"And you'll promise me you won't get married again _under_ the year, at the very earliest?"

"Yes, dear Aunt Elizabeth, I will promise you that. If I can go and stay at Adelonga for a little, and take Alfy----"

"Is he down at the Digbys?"

"Yes, auntie."

"Perhaps that will be the best plan," said Mrs. Hardy, sighing. "It is a quiet place, and out of the way, if only Lucilla doesn't gossip about it."

CHAPTER XI.

CONCLUSION.

Mrs. Thornley was a little scandalised like her mother, at first, not by Rachel's desire to marry again--for that she should do so, as a rich young widow of twenty-five, "left" by a husband just forty years her senior, was generally antic.i.p.ated as a matter of course--but by the too early announcement of those wishes and intentions which conventional decorum forbade a woman to dream of until "the year" was up.

Very speedily, however, she forgot to be shocked by anything of this kind, and devoted herself ardently to the furtherance of her cousin's happiness.

She had had Mr. Dalrymple at Adelonga after his accident, and had nursed him for about a month of his convalescence; and since that time both she and John had had a strong feeling of friendship for him, not much less than that which they had always had for their favourite, Mrs. Digby.

They had condoned all the errors of his earlier years (even the great duel, which Mr. Gordon had a.s.sured them was the worst episode in a reckless but not dishonourable career, and was in itself unstained by any mean or vicious motives), and they had proved the sincerity of their respect and regard for him by allowing their son Bruce to "chum" with him in Queensland.

And now, being put in possession of all the facts relating to his and Rachel's love affairs, Lucilla entered eagerly into the arrangements which Rachel herself, without a blush of shame, suggested for bringing the long-parted lovers together again.

"Oh, _yes_, my darling," she wrote hurriedly, by return of post, "pray _do_ come and spend all the summer with us. Mamma says that as it is so _very_, _very_ soon we must be careful to keep it _quite_ quiet, but John wishes me particularly to tell you that, in _his_ opinion, you are _quite right_.

"We both like Mr. Dalrymple _very much_, and we think he has behaved _so very well_. And John says he is not at all a spendthrift _now_, whatever he may have been _once_, and he thinks _really_ that he will take care of your money and not squander it away (only he says you must let him arrange things for you on your marriage--which _must_ take place at Adelonga--so as to be _quite_ on the safe side); for they have had both floods and droughts _very_ badly at their place in Queensland, and yet they have made it pay, which John says he _never_ expected. Bruce thinks so much of the property and the way it has been managed, that I am sure he will want to go in with Mr. Gordon if Mr. Dalrymple will let us buy him out (perhaps he _won't_ now the meat-freezing is going to do such great things.) But these are details to talk of presently. We must get you here first.

"If you can come on Tuesday, _do_. John will meet you at the train. I have written to Mr. Dalrymple to come the _next_ day, for you must not be excited and upset until you have had time for a _good rest_ after your journey. I am having the blue south room got ready for you--the one you _used_ to like--and the large dressing-room next to it for dear little Alfy. _I_ don't think you ought to send away your maid. Won't it _look_ odd after being used to one for so long? I have _plenty_ of room for her as well as for the nurse, &c., &c."

On the Tuesday, Rachel, with Alfy and his nurse, arrived, having dismissed some of her servants and put the rest on board wages, having packed up her most precious china and art treasures, and swathed her splendid upholstery in sheets of brown holland, prepared to spend any length of time at Adelonga that circ.u.mstances would admit of.

It was a beautiful day in January, rather too hot for travelling in comfort, but pleasant and breezy about the Adelonga-hills and the bosky garden that sheltered the old house. It was the same old house still, Rachel was thankful to see. Mr. Thornley had been building with brick and stone in town, and so had been content to leave to his country seat, the picturesque charm of its wooden walls and its medley of low roofs and gables; and now it stood embowered in cool vine leaves and sweet-scented creepers, with great trees of pink oleander, which loved the sultry midsummer, nestling up against it, and making broad splashes of sunny colour amid the sombre richness of evergreen shrubs--a sort of earthly paradise in Rachel's eyes. Lucilla was standing on the verandah, surrounded by all her family (except her grown-up step daughter, Isabel, who had been sent on a visit to an aunt in Sydney to be "out of the way") waiting to greet her welcome guest; and Rachel, jumping down from the buggy, and flinging herself into those faithful arms, felt that she had been a wandering prodigal in strange countries for half a dozen years, and was on the threshold of home again.

"But, oh," she said to herself, when having seen little Alfy tucked up in his cot, and having, maidless, with her own hands, laid away her clothes in drawers and wardrobes, she began to dress for dinner, "_what_ could have made Lucilla imagine that waiting for him for twenty-four hours would _rest_ me?"

