Christian's Mistake Part 23

Nevertheless, Dr. Grey bore them, and so did his wife, which was harder. She did not mind rudeness to herself, but to hear her husband thus spoken to and spoken of was a sufficient trial to make her long for the time of release. And yet through it all came the deep sense of pity that any woman who could show herself in so pleasant a light abroad-- for many of the morning visitors quite condoled with Mrs. Grey on the impending change at the Lodge, and of the great loss she would have in her sister-in-law--should be so obnoxious at home that her nearest relatives counted the days until her shadow should cease to darken their doors.

And so, gradually and often painfully, but still with a firm conviction on every body's mind that the plan so suddenly decided on had been the best for all parties, came round the time of the aunts' departure.

Christian had spent all the previous day at Avonside, which she found a very pretty cottage, all woodbine and roses, with nothing at all poverty-stricken about it, either within or without. She had gone over it from garret to bas.e.m.e.nt, making every thing as comfortable as possible, as she had carte blanche from her husband to do, and gladly did; for on her tender conscience rankled every bitter word of Miss Gascoigne's as though it were real truth; and sometimes, in spite of herself, she could not suppress an uneasy feeling as if the aunts were being "turned out." The last day of their stay at the Lodge was so exceedingly painful, that, having done all she could, she at length rushed out of the house with Arthur for a breath of fresh air and a quiet half hour before dinner, if such were possible.

She did not go far, only just crossing the bridge to the cottage grounds opposite where, in sight of the Lodge windows, she could walk up and down the beautiful avenue, which still bears the name of the old philosopher who loved it. If his wise, gentle ghost still haunted the place, it might well have watched with pleasure this fair, grave, sweet- looking young woman sauntering up and down with the boy in her hand, listening vaguely to his chatter, and now and then putting in a smiling answer. She had a smiling, peaceful face, and her thoughts were peaceful too. She was thinking to herself how pretty Avonsbridge was in its June dress of freshest green, how quietly and innocently life pa.s.sed under shadow of these college walls, and how could any one have the heart to make it otherwise?

She would not after today. She would cease to vex herself, or let her husband vex himself about Miss Gascoigne. With a mile and a half between them, the Lodge would certainly feel safe from her. And oh!

what a wonderful peace would come into the house when she left it!

How good the children would be! How happy their father!--yes, he could be made happy, Christian knew that, and it was she who could make him so. The consciousness of power in this sweet sense, and the delight of exercising it was becoming the most exquisite happiness Christian had ever known. She sat dreaming over it almost like a girl in her first love-dream--only this dream was deeper and calmer, with all the strength of daily duty added to the joy of loving and being loved.

Not that she reasoned much--she was not given to much a.n.a.lyzing of herself--she only knew that she was content, and found content in every thing--in the ripple of the river at her feet, the flutter of the leaves over her head, the soft blue sky above the colleges, and the green gra.s.s gemmed with daisies, where an old man was mowing on the one side, and a large thrush, grown silent with summer, was hopping about on the other. Every thing seemed beautiful, for the beauty began in her own heart.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Grey."

People talk about "looking as if they had seen a ghost"--and perhaps that look was not unlike Christian's as she started at this salutation behind her. He must have come stealthily across the gra.s.s, for she had heard nothing, did not even know that any body was near, till she looked up and saw Sir Edwin Uniacke.

The surprise was so great that it brought (oh, what shame to feel it, and feel sure that he saw it!) the blood up to her face--to her very forehead.

She half rose, and then sat down again, with a blind instinct that any thing was better than either to be or to appear afraid.

Without waiting for either a reply or a recognition--which indeed came not, nothing but that miserable blush--the young man seated himself on the bench and began to make acquaintance with Arthur.

"I believe I have seen you before, my little friend. You are Dr. Grey's son, and I once offered to carry you, but was refused. Are you quite well now, Master Albert? Isn't that your name?"

"No; Arthur," said the boy, rather flattered at being noticed. "Are you one of the men at our college? You haven't your gown on."

"Not now," with a queer look, half amus.e.m.e.nt, half irritation. "I don't belong to Avonsbridge. I have a house of my own in the country--such a pretty place, with a park, and deer, and a lake, and a boat to row on it.

