_"Peace on Earth, and mercy mild,
Sing the angels, reconciled;
Over each sad warfare done,
Each soul-battle lost and won._
_"He that has a victory lost
May discomfit yet a host;
And, it often doth befall,
He who conquers loses all."_
Christian, after sitting waiting in the study for a long hour, received
a message from her husband that he would not be home that night. He had
to take a sudden journey of twenty miles on some urgent affairs. This
was not unusual. Dr. Grey was one of those people whom all their friends
come to in any emergency, and the amount of other people's business,
especially painful business, which he was expected to transact, and did
transact, out of pure benevolence, was incalculable.
So his wife had to wait still. She submitted as to fatality, laid her
head on her pillow, and fell at once into that dull, stupid sleep
which mercifully comes to some people, and always came to her, in heavy
trouble. She did not wake from it till late in the following morning.
A great dread, like a great joy, always lies in ambush, ready to leap
upon us the instant we open our eyes. Had Miss Gascoigne known what a
horrible monster it was, like a tiger at her throat, which sprang upon
Christian when she waked that morning, she, even she, might have felt
remorseful for the pain she had caused. Yet perhaps she would not. In
this weary life of ours,
_"With darkness and the death-hour rounding it,"_
It is strange how many people seem actually to enjoy making other people
miserable.
Christian rose and dressed; for her household ways must go on as usual;
she must take her place at the breakfast-table, and make it cheerful and
pleasant, so that the children might not find out any thing wrong with
mother. She did so, and sent them away to their morning play--happy
little souls! Then she sat down to think for a little, all alone.
Not what to do--that was already decided; but how to do it--how to tell
Dr. Grey in the least painful way that his love had not been the first
love she had received--and given; that she had had this secret, and kept
it from him, though he was her husband, for six whole months.
Oh, had she but told him before her marriage, long, long ago! Now, he
might think she only did it out of fear, dread of public opinion, or
seeking protection from the public scandal that might overtake her,
however innocent. For was she not in the hands of an unscrupulous man
and a malicious woman? It was hopeless to defend herself. Why should
she attempt it? Had she not better let herself be killed--she sometimes
thought she should be killed, to so great a height of morbid dread had
risen her secret agony--and die, quietly, silently, thus escaping out of
the hands of her enemies, who pursued her with this relentless hatred.
Dying might have felt easier to her but for one fact--she loved her
husband--loved him, as she now knew, so passionately, so engrossingly,
that all this misery converged in one single fear--the fear that she
might lose his love. What the world thought of her--what Miss Gascoigne
thought of her, became of little account. All she dreaded was what Dr.
Grey would think. Would he, in his large, tender, compassionate heart,
on hearing her confession, say only "Poor thing! she could not help it;
she was foolish and young," or would he feel she had deceived him, and
cast her off from his trust, his respect, his love for evermore?
In either case she hesitated not for a moment. Love, bought by a
deception, she knew to be absolutely worthless. Knowing now what love
was, she knew this truth also. Had no discovery been made, she knew
that she must have told all to Dr. Grey. She hated, despised herself for
having already suffered day after day to pass by without telling him,
though she had continually intended to do it. All this was a just
punishment for her cowardice; for she saw now, as she had never seen
before, that every husband, every wife, before entering into the solemn
bond of marriage, has a right to be made acquainted with every secret of
the other's heart, every event of the other's life that such confidence,
then and afterward, should know no reservations, save and except trusts
reposed in both before marriage by other people, which marriage itself
is not justified in considering annulled.
But, the final moment being come, when a day--half a day--would decide
it all--decide the whole future of herself and her husband, Christian's
courage seemed to return.
She sat trembling, yet not altogether hopeless; very humble and yet
strong, with the strength that the inward consciousness of deeply
loving--not of being loved, but of loving--always gives to a woman, and
waited till Dr. Grey came home.
When the parlor door opened she rushed forward, thinking it was he,
but it was only Phillis--Phillis, looking insolent, self-important,
contemptuous, as she held out to her mistress a letter.
"There! I've took it in for once, and given it to you, by yourself, as
he bade me, but I'll never take in another. I'm an honest woman, and my
master has been a good master to me."
"Phillis!" cried Mrs. Grey, astonished. But when she saw the letter she
was astonished no more.
The tinted perfumed paper, the large seal, the dainty handwriting, all
were familiar of old.
Fierce indignation, unutterable contempt, and then a writhing sense
of personal shame, as if she were somehow accountable for this insult,
swept by turns over Christian's soul, until she recollected that she
must betray nothing; for more than her own sake--her husband's--she must
not put herself in her servant's power.
So she did not throw the letter in the fire, or stamp upon it, or do
any of the frantic things she was tempted to do; she held it in her hand
like a common note, and said calmly.
"Who brought this? and when did, it come?"
"Last night, only I couldn't find you. It was nigh dropping into Miss
Gascoigne's hands, and a pretty mess that would have been. And I warn
you--you had better mind what you are about--Miss Susan Bennett told me
all about it; and a nice little story it is, too, for a married lady.
