_"Forgive us each his daily sins,
If few or many, great or small;
And those that sin against us, Lord,
Good Lord! Forgive them all._
_"Judge us not as we others judge;
Condemn us not as we condemn;
They who are merciless to us,
Be merciful to them._
_"And if the cruel storm should pass,
And let Thy heaven of peace appear,
Make not our right the right--or might,
But make the right shine clear."_
"Well, the least I can say of it is that it is very extraordinary!"
"What is extraordinary?" asked Miss Grey, looking up placidly from
her knitting, which did not get on very fast now. For Aunt Maria was
exceedingly busy and exceedingly happy. If ever her brother or his wife
had the least qualms of conscience about her removal from the Lodge to
Avonside, they would have been dispelled by the sight of the dear little
fat woman trotting about, the picture of content, full of housekeeping
plans, and schemes for her poultry-yard, her pigeon-house, and her
green-house. As for her garden, it was a source of perpetual pride,
wonder, and delight. The three years which she had spent at the
Lodge--which, in her secret heart, she owned were rather dull and trying
years--were ended.
She herself, and, indeed, the whole establishment, resumed again exactly
the place they had filled in the lifetime of the first Mrs. Grey.
Avonside became once more a regular aunts' house--devoted to children,
who now, at the distance of a mile and a half, thought nothing so
delightful as to spend long days there, and be petted by Aunt Maria.
The sudden revolution had succeeded--as honest revolutions usually do.
when any one has the courage to attempt them--to break through a false
domestic position, and supply it with a true one. Even Miss Gascoigne
was the happier for it; less worried in her mind, having no feeling of
domestic responsibility, and being no longer haunted by the children.
The poor little souls! she could get on well enough with them for an
hour or two at Avonside, but they had been a sore affliction to her at
the Lodge. Any woman who can not wholly set aside self is sure to be
tormented by, and be a still worse torment to, children.
No; much as she pitied herself, and condoled with Aunt Maria every hour
in the day, Aunt Henrietta was a great deal better in every way since
she came to Avonside--less cross, less ill-natured; even her perpetual
mill-stream of talk flowed on without such violent outbreaks of wrath
against the whole as had embittered the atmosphere of the Lodge. Now,
though her answer was sharp, it was not so sharp as it might have
been--would certainly have been--a few weeks before.
"Maria, I don't think you ever do listen to me when I'm talking. I am
afraid all I say goes in at one ear and out at the other," which was
not impossible, perhaps not unfortunate otherwise, since Miss Gascoigne
talked pretty nearly all day long, Miss Grey's whole life might have
been spent in listening. She replied, with a meek smile, "Oh no, dear
Henrietta!"
"Then you surely would have made some observation on what I have been
telling you--this very extraordinary thing which Miss Smiles told me
last night at the Lodge, while Mrs. Grey was singing--as I forewarned
you, Mrs. Grey sings every where now--and her husband lets her do
it--likes it, too--he actually told me it was a pleasure to him that his
wife should make herself agreeable to other people. They mean to give
tea-parties once a week to the undergraduates at Saint Bede's, because
she says the master ought to be like a father over them, invite them and
make his house pleasant to them. Such a thing was never heard of in our
days."
"No; but I dare say dear Arnold knows best. And what about Miss Smiles?"
"I've told you twenty times already, Maria, how Miss Smiles said that
Mrs. Brereton said--you know Mrs. Brereton, who has so many children,
and never can keep a governess long--that her new governess, who
happens to be Miss Susan Bennett, whom, you may remember, I once got
for Letitia--told her a long story about Mrs. Grey and Sir Edwin
Uniacke--how he was an old acquaintance of hers before she was married."
"Of Christian's? She never said so. Oh no! it can't be, or she would
have said so."
"Don't be too sure of that," said Aunt Henrietta, mysteriously.
"Besides, she dislikes him. You know, Henrietta, that when he called
here last week, and she happened to be with us, she put on her bonnet
and went home immediately, without seeing him!"
"And a very rude thing, too, on her part. Any visitors whom I choose to
invite to my house--"
"But he invited himself."
"No matter, he came, and I certainly had no reason to turn him out. I
consider Dr. Grey's objections to him perfectly ridiculous. Why, one
meets the young man every where, in the very best society, and his
manners are charming. But that is not the question. The question is just
this: Was he, or was he not, an acquaintance of Mrs. Grey's before her
marriage? and if he were, why did she not say so?"
