_"Teach me to feel for others' woes,
To hide the fault I see;
The mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me."_
Breakfast was just over on the morning following the soirée at the vice
chancellor's. Christian sat with the two aunts, quietly sewing.
Ay, very quietly, even after last night. She had taken counsel with her
own heart, through many wakeful hours, and grown calm and still. Neither
her husband nor Miss Gascoigne had once named Sir Edwin. Probably Aunt
Henrietta did not know him, and in the crowded party Dr. Grey might not
have chanced to recognize him. Indeed, most likely the young man would
take every means of avoiding recognition from the master of his own
college, whence he had been ignominiously dismissed. His appearance at
St. Mary's Lodge was strange enough, and only to be accounted for by his
having been invited by the vice chancellor's young wife, who knew him
only as Sir Edwin Uniacke, the rich young baronet.
But, under shadow of these advantages, no doubt he could easily get into
society again, even at Avonsbridge, and would soon be met every where.
She might have to meet him--she, who knew what she did know about him,
and who, though there had been no absolute engagement between them,
had suffered him to address her as a lover for four bright April weeks,
ending in that thunderbolt of horror and pain, after which he never came
again to the farm-house, and she never heard from or of him one word
more.
Ought she to have told all this to her husband--was it her duty to tell
him now? Again and again the question recurred to her, full of endless
perplexities. She and Dr. Grey were not like two young people of equal
years. Why trouble him, a man of middle age, with what he might think a
silly, girlish love-story? and, above all, why wound him by what is the
sharpest pain to a loving heart, the sudden discovery of things hitherto
concealed, but which ought to have been told long ago? He might feel it
thus--or thus--she could not tell; she did not, even yet, know him well
enough to be quite sure. The misfortune of all hasty unions had
been hers--she had to find out everything after marriage. The sweet
familiarity of long courtship, which makes peculiarities and faults
excusable, nay, dear, just because they are so familiar that the
individual would not be himself or herself without them--this sacred
guarantee for all wedded happiness had not been the lot of Christian
Grey.
Even now, though it was the mere ghost of a dead love, or dead fancy,
which she had to confess to her husband, she shrank from confessing it.
She would rather let it slip to its natural Hades.
This was the conclusion she came to when cold, clear daylight put to
flight all the bewilderments and perplexities which had troubled her
through the dark hours; and she sat at the head of her breakfast-table
with her own little circle around her--the circle which, with all its
cares, became every day dearer and more satisfying, if only because it
was her own.
And when she looked across to the husband and father, sitting so
content, with the morning sun lighting up his broad forehead--wrinkled,
it is true, but still open and clear, the honest brow of an honest
man--it was with a trembling gratitude that made religious every throb
of Christian's once half-heathen heart. The other man, with his bold
eyes that made her shiver, the grasp of his hand from which her very
soul recoiled--oh, thank God for having delivered her from him, and
brought her into this haven of purity, peace and love!
As she stopped her needlework to cross to Arthur's sofa--he insisted on
being carried every where beside her, her poor, spoiled, sickly boy--as
she arranged his pillows and playthings, and gave him a kiss or two,
taking about a dozen in return--she felt that the hardest duty, the most
unrequited toil, in this her home would be preferable to that dream
of Paradise in which she had once indulged, and out of which she must
inevitably have wakened to find it a living hell.
The thanksgiving was still in her heart when she heard a ring at the
hall bell, and remembered, with sudden compunction, that this was Miss
Bennett's hour, and that she had to speak to her about the very painful
matter which occurred yesterday.
She had quite forgotten it till this minute, as was not surprising. Now,
with an effort, she threw off all thoughts about herself; this business
was far more important, and might involve most serious consequences
to the young governess if obliged to be dismissed under circumstances
which, unless Miss Gascoigne's tongue could be stopped, would soon be
parroted about to every lady in Avonsbridge.
"Poor girl!" thought Christian, "she may never get another situation.
And yet perhaps she has done nothing actually wrong, no worse wrong than
many do--than I did!"--she sighed--"in letting myself be made love to,
and believing it all true, and sweet, and sacred, when it was all--But
that is over now. And perhaps she has no friends any more than I had--no
home to cling to, no mother to comfort her. Poor thing! I must be very
tender over her--very careful what I say to her."
And following this intention, instead of sending for Miss Bennett into
the dining-room, as Miss Gascoigne probably expected, for she sat in
great state, determined to "come to the root of the matter," as she
expressed it, Mrs. Grey went out and met her in the hall.
