_"You'll love me yet! And I can tarry
Your love's protracted growing:
June reaped that bunch of flowers you carry
From seeds of April's sowing."_
Saint Bede's is one of the most ancient of the minor colleges of
Avonsbridge. Its foundress's sweet, pale, suffering face, clad in the
close coif of the time of the wars of the Roses, still smiles over the
fellow's table in hall, and adorns the walls of combination-room. The
building itself has no great architectural beauty except the beauty of
age. Its courts are gray and still, and its grounds small; in fact, it
possesses only the Lodge garden, and a walk between tall trees on the
other side of the Avon, which is crossed by a very curious bridge. The
Lodge itself is so close to the river, that from its windows you may
drop a stone into the dusky, slowly rippling, sluggish water, which
seems quieter and deeper there than at any other college past which it
flows.
Saint Bede's is, as I said, a minor college, rarely numbering more than
fifty gownsmen at a time, and maintaining, both as to sports and honors,
a mild mediocrity. For years it had not sent any first-rate man either
to boat-race, or cricket-ground, or senate-house. Lately, however, it
had boasted one, quite an Admirable Crichton in his way, who, had his
moral equaled his mental qualities, would have carried all before him.
As it was, being discovered in offenses not merely against University
authority, but obnoxious to society at large, he had been rusticated.
Though the matter was kept as private as possible, its details being
known only to the master, dean and tutor, still it made a nine-day's
talk, not only in the college, but in the town--until the remorseless
wave of daily life, which so quickly closes over the head of either
ill-doer or well-doer, closed completely over that of Edwin Uniacke.
Recovering from the shock of his turpitude, the college now reposed
in peace upon its slender list of well-conducted and harmless
undergraduates, its two or three tutors, and its dozen or so of gray old
fellows, who dozed away their evenings in combination-room. Even such an
event as the master's second marriage had scarcely power to stir Saint
Bede's from its sleepy equanimity.
It was, indeed, a peaceful place. It had no grand entrance, but in a
narrow back street you came suddenly upon its ancient gateway, through
which you passed into a mediaeval world. The clock tower and clock, with
an upright sundial affixed below it, marked the first court, whence,
through a passage which, as is usual in colleges, had the hall on one
hand and the buttery on the other, you entered the second court, round
three sides of which ran cloisters of very ugly, very plain, but very
ancient architecture. In a corner of these cloisters was the door of the
Lodge--the master's private dwelling.
Private it could hardly be called; for, like all these lodges of
colleges, it had an atmosphere most anti-home like, which at first
struck you as extremely painful. Its ancientness, both of rooms and
furniture, added to this feeling. When you passed through the small
entrance hall, up the stone staircase, and into a long, narrow,
mysterious gallery, looking as it must have looked for two centuries
at least, you felt an involuntary shiver, as of warm, human, daily life
brought suddenly into contact with the pale ghosts of the past. You
could not escape the haunting thought that these oaken tables were dined
at, these high-backed chairs sat upon, these black-framed, dirt-obscured
portraits gazed at and admired by people, once flesh and blood like
yourself, who had become skeletons--nay, mere dust, centuries before you
were born. Also, that other people would be dining, sitting, gazing,
and talking in this very same spot long after you yourself had become a
skeleton in your turn.
This impression of the exceeding mutability of all things, common to
most very old houses, was stronger than ordinary in this house, whose
owners did not even hold it by ancestral right, so as to find and leave
behind some few ancestral ties and memories, but came and went, with all
that belonged to them; the only trace of their occupancy and themselves
being a name on the college books, or a solitary portrait on the college
wall. The old dervish's saying to the Eastern king, "Sire, this is not a
place, but a caravanserai," might have been applied here only too truly.
It was not a home, it was the lodge of a college.
Until eighteen months ago, the date of Dr. Grey's appointment, there
had not been a woman's face or a child's foot about it for a hundred
and fifty years. All the masters had been unmarried--grim, gray
fellows--advanced in years. Dr. Arnold Grey, whose fellowship had
terminated early, and who had afterward been tutor and dean, was the
youngest master that had ever been known at Saint Bede's; and his
election might consequently have been unpopular had he not been
personally so much liked, and had there not happened immediately
afterward that scandal about Edwin Uniacke. Therein he acted so promptly
and wisely, that the sleepy, timid old dons as well as the Uniacke
family--for the lad was highly connected--were thankful that this
unlucky business had not occurred in the time of the late master,
who was both old and foolish, and would have made it the talk of all
England, instead of hushing it up, with the prudent decision of Dr.