"Perhaps she did."
"Not to me; when he called at the Lodge and I introduced them, they
bowed as if they were just ordinary strangers. Now that was a rather odd
thing, and a very disrespectful thing to myself, not to tell me they had
met before, I certainly have a right to be displeased. Don't you feel it
so, Maria?"
Whether she did or not, Maria only answered with her usual deprecatory
smile.
"There is another curious circumstance, now I recall it. Sir Edwin
showed great surprise, which, indeed, I could scarcely wonder at, when I
told him--(I forget how it happened, but I know I was somehow obliged
to tell him)--who it was your brother had married--Miss Oakley, the
organist's daughter."
"Don't you think," said Aunt Maria, with a sudden sparkle of
intelligence, "it might have been her father he was acquainted with? Sir
Edwin is so very musical himself that it is not unlikely he should seek
the company of musicians. As for Christian "--simple as she was, Aunt
Maria had not lived fifty years in the world, and twenty with Miss
Gascoigne, without some small acuteness--"I can see, of course, how very
bad it would have been for poor Christian to have any acquaintance among
young gownsmen, and especially with a person like Sir Edwin Uniacke."
"He is no worse than his neighbors, and I beg you will make no remarks
upon him," said Miss Gascoigne, with dignity. "As to Mrs. Grey--"
"Perhaps," again suggested Aunt Maria, appealingly, "perhaps it isn't
true. People do say such untrue things. Mrs. Brereton may have imagined
it all."
"It was no imagination. Haven't I told you that Miss Bennett gave the
whole story, with full particulars, exactly as she had learned it lately
from the servant at the farm where Mr. Oakley and his daughter once
lodged and where Mr. Uniacke used to come regularly? Not one day did he
miss during a whole month. Now, Maria, I should be sorry to think ill of
her for your brother's sake but you must allow, when a young person in
her station receives constant visits from young gentlemen--gentlemen so
much above her as Sir Edwin is--it looks very like--"
"Oh, Henrietta," cried Miss Grey, the womanly feeling within her forcing
its way, even through her placid non-resistance, "do stop! you surely
don't consider what you are saying?"
"I am not in the habit of speaking without consideration, and I am, I
assure you, perfectly aware of what I am saying. I say again, that such
conduct was not creditable to Miss Oakley. Of course, one could not
expect from a person like her the same decorum that was natural to you
and me in our girlhood. I do not believe you and William ever so much as
looked at one another before you were engaged."
A faint light, half tearful, half tender, gleamed in those poor, faded
blue eyes. "Never mind that now Henrietta. Consider Christian. It will
be a terrible thing if any ill-natured stories go about concerning poor
dear Christian."
"It will, and therefore I am determined, for your brother's sake, to
sift the story to the very bottom. In fact, I think--to end all doubt--I
shall put the direct question myself to Sir Edwin Uniacke."
Speak of the--But it would not be fair to quote the familiar proverb
against the young man who appeared that instant standing at the
wicket-gate.
"Well, I never knew such a coincidence," cried Miss Grey.
"Such a providence rather," cried Miss Gascoigne. And perhaps, in her
strange obliquity of vision, or, rather, in that sad preponderance of
self which darkened all her vision, like a moral cataract in the eye
of her soul, this woman did actually think Providence was leading her
toward a solemn duty in the investigating of the past history of the
forlorn girl whom Dr. Grey had taken as his wife.
"Speak of an angel and you see his wings," said she, with exceeding
politeness. "We were just talking about you, Sir Edwin."
"Thank you; and for your charming parody on the old proverb likewise, I
hope I am not the angel of darkness anyhow."
He did not look it--this graceful, handsome young man, gifted with that
peculiar sort of beauty which you see in Goethe's face, in Byron's,
indicating what may be called the Greek temperament--the nature of the
old Attic race--sensuous, not sensual; pleasure-loving, passionate,
and changeable; not intentionally vicious, but reveling in a sort of
glorious enjoyment, intellectual and corporeal, to which every thing
else is sacrificed--in short, the heathen as opposed to the Christian
type of manhood--a type, the fascination of which lasts as long as the
body lasts, and the intellect; when these both fail, and there is left
to the man only that something which we call the soul, the immortal
essence, one with Divinity, and satisfied with nothing less than the
divine--alas for him!
