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