Grey, so that now it was scarcely spoken of beyond the college walls.
Solemn, quiet, and beautiful, as if they had never known a scandal or a
tragedy, slept those old walls in the moonlight, which streamed also
in long bars from window to window, across the ghostly gallery before
mentioned. Ghostly enough in all conscience; and yet two little figures
went trotting fearlessly down it, as they did every night at eight
o'clock, between the two ancient apartments now converted into
dining-room and nursery. The master's children were too familiar with
these grim, shadowy corners to feel the slightest dread besides, they
were not imaginative children. To Arthur, an "ally taw," that is, a real
alabaster marble, such as he now fumbled in his pocket, was an object
of more importance than all the defunct bishops, archbishops, kings,
queens, and benefactors of every sort, whose grim portraits stared at
him by day and night. And Letitia was far more anxious that the candle
she carried should not drop any of its grease upon her best silk frock,
than alarmed at the grotesque shadows it cast, making every portrait
seem to follow her with his eyes, as old portraits always do. Neither
child was very interesting. Letitia, with her angular figure and thin
light hair, looked not unlike a diminished spectral reflection of
the foundress herself--that pale, prim, pre-Raphaelitish dame who was
represented all over the college, in all sizes and varieties of the
limner's art. Arthur, who hung a little behind his sister, was different
from her, being stout and square; but he, too, was not an attractive
child, and there was a dormant sullenness in his under lip which showed
he could be a very naughty one if he chose.
"I told you so, Titia," said he, darting to an open door facing the
staircase at the gallery's end. "There's papa's study fire lit. I knew
he was coming home to-night, though aunts won't let us sit up, as he
said we should. But I will! I'll lie awake, if it's till twelve o'clock,
and call him as he passes the nursery door."
"You forget," said Titia, drawing herself up with a womanly air, "papa
will not be alone now. He may not care to come to you now he has got
Mrs. Grey."
"Mrs. Grey!"
"You know aunts told us always to call her so. I'm sure I don't want to
call her any thing. I hate her!"
"So do I," rejoined the boy, doubling up his fist with intense
enjoyment. "Wouldn't I like to pitch into her for marrying papa! But
yet," with a sudden compunction, "she gave us lots of cake. And she
looked rather jolly, eh?"
"Jolly! You boys are so vulgar," said the little lady, contemptuously.
"But I dare say you'll like her, for aunts say she is quite a vulgar
person. As for me, I don't mean to take any notice of her at all."
"A deal she'll care for that! Who minds you? you're only a girl."
"I'm glad I'm not a big, ugly, dirty-handed, common boy." Arthur's reply
was short and summary, administered by one of those dirty hands, as he
was in the habit of administering what he doubtless considered justice
to his much cleverer, more precocious, and very sharp-tongued sister,
even though she was "a girl." It was the only advantage he had over her
and he used it, chivalry not being a thing which comes natural to most
boys, and it, as well as the root and core of it, loving-kindness, not
having been one of the things taught in these children's nursery.
Letitia set up an outcry of injured innocence, upon which nurse, who
waited at the foot of the stairs, seeing something was amiss, while not
stopping to discover what it was, did as she always did under similar
circumstances--she flew to the contending parties and soundly thumped
them both.
"Get to bed, you naughty children; you're always quarreling," rang the
sharp voice, rising above Letitia's wail, and Arthur's storm of furious
sobs. The girl yielded, but the boy hung back; and it was not until
after a regular stand-up fight between him and the woman--a big, sturdy
woman too--that he was carried off, still desperately resisting, and
shouting that he would have his revenge as soon as ever papa came home.
Letitia followed quietly enough, as if the scene were too common for her
to trouble herself much about it. The only other witness to it was the
portrait of the mild-faced foundress, which seemed through the shadows
of centuries to look down pitifully on these motherless children, as if
with a remembrance of her own two little sons, whose sorrowful tale--is
it not to be found in every English History, and why repeat it here?
