it his constant practice to run away with married women, and to murder their lawful spouses in sham duelsafterwards if they ventured to make any objections.
But of all the human beings collected in the Town Hall that afternoon, perhaps no two were less capable of violating the spirit of the moral and social law whereof the letter is so sacred to the ubiquitous and lynx-eyed Mrs. Grundy, who persists in suspecting everyone of a desire to evade or infringe it, simply for the sake of doing so, whenever he or she is presented with an opportunity.
That they loved one another as much as it was possible for sympathetic hearts to love, and that they seized one brief half-hour out of a lifetime of separation in which to say farewell, might have been reprehensible from the conventional point of view; but thenthe conventional point of view does not embrace the universe, by a very long way.
He came down the hall, and round to her chair, and she drew her dress close that he might sit down beside her. She was too innately pure to make any mere outward and artificial demonstrations of modesty in such a moment as this; and she trusted him too well to be afraid of him.
She put out her hand, and he took it in a long, close clasp; and they looked at one another the while with loving, despairing eyes, which said, "Oh, Rachel, whydidyou?" and "Oh, Roden, forgive me!" and bridged the only gulf that could be bridged between them, without any help of words.
And then, though the organ began tofill the air with the sonorous crash and thunder of Bach's great pedal fugue in D, they heard nothing but the beating of their hearts, and the memories that called to them from their brief past, vibrating through the void and silence of a world in which they were alone together.
When the music ceased for an interval, Mr. Dalrymple rested his arm on the back of the chair which had served Rachel for a footstool, and looking into her face, said under his breath,
"Gordon gave me your message—I came down to thank you—and I thought we should get on better if we could see each other just once. Dear, we must try and comfort ourselves with knowing that neither of us played the other false."
"Idid—Idid," she whispered hurriedly. "I ought to have trusted you, Roden."
"Yes—that was a mistake. But you did not know any better, poor child. And they were too many for you, those people. Gordon ought to have insisted on seeing you, himself, or getting some message to you, and not have left you in their hands. But he did his best, he says. He was too anxious to get back to me to have much patience over it, and he didn't bargain for being told lies of that magnitude in cold blood. However,—however——"
He broke off and looked at her with a passion of love and grief in his eyes that he dared not trust to speech. And she looked back at him, with hersimple soul laid bare—longing to make him know, if they were never to be together like this again, how absolutely in her heart she had been true to him.Shewould not tell him a lie, at any rate.
"Oh," he said in a sort of groaning whisper, drawing a long hard breath, "oh, my little one, isn't it hard lines!"
"Don't," she gasped, feeling that clutch on her throat tighten with a sudden spasm; "oh, Roden, don't!"
And he straightened himself quickly, and sat back in his chair. And the organ began to play again—a stately march of Schubert's, which acted like a tonic on her disordered nerves, and as a sedative to the hysterical excitement that for a moment had threatened to overmaster her.
The echoes of that march rang in her ears, when Roden was gone back to Queensland and this chapter of her life was finished, for many a long day.
And then at last the thunders of the National Anthem brought the performance to a close, and the audience trooped out, casting curious glances as they went at the distinguished-looking couple standing conspicuously apart—the tall stranger with the peculiar moustache, who had soldier and gentleman written on him from head to foot, and the graceful young lady with the lovely complexion and the irreproachable French dress, whom nobody "who was anybody" failed to recognise.
The two were left together amongst all the empty chairs, in a silence thatwas hardly broken by the organist's movements at the far end of the hall, closing the stops and keys of his enormous instrument.
"Well," said Mr. Dalrymple, looking down upon his companion, who lifted to his sombre eyes a pale but solemn face, "well—so this is all, I suppose!"
Her lips twitched a little; she could not answer him.
"You are not sorry that I came, are you, Rachel? It will not make it harder for you, will it?"
"Oh,no, Roden! But it isyouon whom it is so hard—you will be so lonely without me! I can't bear to think what I have brought on you—and you had so many troubles already!"