A keen observer, who had lived twenty years longer in the world than he,
might, regarding him in all his beauty and youth, feel a sentiment not
unlike compassion for Edwin Uniacke.
He sat down, making himself quite at home, though this was only his
second visit to Avonside Cottage. But Miss Gascoigne, if only from
love of opposition, had made it pretty clear to him that he was welcome
there, and that she liked him. He enjoyed being liked, and had the easy
confidence of one who is well used to it.
"Yes, I am ready to avouch, this is the prettiest little paradise within
miles of Avonsbridge. No wonder you should have plenty of visitors, I
met a tribe coming here--your sister-in-law (charming person is Mrs.
Grey!) your nephews and niece, and that gipsy-looking, rather handsome
nurse, who is a little like the head of Clytie, only for her sullen,
underlying mouth and projecting chin."
"How you notice faces, Sir Edwin!"
"Of course. I am a little bit of an artist."
"And a great piece of a musician, as I understand. Which reminds me,"
added Miss Gascoigne, eager to plunge into her mission, which, in her
strange delusion, she earnestly believed was a worthy and righteous
one, in which she had embarked for the family benefit--"I wanted to ask
whether you did not know Mrs. Grey's father, the organist? And herself
too, when she was Miss Oakley?"
"Every body knew Mr. Oakley," was the evasive answer. "He was a
remarkable man--quite a genius, with all the faults of a genius. He
drank, he ate opium, he--"
"Nay, he is dead," faintly said Aunt Maria.
"Which, you mean, is a good reason why I should speak no more about him.
I obey you, Miss Grey."
"But his daughter? Did you say you knew his daughter?" pursued Miss
Gascoigne.
"Oh yes, casually. A charming girl she was! very pretty, though
immature. Those large, fair women sometimes do not look their best
until near thirty. And she had a glorious voice. She and I used to sing
duets-together continually."
He might not have thought what he was doing--it is but charity to
suppose so; that he spoke only after his usual careless and somewhat
presumptuous style of speaking about all women, but he must have been
struck by the horrified expression of Miss Gascoigne's face.
"Sing duets together! a young man in your position, and a young woman in
hers! Without a mother, too!"
"Oh, her father was generally present, if you think of propriety. But
I do assure you, Miss Gascoigne, there was not the slightest want of
propriety. She was a very pretty girl, and I was a young fellow, rather
soft, perhaps, and so we had a--well, you might call it a trifling
flirtation. But nothing of any consequence--nothing. I do assure you."
"Of course it was of no consequence," said Aunt Maria, again breaking
in with a desperate courage. And still more desperate were the nods and
winks with which she at last aroused even Aunt Henrietta to a sense of
the position into which the conversation was bringing them both, so that
she, too, had the good feeling to add,
"Certainly it is not of the slightest consequence. Dr. Grey is probably
aware of it all?"
"Which may be the reason I am never invited to the Lodge," laughed the
young man, so pleasantly that one would hardly have paused to consider
what he laughed at or what it implied. "By-the-by, I hear they had such
a pleasant gathering there last night--a musical evening, where every
body sang a great deal, and Mrs. Grey only once, but then, of course,
divinely. I should like to hear her again. But look, there are the
children. Shall I take the liberty of unfastening for them the latch of
your garden gate?"
He sprang out of the low window, and came back heading the small
battalion of visitors--Phillis, Arthur, Letitia, and Oliver. But Mrs.
Grey was not there. She had come half way, and returned home alone.
"Well, I must say that is very odd, considering I invited her to spend
the day, and, I think, rather disrespectful of me--to us both, Maria."
"She might have been tired after the party last night," put in Aunt
Maria.
"No, she wasn't tired, for she never told me so." said Arthur. "She
told me to say--not you, Phillis, mother always trusts me with her
messages--that she had gone back on account of papa's wanting her,
and that if he came to fetch us, she would come here with him in the
evening."
"Very devoted! 'An old man's darling and a young man's slave,' runs the
proverb; but Mrs. Grey seems to reverse it. She will soon never stir out
an inch without your brother, Maria."
"And I am sure my brother never looks so happy as when she is beside
him," said Aunt Maria. "We shall quite enjoy seeing them both together
to-night."
"And I only wish it had been my good fortune to join such a pleasant
family party," observed Sir Edwin Uniacke.
