_"Weave, weave, weave,
The tiniest thread will do;
The filmiest thread from a spider's bed
Is stout enough for you._
_"Twist, twist, twist,
With fingers dainty and small;
Let the wily net be quietly set,
That the innocent may fall."_
Arthur never got his thrashing. The serious results, of which he had
been the primary cause, for a while put his naughtiness out of every
body's head; and when, after an hour or more, Christian went up stairs,
and found the poor little fellow waiting patiently and obediently in
mother's bedroom, it seemed rather hard to punish him.
She went down again into the study, and had a long talk with her
husband, in which she spoke her mind very freely--more freely than
she had ever done before, and told him things which had come to her
knowledge concerning the children of which he, poor man! had hitherto
been kept in total ignorance.
Thus taking counsel together, the father and mother decided that,
except in very rare instances, corporal punishment should be entirely
abolished, and never, under any circumstances, should be administered
by Phillis. That Phillis's sway was to be narrowed as much as possible,
without any absolute laws being made that would wound her feelings, or
show indifference to her long fidelity.
"For," said Dr. Grey, "we must not forget, Christian, that she loved the
children when they had not quite so much love as they have now."
No, Arthur was not thrashed--was promised faithfully that Phillis should
never be allowed to thrash him any more; but his step-mother made him
write the meekest, humblest letter of apology to his Aunt Henrietta,
which that lady returned unanswered. This, however, as Christian took
some pains to explain to him, was a matter of secondary consequence.
Whatever she did, he had done only what was his duty. And he was
enjoined, when they did meet, to address her politely and respectfully,
as a nephew and a gentleman should--as his father always addressed her,
even in answer to those sharp speeches which, though in his children's
presence, Miss Gascoigne continually let fall.
Nevertheless, Dr. Grey bore them, and so did his wife, which was harder.
She did not mind rudeness to herself, but to hear her husband thus
spoken to and spoken of was a sufficient trial to make her long for the
time of release. And yet through it all came the deep sense of pity that
any woman who could show herself in so pleasant a light abroad--for many
of the morning visitors quite condoled with Mrs. Grey on the impending
change at the Lodge, and of the great loss she would have in her
sister-in-law--should be so obnoxious at home that her nearest relatives
counted the days until her shadow should cease to darken their doors.
And so, gradually and often painfully, but still with a firm conviction
on every body's mind that the plan so suddenly decided on had been the
best for all parties, came round the time of the aunts' departure.
Christian had spent all the previous day at Avonside, which she found
a very pretty cottage, all woodbine and roses, with nothing at all
poverty-stricken about it, either within or without. She had gone
over it from garret to basement, making every thing as comfortable as
possible, as she had carte blanche from her husband to do, and gladly
did; for on her tender conscience rankled every bitter word of Miss
Gascoigne's as though it were real truth; and sometimes, in spite of
herself, she could not suppress an uneasy feeling as if the aunts were
being "turned out." The last day of their stay at the Lodge was so
exceedingly painful, that, having done all she could, she at length
rushed out of the house with Arthur for a breath of fresh air and a
quiet half hour before dinner, if such were possible.
She did not go far, only just crossing the bridge to the cottage grounds
opposite where, in sight of the Lodge windows, she could walk up
and down the beautiful avenue, which still bears the name of the old
philosopher who loved it. If his wise, gentle ghost still haunted
the place, it might well have watched with pleasure this fair, grave,
sweet-looking young woman sauntering up and down with the boy in her
hand, listening vaguely to his chatter, and now and then putting in a
smiling answer. She had a smiling, peaceful face, and her thoughts were
peaceful too. She was thinking to herself how pretty Avonsbridge was in
its June dress of freshest green, how quietly and innocently life passed
under shadow of these college walls, and how could any one have the
heart to make it otherwise?
She would not after today. She would cease to vex herself, or let her
husband vex himself about Miss Gascoigne. With a mile and a half between
them, the Lodge would certainly feel safe from her. And oh! what a
wonderful peace would come into the house when she left it! How good the
children would be! How happy their father!--yes, he could be made
happy, Christian knew that, and it was she who could make him so.
The consciousness of power in this sweet sense, and the delight of
exercising it was becoming the most exquisite happiness Christian had
ever known. She sat dreaming over it almost like a girl in her first
love-dream--only this dream was deeper and calmer, with all the strength
of daily duty added to the joy of loving and being loved. Not that she
reasoned much--she was not given to much analyzing of herself--she only
knew that she was content, and found content in every thing--in the
ripple of the river at her feet, the flutter of the leaves over her
head, the soft blue sky above the colleges, and the green grass gemmed
with daisies, where an old man was mowing on the one side, and a large
thrush, grown silent with summer, was hopping about on the other. Every
thing seemed beautiful, for the beauty began in her own heart.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Grey."