And Miss Gascoigne has scented it out, I'll be bound and if Dr. Grey
once gets hold of it--"
"Stop!" said Christian, firmly, though she felt her very lips turning
white. "You are under some extraordinary delusion. There is nothing
to be got hold of. Take this letter to my husband's study--it is his
affair. I have no communications whatever with Sir Edwin Uniacke."
Phillis looked utterly amazed. Though her mistress did not speak another
word, there was something in her manner--her perfect, quiet conviction
of innocence, self-asserted, though without any open self-defense, which
struck the woman more than any amount of anger would have done.
"If I've made a mistake, I'm sure I beg your pardon, ma'am," began she
quite humbly.
"What for? Except for receiving and bringing to me privately a letter
which should have been left with Barker at the door, it being Barker's
business, and not yours. Remember that another time. Now take the letter
to the study, and go."
Phillis hesitated. She looked again and again at that calm, proud,
innocent lady, whom she had so wickedly misjudged and maligned, how far
and how fatally her own conscience alone could tell. And Phillis knew
what innocence was, for, poor woman, she had known what it was not.
Malice also she knew; and judging her mistress by herself, she trembled.
"If you're going to bear spite against me for this, I'd best give
warning at once, Mrs. Grey--only it would nigh break my heart to leave
the children."
"I have no wish for you to leave the children, and I never bear spite
against anybody. Life is not long enough for it," added Mrs. Grey,
sighing. Then, with a sudden impulse, if by any means she could smooth
matters and win a little household peace, "I desire to be a good
mistress to you, Phillis; why should you not be a good servant to me?
You love the children; you are to them a most faithful nurse; why can
not you believe that I shall be a faithful mother? Let us turn over a
new leaf, and begin again."
She held out her hand, and Phillis took it; looked hard in her
mistress's face--the kind, friendly face, that was not ashamed to be a
friend even to a poor servant; then, with something very like a sob, she
turned and ran out of the room.
But when she was gone, Christian sat down exhausted. With a desperate
self-control she had wrenched herself out of Phillis's power, she had
saved herself and her husband from the suspicion that it was possible
Dr. Grey's wife could receive, or give occasion to receive, a secret
letter, a love-letter, from any man; but when the effort was over she
broke down. Convulsive sobs, one after the other, shook her, until she
felt as if her very life were departing. And in the midst of this agony
appeared--Miss Gascoigne.
Aunt Henrietta had spent the whole night, except a brief space for
sleeping, in thinking over and talking over her duties and her wrongs,
the two being mixed up together in inextinguishable confusion. Almost
any subject, after being churned up in such a nature as hers for twelve
mortal hours, would at the end look quite different from what it did at
first, or what it really was. And so, with all honesty of purpose, and
with the firmest conviction that it was the only means of saving her
brother-in-law and his family from irretrievable misery and disgrace,
poor Miss Gascoigne had broken through all her habits, risen, dressed,
and breakfasted at an unearthly hour, and there she stood at the
Lodge door at nine in the morning, determined to "do her duty," as she
expressed it, but looking miserably pale, and vainly restraining her
agitation so as to keep up a good appearance "before the servants."
"That will do, Barker. You need not disturb the master; I came at this
early hour just for a little chat with your mistress and the children."
And then entering the parlor, she sat down opposite to Christian to take
breath.
Miss Gascoigne was really to be pitied. Mere gossip she enjoyed; it was
her native element, and she had plunged into this matter of Sir Edwin
Uniacke with undeniable eagerness. But now, when it might be not gossip,
but disgrace, her terror overpowered her. For disgrace, discredit in the
world's eye, was the only form the matter took to this worldly woman,
who rarely looked on things except on the outside. Guilt, misery, and
their opposites, which alone give strength to battle with them,
were things too deep to be fathomed in the slightest degree by Miss
Gascoigne.
Therefore, as her looks showed, she was not so much shocked as simply
frightened, and had come to the Lodge with a frantic notion of hushing
up the matter somehow, whatever it was. Her principal terror was, not so
much the sin itself, but that the world might hear of it.
"You see, Mrs. Grey, I am come again," said she, very earnestly. "In
spite of every thing, I have come back to advise with you. I am ready
to overlook everything, to try and conceal everything. Maria and I have
been turning over in our minds all sorts of plans to get you away till
this has blown over--call it going to the seaside, to the country with
Arthur--any thing, in short, just that you may leave Avonsbridge."
"I leave Avonsbridge? Why?"
"Yon know why. When you had a lover before your marriage, of whom you
did not tell your husband or his friends--when this gentleman afterward
meets you, writes to you--I saw the letter--"
"You saw the letter!"
There was no hope. She was hunted down, as many an innocent person has
been before now, by a combination of evidence, half truths, half lies,
or truths so twisted that they assume the aspect of lies, and lies so
exceedingly probable that they are by even keen observers mistaken for
truth. Passive and powerless Christian sat. Miss Gascoigne might say
what she would--all Avonsbridge might say what it would--she would never
open her lips more.