It was rather too broad a hint, presuming even upon Miss Gascoigne's
large courtesy. In dignified silence she passed it over, sending the
children and Phillis away to their early dinner, and after an interval
of that lively conversation, in which, under no circumstances, did Sir
Edwin ever fail, allowing him also to depart.
As he went down the garden, Miss Grey, with great dismay, watched him
stop at her beautiful jessamine bower, pull half a dozen of the white
stars, smell at them, and throw them away. He would have done the
same--perhaps had done it--with far diviner things than jessamine
flowers.
"Yes," said Miss Gascoigne, looking after him, and then sitting down
opposite Miss Grey, spreading out her wide silk skirts, and preparing
herself solemnly for a wordy war--that is, if it could be called a war
which was all on one side--"yes, I have come to the bottom of it all.
I knew I should. Nothing ever escapes me. And pray, Maria, what do you
think of her now."
"Think of whom?"
"You are so dull when you won't hear. Of your sister-in-law, Christian
Grey."
Poor Aunt Maria looked up with a helpless pretense of ignorance. "What
about her. Henrietta, dear?"
"Pshaw! You know as well as I do, only you are so obtuse, or so meek,"
(A mercy she was, or she would never have lived a week, not to say
twenty years, with Henrietta Gascoigne.) "Once for all, tell me what you
propose doing?"
"Doing? I?"
"Yes, you. Can't you see, my dear Maria, that it is your business to
inform your brother what you have discovered concerning his wife?"
"Discovered?"
"Certainly; it is a discovery, since she has never told it--never
told her husband that before her marriage she had been in the habit of
singing duets (love-songs, no doubt, most improper for any young woman)
with a young gentleman of Sir Edwin's birth and position, who, of
course, never thought of marrying her--(your brother, I do believe, is
the only man in Avonsbridge who would have so committed himself)--and
who, by the light way he speaks of her, evidently shows how little
respect he had for her."
"Perhaps," mildly suggested Aunt Maria, "perhaps she really has told
dear Arnold."
"Then why did he not tell us--tell me? Why did he place me in the very
awkward position of not knowing of this previous acquaintance of his
wife's? Why, in that very unpleasant conversation we had one day at the
Lodge, was I the only person to be kept in ignorance of his reasons--and
very good reasons I now see they were--for forbidding Sir Edwin's
visits? Singing duets together! Who knows but that they may meet and
sing them still? That new piano! and we turned out of the house directly
afterward--literally turned out! But perhaps that was the very reason
she did it--that she might meet him the more freely. Oh, Maria! your
poor deluded brother!"
It is strange the way some women have--men too, but especially women--of
rolling and rolling their small snowball of wrath until it grows to
an actual mountain, which has had dragged into it all sorts of
heterogeneous wrongs, and has grown harder and blacker day by day, till
no sun of loving-kindness will ever thaw it more. In vain did poor Maria
ejaculate her pathetic "Oh, Henrietta!" and try, in her feeble way, to
put in a kindly word or two; nothing availed. Miss Gascoigne had lashed
herself up into believing firmly every thing she had imagined and it was
with an honest expression of real grief and pain that she repeated over
and over again, "What ought we to do? Your poor, dear brother!"
For, with all her faults, Miss Gascoigne was a conscientious woman; one
who, so far as she saw her duty, tried to fulfill it, and as strongly,
perhaps a little more so, insisted on other people's fulfilling theirs.
She stood aghast at the picture, her own self-painted picture, of the
kind brother-in-law, of whom in her heart she was really fond, married
to a false, wicked woman, more than twenty years his junior, who mocked
at his age and peculiarities, and flirted behind his back with any body
and every body. To do Aunt Henrietta justice, however, of more than
flirtation she did not suspect--no person with common sense and ordinary
observation could suspect--Christian Grey.
"I must speak to her myself, poor thing! I must open her eyes to the
danger she is running. Only consider, Maria, if that story did go about
Avonsbridge, she would never be thought well of in society again. I must
speak to her. If she will only confide in me implicitly, so that I
can take her part, and assure every body I meet that, however bad
appearances may be as regards this unlucky story, there is really
no-thing in it--nothing at all--don't you see, Maria?"
Alas! Maria had been so long accustomed to look at every thing through
the vision of dear Henrietta, that she had no clear sight of her own
whatever. She only found courage to say, in a feeble way,
"Take care, oh, do take care! I know you are much cleverer than I am,
and can manage things far better; but oh please take care?"