The long hours pa.s.sed, however, as the longest hours do, and the evening of Wednesday drew on with a flaming crimson sunset; and Rachel listened for the sound of buggy wheels on distant bush tracks, and was deafened by the noise of her own loud-beating heart.

"They are coming," whispered Lucilla, creeping with the stealth of a conspirator into her cool, dim drawing-room, where the young widow stood, bright-eyed and pale, in her black gown, steadying herself with a hand on the piano.

"Shall I send him in to you by himself, dear, or would he think that was bad taste--a too open and vulgar way of recognising the state of affairs?"

"Oh, no, he would think not it vulgar," replied Rachel, smiling slightly through her air of solemn and rapt abstraction. "You must send him by himself, Lucilla, please--this once."

The buggy came into the garden and pa.s.sed the window. Lucilla, outside on the verandah, welcomed her guest with effusive inquiries after Mrs.

Digby's health and welfare, and that of all the little Digbys'

respectively; Mr. Thornley gave loud directions to the servants about the portmanteau that was to be carried to the green gable room. And then the buggy went to the stable-yard; there was a few minutes' silence; and the door of the drawing-room opened quietly, and Roden Dalrymple came in.

He had changed a little in the four years since she had seen him last; his ruddy moustache was a little more grizzled, and the lines in his sun-tanned forehead were stronger and deeper.

She was changed, too; there was a matronly grace and maturity in the roundness of her shapely figure and in the reposeful softness of her face, that had been wanting in the beauty, fresh and delicate as he remembered it, of her earlier girlish years.

But the only change they recognised in one another was their deeper capacity for understanding the worth and the meaning of such an experience as this, when, with his back against the closed door, and her hands about his neck, he held her in both arms clasped close to his breast, and they drank together in one moment of speechless pa.s.sion the solace and the sweetness of all the kisses that they _should_ have had.

In the evening Lucilla sat down to the piano, to play some of Beethoven's sonatas to her husband. It was a lovely moonshiny summer night, and some of the windows stood open, letting in the fragrance of jessamine and tobacco, and a quant.i.ty of tiny moths and gnats.

Mr. Thornley, having taken his coffee and his cigarette upon the verandah, lying all along on a bamboo easy chair, stayed there to listen and doze in obscurity, with his handkerchief thrown over his bald head to keep off the mosquitoes.

For a few minutes Mr. Dalrymple stood behind his hostess; but, finding that she played from memory, and therefore did not want leaves turned over for her, he left the piano, and crossing the room, stooped down to Rachel as she sat in a low chair dreamily fanning herself.

"Rachel," he whispered, "is the lapageria in blossom now?"

"I don't know, Roden--I don't think so," she replied.

"Shall we go and see?"

She rose at once, and they went together into the curtained alcove and through the noiseless swing door.

"Where is our seat?" he said, taking her hand as soon as they were alone, and leading her down the dim alleys, over-arched with fern trees, and filled with broken shadows of the gigantic fronds. "I hope it is in the same place."

It was in the same place, but the place was stiller and darker than it used to be--built all round and about with gnarled ma.s.ses of cork, feathered in every crevice with maiden hair, and roofed with drooping leaves.

There was just moonlight enough to enable them to find it, and when they found it they sat down side by side, and Rachel laid her head on one of her lover's broad shoulders and her hand on the other; and they remained there for several minutes without moving or speaking, listening to the far-off sound of the piano, more perfectly at rest than either of them had ever imagined it possible to be in this world.

Mr. Dalrymple spoke first, drawing a long breath.

"_Must_ we be separated any more, Rachel? Can't we be married now--this week--to-morrow--and go away from everybody quietly? It seems like tempting Providence to lose sight of one another again--to lose one hour more than we can help of what we have been kept out of all this time."

"It does--it does," a.s.sented Rachel. "But I promised Aunt Elizabeth that I would be a widow for a year."

"You were a widow for me--how many years?"

"I know, Roden, I know. I do not do it willingly. But other people--other things--have to be considered."

"Six months more! Child, no one has any right to demand such an enormous sacrifice of us. Who knows how long we may live to be together as we want to be together? Can we afford to throw away six months on the top of six years for the sake of mere sham propriety, knowing the worth of every hour as we do?"

"Roden," said Rachel gently, after a pause, "it shall be just as you like. If you think we ought not to wait, we will not. I can explain to Aunt Elizabeth."

And then he recognised his responsibilities.

"No," he said, "I think perhaps we had better wait--though there _is_ no sense or justice in it. We'll pay Mrs. Grundy the heaviest price that she has swindled honest people of for many a day, and then we'll take it out with interest. But you will do something for me in the meantime?"

"There is nothing I could do for you that I should not want to do for myself, Roden."