"You are the lady whom my sister-in-law engaged as governess?"
"Yes, ma'am. And you are Mrs. Grey?" peering at her with some curiosity;
for, as every body knew every thing in Avonsbridge, no doubt Miss
Bennett was perfectly well aware that Dr. Grey's young wife was the
_ci-devant_ governess at Mr. Ferguson's.
"Will you walk up into my room? I wanted a word with you before
lessons."
"Certainly, Mrs. Grey. I hope you are quite satisfied with my
instruction of Miss Grey. Indeed, my recommendations--as I told Miss
Gascoigne--include some of the very first families--"
"I have no doubt Miss Gascoigne was satisfied," interrupted Mrs. Grey,
not quite liking the flippant manner, the showy style of dress, and the
air, at once subservient and forward; in truth, something which, despite
her prettiness, stamped the governess as underbred, exactly what Aunt
Henrietta had said--"not a lady."
"Your qualifications for teaching I have no wish to investigate; what I
have to speak about is a totally different thing."
Miss Bennett looked uneasy for a minute, but Christian's manner was so
studiously polite, even kindly, that she seemed to think nothing could
be seriously wrong. She sat down composedly on the crimson sofa, and
began investigating, with admiring, curious, and rather envious eyes,
the handsome room, half boudoir, half bed-chamber.
"Oh, Mrs. Grey, what a nice room this is! How you must enjoy it! It's a
hard life, teaching children."
"It is a hard life, as I know, for I was once a governess myself."
This admission, given so frankly, without the least hesitation,
evidently quite surprised Miss Bennett. With still greater curiosity
than the fine room, she regarded the fine lady who had once been a
governess, and was not ashamed to own it.
"Well, all I can say is, you have been very lucky in your marriage, Mrs.
Grey; I only wish I might be the same."
"That is exactly--" said Christian, catching at any thing in her nervous
difficulty as to how she should open such an unpleasant subject--"no,
not exactly, but partly, what I wished to speak to you about. Excuse a
plain, almost rude question, which you can refuse to answer if you like;
but, Miss Bennett, I should be very glad to know if you are engaged?"
"Engaged by Miss Gascoigne?"
"No; engaged to be married."
Miss Bennett drew back, blushed a little, looked much annoyed, and
answered sharply, apparently involuntarily, "No!"
"Then--excuse me again--I would not ask if I did not feel it absolutely
my duty, in order that we may come to a right understanding--but the
gentleman you were walking with yesterday, when you asked Letitia to
meet you in Walnut-tree Court, was he a brother, or cousin, or what?"
Susan Bennett was altogether confounded. "How did you find it all out?
Did the child tell?--the horrid little--but of course she did. And then
you set on and watched me! That was a nice trick for one lady to play
another."
"You are mistaken," replied Christian, gravely; "I found this out by the
merest accident; and as I can not allow the child to do the same thing
again, I thought it the most honest course to tell you at once of the
discovery I made, and receive your explanations."
"You can't get them; I have a perfect right to walk with whom I please?"
"Most certainly; but not to take Dr. Grey's little daughter with you as
a companion. Don't you see, Miss Bennett"--feeling sorry for the shame
and pain she fancied she must be inflicting--"how injurious these sort
of proceedings must be to a little girl, who ought to know nothing about
love at all--(pardon my concluding this is a love affair)--till she
comes to it seriously, earnestly, and at a fitting age? And then the
deception, underhandedness--can not you see how wrong it was to make
secret appointments with a child, and induce her to steal out of the
house unknown to both nurse and mother?"
"You are not her own mother, Mrs. Grey, it don't affect you."
"Pardon me," returned Christian very distantly, as she perceived her
delicacy was altogether wasted upon this impertinent young woman, who
appeared well able to hold her own under any circumstances, "it does
affect me so much that, deeply as I shall regret it, I must offer you
a check for your three months' salary. Your engagement, I believe, was
quarterly, and I must beg of you to consider it canceled."
Miss Bennett turned red and pale; the offensive tone sank into one
pitifully weak and cringing.
"Oh, Mrs. Grey! don't be hard upon me; I'm a poor governess, doing
my best, and father has a large family of us, and the shop isn't as
thriving as it was. Don't turn me away, and I'll never meet the young
fellow again."
There was a little natural feeling visible through the ultra-humility of
the girl's manner, and when she took out a coarse but elaborately laced
pocket-handkerchief, and wept upon it abundantly, Christian's heart
melted.
"I am very sorry for you--very sorry indeed; but what can I do? Will you
tell me candidly, are you engaged to this gentleman?"