Motherless children indeed these were, and had been, pathetically, ever
since they were born. All the womanly bringing up they had had, even in
Mrs. Grey's lifetime, had come from that grim nurse, Phillis.
Phillis was not an ordinary woman. The elements of a tragedy were in her
low, broad, observant, and intelligent forehead, her keen black eyes,
and her full-lipped, under-hanging mouth. Though past thirty, she was
still comely, and when she looked pleasant, it was not an unpleasant
face. Yet there lurked in it possibilities of passion that made you
tremble, especially considering that she had the charge of growing
children. You did not wonder at her supremacy in the nursery, but you
wondered very much that any mother could have allowed her to acquire it.
For the rest, Phillis had entered the family as Letitia's wet-nurse,
with the sad story of most wet-nurses. Her own child having died, she
took to her foster-child with such intensity of devotedness as to save
Mrs. Grey all trouble of loving or looking after the little creature
from henceforward. And so she staid, through many storms and warnings
to leave, but she never did leave--she was too necessary. And, in one
sense, Phillis did her duty. Physically, no children could be better
cared for than the little Greys. They were always well washed, well
clad, and, in a certain external sense, well managed. The "rod in
pickle," which Phillis always kept in the nursery, maintained a form of
outward discipline and even manners, so far as Phillis knew what manners
meant; morals too, in Phillis's style of morality. Beyond that Phillis's
own will--strong and obstinate as it was--made laws for itself, which
the children were obliged to obey. They rebelled; sometimes they
actually hated her, and yet she had great influence over them--the
earliest and closest influence they had ever known. Besides, the
struggle had only begun when they were old enough to have some sense of
the difference between justice and injustice, submission compelled
and obedience lawfully won; to infants and little children Phillis was
always very tender--nay, passionately loving.
As she was to Oliver, who, wakening at the storm in the nursery, took to
sleepy crying, and was immediately lulled in her arms with the fondest
soothing; the fiercest threatenings between whiles being directed
to Letitia and Arthur, until they both slunk off to bed, sullen and
silent--at war with one another, with Phillis, and with the whole world.
But children's woes are transient. By-and-by Titia's fretful face
settled into sleepy peace; the angry flush melted from Arthur's hot
cheeks; Oliver had already been transferred to his crib; and Phillis
settled herself to her sewing, queen regnant of the silent nursery.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the ghostly gallery, sat, over the
dining-room fire, the two other rulers, guardians, and guides of these
three children--"the aunts"--Miss Gascoigne and Miss Grey; for these
ladies still remained at the Lodge. Dr. Grey had asked Christian if
she wished them to leave, for they had a house of their own near
Avonsbridge, and she had answered indifferently, "Oh no; let them do as
they like." As she liked did not seem to enter into her thoughts.
Alas! that sacred dual solitude, which most young wives naturally and
rightfully desire, was no vital necessity to Christian Grey.
So the two ladies, who had come to the Lodge when their sister died, had
declared their intention of remaining there, at least for the present,
"for the sake of those poor, dear children." And, dressed in at their
best, they sat solemnly waiting the arrival of the children's father
and step-mother--"that young woman," as they always spoke of her in
Avonsbridge.
What Dr. Grey had gone through in domestic opposition before he married,
he alone knew, and he never told. But he had said, as every man under
similar circumstances has a right to say, "I _will_ marry," and had done
it. Besides, he was a just man; he was fully aware that to his sisters
Christian was not--could not be as yet, any more than the organist's
daughter and the silversmith's governess, while they were University
ladies. But he knew them, and he knew her; he was not afraid.
They were a strong contrast, these two, the ladies at the Lodge. Miss
Grey, the elder, was a little roly-poly woman, with a meek, round,
fair-complexioned face, and pulpy soft-hands--one of those people who
irresistibly remind one of a white mouse. She was neither clever nor
wise, but she was very sweet-tempered. She had loved Dr. Grey all her
life. From the time that she, a big girl, had dandled him, a baby, in
her lap; throughout her brief youth, when she was engaged to young Mr.
Gascoigne, who died; up to her somewhat silly and helpless middle-age,
there never was anybody, to Miss Grey, like "my brother Arnold."
