A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 1

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 trespassing 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," ejaculated 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 passion 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 circumstance. "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 tête-à-tête 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 wishing 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 embarrassment 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 glass 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 circumstances; 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 glass door, which swung on noiseless hinges, and passing 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 glass roofs through which the moon was shining, 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 woodpecker.

"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 clusters 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 tête-à-tête; "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?"

"Yes," whispered Rachel. "But how could there be any sufficient reason for such a terrible crime?"

"Don't call it a crime," he protested. "That is how they speak of it who know nothing about it – that is how they will represent all my life, which has been different from theirs – to make you shun and shrink from me as if I had the small-pox. Wait till you know a little more."

He was leaning forward with an elbow on his knee, and looking into her face. She met his eyes now in the uncertain moonlight, which was shining on her and not on him; and he saw no sign of shrinking yet.

"Why did you do it?" she asked sorrowfully.

"Long ago," he said, after a pause, "he and I fell in love with – some one; and she loved him best. At least I think she did – I don't know. Sometimes I fancy she would have cared most for me, if we had had our chances. But we had no chances; I had to give my word of honour not to stand between her and him – not to try to win her, unless she distinctly showed a preference for me."

"I understand," whispered Rachel. She knew this part of the story already.

"At any rate," he continued, "she made choice of him. He sold out of the service, and they went away together. I had sold out myself not long before, and went away too – travelling about the world. I was very lonely at that time; I didn't much care where I went or what became of me. It was several years before I saw or heard of her again."