People talk about "looking as if they had seen a ghost"--and perhaps
that look was not unlike Christian's as she started at this salutation
behind her. He must have come stealthily across the grass, for she had
heard nothing, did not even know that any body was near, till she looked
up and saw Sir Edwin Uniacke.
The surprise was so great that it brought (oh, what shame to feel it,
and feel sure that he saw it!) the blood up to her face--to her very
forehead. She half rose, and then sat down again, with a blind instinct
that any thing was better than either to be or to appear afraid.
Without waiting for either a reply or a recognition--which indeed came
not, nothing but that miserable blush--the young man seated himself on
the bench and began to make acquaintance with Arthur.
"I believe I have seen you before, my little friend. You are Dr. Grey's
son, and I once offered to carry you, but was refused. Are you quite
well now, Master Albert? Isn't that your name?"
"No; Arthur," said the boy, rather flattered at being noticed. "Are you
one of the men at our college? You haven't your gown on."
"Not now," with a queer look, half amusement, half irritation. "I don't
belong to Avonsbridge. I have a house of my own in the country--such a
pretty place, with a park, and deer, and a lake, and a boat to row on
it. Wouldn't you like to see it?"
"Yes." said Arthur, all eyes and ears.
"I live there, but I am always coming over to Avonsbridge. Do what I
will, I can not keep away."
The tone, the glance across the child, were unmistakable. Christian
rose, her momentary stupefaction gone.
"Come, Arthur, papa will be waiting dinner. We never keep papa waiting,
you know."
Simple as the words were, they expressed volumes.
For an instant her composed matronly grace--her perfect indifference,
silenced, nay, almost awed the young man, and then irritated him into
resistance. He caught hold of Arthur in passing.
"You need not go yet. It is only just five, and your papa does not dine
till six."
"How do you know?" asked the child.
"Oh. I know every thing. I watch you in and out of the Lodge, and am
aware of all you do. But about the boat I promised you. It is at my
place, Lake Hall, near--"
"Arthur. we must go."
Arthur jumped up at once. Gentle as it was, he had learned that that
voice must never be disobeyed.
"I can't stay, sir; mother calls me. But I'll tell papa we met you, and
ask him to let me come and see you, if you will tell me your name."
Sir Edwin hesitated.
"There is no necessity," said Mrs. Grey. "Arthur, I know this gentleman.
I myself shall tell your papa that we have met him here. Good-morning,
Sir Edwin Uniacke."
She bowed with that perfect, repellant courtesy against which there
is no appeal, and passed on; had she seen--she did not, for she looked
straight on and saw nothing--but had she seen the look of mingled hate
and love which darkened over Sir Edwin's face, it might have terrified
her. But no, she was too courageous a woman to fear anything save doing
wrong.
After a minute's angry beating of his boot with his stick, the young
man rose and followed them down the avenue, contriving, by dint of
occasional conversation with Arthur, to keep along side of them the
whole way as far as the bridge which connected the college grounds with
the college buildings, and which was overlooked by the whole frontage of
the Lodge.
With a vague sense of relief and protection, Christian glanced to the
windows of her home, and there, at the open nursery casement, she saw a
group, Phillis, Oliver, Letitia, and behind Letitia another person--Miss
Susan Bennett, who had come with a message from old Mrs. Ferguson, and
whom, in her kindness, Mrs. Grey had sent to have a cup of tea in the
nursery before returning to the village, where the girl said she was
"quite comfortable." There she stood, she and Phillis, watching, as they
doubtless had watched the whole interview, from the time Sir Edwin sat
down, on the bench till his parting shake of the hand to Arthur, and
farewell bow to herself, which bow was rather easy and familiar than
distantly ceremonious.
Had he done it on purpose? Had he too seen the group at the window, and,
moved by a contemptible vanity, or worse, behaved so that these others
ought notice his manner to Mrs. Grey, and put upon it any construction
they pleased?
Yet what possible construction could be put upon it, even by the most
ill-natured and malicious witnesses? The college grounds were free
to all; this meeting was evidently accidental and all that had passed
thereat was a few words with the boy, which Arthur would be sure to
repent at once; nor did Christian desire to prevent him.