"Not you, dear—not you. And I can bear all my part of it, if only things go well with you."
"Why did you break that trace?" she exclaimed, with a touch of bitter passion. "But for that—but for two minutes lost—you would never have seen me, and then I should never have spoiled your life like this."
"But, dear, we are not going to regretthat, I hope. We have got something 'saved from chance and change,' if not much, that to me at any rate—yes and to you too, I know—is worth even this heavy price that we are paying for it now. It need not spoil our lives, Rachel, to know—what we know. It is an agonising thing to see how blessed itmighthave been for us, and to be obliged to give it all up; but I shallnever think of those two hours, when we belonged entirely to each other—only two hours, Rachel, out of our whole lives!—without being thankful for the chance which gave them to us. Yes, and I think we shall be the better for them—I don't say happier, because I really don't know what that word means—but I think life will somehow have a finer quality henceforth, whatever happens, on account of those two hours. Dear, I am forcing myself to give in to the hard fate that has done us out of our inheritance; but there is one thing that I don't think Icouldget reconciled to—and that is to thinking that you would ever live to wish that we had never known each other."
"I could not wish it," she whispered;"I could only try to persuade myself that I did."
"Do not try. You are under no obligation of duty to do that. Try to be happy with your husband—try not to fret over what is irrevocable, and not to hanker after what is hopeless. But don't try to turn me out of the only place in your life where I have a corner of my own. Let me keep the little of you that I have got—it is little enough! Do you remember what you said to me that night?—you said you had no rights in my past.Hehas no rights in our past. Keep it sacred, Rachel, for my sake. That will not hurt anybody. You are not afraid that such remembrances, if you shut them away in your heart, will militate against your efforts to do what is right by him? And you are notafraid thatIwill ever tempt or trouble you?"
"Oh, Roden, I am not afraid of you—you well know that!"
"Treat me as if I were dead," he said gently. "If I had been killed that time when I was thrown—if I were in my grave now—I know how you would think of me. You would not wish you had never seen me then. That is how Iwantyou to think of me, Rachel."
"I know," she said, drawing a deep breath. "But to me—even if youhadkilled yourself—to me you could never be dead."
By this time they had sauntered slowly out of the deserted hall and through the empty vestibules, and were standing in the doorway, looking out upon the street below them.
The storm that had threatened in the morning was gathering up. Heavy clouds weighed upon the sultry air, and gusts of wind were beginning to blow the dust about ominously. Pedestrians were hurrying to gain shelter before the rain came on, but, as they passed, they took note of the lingering pair, who were apparently heedless of the warnings of the elements, with more or less curious eyes. Neither of them, it is needless to say, minded in the least who saw them. They had no desire to take even this last good-bye clandestinely.
And when Rachel, to whom it had not occurred to wonder why her carriage was not in attendance, saw it thundering along the street towards her, it was with as much relief as surprise that she recognised her husband in it,looking out of the window for her.
"We have said nothing," said Mr. Dalrymple, who perceived the approach of his old rival and enemy; "and we had so much to say."
"Perhaps it is better not to say much," said Rachel.
"Perhaps so. But one thing you must not mind my asking you—and I know you will tell me truly—are you getting along pretty well? Do you think you will be able to make anything of a happy life out of it? That is my great anxiety."
"Do not be anxious about me," she replied. "I shall get along. I know that you forgive me—that will help me more than anything."
"Don't talk about forgiveness, child—it implies a wider separation than I think has ever been between us. There can be no forgiveness in the case of people who never knowingly do one another wrong."
The carriage, with its high stepping, showy horses, began to slacken speed, and they descended the long flight of steps quietly, side by side.
"Is he good to you?" inquired Roden, quickly.
"Very," she replied; "very, indeed."
And then they reached the pavement, and the person referred to got out of the carriage and came to meet them.