At that moment, to preserve her from going mad--(she felt as if she
were--as if the whole world were whirling round, and God had forgotten
her)--Dr. Grey walked in.
"Oh, husband! save me from her--save me--save me!" she shrieked again
and again. And without one thought except that he was there--her one
protector, defender, and stay--she sprang to him, and clung desperately
to his breast.
And so, in this unforeseen and unpremeditated manner, told, how or
in whom, herself or Miss Gascoigne, or both together, Christian never
clearly remembered--her one secret, the one error of her sad girlhood,
was communicated to her husband.
He took the revelation calmly enough, as he did everything; Dr. Grey was
not the man for tragic scenes. The utmost he seemed to think of in this
one was calming and soothing his wife as much as possible, carrying her
to the sofa making her lie down, and leaning over her with a sort of
pitying tenderness, of which the only audible expression was, "Poor
child, poor child!"
Christian tried to see his face, but could not. She sought feebly for
his hand--his warm, firm, protecting hand--and let him take hers in it.
Then she knew that she was safe.
No, he never would forsake her, he had loved her--once and for
always--with the love that has strength to hold its own through every
thing and in spite of every thing. Whatever she was, whatever the world
might think her, she was his wife, and he loved her. She crept into her
husband's bosom, knowing that it was her sure refuge, never to be closed
against her until she died.
The next thing she remembered was his speaking to Miss Gascoigne--not
harshly, or as if in great mental suffering, but in his natural voice.
"And now! Henrietta, just tell me the utmost you have to allege against
my wife. That Sir Edwin was known to her father and herself, of which
acquaintance she never told her husband; that she has accidently met him
since a few times; and that he has been rude enough to address a letter
to her--where is it?"
It was lying on the table, for Phillis, in her precipitate
disappearance, had forgotten it. Dr. Grey put it into his pocket
unopened.
"Well, Aunt Henrietta, is that all? Have you any more to say, any thing
else of which to accuse my wife? Say it all out, only remember one
thing, that you are saying it to a man, and about his wife."
Brief as the words were, they implied volumes--all that Dr. Grey was,
and every honest man should be, toward his wife, whom he has taken
to himself, to cherish and protect, if necessary, against the whole
world--everything for which the bond of marriage was ordained, to be
maintained unannulled by time, or change, or faultiness, perhaps even
actual sin. One has heard of such guardianship--of a husband pitying and
protecting till death a wife who had sinned against him; and if possible
to any man, this would have been possible to one like Arnold Grey.
But in his manner was not only protection, there was also love--the
sort of' love which passionate youth can seldom understand; but Paul
the apostle did, unmarried though he was, when he spoke in such mystical
language of a husband's "nourishing and cherishing" his wife "as the
Lord the Church." And now Christian seemed to comprehend this, when,
looking up to her husband, she felt that he was also her "lord,'' ruling
and guiding her less by harsh authority than by the perfect law of love.
"Nay," she said, faintly, "don't blame your sister: she meant no harm,
nor did I. I only--"
"Hush!" Dr. Grey replied, laying his hand upon her mouth; "that is a
matter solely between you and your husband."
But whether, thus met at all points, Miss Gascoigne began to doubt
whether her mountain were not a mere molehill after all, or whether
she involuntarily succumbed to the influence of such honest love, such
unbounded trust, and felt that to interfere farther between this husband
and wife would be not only hopeless, but wicked, it is impossible to
say. Perhaps--let us give her the credit of a good motive rather than a
bad one--she really felt she had been wrong, was moved and softened, and
brought to a better mind.
In any case, that happened which had never been known to happen before
in Miss Gascoigne's existence--when asked to speak she had literally
nothing to say!
"Then," continued Dr. Grey, good-humouredly, still holding his wife's
hand, and sitting beside her on the sofa, "this mighty matter may come
to an end, which is, indeed, the best thing for it. Since I am quite
satisfied concerning my wife, I conclude my sister may be. We will
consider the subject closed. Make friends, you two. Christian, will you
not?"
Christian rose. She had never kissed Miss Gascoigne in her life, had had
no encouragement to do it, and it would have seemed a piece of actual
hypocrisy. Now it was not. The kiss of affection it could hardly be, but
there is such a thing as the kiss of peace.
She rose and went, white and tottering as she was, across the room to
where Miss Gascoigne sat, hard, bitter, and silent, determined that not
a step should be taken on her side--she would not be the first to "make
friends."
"Forgive me, Aunt Henrietta, if I ever offended you. I did not mean it.
Let us try to get on better for the future. We ought, for we are both so
fond of the children and of Arnold."
Such simple words, such a natural feeling! if that hard heart were only
natural and soft enough to take it in. And it was--for once.
Miss Gascoigne looked incredulously up, then down again, in a
shamefaced, uncomfortable way, then held out her hand, and kissed
Christian, while two tears--only two--gathered and dropped from her
eyes.
But the worst was over. The ice was broken and the stream ran clear. How
long it would run good angels only could tell. But they sang, and
kept on singing, all that day, in Christian's heart, the song of
peace--"peace on earth"--for the battle was over and the foes were
reconciled.