Faithfulness is a rare virtue; let us criticise her no more, but pass
her over, faults and all.
Miss Gascoigne was a lady who could not be passed over on any account.
Nothing would have so seriously offended her. From her high nose to her
high voice and her particularly high temper, every thing about her was
decidedly _prononcé_. There was no extinguishing her or putting her
into a corner. Rather than be unnoticed--if such a thing she could ever
believe possible--she would make herself noticeable in any way, even in
an ill way. She was a good-looking woman, and a clever woman too, only
not quite clever enough to find out one slight fact--that there might be
any body in the world superior to herself.
_"Set down your value at your own huge rate,
The world will pay it"_
--for a time. And so the world had paid it pretty well to Miss
Gascoigne, but was beginning a little to weary of her; except fond
Miss Grey, who still thought that, as there never was a man like "dear
Arnold," so there was not a woman any where to compare with "dear
Henrietta."
There is always something pathetic in this sort of alliance between two
single women unconnected by blood. It implies a substitution for better
things--marriage or kindred ties; and has in some cases a narrowing
tendency. No two people, not even married people, can live alone
together for a number of years without sinking into a sort of double
selfishness, ministering to one another's fancies, humors, and even
faults in a way that is not possible, or probable, in the wider or
wholesomer life of a family. And if, as is almost invariably the
case--indeed otherwise such a tie between women could not long
exist--the stronger governs the weaker, one domineers and the other
obeys, the result is bad for both. It might be seen in the fidgety
restlessness of Miss Gascoigne, whose eyes, still full of passionate
fire, lent a painful youthfulness to her faded face, and in the lazy
supineness of Miss Grey, who seemed never to have an opinion or a
thought of her own. This was the dark side of the picture; the bright
side being that it is perfectly impossible for two women, especially
single women, to live together, in friendship and harmony, for nearly
twenty years, without a firm basis of moral worth existing in their
characters, producing a fidelity of regard which is not only touching,
but honorable to both.
They sat, one on either side the fire, in the long unbroken silence of
people who are so used to one another that they feel no necessity for
talking, until Miss Gascoigne spoke first, as she always did.
"I wonder what Dr. Grey meant by desiring the children to be kept out
of their beds till his return. As if I should allow it! And to order a
tea-dinner! No wonder Barker looked astonished! He never knew my poor
sister have anything but a proper dinner, at the proper hour; but it's
just that young woman's doing. In her position, of course she always
dined at one o'clock."
"Very likely," said Miss Grey, assentingly. Dissent she never did, in
any thing, from any body, least of all from Miss Gascoigne.
That lady fidgeted again, poked the fire, regarded herself in the
mirror, and settled her cap--no, her head-dress, for Miss Grey always
insisted that "dear Henrietta" was too young to wear caps, and admired
fervently the still black--too black hair, the mystery of which was only
known to Henrietta herself.
"What o'clock is it? half-past nine, I declare. Most annoying--most
impertinent--to keep us waiting for our tea in this way. Your brother
never did it before."
"I hope there is no accident," said Miss Grey, looking up alarmed. "The
snow might be dangerous on the railway."
"Maria, if you had any sense--but I think you have less and less every
day--you would remember that they are not coming by rail at all--of
course not. On the very first day of term, when Dr. Grey would meet so
many people he knew to have to introduce his wife! Why, everybody would
have laughed at him; and no wonder. Verily, there's no fool like an old
fool."
"Henrietta!" pitifully appealed the sister, "you know dear Arnold is not
a fool. He never did a foolish thing in his life, except, perhaps, in
making this unfortunate marriage. And she may improve. Any body ought to
improve who had the advantage of living constantly with dear Arnold."
Miss Gascoigne, always on the watch for affronts, turning sharply round,
but there was not a shadow of satire in her friend's simplicity. "My
dear Maria, you are the greatest--"
But what Miss Grey was remained among the few bitter speeches that Miss
Gascoigne left unsaid, for at that moment the heavy oak door was thrown
wide open, and Barker, the butler (time-honored institution of Saint
Bede's, who thought himself one of its strongest pillars of support),
repeated, in his sonorous voice,
"The master and Mrs. Grey."
