A Mere Chance Volume I Part 12

She whispered her proposed errand to Lucilla, who gratefully sent her off; and the baby being discovered awake and amiable, she spent nearly an hour in his apartment, nursing and fondling him in her warm, white arms. It was her favourite occupation, from which she never could tear herself voluntarily.

By and bye the baby dropped asleep, and was tenderly lowered into his cradle; and then having nothing more to do for him, she tucked him up, kissed him, and went back to her social duties.

When she entered the drawing-room she found the whole party a.s.sembled, and some exciting discussion was going on. Mrs. Hale sitting square on a central sofa was evidently the leading spirit; and Mrs. Hardy sitting beside her, indicated to the girl's experienced eye, by the expression of her face and the elevation of her powerful Roman nose, that she was supporting her neighbour's views--whatever they were--in a determined and defiant manner. Miss Hale and Mr. Lessel had retired to a distant alcove, but they had suspended their whispered confidences to listen to the public debate. Mr. Thornley and Mr. Hale were trying to play chess, but were also distracted. Mr. Digby lounged against a side table pretending to be absorbed in _The Argus_, but peeping furtively at intervals over the top of the sheet. Miss O'Hara sat apart knitting, with an expression of rigid disapproval.

Mrs. Digby, in a very central position, full in the light, lay back in a low easy chair, and fanned herself with gentle, measured movements. Her eyes were fixed on a picture in front of her, her soft mouth was set, her face was pale, proud, and grave; very different from Mrs. Thornley's beside her, which was disturbed and downcast, as that of a hostess whose affairs were not going well. Rachel saw in Mrs. Digby for the first time a strong resemblance to her brother.

Mr. Roden Dalrymple stood alone on the hearthrug with his back against the wall, and his elbows on a corner of the mantelpiece. His face was hard and cold, yet not without signs of strong emotion.

It was evidently between him and Mrs. Hale that the discussion lay, and it was equally evident that the "feeling of the meeting" was against him. Rachel, taking in the situation at a glance, longed to walk over to the hearthrug and publicly espouse her hero's cause, whatever it might happen to be. What she did instead was to glide noiselessly to the back of her cousin's chair, and leaning her arms upon it, to "watch the case"

on his behalf. They were all too preoccupied to notice her.

"It is all very well," Mrs. Hale was saying in an aggressive manner, "but it was nothing short of murder in cold blood. And if you had been in any other quarter of the globe when you did it, you would not have escaped to tell the tale to us here."

"My dear Mrs. Hale--excuse me--I am not telling the tale to you here. I have not the slightest intention of doing so."

"But everybody knows it, of course."

"I think not," said Mr. Dalrymple.

"That you had a quarrel with a man who had once been your friend,"

proceeded Mrs. Hale, with a vulgar woman's unscrupulousness about trespa.s.sing on sacred ground; "and that you hunted him round the world, and then, when you met him in that Californian diggings place, shot him across a billiard-table where he stood, without a moment's warning."

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Dalrymple, calmly; "he had plenty of warning--five years at least."

"Not five minutes after you met him. Mr. Gordon was there, and said that he was a dead man five minutes after you came into the room and recognised him."

"Gordon can tell you, then, that I satisfied all the laws of honour. The meeting had been arranged and expected; there were no preliminaries to go through--except to borrow a couple of revolvers and get somebody to see fair play. There were at least a dozen to do that; Gordon was one."

"Poor fellow," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Hardy with solemn indignation. "And _he_ fired in the air, I suppose?"

"He would have fired in the air, I daresay, if he had any hope that I would do so," replied Mr. Dalrymple, with a face as hard as flint, and a deep blaze of pa.s.sion in his eyes. "But he well knew that there was no chance of that. He was obliged to shoot his best in self-defence."

"Then you might have been killed yourself!--and what then?"

"That was a contingency I was quite prepared for, of course. What then?--I should have done my duty."

"Don't say 'duty,' Roden," interposed Mrs. Digby, very gently and gravely.

"My dear Lily, the word has no arbitrary sense; we all interpret it to suit our own views. It was my idea of duty."

"Poor fellow!" exclaimed Mrs. Hardy again. "It is a dreadful story. And did he leave any family?"

"I would rather not pursue the subject, Mrs. Hardy--if you have no objection."

"I wonder you are not afraid to go to bed," Mrs. Hale persisted, undeterred by the darkness of his face. "The ghost of that poor wretch would haunt _me_ night and day. I should never know what it was to sleep in peace."

Rachel listened to this fragment of a conversation, which had evidently been going on for some time; and her heart grew cold within her. Mr.

Dalrymple happened to turn his head, and saw her looking at him with her innocent young face scared and pale; and he was almost as much shocked as she. A swift change in himself--a straightening of his powerful, tall frame, and a flash of angry surprise and pain in his imperious eyes--aroused a general attention to her presence.

"You here, my dear?" exclaimed Mrs. Hardy, much discomposed by the circ.u.mstance. "That is the worst of these irregular shaped rooms--with so many doors and corners, one never sees people go out and come in."

