A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 1

Here a railway official shouldered them apart in order to lock the door, and Mr. Kingston demanded of him what he meant by his impudence. Having satisfied the claims of outraged dignity, he again leaned into the window, and put out his hand for a tender farewell.

"Good-bye, my darling. You will write often, won't you? And mind now," with one of his Mephistophelian smiles, "you are not to go and flirt with anybody behind my back."

"I never flirt," said Rachel severely.

"Nor fall in love with handsome young squatters, you know."

"Don't talk nonsense," she retorted, melting into one of her sunny smiles. "If you can't trust me, why do you let me go?"

"I would not, if I had the power to stop you – you may be quite sure of that. But you will promise me, Rachel?"

"Promise you what?"

"That you will be constant to me while you are away from me, and not let other men – "

She lifted her ungloved hand, on which shone that ring "full of diamonds" which he had given her, and laid it on his mouth – or rather on his moustache.

"Now you'll make me angry if you go on," she said, with a playfully dignified and dictatorial air. "No, I won't hear any more – I am ashamed of you! after all the long time we have been engaged. As if I was a girl of that sort, indeed!"

Here the signal was given for the train to start, and Mrs. Hardy came forward to make her own adieux, and to give her last instructions to her son-in-law, who had been meekly standing apart.

As they slowly steamed out of the station, Rachel rose and comforted her bereaved lover with a last sight of her fair face, full of fun and smiles.

"Good-bye," she called gaily; "I promise."

"Thank you," he shouted back.

He lifted his hat, and kissed the tips of his fingers, and stood to watch the train disappear into the dismal waste that lay immediately beyond the station precincts. Then he walked away dejectedly to find his cab. He had grown very fond of his little sweetheart, and he anticipated the long, dull days that he would have to spend without her.

He wished Mrs. Hardy had been a little more definite as to the time when she meant to bring her home. It was not as if he were a young man, with any quantity of time to waste. However, he had her assurance that she would be true to him under any temptations that should assail her in his absence; and though too experienced to put absolute faith in that, it greatly cheered and consoled him. He stepped into his hansom, and told the driver to take him to Toorak, that he might see how the house where they were going to live together was getting on.

CHAPTER VII.

TWO LOVE LETTERS

Mr. Kingston to Miss Fetherstonhaugh.

"MY dearest love,

"I had no idea that Melbourne could be such a detestable hole! Why have you gone away, and taken all the life and brightness out of everything?

"If I had not the house to look after – and there is not much to interest one in that at present – I declare life would not be worth the trouble it entails in the mere matter of dressing and dining, and slating the servants and tradespeople.

"I went to Mrs. Reade's last night. Everybody was there; but I was bored to that extent that I came home in an hour (and physicked ennui at the card-table, where I lost ten pounds). I could not get up any interest in anybody. Mrs. Reade herself looked remarkably well. She is a very stylish woman, though she is so small. And Miss Brownlow looked handsome, as usual – to those who care for that dark kind of beauty. I confess I don't. I could only long for you, and think what a lily you would have been amongst them all, with your white neck and arms. (Be very careful of your complexion, my darling, while you are in the country; don't let the wind roughen your fine skin, nor sit by the fire without a screen for your face).

"As usual, poor Reade got a good deal snubbed. I would not be in his place for something. But if a wife of mine told me in the presence of guests that I had had as much wine as was good for me, I'd take care she didn't do it a second time. My little wife, however, will know better than that; I have no fear of being henpecked. It was a kind of musical evening, and Sarah Brownlow sang several new songs. I thought her voice had gone off a great deal.

"I must say for Mrs. Beatrice, that she is a capital hostess, and manages her parties as well as anybody. But this one was immensely slow. Everything is slow now you are away. Is it necessary for you to remain at Adelonga for the whole time of your aunt's visit? Can't you come back to town soon, and stay with Mrs. Reade? Do try and manage it; I'm sure your aunt would be willing, and it would be a most delightful arrangement all round.

"You will find Adelonga very dull, I fancy. It used to be a pleasant house in the old days, when Thornley was a bachelor; but two marriages must have altered both it and him, and the second Mrs. Thornley is not lively, even at the best of times, and must be terribly depressing as an invalid. There are a lot of children, too, are there not? If your aunt doesn't let you come back, can't you, when your cousin is well enough, manœuvre to get me an invitation? I would not mind a country house if you and I were in it together. Nothing could well be drearier than town is without you. And it would be so charming to be both under the same roof!

"And this reminds me of something I want to speak to you about seriously, so give me your best attention. (I wonder whether, having read so far, you are beginning to cover yourself with blushes in anticipation of what is coming? I am sure you are.)