And when, some hours after, Dr. and Mrs. Grey not appearing, she was
called into Miss Gascoigne's room, where that lady stood tying her
bonnet-strings with a determined air, and expressing her intention of
going at once to the Lodge, however inconvenient, still, all that Aunt
Maria ventured to plead was that melancholy warning, generally unheeded
by those who delight in playing with hot coals and edged tools, as Aunt
Henrietta had done all her life, "Take care!"
In her walk to the Lodge, through the still, sweet autumn evening, with
a fairy-like wreath of mist rising up above the low-lying meadows of
the Avon, and climbing slowly up to the college towers, and the
far-off sunset clouds, whose beauty she never noticed, Miss Gascoigne
condescended to some passing conversation with Phillis, and elicited
from her, without betraying any thing, as she thought, a good
deal--namely, that Sir Edwin Uniacke was often seen walking up and
down the avenue facing the Lodge, and that once or twice he had met and
spoken to the children.
"But Mrs. Grey doesn't like it, I think she wants to drop his
acquaintance," said the sharp Phillis, who was gaining quite as much
information as she bestowed.
"Why, did they ever--did she ever"--and then some lingering spark of
womanly feeling, womanly prudence, made Miss Gascoigne hesitate, and
add with dignity. "Yes, very likely Mrs. Grey may not choose his
acquaintance. He is not approved of by every body."
"I know that." said Phillis, meaningly.
The two women, the lady and the servant, exchanged looks. Both were
acute persons, and the judgment either passed on the other was keen and
accurate. Probably neither judged herself, or recognized the true root
of her judgment upon the third person, unfortunate Christian. "She has
interfered with my management, and stolen the hearts of my children;"
"she has annoyed me and resisted my authority?" would never have been
given by either nurse or aunt as a reason for either their feelings or
their actions; yet so it was.
Nevertheless, when in the hall of the Lodge they came suddenly face to
face with Mrs. Grey, entering, hat in hand, from the door of the private
garden, the only place where she ever walked alone now, they both
started as if they had been detected in something wrong. She looked so
quiet and gentle, grave and sweet, modest as a girl and dignified as
a young matron--so perfectly unconscious of all that was being said
or planned against her, that if these two malicious women had a
conscience--and they had, both of them--they must have felt it smite
them now.
"Miss Gascoigne, how kind of you to walk home with the children! Papa
and I would have come, but he was obliged to dine in Hall. He will soon
be free now, and will walk back with you. Pray come in and rest; you
look tired."
Mrs. Grey's words and manner, so perfectly guileless and natural, for
the moment quite confounded her enemy--her enemy, and yet an honest
enemy. Of the number of cruel things that are done in this world, how
many are done absolutely for conscience sake by people who
deceive themselves that they are acting from the noblest, purest
motives--carrying out all the Christian virtues, in short, only they do
so, not in themselves, but against other people. And from their list
of commandments they obliterate one--"Judge not, that ye be not judged
condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned."
But, for the time being, Miss Gascoigne was puzzled. Her stern reproof,
her patronizing pity, were alike disarmed. Her mountain seemed crumbling
to its original mole-hill. The heap of accusing evidence which she had
accumulated dwindled into the most ordinary and commonplace facts at
sight of Christian's innocent face and placid mien. Nothing could be
more unlike a woman who had ever contemplated the ordinary "flirting"
of society. As for any thing worse, the idea was impossible to be
entertained for a moment. It was simply ridiculous.
Aunt Henrietta sat a good while talking, quite mildly for her, of
ordinary topics, before she attempted to broach the real object of her
visit. It was only as the hour neared for Dr. Grey's coming in that she
nerved herself to her mission. She had an uneasy sense that it would be
carried out better in his absence than in his presence.
Without glancing often at Christian, who sat so peaceful, looking out
into the fading twilight, she launched her thunderbolt at once.
"We had a visit today from Sir Edwin Uniacke."
"So I supposed, since I and the children met him on the way to
Avonside."
In this world, so full of shams, bow utterly bewildering sometimes is
the direct innocent truth! At this answer of Christian's Miss Gascoigne
looked more amazed than if she had been told a dozen lies.
"Was that the reason you turned back and went home?"
"Partly; I really had forgotten something which Dr. Grey wanted, but I
also wished to avoid meeting your visitor."