"No, not exactly; but I am sure I shall be by-and-by."
"He is your lover, then? he ought to be, if, as Letitia says, you go
walking together every evening."
"Well, and if I do, it's nobody's business but my own, I suppose; and
it's very hard it should lose me my situation."
So it was. Mrs. Grey remembered her own "young days," as she now called
them--remembered them with pity rather than shame; for she had done
nothing wrong. She had deceived no one, only been herself deceived--in
a very harmless fashion, just because, in her foolish, innocent heart,
which knew nothing of the world and the world's wiles, she thought no
man would ever be so mean, so cowardly, as to tell a girl he loved her
unless he meant it in the true, noble, knightly way--a lover
"Who loved one woman, and who clave to her"
--clave once and forever. A vague tenderness hung about those days yet,
enough to make her cast the halo of her sympathy over even commonplace
Susan Bennett.
"Will you give me your confidence? Who is this friend of yours, and why
does he not at once ask you for his wife? Perhaps he is poor and can not
afford to marry?"
"Oh. dear me! I'm not so stupid as to think of a poor man, Bless you!
he has a title and an estate too. If I get him I shall make a splendid
marriage."
Christian recoiled. Her sympathy was altogether thrown away. There
evidently was not a point in common between foolish Christian Oakley,
taking dreamy twilight saunters under the apple-trees--not alone;
looking up to her companion as something between Sir Launcelot and the
Angel Gabriel--and this girl, carrying on a clandestine flirtation,
which she hoped would--and was determined to make--end in a marriage,
with a young man much above her own station, and just because he was so.
As for loving him in the sense that Christian had understood love,
Miss Bennett was utterly incapable of it. She never thought of love at
all--only of matrimony.
Still, the facts of the case boded ill. A wealthy young nobleman, and
a pretty, but coarse and half-educated shopkeeper's daughter--no good
could come of the acquaintance--perhaps fatal harm. Once more Christian
thought she would try to conquer her disgust, and win the girl to better
things.
"I do not wish to intrude--no third person has a right to intrude upon
these affairs; but I wish I could be of any service. You must perceive,
Miss Bennett, that your proceedings are not quite right--not quite safe.
Are you sure you know enough about this gentleman? How long have you
been acquainted with him? He probably belongs to the University."
Miss Bennnett laughed. "Not he--at least not now. He got into a scrape
and left it, and has only been back here a week; but I have found out
where his estate is, and all about him. He has the prettiest property,
and is perfectly independent, and a baronet likewise. Only think"--and
the girl, recovering her spirits, tossed her handsome head, and spread
out her showy, tawdry gown--"only think of being called 'Lady!'--Lady
Uniacke."
Had Miss Bennett been less occupied in admiring herself in the mirrors
she must have seen the start Mrs. Grey gave--for the moment only,
however--and then she spoke.
"Sir Edwin Uniacke's character here is well known. He is a bad man. For
you to keep up any acquaintance with him is positive madness."
"Not in the least; I know perfectly what I am about, and can take care
of myself, thank you. He has sown his wild oats, and got a title and
estate, which makes a very great difference. Besides, I hope I'm as
sharp as he. I shall not let myself down, no fear. I'll make him make me
Lady Uniacke."
Christian's pity changed into something very like disgust. Many a poor,
seduced girl would have appeared to her less guilty, less degraded than
this girl, who, knowing all a man's antecedents, which she evidently
did--bad as he was, set herself deliberately to marry him--a
well-planned, mercenary marriage, by which she might raise herself out
of her low station into a higher, and escape from the drudgery of labor
into ease and splendor.
And yet is not the same thing done every day in society by charming
young ladies, aided and abetted by most prudent, respectable, and
decorous fathers and mothers? Let these, who think themselves so
sinless, cast the first stone at Susan Bennett.
But to Christian, who had never been in society, and did not know the
ways of it, the sensation conveyed was one of absolute repulsion. She
rose.
"I fear, Miss Bennett, that if we continued this conversation forever we
should never agree. It only proves to me more and more the impossibility
of your remaining my daughter's governess. Allow me to pay you, and then
let us part at once."
But the look of actual dismay which came over the girl's face once more
made her pause.
"You send me away with no recommendation--and I shall never get another
situation--and I have hardly a thing to put on--and I'm in debt
awfully. You are cruel to me, Mrs. Grey--you that have been a governess
yourself." And she burst into a passion of hysterical crying.