It was a hard position. She had done no wrong--not the shadow of
wrong--and yet here was she, Christian Grey, discovered meeting and
walking with a man whom her husband had distinctly forbidden the
house--discovered both by her servant, who, having an old servant's love
of prying into family affairs, no doubt knew of this prohibition, and
by Miss Bennett, to whom she herself had said that Sir Edwin was a man
unfit for any respectable woman's acquaintance.
"What would they both think? And, moreover, when she heard of it--as
assuredly she would--what would Miss Gascoigne think and say?"
That overpowering dread, "What will people say?" for the first time
in her life began to creep over Christian's fearless heart. Such an
innocent heart it was, and oh, such a contented one only half an hour
ago.
"How dare he?" she said, fiercely, as she found herself alone in her own
room, with but just time enough to dress and take her place as the fair,
stately, high-thoughted, pure-hearted mistress of her husband's table.
"How dare he?" and, standing at the glass, she looked almost with
disgust into the beautiful face that burnt, hotly still only at the
remembrance of the last ten minutes. "But he must see--he must surely
understand how utterly I despise him. He will not presume again. Oh, if
I had only told my husband! It was a terrible mistake?"
What was--her secret or her marriage? or both?
Christian did not stop to think. Whatever it was, she knew that, like
most of the mistakes and miseries of this world, it was made to be
remedied--made possible of remedy. At all events, the pain must be
endured, fought through, struggled with, any thing but succumbed to.
In the five minutes that, after all, she found she had to wait in the
drawing-room before the aunts or her husband appeared. Christian took
herself seriously to task for this overwhelming, cowardly fear. What had
she really to dread? What harm could he do her--the bad man of whom she
had so ignorantly made a girl's ideal? The only testimony thereof was
her letters, if he still had them in his possession--her poor, innocent,
girlish letters--very few--just two or three. Foolish they might have
been, sentimental and ridiculous, but she could not remember any thing
wrong in them--any thing that a girl in her teens need blush to have
written, either to friend or lover, save for the one fact that, a girl
is wiser to have no friend at all among men--except her lover. And,
whatever they were, most likely he had destroyed them long ago.
"No, no," she thought, "he can not do me any harm; he dare not!"
It was difficult to say what Sir Edwin Uniacke would not dare; for,
going back to her room for some trifle forgotten, she discovered that
he was still lounging, cigar in mouth, up and down the river-side avenue
opposite, where he could plainly see and be seen from almost every
window in the Lodge.
And there, hurrying to meet him, she saw Susan Bennett. But the meeting
appeared not satisfactory, and after a few minutes the girl had left him
and he was again seen walking up and down alone.
A vain woman might have been flattered, perhaps allured, by this
persistence. In Christian it produced only repulsion, actual hatred, if
so gentle a spirit could hate. An honest love from the very humblest man
alive, she would have been tender over; but this, which to her, a wife,
was necessarily utter insult and wickedness, awoke in her nothing but
abhorrence--the same sort of righteous abhorrence that she would have
felt--she knew she would--toward any woman who had tried to win her
husband from herself. Win her husband? The fancy almost made her smile,
and then filled her with a brimming sense of joy that he was--what he
was, a man to whom the bare idea of loving any woman but his own wife
was so impossible that it became actually ludicrous.
She smiled, she even laughed, with an ever-growing sense of all he was
to her and she to him, when she heard him open his study-door and call
"Christian."
She went quickly, to explain in a word or two, before they went down to
dinner, her rencontre with Sir Edwin Uniacke. Afterward, in their long,
quiet evenings, to which she so looked forward, she would tell her
husband the whole story, and give herself the comfort of feeling that
now at last he was fully acquainted with her whole outer life and inmost
soul, as a husband ought to be.
But there stood the two aunts, one stately and grim, the other silent
and tearful; and it took all Dr. Grey's winning ways to smooth matters
so as to make their last meal together before the separation any thing
like a peaceful one.
He seemed so anxious for this--nervously anxious--that his wife forgot
every thing in helping him to put a cheerful face on every thing. And
when she watched him, finding a pleasant word for every one, and
patient even with Miss Gascoigne, who today seemed in her sharpest
mood, gray-haired, quaint, and bookish-looking as he was, it appeared to
Christian that not a young man living could bear a moment's comparison
with Dr. Arnold Grey.