"You told me, you know, my darling, that you did not wish to be married for a year or two – not until the house was built and finished, you said – because you were so young. But I have been thinking that that will never do. The house will probably be an immense time in hand; it is not like an ordinary plain house, you see. And I am not young, if you are. I don't say that I am old, but still I have come to that time of life when a man, if he means to marry and settle, should do it as soon as possible. And you are not any younger than your cousin Laura was when she married last year; and her husband, moreover, was a mere boy. I remember when Buxton was born, and he can't be five-and-twenty, nor anything like it. So you see, my pet, your proposal is quite absurd and unreasonable.

"And now I will tell you what mine is. And I know my little girl's gentle and generous disposition too well to doubt that she will offer any serious opposition to it, or to any of my urgent wishes. I propose that we marry without any delay; that is to say, with no more delay than the preparing of your trousseau necessitates.

"We have already been engaged some months, and by the time your visit is over and your preparations made, we shall have fully reached the average term of engagements amongst people of our class. I want you to let me write to your aunt (I am sure she would see the matter quite from my point of view), and suggest a day in September, or in October at the latest. That is a lovely time of year, and all my other plans would fit in with such an arrangement beautifully.

"You have never travelled, nor seen anything of the world yet; and I should like to show you a little before you settle down in your big house to all the cares of state. So I thought we would go for a short honeymoon to Sydney or Tasmania – whichever you like best; then come back for the races, and to see how the house was going on. I think there will be a club ball, too, about that time; if so, I know you would like to go to it with your diamond necklace on. Would you not? And then – while the shell of the house is building – I propose we repeat the honeymoon tour on a larger scale, and go to Europe.

"I know you would like to see all that Laura Buxton is seeing now; and I will take care that you see a great deal besides. You shall make the old grand tour, if you like it; it will be new enough to you.

"And we will have a good time in Paris; and we will amuse ourselves, wherever we go, collecting furniture and pictures, and ornaments for our house.

"You shall choose everything for your own rooms – as I told you my wife should – from the best looms and workshops in the world. And then when we come home we will take a house somewhere while we superintend the fitting up of our own.

"And finally, we will give a brilliant ball or something, by way of housewarming, and settle down to domestic life.

"Now is not this a charming programme? I am sure you will think so – indeed you must, for I have set my heart upon it.

"Pray write at once, dear love, and give me leave to put matters in train. Do you know you have been away four days and I have only had a post-card to tell me you arrived safely! That is not how you are going to treat me, I hope. I know there is a daily mail from Adelonga, and (though I repudiate post-cards) I don't care what sort of scribble you send so long as you write constantly. Remember what I told you about that. And remember your promise.

"And now, good-night, my sweetest Rachel. Sleep well, darling, and dream of me,

    "Your faithful lover,
    "Graham Kingston."

Miss Fetherstonhaugh to Mr. Kingston.

"My dearest Graham,

"I am afraid you will think I ought to have written to you before, but I have been so much engaged ever since I arrived that I really have not had an opportunity.

"Mr. Thornley is always showing me about the place, or the children are wanting me to have a walk with them, or my cousin sends for me to her room to see the baby; so that I may say I have scarcely a moment to call my own until bedtime comes, and then I am much too sleepy to write – the effect of the country air, I suppose. I am enjoying myself excessively.

"The weather is lovely, and this is certainly the most delightful place. It is a regular old bush house, which has been added to in every direction.

"The rooms are low, and straggle about anyhow; there is no front door – or, rather, there are several; and it has shingle roofs and weatherboard walls (though all the outhouses are brick and stone, and Mr. Thornley is going to build a new house presently, which I think is such a pity.)

"My own room has a canvas ceiling, which flaps up and down when the wind is high: and most of the floors are of that dark, rough-sawn native wood of olden times, which makes it necessary that the best carpets should have drugget, or some kind of padding under them. But, oh, how exquisitely the whole house is kept inside and out.

"The drawing-room is much prettier than ours at Toorak; because Mr. Thornley has travelled a great deal at odd times, and collected beautiful things, and seems to have good taste, as well as plenty of money. There are quantities of pictures everywhere; he is very fond of pictures.

"And the conservatories are half as big as the house; he is fond of flowers too. Just now they are full of delicious things – cyclamens, and orchids, and primulas, and begonias, and heaths of all sorts, and azaleas, and I don't know what. There are quantities of flowers in the garden too, so early as it is. The great bushes – almost trees – of camellias are simply wonderful; and there is a bed of double hyacinths under my window of all the colours of the rainbow.

"Then there is a fernery – part of it roofed in, and part running down through the shrubberies on one side. The tree ferns make a matted roof overhead, and other ferns grow between like bushes, and little ferns sprout everywhere underneath amongst stones and things. There are winding paths in and out through it, where it is quite dark at mid-day; and there are little rills and waterfalls trickling there in all directions, carried down in pipes from a dam up amongst the hills behind the house.