"When ye’re my ain
goodwife, lassie,
What’ll ye bring
to me?
A hantle o’siller,
a stockin’ o’ gowd?
’I haena ae bawbee.’
"When ye are my ain goodwife, lassie,
And sit at my fireside, Will the red and white
meet in your face? ’Na! ye’ll
no get a bonnie bride.’
"But gin ye’re my ain goodwife,
lassie, Mine for gude an’ ill, Will
ye bring me three things lassie, My empty hame
to fill?"
"A temper sweet, a silent tongue,
A heart baith warm and free? Then I’ll
marry ye the morn, lassie, And loe ye till I dee."
Avonsbridge lay still deep in February
snow, for it was the severest winter which had been
known there for many years. But any one who
is acquainted with the place must allow that it never
looks better or more beautiful than in a fierce winter
frost-too fierce to melt the snow; when,
in early morning, you may pass from college to college,
over quadrangles, courts, and gardens, and your own
footsteps will be the only mark on the white untrodden
carpet, which lies glittering and dazzling before
you, pure and beautiful as even country snow.
A little later in the morning you
may meet a few gyps and bedmakers coming round chance
corners, or descending mysterious stairs; but if you
go beyond inhabited precincts, down to the river-side,
you are almost sure to be quite alone; you may stand,
as Christian was accustomed to do, on any one of the
bridges which connect the college buildings and college
grounds, and see nothing but the little robin hopping
about and impressing tiny footprints after yours in
the path, then flying on to the branches of the nearest
willow, which, heavy with a weight that is not leaves,
but snow, dips silently into the silenced water.
Or you may gaze, as Christian gazed
every morning with continually new wonder, at the
colors of the dawn brightening into sunrise, such as
it looks on a winter’s morning-so
beautiful that it seems an almost equal marvel that
nobody should care to see it but yourself, except
perhaps a solitary gownsman, a reading man, taking
his usual constitutional just as a matter of duty,
but apparently not enjoying it the least in the world.
Not enjoying it-the sharp
fresh air, which braces every nerve, and invigorates
every limb, causing all the senses to awake and share,
as it were, this daily waking up of Nature, fresh
as a rose? For what rosiness, in the brightest
summer days, can compare with that kiss of the winter’s
sun on the tree-tops, slowly creeping down their trunks
and branches? And what blueness, even of a June
sky, can equal that sea of space up aloft, across
which, instead of shadows and stars, pink and lilac
morning clouds are beginning to sail, clearer and brighter
every minute? As they have sailed for the last
four centuries over the pinnacle of that wondrous
chapel, which has been described in guide-books,
and pictured in engravings to an overwhelming extent,
yet is still a building of whose beauty, within and
without, the eye never tires.
Christian stood watching it, for the
hundredth time, with that vague sensation of pleasure
which she felt at sight of all lovely things, whether
of nature or art. That, at least, had never left
her; she hoped it never might. It was something
to hold by, though all the world slid by like a dream.
Very dreamy her life felt still, though she had tried
to make it more real and natural by resuming some
of her old ways, and especially her morning walk,
before the nine o’clock breakfast at the Lodge.
She had made a faint protest in favor
of an earlier hour than nine, and begged that the
children might come down to breakfast; she craved so
to have the little faces about the table. But
Miss Gascoigne had said solemnly that “my poor
dear sister always breakfasted at nine, and never
allowed her children to breakfast any where but in
the nursery.” And that reference, which
was made many times a day, invariably silenced Christian.
She had now been married exactly four
weeks, but it seemed like four years-four
ages-as if she hardly remembered the time
when she was Christian Oakley. Yet now and then,
in a dim sort of way, her old identity returned to
her, as it does to those who, after a great crisis
and uprooting of all life, submit, some in despair,
some in humble, patience, to the inevitable.
This good time, this lucid interval,
so to speak, usually came to her in the morning, when
she took her early walk in the familiar places; for
to Christian familiarity only made things more dear.