He tried his best, and she tried her best but it was rather a dull
dinner, and she found no opportunity to say, as at last she had decided
to say publicly, just as a piece of news, no more, that she had today
met Sir Edwin Uniacke. And so it befell that the first who told the fact
was Arthur, blurting out between his strawberries, "Oh, papa I want you
to let me go to a place called Lake Hall."
"Lake Hall?"
"Yes; the owner of it invited me there; he did, indeed. He is the
kindest, pleasantest gentleman I ever met. A 'Sir,' too. His name is Sir
Edwin Uniacke."
"My boy, where did you meet Sir Edwin Uniacke?"
So the whole story came out. Dr. Grey listened in grave silence--even
a little displeasure, or something less like displeasure than pain. At
length, he said,
"I think you must have made some mistake, Arthur. Your mother could
never have allowed--"
"She did not say she would allow me to go. She looked rather vexed; I
don't think she liked Sir Edwin Uniacke. And if she is very much against
my going--well, I won't go," said Arthur, heroically.
"You are a good boy; but I think this gentleman ought to have hesitated
a little before he thus intruded himself upon my wife and my son."
"I think so, too," said Christian, the first words she had spoken.
Dr. Grey glanced at her sharply, but the most suspicious husband could
have read nothing in her face beyond what she said.
"And I think," burst in Miss Gascoigne, who had listened to it all,
her large eyes growing every minute larger and larger, "that it must
be somehow a lady's own fault when a gentleman is intrusive, I never
believed--I never could have believed--after all Dr. Grey has said about
Sir Edwin, that the three figures--a lady, and gentleman, and a child,
whom I saw this afternoon sitting so comfortably together on the
bench--as comfortably, I vow and declare, as if they had been sitting
there an hour, which perhaps they had--"
"Not more than two minutes," interrupted Christian, speaking very
quietly, but conscious of a wild desire to fly at Miss Gascoigne and
shake her as she stood, putting forward, in her customary way, those
mangled fragments of truth which are more irritating than absolute lies.
"Indeed, it was only two minutes. I did not choose, even if I had no
other reason, that a man of whom Dr. Grey did not approve should hold
any communication with Arthur?"
"Thank you, that was right," said Dr. Greg.
"Yet you let him walk with you--I know you did, up to the very Lodge
door."
"To the bridge, Miss Gascoigne."
"Well, it's all the same. And I must confess it is most extraordinary
conduct. To refuse a gentleman's visits--his open visits here--on the
pretext that he is not good enough for your society, and then to meet
him, sit with him, walk with him in the college grounds. What will
people say."
Christian turned like a hunted creature at bay, "I do not care--not a
jot, what people say."
"I thought not. People like you never do care. They fly in the face of
society; they--"
"Husband!" with a sort of wild appeal, the first she had ever made for
protection--for at least justice.
Dr. Grey looked up, started out of a long fit of thoughtfulness--sadness
it might be, during which he had let the conversation pass him by.
"The only thing I care for is what my husband thinks. If he blames me--"
"For what, my dear?"
"Because, when I was walking in the college grounds, as any lady may
walk, that man, Sir Edwin Uniacke, whose acquaintance I desire as little
as you do, came up and spoke to me, or rather to Arthur. I could not
help it, could I?"
"No, my child," with a slight emphasis on the words "my child," that
went to Christian's heart. Yes, surely, if she had only had courage to
tell him, in his large tenderness he could have understood that childish
folly, the dream of a day, and the long misery it had brought her. She
would tell him all the very first opportunity; however much it pained
and humiliated her, she would tell her good husband all.
"And, papa, have I been naughty too?" said Arthur? "I am sure I did not
see any thing so very dreadful in Sir Edwin. He came up and spoke to
mother as if he knew her quite well, and then he talked ever so much to
me, and said if I would visit him he would give me a boat to row, and
a horse to ride. And I'm sure he seemed the very kindest, pleasantest
gentleman."
"So he is; and nothing shall ever make me believe he isn't." cried Miss
Gascoigne, always delighted to pull against the tide. "And I must say,
Dr. Grey, the way you and your wife set up your opinion against that
of really good society is perfect nonsense. For my part, when I have a
house of my own once more, and can invite whomsoever I please--"
"I would nevertheless advise, so far as a brother may," interrupted Dr.
Grey, very seriously, "that you do not invite Sir Edwin Uniacke. And
now, aunts both," with that sun-shiny smile which could disperse
almost any domestic cloud, "as this conversation is not particularly
interesting to the children, suppose we end it. When do you intend to
have us all to tea at Avonside?"