It must be recorded, to Mr. Kingston's credit, that he behaved like a gentleman on this occasion. He was a little acid and supercilious, and notas composed as he assumed to be; but otherwise he conducted himself with propriety. "I took the carriage for half an hour," said he loudly. "I hope I haven't kept you waiting, my dear. Ah, Mr. Dalrymple, how do you do? I did not know you were in town. I hope you are quite well. Making a long stay?"
"A day or two only," said Roden, who stiffened in spite of himself, but spoke with studied courtesy. "I shall be starting back to Queensland to-night. I am glad to have had the opportunity of meeting Mrs. Kingston, and to see her looking well."
"Oh, yes, she is very well, I hope. Travelling did her good—it does everybody good. I felt quite set up by it myself. Dear me, was that a drop ofrain? I think you had better be getting home, Rachel. There is a heavy storm coming directly. Good day, Mr. Dalrymple, good day. We can't set you down anywhere, I suppose?"
Mr. Dalrymple declined a seat in the carriage with thanks, and he held out his hand to Rachel.
"Good-bye," he said quietly.
"Good-bye," she replied, with an ash-white face. They looked at one another for a second; and then, lifting his hat gravely, Mr. Dalrymple turned and walked away down the street, and Mr. Kingston gave his arm to his wife, and led her to her carriage. Poor Rachel! she did not ask herself what would happen next—she did not wonder nor care whether she was to be scolded or not. For a few bitter, lonelymoments, she had no recognisable future.
Then she turned to her husband, who was fanning the fuel of his wrath in silence, laid her hand on his arm, and said softly, "Graham?"
"Well—what?" he inquired, roughly.
"Do not be angry. I am never going to see him again."
"It's to be hoped not," he snarled, "if you have any regard for your reputation. Standing up there with him, in that public way, for all Melbourne to see!"
"You would not have wished me to meet Mr. Dalrymple in any way that wasnotpublic," she said, drawing herself up. "And I should be very sorry to do anything that all Melbourne might not see."
The rain began to sweep down heavily, and he turned to put up the window nearest him with an energy that threatened destruction to the glass.
And he said no more about Mr. Dalrymple.
Disturbed as he was, he was greatly relieved that the meeting he had always dreaded was over, and had taken place so quietly; and poor as was his estimation of the abstract woman, he had the most implicit faith in his wife's sincerity.
When she told him that she had bidden her old lover a final farewell, he believed her; and, though the sight and thought of the man made him ferocious, he was quite aware that difficulties were adjusting themselves more satisfactorily than he could have expected.
He did not feel that he had any excuse for upbraiding Rachel now, and he did not do it. But he had to put great restraint upon himself not to do it.
He got out of the carriage at his club, shutting the door with a bang behind him, and while his wife drove home by herself in a state of semi-consciousness, he went in to quarrel with some of his old friends who chanced to require his opinion upon the political situation. Politics, he promptly gave them to understand, were beneath his notice, likewise the people who concerned themselves therein. He wouldn't touch one of them with a pair of tongs. It wasn't for gentlemen and clubmen to mix themselves up with a lot of rogues and vagabonds. Let them alone and behanged to them. That was what respectable people did in America. If Americans didn't care what riff-raff represented them, why should they?
As for the colony, if it liked to be dragged in the dirt—if it preferred, of its own free will, to go to the devil—let it, for all to him.
And so he worked off his savage temper harmlessly, and appeared in his own drawing-room at seven o'clock, irreproachably spruce, and with a flower in his button-hole, looking jaunty and amiable, as if nothing had happened.
Rachel, when he arrived, was sitting alone in the midst of her wealth and splendour, waiting for him.
She rose as he entered and went to meet him, looking lovely in her favourite black velvet, with red geraniums in herhair; and she laid her hand on his sleeve, and lifted a sad but peaceful face. "Kiss me, Graham," she said gently.
He put his arms round her at once.