Thus announced--suddenly and formally, like a stranger, in her own
house--Christian came home.
The two maiden aunts rose ceremoniously. Either their politeness sprang
from their natural habit of good-breeding, or it was wrung from them
by extreme surprise. The apparition before them--tall, graceful, and
dignified--could by no means be mistaken for any thing but a lady--such
a lady as Avonsbridge, with all its aristocracy of birth and condition,
rarely produced. She would have been the same even if attired in hodden
gray, but now she was well-dressed in silks and furs. Dr. Grey had
smiled at the modest trousseau, and soon settled every thing by saying,
"My wife must wear so and so." In this rich clothing, which set off her
fair large Saxon beauty to the utmost advantage, Christian quite dazzled
the eyes of the two ladies who had so persistently called her "that
young woman." Any person with eyes at all could see that, except for the
difference in age, there was not the slightest incongruity between (to
follow Barker's pompous announcement) "the master and Mrs. Grey."
Dr. Grey's personal introduction was brief enough: "Christian, these are
my sisters. This is Maria, and this is Henrietta--Miss Gascoigne."
Christian bowed--a little stately, perhaps--and then held out her hand,
which, after a hesitating glance at Miss Gascoigne, was accepted timidly
by Miss Grey. "I couldn't help it, my dear" she afterward pleaded, in
answer to a severe scolding; "she quite took me by surprise."
But in Miss Gascoigne's acuter and more worldly nature the surprise
soon wore off, leaving a sharp consciousness of the beauty, grace and
dignity--formidable weapons in the hands of any woman, and especially
of one so young as the master's wife. Not that her youth was now very
noticeable; to any one who had known Christian before her marriage,
she would have appeared greatly altered, as if some strange mental
convulsion had passed over her--passed, and been subdued. In two weeks
she had grown ten years older--was, a matron, not a girl. Yet still
she was herself. We often come to learn that change--which includes
growth--is one of the most blessed laws in existence; but it is only
weak natures who, in changing, lose their identity. If Dr. Grey saw,
what any one who loved Christian could not fail to have seen, this
remarkable change in her, he also saw deep enough into her nature
neither to dread it nor deplore it.
A few civil speeches having been interchanged about the weather, their
journey, and so forth, the master, suddenly looking round him, inquired.
"Maria, where are the children?"
"I sent them to bed," said Miss Gascoigne, with dignity. "It was
impossible they could be kept up to this late hour. My poor sister would
never allow it."
The color flashed violently over Dr. Grey's face. With the quick,
resolute movement of a master in his own house, he crossed the room and
rang the bell.
"Barker, inquire of nurse if the children are in bed. If not, say I wish
them sent down to me; otherwise I will come up to them immediately."
The answer to this message was awaited in most awkward silence. Even
Miss Gascoigne seemed to feel that she had gone a bit too far, and
busied herself over the tea equipage; while Miss Grey, after one or
two deprecating looks at dear Arnold, began knitting nervously at her
eternal socks---the only aunt-like duty which, in her meek laziness, she
attempted to fulfill toward the children.
For Christian, she sat by the fire, where her husband had placed her,
absently taking in the externalities--warm, somber, luxurious--which,
in all human probability, was now her home for life. For life! Did that
overpowering sense of the inevitable--so maddening to some, so quieting
to others--cause all small things to sink to their natural smallness,
and all painful things to touch her less painfully than otherwise they
would have been felt? It might have been.
Barker returned with the information that all the children were
fast asleep, but nurse said, "Of course Dr. Grey could come up if he
pleased."
"Let me go too," begged Christian. "Little Oliver will look so pretty in
his bed."
Dr. Grey smiled. It was a rare thing to be a whole fortnight away from
his children, and all the father's heart was in his loving eyes. "Come
away, then," he said, all his cheerful looks returning. "Aunts, you will
give us our tea when we return."
"Well, she does make herself at home!" cried Miss Gascoigne,
indignantly, almost before the door had closed.
Miss Grey knitted half a row with a perplexed air, and then, as if she
had lighted upon a perfect solution of the difficulty, said lightly,
"But then, you see, dear Henrietta, she _is_ at home."