Already she was beginning to find her own nooks,
and to go about her own ways in those grim college
rooms, which grew less ghostly now that she knew them
better. Already she was getting a little used
to her new home, her formal dignities, and her handsome
clothes. It was a small thing to think of, perhaps,
and yet, as she walked across the college quadrangles,
remembering how often she had shivered in her thin
shawl along these very paths, the rich fur cloak felt
soft and warm, like her husband’s goodness and
unfailing love.
As she stepped with her light, firm
tread across the crinkling snow, she was-not
unhappy. In her still dwelt that wellspring of
healthy vitality, which always, under all circumstances,
responds more or less to the influence of the cheerful
morning, the stainless childhood, of the day.
No wonder the “reading man” who had been
so insensible to the picturesque in nature, turned
his weary eyes to look after her, or that a bevy of
freshmen, rushing wildly out of chapel, with their
surplices flying behind them like a flock of white-geese?-should
have stopped to stare, a little more persistently
than gentlemen ought, at the solitary lady, who was
walking where she had a perfect right to walk, and
at an hour when she could scarcely be suspected of
promenading either to observe or to attract observation.
But Christian went right on, with perfect composure.
She knew she was handsome, for she had been told
so once; but the knowledge had afterward become only
pain. Now, she was indifferent to her looks-at
least as indifferent as any womanly woman ever can
be, or ought to be. Still, it vexed her a little
that these young men should presume to stare, and
she was glad she was not walking in Saint Bede’s,
and that they were not the men of her own college.
For already she began to appropriate
“our college”-those old walls,
under the shadow of which all her future life must
pass. As she entered the narrow gateway of Saint
Beck’s, and walked round its chilly cloisters,
to the Lodge door, she tried not to remember that she
had ever thought of life as any thing different from
this, or had ever planned an existence of boundless
enjoyment, freedom, and beauty, travel in foreign
countries, seeing of mountains, cities, pictures, palaces,
hearing of grand music, and mingling in brilliant
society-a phantasmagoria of delight which
had visited her fancy once-was it only her
fancy?-and vanished in a moment, as completely
as the shadows projected on the wall. And here
she was, the wife of the Master of Saint Bede’s.
“I was right-I was
right,” she said to herself in the eagerness
of a vain assurance. “And whether I was
right or wrong matters not now. I must bear
it-I must do my duty-and I will!”
She stood still a minute to calm herself,
then knocked at the Lodge gate. Barker opened
it with that look of grieved superior surprise with
which he always obeyed any novel order, or watched
the doing of any deed which he considered lowered
the dignity of himself and the college.
“A beautiful morning, Barker!”
“Is it, ma’am? So
one of the bedmakers was a-saying;” as if to
imply that bedmakers were the only women whose business
it was to investigate the beauties of the morning.
Christian smiled; she knew she was
not a favorite with him; indeed, no women were.
He declared that no petticoat ought ever to be seen
within college boundaries. But he was a decent
man, with an overwhelming reverence for Dr. Grey;
and so, though he was never too civil to herself,
Christian felt a kindness for honest old Barker.
She was a minute or two late; the
master had already left his study, and was opening
the large book of prayers. Nevertheless, he looked
up with a smile, as he always did the instant his
wife’s foot entered the door. But his sister
appeared very serious, and Miss Gascoigne’s aspect
was a perfect thundercloud, which broke into lightning
the instant prayers were over.
“I must say, Mrs. Grey, you
have a most extraordinary propensity for morning walks.
I never did such a thing in all my life, nor Maria
either.”
“Probably not,” answered
Christian, as she took her seat before the urn, which
gave her the one home-like feeling she had at the Lodge.
“Different people have different ways, and this
has always been mine.”
“Why so?”
“Because it does me good, and
harms nobody else,” said Christian, smiling.