"How is baby?" inquired Mrs. Thornley eagerly, thankful for the diversion. "Is he sleeping nicely?"

Mr. Dalrymple strode across the room and wheeled up a chair. "Won't you sit down, Miss Fetherstonhaugh?" he said, looking at her with a little appeal in his still stern face. "You must be tired after your long day."

"Thank you," said she; and she sat down. But she felt incapable of talking--incapable of sitting still, with her hands before her. General conversation of a more comfortable and conventional kind than that which she had interrupted was set going all around her.

The lovers resumed their _tete-a-tete_ in the corner; the chess-players continued their game; Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Hardy, suffering from a very justifiable suspicion that they had been a trifle rude, endeavoured to make themselves particularly entertaining. But she sat silent and miserable with downcast eyes, picking at the embroidery on her dress, and wis.h.i.+ng the evening over--this disappointing evening which had counteracted all the brightness and pleasure of the day--so that she could slip away to bed.

"You have had no tea," said Mr. Dalrymple presently, when all the married ladies were absorbed in discussing the merits of their respective cooks. "It came in while you were out of the room. Won't you have some now?"

Grateful for any interruption of the spell of embarra.s.sment which was holding her painfully under his watchful eyes, she thanked him, and rising hastily went over to one of the numerous recesses of that charmingly arranged room, where the evening tea-table usually stood between a curtained archway and a gla.s.s door that led into the conservatory.

Of course he followed her. The curtains were looped back so as to permit the glow of lamps and firelight to stream in from the room, and on the other side a full moon shone palely down through a network of flowering shrubs and fern trees. They could hear the conversation of the rest distinctly--particularly Mrs. Hale's share of it. But it was a very retired place.

"You had better sit down," said Mr. Dalrymple, "and let me pour it out for you. Yes--I do it every night for my sister. She, too, likes to have the teapot brought in. But I doubt if it is fit to drink; it has been in half an hour. I thought you were tired and had gone to bed."

"Did you?"

"Yes; I am afraid you _are_ very tired. You ought not to have come back."

"I--I wish I had not," she said, hardly above a whisper, as she took the cup from his hands. She looked into his face for a moment with her timid, troubled eyes, and then looked down hastily and blushed her brightest scarlet.

"I know, I know," he replied, in a low tone of emotion that had a touch of fierceness in it. "I saw how shocked you were, and I could have bitten my tongue out. But I should never have spoken of _that_ if Mrs.

Hale had not badgered me into it. If it had been one of the men--but they know better! A woman, though she may be the most prodigious fool, is privileged. I am very sorry. I can't tell you how sorry I am."

"It is not _hearing_ it that matters," stammered Rachel, stirring her tea with wild and tremulous splashes; "it is knowing--it is thinking--of its being true."

He paused for a moment, and looked at her with a look that she was afraid to meet, but which she _felt_ through all her shrinking consciousness: and then he said quietly. "Drink your tea, and let us go into the conservatory for five minutes."

It was a bold proposal under the circ.u.mstances; but it did not occur to her to question it. She drank her tea hastily, and put down her cup; and Mr. Dalrymple opened the gla.s.s door, which swung on noiseless hinges, and pa.s.sing out after her, coolly closed it behind them both. It was very dim and still out there. The steam of the warm air, full of strong earthy and piney odours, clung to the gla.s.s roofs through which the moon was s.h.i.+ning, and made the light vague and misty. The immense brown stems of the tree ferns, barnacled with stag horns, and the great green feathers spreading and drooping above them, took all kinds of phantom shapes.

Rachel herself looked like a ghost in her white dress, as she flitted down the dim alleys by that tall man's side, tapping the tiled floor with her slippered feet with no more noise than a woodp.e.c.k.e.r.

"Is that the lapageria?" asked Mr. Dalrymple, when he thought they had gone far enough for privacy, pausing beside a comfortable seat, and pointing upward to a lattice-work of dark leaved shoots, from which hung cl.u.s.ters of dusky flower bells. "How well it grows here, to be sure!"

"Everything grows well here," responded Rachel, relieved from some restraint by this harmless opening of their clandestine _tete-a-tete_; "and that creeper is Mr. Thornley's favourite. The flowers are the loveliest red in daylight."

"Now I want to tell you a little about that story you heard just now,"

he proceeded gravely. "Sit down; it won't take long."

"You said you would rather not talk about it," murmured Rachel.

"I would much rather not. There is nothing I would not sooner do--except let you go away thinking so badly of me as you do now. I don't usually care what people think of me," he added; "I am sure I don't know why I should care now. But you looked so terribly shocked! It hurts me to see you looking at me in that way. And I should like to try if I could to make you believe that I am not necessarily a bad man, more than other men, though bad enough, because I fought a duel once and killed my adversary."

"_Meaning_ to kill him," interposed Rachel. "That is the dreadful part of it!"

"Yes; I meant to kill him. I staked my own life on the same chance, if that is any justification, but--oh, yes, I meant to kill him, if I could. I had a reason for that, Miss Fetherstonhaugh. Shall I tell you what it was?"