Home! Through that chilly gallery, preceded by Barker and his
wax-lights; stared upon by those grim portraits, till more than once she
started as if she had seen a ghost; up narrow, steep stone stair-cases,
which might lead to a prison in a tower or a dormitory in a
monastery--any where except to ordinary, natural bedchambers. And
when she reached them, what gloomy rooms they were, leading one out of
another, up a step and down a step, with great beds that seemed only
fit to lie in state in, after having turned one's face to the wall and
slipped out of weary life into the imagined freedom of the life beyond.
Home! If that was home, Christian shivered.
"Are you cold? Barker, send Mrs. Grey's maid with her warm shawl. Every
body feels the Lodge cold at first, but you will get used to it. Wait
one minute," for she was pressing eagerly to the gleam of light through
the half-opened nursery door. "My wife!"
"Yes, Dr. Grey."
As he put his hands on her shoulders, Christian looked into his
eyes--right into them, for she was as tall as he. There was a sad
quietness in her expression, but there was no shrinking from him, and no
distrust.
"My wife need never be afraid of any thing or any body in this house."
"I know that."
"And by-and-by, many things here which feel strange now will cease to
feel so. Do you believe this?"
She smiled--a very feeble smile; but, at least, there was no pretense in
it.
"One thing more. Whatever goes wrong, you will always come at once and
tell it to me--to nobody in the world but me. Remember."
"I will."
Dr. Grey leaned forward and kissed his wife in his inexpressibly tender
way, and then they went in together.
Letitia and Arthur occupied two little closets leading out of the
nursery, which seemed spacious enough, and ancient enough, to have been
the dormitory of a score of monks, as very likely it was in the early
days of Saint Bede's. Phillis, sewing by her little table in the far
corner, kept guard over a large bed, where, curled up like a rose-bud,
flushed and warm, lay that beautiful child whom Christian had thought of
twenty times a day for the last fortnight.
"Well, Phillis, how are you and your little folk?" said the master, in a
pleasant whisper, as he crossed the nursery floor.
He trod lightly, but either his step was too welcome to remain
undiscovered, or the children's sleep had been "fox's sleep," for there
arose a great outcry of "Papa, papa!" Oliver leaped up, half laughing,
half screaming, and kicking his little bare legs with glee as his father
took him in his arms; Arthur came running in, clad in the very airiest
costume possible; and Letitia appeared sedately a minute or two
afterwards having stopped to put on her warm scarlet dressing-gown, and
to take off her nightcap--under the most exciting circumstances, Titia
was such an exceedingly "proper" child.
What would the Avonsbridge dons have said--the solitary old fellows in
combination-room--and, above all, what would the ghosts of the gloomy
old monks have said, could they have seen the Master of Saint Bede's,
with all his children round him, hugging him, kissing him, chattering to
him, while he hung over them in an absorption of enjoyment so deep that,
for a moment, Christian was unnoticed? But only for a moment; and he
turned to where she stood, a little aloof, looking on, half sadly, and
yet with beaming, kindly eyes. Her husband caught her hand and drew her
nearer.
"Children, you remember this lady. She was very good to you one day
lately. And now I want you to be very good to her."
"Oh yes," cried Oliver, putting up his mouth at once for a kiss. "I like
her very much. Who is she? What is her name?"
Children ask sometimes the simplest, yet the most terrible of questions.
This one seemed literally impossible to be answered. Dr. Grey tried,
and caught sight of his daughter's face--the mouth pursed into that
hard line which made her so exactly like her mother. Arthur, too, looked
sullen and shy. Nobody spoke but little. Oliver, who, in his innocent,
childish way, pulling Christian's dress, repeated again, "What is your
name? What must Olly call you?"
Whatever she felt, her husband must have felt and known that this was
the critical moment which, once let slip, might take years afterward to
recall. He said, nervously enough, but with a firmness that showed he
must already have well considered the subject,
"Call her mamma."
There was no reply. Christian herself was somewhat startled, but
conscious of a pleasant thrill at the sound of the new name, coming upon
her so suddenly. Strange it was; and ah! how differently it came to her
from the way it comes upon most women--gradually, deliciously, with long
looking forward and tremulous hope and fear--still it was pleasant. The
maternal instinct was so strong that even imaginary motherhood seemed
sweet. She bent forward to embrace the children, with tears in her eyes,
when Letitia said, in a sharp, unchildlike voice,
"People can't have two mammas; and our mamma is buried in the New
Cemetery. Aunts took us there yesterday afternoon."