"What can I do?" said Christian sadly. "I can not keep you----I dare
not. And it is equally true that I dare not recommend you. If I could
find any thing else--not with children--something you really could do,
and which would take you away from this town--"
"I'd go any where----do any thing to get my bread, for it comes to that.
If I went home and told father this--if he found out why I had lost my
situation, he'd turn me out of doors. And except this check, which is
owed nearly all, I haven't one halfpenny--I really haven't. Mrs.
Grey. It's all very well for you to talk--you in your fine house and
comfortable clothes; but you don't know what it is to be shabby, cold,
miserable. You don't know what it is to be in dread of starving."
"I do," said Christian, solemnly. It was true.
The shudder which came over her at thought of these remembered days
obliterated every feeling about the girl except the desire to help her,
blameworthy though she was, in some way that could not possibly injure
any one else.
Suddenly she recollected that Mrs. Ferguson was in great need of some
one to take care of Mr. Ferguson's old blind mother, who lived forty
miles distant from Avonsbridge. If she spoke to her about Miss Bennett,
and explained, without any special particulars, that, though unfit to be
trusted with children, she might do well enough with an old woman in a
quiet village, Mrs. Ferguson, whose kind-heartedness was endless, might
send her there at once.
"Will you go? and I will tell nobody my reasons for dismissing you,"
said Christian, as earnestly as if she had been asking instead of
conferring a favor. Her kindness touched even that bold, hard nature.
"You are very good to me; and perhaps I don't deserve it."
"Try to deserve it. If I get this situation for you, will you make me
one promise?"
"A dozen,"
"One is enough--that you will give up Sir Edwin Uniacke."
"How do you mean?"
"Don't meet him, don't write to him--don't hold any communication with
him for three months. If he wants you, let him come and ask you like an
honest man."
Miss Bennett shook her head. "He's a baronet, you know."
"No matter. An honest man and an honest woman are perfectly equal, even
though one is a baronet and the other a daily governess. And, if love
is worth any thing, it will last three months; if worth nothing, it had
better go."
But even while she was speaking--plain truths which she believed with
her whole heart--Christian felt, in this case, the bitter satire of her
words.
Susan Bennett only smiled at them in a vague, uncomprehending way.
"Would you have trusted your lover--that means Dr. Grey, I suppose--for
three months?"
Mrs. Grey did not reply. But her heart leaped to think how well she knew
the answer. No need to speak of it, though. It would be almost profanity
to talk to this women, who knew about as much of it as an African
fetish-worshipper knows of the Eternal--of that love which counts
fidelity not by months and years; which, though it has its root
in mortal life, stretches out safely and fearlessly into the life
everlasting.
"Well, I'll go, and perhaps my going away will bring him to the point,"
was the fond resolution of Miss Susan Bennett.
Mrs. Grey, infinitely relieved, wrote the requisite letters and
dismissed her, determined to call that day and explain as much of the
matter to honest Mrs. Ferguson as might put the girl in a safe position,
where she would have a chance of turning out well, or, at least, better
than if she had remained at Avonsbridge.
Then Christian had time to think of herself. Here was Sir Edwin
Uniacke--this daring, unscrupulous man, close at her very doors; meeting
her at evening parties; making acquaintance with her children, for
Titia had told her how kind the gentleman was, and how politely he had
inquired after her "new mamma."
Of vanity, either to be wounded or flattered, Christian had absolutely
none. And she had never read French novels. It no more occurred to her
that Sir Edwin would come and make love to her, now she was Dr. Grey's
wife, than that she herself should have any feeling--except pity--in
knowing of his love-affair with Miss Bennett. She was wholly and
absolutely indifferent with regard to him and all things concerning him.
Even the events of last night and this morning were powerless to cast
more than a momentary gravity over her countenance--gone the instant she
heard her husband calling her from his open study door.
"I wanted to hear how you managed Miss Bennett, you wise woman. Is it a
lover?"
"I fear so, and not a creditable one. But I am certain of one thing. She
does not love him--she only wants to marry him."
"A distinction with a difference," said Dr. Grey, smiling. "And you
don't agree with her, my dear?"
"I should think not!"
Again Dr. Grey smiled. "How fiercely she speaks! What a tiger this
little woman of mine could be if she chose. And so she absolutely
believes in the old superstition that love is an essential element of
matrimony."
"You are laughing at me."
"No, my darling, God forbid. I am only--happy."
"Are you really, really happy? Do you think I can make you so--I, with
all my unworthiness?"
"I am sure of it."
She looked up in his face from out of his close arms, and they talked no
more.