A Mere Chance Volume III Part 22

"However, I am not going to be called to account by her," he said to himself, in that spirit of swagger which she had herself nursed and nourished by her excess of wifely meekness. "_I_ am not Ned Reade, to submit to be dictated to and sat upon by my own wife--so she needn't begin it."

And he walked into the drawing-room in a lordly manner.

The reception that he met with staggered him considerably.

"Graham," said Rachel, in a very quiet voice, "did you send word to Mr.

Roden Dalrymple that I was engaged to you that Christmas--you know when I mean--two years ago, when I was ill? Did you tell that lie to Mr.

Gordon deliberately, when you knew how things were with us?"

He was silent--intensely silent--for a few minutes, amazed, ashamed, embarra.s.sed, and savage. He did not know how to answer her. Then he gave a little short surly laugh.

"What about it? Who has been talking to you of those things? What is Mr.

Dalrymple to you _now_, I should like to know?"

"Did you?" she persisted.

"And what if I did?" he retorted roughly, but still making a ghastly attempt at badinage. "All's fair in love and war, you know, my dear; and it was that aunt of yours who told the lie, as you elegantly term it--if it was a lie--not I; I merely did not contradict her."

She looked at him steadily, with that implacable hardness in her once soft eyes.

"I will never forgive you," she said; "I will never, never forgive you."

"I am sure I am very sorry to hear it; but I suppose I can manage to get on without your forgiveness," he began. And then he gave up trying to make a joke of it, and turned upon her savagely. "Have you been seeing that fellow, Rachel? Tell me this instant; I insist upon knowing."

"I have seen his friend," she said, quietly.

"And did he send his friend to make those explanations to you--to _you_?"

"No; he did not send him. It was by accident that I met Mr. Gordon to-night!"

"And what business had you to talk to Mr. Gordon--to talk to anybody--about your old love affairs? Do you forget that you are a married woman--that you are my wife? It was bad enough when you were single to be mixing yourself up with a disreputable scoundrel like that----"

"He is not a disreputable scoundrel," she interposed sternly. "He is the most upright gentleman--he is the most n.o.ble man--in the wide world.

I might have known," she added, drawing herself up proudly, "that he would never have forsaken me! I might have been sure that he would never break his word; that whoever was to blame for what happened to me that time, _he_ was not! But I let myself be twisted round anybody's fingers rather than trust in him. It serves me right, it serves me right! I was not worthy of him."

"Well--upon my word!"

"You need not look at me so, Graham. I have never deceived _you_. I told you before I married you exactly how it was with me. I have never had any secrets from you, and I never will have any. You _know_ as well as I do that I loved him--ah! I did not love him enough, that is what has ruined us!--and so I shall while I live, if I live to be a hundred."

"You mean to say you can sit there and tell me that to my face?"

"I can only tell the truth," she replied, with the same hard deliberation. "I could no more help loving him, especially now I understand how things have been with us--no one will know it, but it will be in my heart--than I could help breathing. When I leave off breathing, then I shall forget him perhaps, not before."

Mr. Kingston was beside himself with pa.s.sion--as, indeed, so was she.

"Forewarned is forearmed," he said, with a sort of sardonic snarl; "I shall know now what steps to take to protect my honour."

"You know perfectly well that your honour--what _you_ call your honour--is safe," she replied proudly. "If I am not to be trusted, _he_ is. Do not insult us any more. We have had enough cruelty; we shall have quite enough to bear--he and I."

And so they went on with these bitter and defiant recriminations--Mr.

Kingston, of course, insisting upon giving due prominence to his own wrongs, which were very real ones in their way, and both of them making reckless proposals with respect to their domestic arrangements--until suddenly, without any apparent warning, Rachel went off into wild hysterics, and the doctor had to be sent for.

Perhaps it was the best thing that could have happened under all the circ.u.mstances. She was very ill for several hours; and in the morning, when pa.s.sion was spent, and she was lying in her bed still and quiet, with her head swathed in wet bandages, her husband knelt down beside her and asked her to forgive him.

"It was for love of you that I did it," he said; "and _I_ am punished, too. We can't undo it now, Rachel, if we would, and there's no good in making a public talk and scandal. Let bygones be bygones, won't you, dear?"

She lifted her heavy eyes to his face. They were cold and hard no longer, but unutterably dull and sad.

"Yes," she said wearily; "we have both been wrong; we have injured one another. We must try to make the best of it; it is the only thing we can do now."

He kissed her and stroked her face, and adjusted the wet bandages.

"There, there," he said soothingly, "we both forgot ourselves a little.

We said a great deal more than we meant, I daresay. People do when they are out of temper."

And he bade her go to sleep, told her he would take her for a drive in the afternoon if she felt well enough, and went forth with the sense that he was treating her magnanimously to receive and reply to inquiries after her health in person.

By noon, "all Melbourne," according to Mrs. Hardy's calculation, was aware that Mr. and Mrs. Kingston had had a quarrel (though there was every variety of conjecture as to the cause of it, and a division of opinion as to which was the most to blame); but it was not Mr.

Kingston's fault if all Melbourne was not satisfied by nightfall that the quarrel had been made up.

CHAPTER VI.

MRS. READE MEETS HER MATCH.

"Will Mr. Roden Dalrymple do Mrs. Edward Reade the great favour to call upon her to-morrow (Thursday) morning, if convenient to him, between ten and twelve o'clock? She is particularly anxious to see him upon a matter of private business."

This note was despatched from South Yarra to Menzies on a certain night in the early part of December, a few weeks after the Town Hall ball.

Mr. Dalrymple had just come to Melbourne, and Mrs. Reade, through the gossip of afternoon visitors, had heard of it.

She had heard of a great deal more besides--from Laura's husband chiefly; and the critical nature of the situation, and her anxious solicitude for Rachel's welfare in the midst of the perils and temptations to which, while a meeting with her old lover was possible, she would be exposed, made it seem absolutely necessary that the person who was most capable of doing so effectually should interfere once more.

The course she adopted in undertaking this delicate and difficult enterprise was worthy alike of her courage and her good sense. She had never met Mr. Dalrymple, and she had no definite knowledge of his character, only an impression that he was "wild"--a man of the world, with a touch of the libertine and the vagabond about him--and that he was also undoubtedly a gentleman, with some of the finer qualities that are the heritage of good blood.

Yet she determined that she would abjure all schemes and artifices, and see him herself before there was time for anything to happen, and appeal to his honour and generosity on behalf of the woman he loved--upon whose peace it seemed evident to her he had some selfish if not distinctly evil designs.

"He has come to town in consequence of Mr. Gordon's representations, of course, for no other purpose than to see her," the little woman said to herself the moment she heard of his arrival; "and if he does see her, nothing but trouble can possibly come of it."

So she determined to prevent trouble if possible, and this seemed to her the proper way.

She prepared herself for the interview on the Thursday morning, without any sense of having undertaken a difficult task.

When he arrived she was discussing dinner with her cook, and she walked from the larder to the drawing-room with a very grave and thoughtful face, but feeling perfectly serene and self-possessed.

He was standing in the middle of the room, facing the door, with his hat in his hand when she entered. He looked immensely tall, and stiff, and stately. There was an air of impracticable independence in his att.i.tude, and in the distant dignity of his salutation that disconcerted her a little. He was wonderfully like his photograph she thought, and yet he was a much more imposing personage than she had bargained for.