Had the little girl chosen the sharpest arrow in her aunts' quiver--nay,
had she been Miss Gascoigne herself, she could not have shot more keenly
home. For the dart was barbed with truth--literal truth; which, however,
sore it be, people in many difficult circumstances of life are obliged
to face, to recognize, and abide by--to soften and subdue if they
can--but woe betide them if by any cowardly weakness or shortsighted
selfishness, they are tempted to deny it as truth, or to overlook and
make light of it.
Painful as the position was--so painful that Dr. Grey was quite overcome
by it, and maintained a total silence--Christian had yet the sense to
see that it was a position inevitable, because it was true. Bitterly as
the child had spoken--with the bitterness which she had been taught--yet
she had only uttered a fact. In one sense, nobody could have two
mothers; and Christian, almost with contrition, thought of the poor
dead woman whose children were now taught to call another woman by that
sacred name. But the pang passed. Had she known the first Mrs. Grey,
it might not have been so sharp; in any case, here was she herself--Dr.
Grey's wife and the natural guardian of his children. Nothing could
alter that fact. Her lot was cast; her duty was clear before her; she
must accept it and bear it, whatever it might be perhaps, for some
reasons, it was the better for her that it was rather hard.
She looked at her husband, saw how agitated he was, and there seemed to
come into her mind a sort of inspiration.
"My child," she said, trying to draw Letitia toward her, "you say truly.
I am not your own mamma; no one ever could be that to you again; but
I mean to be as like her as I can. I mean to love you and take care of
you; and you will love me too by-and-by. You can always talk to me as
much as ever you like about your own mamma."
"She doesn't remember her one bit," said Arthur, contemptuously.
"Oh, yes I do," cried Letitia. "She was very pretty, and always wore
such beautiful gowns."
Again there was a silence, and then Christian said,
"I think, if the children do not dislike it, that as they always called
Mrs. Grey 'mamma,' they had better call me 'mother.' It is a pleasanter
word than step-mother. And I hope to make myself a real mother to them
before very long."
"I know you will," answered Dr. Grey, in a smothered voice, as he set
down little Oliver, and, kissing the children all round, bade nurse
carry them off to bed once more--nurse, who, standing apart, with her
great black eyes had already taken the measure of the new wife, of the
children's future, and of the chances of her own authority. Not the
smallest portion of this decision originated in the fact that Christian,
wholly preoccupied as she was, quitted it without taking any notice of
her--Phillis--at all.
Dr. Grey preceded his wife to a room, which, in the long labyrinth of
apartments, seemed almost a quarter of a mile away. A large fire
burnt on the old-fashioned hearth, and glimmered cheerily on the white
toilet-table, crimson sofa, and bed. It was a room comfortable, elegant,
pleasant, bright, thoroughly "my lady's chamber," and which seemed from
every nook to welcome its new owner with a smile.
"Oh, how pretty!" exclaimed Christian, involuntarily. She was not
luxurious, yet she dearly loved pretty things; the more so, because she
had never possessed them. Even now, though her heart was so moved
and full, she was not insensible to the warmth imparted to it by mere
external pleasantnesses like these.
"I had the room newly furnished. I thought you would like it," said Dr.
Grey.
"I do like it. How very kind you are to me!"
Kind--only kind!
She looked around the room, and there, in one corner, just as if she
had never parted from them, were all the old treasures of her
maidenhood--desk, work-table, chair. She guessed all the secret. Once,
perhaps, she might have burst into tears--heart-warm tears; now she only
sighed.
"Oh, how good you are!"
Her husband kissed her. Passively she took the caress, and again she
sighed. Dr. Grey looked at her earnestly, then spoke in much agitation--
"Christian, tell me truly, were you hurt at what occurred just now? I
mean in the nursery."
"No, not in the least. It was inevitable."
"It was. Many things in life, quite inevitable, have yet to be met and
borne, conquered even, if we can."