“I doubt that, anyhow; you never
will make me believe it can be good for you to do
a thing that nobody else does-to go wandering
about streets and colleges when all respectable people
are still in their beds. To say the least of
it, it is so very peculiar.”
The tone, more even than the words,
made Christian flush up, but she did not reply.
She had already learned not to reply to these sharp
speeches of Miss Gascoigne’s, which, she noticed,
fell on every body alike. “What Miss Grey
bears, I suppose I can,” thought she to herself
when many times during the last two weeks she had been
addressed in a manner which somewhat surprised her,
as being a mode of speech more fitting from a school-mistress
to a naughty school-girl than from a sister to a young
wife, or, indeed, from any lady to any other lady-at
least, according to her code of manners.
“You may talk as you like!”
continued Miss Gascoigne, glancing at the far end
of the room, where the master was deeply busied in
searching for a book, “but I object to these
morning walks; and I am certain Dr. Grey also would
object, if he knew of them.”
“He does know.”
“And does he approve?
Impossible! Only think, Maria, if our poor dear
sister had done such a thing!”
“Oh, hush, Henrietta!”
cried Maria, appealingly, as Dr. Grey came back and
sat himself placidly down at the breakfast-table, with
his big book beside him. He had apparently not
heard a single word.
Yet he looked so good and sweet-yes,
sweet is the only fitting word; a gentle simplicity
like a child’s, which always seemed to hover
round this bookish learned man-that the
womenkind were silenced-as, by a most fortunate
instinct, women generally are in presence of their
masculine relatives. They may quarrel enough
among themselves, but they seem to feel that men either
will not understand it or not endure it. That
terrible habit of “talking over” by which
most women “nurse their wrath and keep it warm,”
is happily to men almost impossible.
Breakfast was never a lively meal
at the Lodge. After the first few days Dr. Grey
took refuge in his big book, which for years Miss Gascoigne
averred he had always kept beside him at meal-times.
Not good behavior in a paterfamilias, but the habit
told its own tale. Very soon Christian neither
marveled at nor blamed him.
Never in all her life, not even during
the few months that she lived with the Fergusons,
had she sat at a family table; yet she had always had
a favorite ideal of what a family table ought to be-bright,
cheerful, a sort of domestic altar, before which every
one cast down his or her offering, great or small,
of pleasantness and peace; where for at least a brief
space in the day all annoyances were laid aside, all
stormy tempers hushed, all quarrels healed; everyone
being glad and content to sit down at the same board,
and eat the same bread and salt, making it, whether
it were a fatted calf or a dinner of herbs, equally
a joyful, almost sacramental meal.
This was her ideal, poor girl!
Now she wondered as she had done many times since
her coming “home,” if all family tables
were like this one-shadowed over with gloomy
looks, frozen by silence, or broken by sharp speeches,
which darted about like little arrows pointed with
poison, or buzzed here and there like angry wasps,
settling and stinging unawares, and making every one
uncomfortable, not knowing who might be the next victim
stung. True, there was but one person to sting,
for Miss Grey never said ill-natured things; but then
she said ill-advised and mal-apropos things,
and she had such an air of frightened dumbness, such
a sad, deprecatory look, that she was sometimes quite
as trying as Miss Gascoigne, who spoke out. And
oh, how she did speak! Christian, who had never
known many women, and had never lived constantly with
any, now for the first time learned what was meant
by “a woman’s tongue.”
At first it simply astonished her.
How it was possible for one mortal member to run
on so long without a pause, and in such ugly and uneasy
paths-for the conversation was usually fault-finding
of persons or things-passed her comprehension.
Then she felt a little weary, and half wished that
she, too, had a big book into which she could plunge
herself instead of having to sit there, politely smiling,
saying “Yes,” and “No,” and
“Certainly.” At last she sank into
a troubled silence tried to listen as well as she
could, and yet allow the other half of her mind to
wander away into some restful place, if any such place
could be found. The nearest approach to it was
in that smooth, broad brow, and kindly eyes, which
were now and then lifted up from the foot of the table,
out of the mazes of the big book, at the secret of
which Christian did not wonder now.
