CHAPTER XI.
MR. DALRYMPLE HAS TO CONSULT GORDON.
OF course it is well understood, without further explanation, that Mr. Dalrymple and Rachel were in the position of the Sleeping Beauty and her prince when the spell that held life in abeyance was—or was about to be—broken. At the same time it is not to be inferred that the man, with his years and experience, fell in love at first sight with a merely pretty face, nor that the girl was more than ordinarily impressionable and inconstant, or had any constitutional weakness for wild young men.
Perhaps it is not necessary to essay the difficult task of finding a theory to account for it. Everybody knows that if there is a law of nature that will not lend itself to system, it is that which governs these affairs.
The greatest force and factor in human life comes to birth by a mere chance—in Roden Dalrymple's case by the breaking of a trace, which was in itself the result of a whole series of trivial and quite avoidable circumstances; and then it thrives or languishes by the favour of petty accidents—until time and sanctifying associations put it beyond the reach of accident. That is its superficial history, taking a general average.
Quality and potency are questions of temperament; vigour of growth depends in great measure on what may be called climatic influences. But, as with some other great mysteries of this world, human understanding can make very little of it.