"Ay, _if_ we can!"
And Christian looked up wistfully, almost entreatingly, to her husband,
who, she now knew, and trembled at the knowledge, so solemn was the
responsibility it brought, had loved her, and did love her, with a depth
and passion such as a man like him never loves but one woman in all his
life.
"Christian," he began again, with an effort, "I want to say something
to you. Once in my life, when I was almost as young as you are, I made a
great mistake. Therefore I know that mistakes are not irretrievable. God
teaches us sometimes by our very errors, leading us through them into
light and truth. Only we must follow Him, and hold fast to the right,
however difficult it may be. We must not be disheartened: we must leave
the past where it is, and go on to the future; do what we have to do,
and suffer all we have to suffer. We must meet things as they are,
without perplexing ourselves about what they might have been; for, if
we believe in an overruling Providence at all, there can be no such
possibility as 'might have been.'"
"That is true," said Christian, musingly. She had never known Dr. Grey
to speak like this. She wondered a little why he should do it now;
and yet his words struck home. That great "mistake"--was it his first
marriage? which, perhaps, had not been a happy one. At least, he never
spoke of it, or of his children's mother. And besides, it was difficult
to believe that any man could have loved two women, as, Christian knew
and felt, Dr. Grey now loved herself.
But she asked him no questions; she felt not the slightest curiosity
about that, or about any thing. She was like a person in a state of
moral catalepsy, to whom, for the time being, every feeling, pleasant or
painful, seems dulled and dead.
Dr. Grey said no more, and what he had said was evidently with great
effort. He appeared glad to go back into ordinary talk, showing her what
he had done in the room to make it pretty and pleasant for his bride,
and smiling over her childish delight to see again her maiden treasures,
with which she had parted so mournfully.
"You could not think I meant you really to part with them, Christian?"
said he. "I fancied you had found out my harmless deceit long ago. But
you are such an innocent baby, my child--as clear as crystal, and as
true as steel."
"Oh no, no!" she cried, as he went out of the room--a cry that was
almost a sob, and might have called him back again--but he was gone,
and the moment had passed by. With it passed the slight quivering and
softening which had been visible in her face, and she sunk again into
the impassive calm which made Christian Grey so totally different, from
Christian Oakley.
She rose up, took off her bonnet and shawl, and arranged her hair,
looking into the mirror with eyes that evidently saw nothing. Then
she knelt before the fire, warming her ice-cold hands on which the
two-weeks' familiar ring seemed to shine with a fatal glitter. She kept
moving it up and down with a nervous habit that she was trying vainly to
conquer.
"A mistake," she muttered, "Perhaps my marriage, too, was a mistake,
irretrievable, irremediable, as he may himself think now, only he was
too kind to let me see it. What am I to do? Nothing. I can do nothing.
'Until death us do part.' Do I wish for death--my death, of course--to
come and part us?"
She could not, even to herself, answer that question.
"What was he saying--that God teaches us by our very errors--that there
is no such thing as 'might have been?' He thinks so, and he is very
wise, far wiser and better than I am. I might have loved him. Oh that
I had only waited till I did really love him, instead of fancying
it enough that he loved me. But I must not think. I have done with
thinking. It would drive me out of my senses."
She started up, and stood gazing round the cheerful, bright, handsome
room, where every luxury that a comfortable income could give had been
provided for her comfort, every little fancy and taste she had been
remembered, with a tender mindfulness that would have made the heart of
any newly-married wife, married for love, leap for joy, and look forward
hopefully to that life which, with all its added cares, a good man's
affection can make so happy to the woman who is his chosen delight. But
in Christian's face was no happiness; only that white, wild, frightened
look, which had come on her marriage day, and then settled down into
what she now wore--the aspect of passive submission and endurance.
"But I will do my duty. And he will do his, no fear of that! He is so
good--far better than I. Yes, I shall do my duty."
_"Faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is
charity."_
There is a deeper meaning in this text than we at first see. Of "these
three," two concern ourselves; the third concerns others. When faith and
hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in
action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When
we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us the reason
why.
Christian went down stairs slowly and sadly, but quite calmly, to
spend--and she did spend it, painlessly, if not pleasantly--the first
evening in her own home.