And he had thus listened patiently
to this mill-stream, or mill-clack, for three weary
years! Perhaps; for many another year before;
but into that Christian would not allow her lightest
thoughts to penetrate: the sacred veil of Death
was over it all.
“If I can only make him happy!”
This was already beginning to be her prominent thought,
and it warmed her heart that morning at this weary
breakfast table to hear him say,
“Christian, I don’t know
how you manage it, but I think I never had such good
tea in all my life as since you took it into your own
hands and out of Barker’s.”
“No doubt she makes tea very
well,” said Miss Gascoigne condescendingly,
“which is one good result of not having been
used to a servant to do it for her. And she
must have had such excellent practice at Mrs. Ferguson’s.
I believe those sort of people always feed together-parents,
children, apprentices and all.”
“I assure you, not always,”
said Christian, quietly. “At least I dined
with the children alone,”
“Indeed! How very pleasant!”
“It was not unpleasant.
They were good little things; and, as you know, I
always prefer having children about me at meal-times.
I think it makes them little gentlemen and gentlewomen
in a manner that nothing else will. If I had
a house”-she stopped and blushed deeply
for having let old things-ah! they seemed
so very old, and far back now-make her
forget the present. “I mean, I should wish
in my house to have the children always accustomed
to come to the parents’ table as soon as they
were old enough to handle a knife and fork.”
“Should you?” said Dr.
Grey, quite startling her, for she thought he had
not been attending to the conversation. “Then
we will have Titia and Atty to breakfast with us to-morrow.”
Thus, without any fuss the great revolution
was made; so quickly, so completely, that even Miss
Gascoigne was dumb-foundered. She set down her
teacup with a jerk; her handsome face grew red with
anger, but still she did not venture a word, she had
not lived three years with Dr. Grey without finding
out that when the master of the house did choose to
exercise authority, he must be obeyed. He very
seldom interfered, especially as regarded the children;
like most simple-minded men, he was humble about himself,
and left a great deal to his womankind; but when he
did interfere it was decisive. Even Miss Gascoigne
felt instinctively that she might have wrangled and
jangled for an hour and at the end of it he would
have said, almost as gently as he had said it now,
“The children will breakfast with us to-morrow.”
Christian, too, was surprised, and
something more. She had thought her husband
so exceedingly quiet that sometimes her own high spirit
winced a little at his passiveness; that is, she knew
it would have done had she been her own natural self,
and not in the strange, dreamy, broken-down state,
which seemed to take interest in nothing. Still,
she felt some interest in seeing Dr. Grey appear,
though but in a trivial thing, rather different from
what she had at first supposed him. And when,
after an interval of awful silence, during which Miss
Gascoigne looked like a brooding hurricane, and Miss
Grey frightened out of her life at what was next to
happen, he rose and said, “Now remember, Aunt
Henrietta, you or my wife are to give orders to Phillis
that the children come to us at lunchtime to-day,”
Christian was conscious of a slight throb at heart.
It was to see in her husband-the man to
whom, whatever he was, she was tied and bound for
life-that something without which no woman
can wholly respect any man-the power of
asserting and of maintaining authority; not that arbitrary,
domineering rule which springs from the blind egotism
of personal will, and which every other conscientious
will, be it of wife, child, servant, or friend, instinctively
resists, and, ought to resist, but calm, steadfast,
just, righteous authority. There is an old rhyme,
"A spaniel, a woman, and
a walnut-tree,
the more ye thrash ’em,
the better they be;"
which rhyme is not true. But
there lies a foundation of truth under it, that no
woman ever perfectly loves a man who is not strong
enough to make her also obey.
As Dr. Grey went out of the room,
and the minute following, as with an after-thought,
put in his head again, saying, “Christian, I
want you!” she followed him with a lighter heart
than she had had for many weary days.