"Why so?"
"Surely you must guess. How can I voluntarily meet any one who is not a
friend of my husband's?"
"Not though he may have been a friend of your own? For, as I understand,
you once had a very close acquaintance with Sir Edwin Uniacke."
The thrust was so unexpected, unmistakable in its meaning, that
Christian, in her startled surprise, said the very worst thing she could
have said to the malicious ears which were held open to every thing and
eager to misconstrue every thing, "Who told you that?"
"Told me! Why all Avonsbridge is talking about it, and about you."
This was a lie--a little white lie; one of those small exaggerations of
which people make no account; but Christian believed it, and it seemed
to wrap her round as with a cold mist of fear. All Avonsbridge talking
of her--her, Dr. Grey's wife, who had his honor as well as her own in
her keeping--talking about herself and Sir Edwin Uniacke! What? how
much? how had the tale come about? how could it be met?
With a sudden instinct of self-preservation, she forcibly summoned back
her composure. She knew with whom she had to deal. She must guard every
look, every word.
"Will you tell me. Miss Gascoigne, exactly who is talking about me, and
what they say? I am sure I have never given occasion for it."
"Never? Are you quite certain of that?"
"Quite certain. Who said I had 'a very close acquaintance'--were not
these your words--with Sir Edwin Uniacke?"
"Himself."
"Himself!"
Then Christian recognized the whole amount of her difficulty--nay, her
danger; for she was in the power, not of a gentleman, but of a villain.
Any man must have been such who, under the circumstances, could have
boasted of their former acquaintance, or even referred to it at all.
"Kiss and tell?" runs the disdainful proverb. And even the worldliest of
men, in their low code of honor, count the thing base and ignoble. Alas!
all women do not.
In the strangely mistaken code of feminine "honorable-ness," it is
deemed no disgrace for a woman to chatter and boast of a man's love, but
the utmost disgrace for her to own or feel on her side any love at all.
But Christian was unlike her sex in some things. To her, with her creed
of love, it would have appeared far less mean, less cowardly, less
dishonorable, openly to confess, "I loved this man," than to betray
"This man loved me." And it was with almost contemptuous indignation
that she repeated, "What! he told it himself?"
"He did. I first heard it through Miss Bennett, your _protégée,_ who
has come back, and is now a governess at Mrs. Brereton's. But when I
questioned Sir Edwin himself, he did not deny it."
"You questioned him?"
"Certainly. I felt it to be my duty. He says that he knew you in your
father's lifetime; that he was intimate with you both: that you and he
used to sing duets together; in short, that--"
"Go on. I wish to hear it all."
"That is all. And I am sure, Mrs. Grey, it is enough."
"It is enough. And he has been saying this, and you have been listening
to it, perhaps repeating it to all Avonsbridge. What a wicked woman you
must be!"
The words were said, not fiercely or resentfully, but in a sort of
meditative, passive despair. A sense of the wickedness, the cruelty
there was in the world, the hopelessness of struggling against it, of
disentangling fact from falsehood, of silencing malice and disarming
envy, came upon Christian in a fit of bitterness uncontrollable. She
felt as if she could cry out, like David, "The waters have overwhelmed
me, the deep waters have gone over my soul."
Even if she were not blameless--who is blameless in this mortal
Life?--even if she had made a mistake--a great mistake--her punishment
was sharp. Just now, when happiness was dawning upon her, when the
remorse for her hasty marriage and lack of love toward her husband had
died away, when her heart was beginning to leap at the sound of his
step, and her whole soul to sun itself in the tender light of his loving
eyes, it was very, very hard!
"Well, Mrs. Grey, and what have you to say for yourself?"
Christian looked up instinctively--lifted her passive hands, and folded
them on her lap, but answered nothing.
"You must see," continued Miss Gascoigne, "what an exceedingly
unpleasant story it is, and how necessary it was for me to speak
about it. Such a matter easily might become the whole town's talk.
An acquaintance before your marriage, which you kept so scrupulously
concealed that your nearest connections--I myself even--had not the
slightest idea of it. You must perceive, Mrs. Grey, what conclusions
people will draw--indeed, can not help drawing. Not that I believe--I
assure you I don't--one word against you. Only confide in me, and I will
make the matter clear to all Avonsbridge. You hear me?"