"Dear little woman!" he responded. "I understand. I am not angry with you. It's all right. We won't say any more about it."
And he led her to the dining-room and placed her "at the head of the table," which was her social throne; and he plied her with dainty viands and rare wines with a fussy solicitude that was highly edifying to the servants who waited upon them, by way of showing her that he forgave her.
He was much impressed by his own large magnanimity; and what was moreto the purpose, so in her unselfish heart, was she. They spent the evening together,tête-à-têteby the fireside (for it was cold when the storm was over), in the most domestic manner, planning new schemes for the garden and for the arrangement of a pet cabinet of blue china; and when Rachel went to bed, lighting her way about the great corridors and staircases with a candle that her husband had lit for her, she felt that he was helping her to make a fair start upon the weary road which stretched, plain and straight—but, oh, so flat and bare!—before her.
And she was very grateful to him.
Mr. Dalrymple, meanwhile left town by an evening train, and travelled night and day until he reached his home in the Queensland wilderness, where, beinghuman—and very much so, too—he unloosed his heart from the restraints that he had put upon it, and railed at ease over the injustices of fate in the very strongest language.
"Why should I have done it?" he demanded of his ancient friend and comrade as they lounged in restful attitudes under the grass-thatched verandah of their humble little house, smoking the pipe of peace in the cool of the summer day. "Why should I have given her up to him? What right has he to keep her, while I am lonely for the rest of my days? He has not the shadow of a right. She doesn't belong to him, and she never will. There is no binding force in any other contract that is entered into by fraud and false pretences; why should there be in this which she has been dragged into, and which deprivesher as well as me, of all the flower and sweetness of her life? It is a monstrous sacrifice—and as immoral as it is monstrous.
"It isn't as if we had no end of years, no end of lives to throw away. Suppose, ages hence, if we should survive, with our human nature, and I, for one, don't want to survive without it—and we look back upon this precious bit of certain happiness that wemighthave had, and see that we voluntarily gave up the whole of it merely because of a wretched little paper law—a miserable little conventional prejudice—what shall we think of ourselves then? We shall say that we did not deserve a gift that we did not know how to value."
"Rave away," said Mr. Gordon. "It will do you good. All the same, youknow, as well as I do, that it would be impossible for you to do less or more than you have done."
Of course it was impossible. Few people are better than they profess to be, but he was one of those few. And if he had had the happiness of twenty lives to lose, he would have lost it all twice over rather than have kept it at any cost of peace or honour to the woman he loved. He allowed himself the right to love her still, which, as he justly remarked, couldn't hurt anybody.
He thought of her as he rode about his lonely plains, looking after black boys and cattle, and dreamt of her as he lay out in the starlight nights, with a saddle for his pillow, and the red light of the camp-fire flickering through the darkness upon his face; and always with a sense that,spiritually and morally, she belonged, before all the world to him.
But he never at heart regretted either that he had seen her that day at the Town-hall, or that he had elected to see her no more. He had done the only thing that it had been in him to do.
CONSOLATION.
IIF 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 contractingparties 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 companionshipgrow, 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, andnever 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 gratefulin 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 lifetogether 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,didcomfort her a little.
She was excessively unpretentious in her habits, and pure and simple in hertastes, 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 poorpeople'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 wasdecidedly 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 havemade 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 impressivecordiality, 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 tinycreature 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 takingthe 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 endhadjustified 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 amtoohappy," 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'sthe 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."
"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 wasdeeply 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.
REPARATION.
BBUT, 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 arrangementof 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 hadexcused 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—whichwas 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 hismother 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 thestation, 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 wouldlike 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—fancycoalfires!—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. Icouldn'tget 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 inhissince 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 anaccent of genuine distress, "youhavegot 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, wasas 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" onemorning, 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 herwhite 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 deathwas 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. Hedidunderstand her—better, perhaps, than he had ever understood her before.
"Good little woman!" he murmured, "Good little girl—to tell the truth."