"Yes"
"And now, my dear"--the energy of her protection making Aunt Henrietta
actually affectionate--"do speak out. Tell me all you have to say for
yourself."
"Nothing."
"Nothing? What do you mean?"
It may seem an odd thing to assert, and a more difficult thing still to
prove, but Miss Gascoigne was not at heart a bad woman. She had a
fierce temper and an enormous egotism, yet these two qualities, in the
strangely composite characters that one meets with in life, are not
incompatible with many good qualities.
Pain, most sincere and undisguised, not unmingled with actual pity,
was visible in Miss Gascoigne's countenance as she looked on the young
creature before her, to whom her words had caused such violent emotion.
For this emotion her narrow nature--always so ready to look on human
nature in its worst side, and to suspect wherever suspicion could
alight--found but one interpretation--guilt.
She drew back, terrified at what her interference had done. What if the
story should prove to be, not mere idle gossip, but actual scandal--the
sort of scandal which would cast a slur forever on the whole Grey
family, herself included?
There, above all, the fear struck home. Suppose she had meddled in
a matter which no lady could touch without indecorum, perhaps actual
defilement? Suppose, in answer to her entreaty, Christian should confide
to her something which no lady ought to hear? What a fearful position
for her--Miss Gascoigne--to be placed in! What should she say to Dr.
Grey?
Hard as her heart might be, this thought touched the one soft place in
it. Her voice actually trembled as she said,
"Your poor husband! what would become of him?"
Christian sprang up with a shrill cry. "Yes, yes I know what I will do,
I will go and tell my husband." Miss Gascoigne thought she was mad. And,
indeed, there was something almost frenzied in the way her victim rushed
from the room, like a creature driven desperate by misery.
Aunt Henrietta did not know how to act. To follow Christian was quite
beneath her dignity; to go home, with her mission unfulfilled, her duty
undone, that too was impossible. She determined to wait a few minutes,
and let things take their chance.
Miss Gascoigne was not a bad woman, only an utterly mistaken and
misguided one. She meant no harm--very few people do deliberately mean
harm--they only do it. She had set herself against her brother-in-law's
marriage--not in the abstract, she was scarcely so wicked and foolish
as that; but against his marrying this particular woman, partly because
Christian was only a governess, with somewhat painful antecedents--one
who could neither bring money, rank, nor position to Dr. Grey and his
family, but chiefly because it had wounded her self-love that she, Miss
Gascoigne, had not been consulted, and had had no hand in bringing about
the marriage.
Therefore she had determined to see it, and all concerning it, in the
very worst light to modify nothing, to excuse nothing. She had made up
her mind that things were to be so and so, and so and so they must
of necessity turn out. _Audi alteram partem_ was an idea that never
occurred, never had occurred, in all her life to Henrietta Gascoigne. In
fact, she would never have believed there could be "another side," since
she herself was not able to behold it.
Yet she had not a cruel nature, and the misery she endured during the
few minutes that she sat thinking of the blow that was about to fall
on Dr. Grey and his family, heaping on the picture every exaggerated
imagination of a mind always prone to paint things in violent colors,
was enough to atone for half the wrong she had done.
She started up like a guilty creature when the door opened, and Phillis
entered with a letter in her hand.
"Beg pardon, ma'am, I thought you were Mrs. Grey."
"She is just gone up stairs--will be back directly," said Miss
Gascoigne, anxious to keep up appearances to the last available moment.
"Is that letter for her? Shall I give it to her?"
"No, thank you, I'll give it myself; and it'll be the last that ever
I will give, for it isn't my business," added Phillis, flustered and
indignant, so much so that she dropped the letter on the floor.
By the light of the small taper there was a mutual search for it--why
mutual Miss Gascoigne best knew. It was she who picked it up, and before
she had delivered it back she had clearly seen it all--handwriting, seal
and tinted envelope, with the initials "E. U." on the corner.
Some hidden feeling in both of them, the lady and the servant, some last
remnant of pity and charity, prevented their confiding openly in one
another, even if Miss Gascoigne could have condescended so far. But she
knew as well as if Phillis had told, and Phillis likewise was perfectly
aware she knew, that the note came from Sir Edwin Uniacke.
Poor Aunt Henrietta! She was so horrified--literally horrified, that she
could bear no more. She left no message--waited for nobody--but hurried
back as fast as she could walk, through twilight, to her own cottage at
Avonside.