Wouldn't you like to see it?"

"Yes." said Arthur, all eyes and ears.

"I live there, but I am always coming over to Avonsbridge. Do what I will, I can not keep away."

The tone, the glance across the child, were unmistakable. Christian rose, her momentary stupefaction gone.

"Come, Arthur, papa will be waiting dinner. We never keep papa waiting, you know."

Simple as the words were, they expressed volumes.

For an instant her composed matronly grace--her perfect indifference, silenced, nay, almost awed the young man, and then irritated him into resistance. He caught hold of Arthur in pa.s.sing.

"You need not go yet. It is only just five, and your papa does not dine till six."

"How do you know?" asked the child.

"Oh. I know every thing. I watch you in and out of the Lodge, and am aware of all you do. But about the boat I promised you. It is at my place, Lake Hall, near--"

"Arthur. we must go."

Arthur jumped up at once. Gentle as it was, he had learned that that voice must never be disobeyed.

"I can't stay, sir; mother calls me. But I'll tell papa we met you, and ask him to let me come and see you, if you will tell me your name."

Sir Edwin hesitated.

"There is no necessity," said Mrs. Grey. "Arthur, I know this gentleman. I myself shall tell your papa that we have met him here.

Good-morning, Sir Edwin Uniacke."

She bowed with that perfect, repellant courtesy against which there is no appeal, and pa.s.sed on; had she seen--she did not, for she looked straight on and saw nothing--but had she seen the look of mingled hate and love which darkened over Sir Edwin's face, it might have terrified her. But no, she was too courageous a woman to fear anything save doing wrong.

After a minute's angry beating of his boot with his stick, the young man rose and followed them down the avenue, contriving, by dint of occasional conversation with Arthur, to keep along side of them the whole way as far as the bridge which connected the college grounds with the college buildings, and which was overlooked by the whole frontage of the Lodge.

With a vague sense of relief and protection, Christian glanced to the windows of her home, and there, at the open nursery cas.e.m.e.nt, she saw a group, Phillis, Oliver, Let.i.tia, and behind Let.i.tia another person--Miss Susan Bennett, who had come with a message from old Mrs. Ferguson, and whom, in her kindness, Mrs. Grey had sent to have a cup of tea in the nursery before returning to the village, where the girl said she was "quite comfortable." There she stood, she and Phillis, watching, as they doubtless had watched the whole interview, from the time Sir Edwin sat down, on the bench till his parting shake of the hand to Arthur, and farewell bow to herself, which bow was rather easy and familiar than distantly ceremonious.

Had he done it on purpose? Had he too seen the group at the window, and, moved by a contemptible vanity, or worse, behaved so that these others ought notice his manner to Mrs. Grey, and put upon it any construction they pleased?

Yet what possible construction could be put upon it, even by the most ill-natured and malicious witnesses? The college grounds were free to all; this meeting was evidently accidental and all that had pa.s.sed thereat was a few words with the boy, which Arthur would be sure to repent at once; nor did Christian desire to prevent him.

It was a hard position. She had done no wrong--not the shadow of wrong--and yet here was she, Christian Grey, discovered meeting and walking with a man whom her husband had distinctly forbidden the house--discovered both by her servant, who, having an old servant's love of prying into family affairs, no doubt knew of this prohibition, and by Miss Bennett, to whom she herself had said that Sir Edwin was a man unfit for any respectable woman's acquaintance.

"What would they both think? And, moreover, when she heard of it--as a.s.suredly she would--what would Miss Gascoigne think and say?"

That overpowering dread, "What will people say?" for the first time in her life began to creep over Christian's fearless heart. Such an innocent heart it was, and oh, such a contented one only half an hour ago.

"How dare he?" she said, fiercely, as she found herself alone in her own room, with but just time enough to dress and take her place as the fair, stately, high-thoughted, pure-hearted mistress of her husband's table.

"How dare he?" and, standing at the gla.s.s, she looked almost with disgust into the beautiful face that burnt, hotly still only at the remembrance of the last ten minutes. "But he must see--he must surely understand how utterly I despise him. He will not presume again. Oh, if I had only told my husband! It was a terrible mistake?"

What was--her secret or her marriage? or both?

Christian did not stop to think. Whatever it was, she knew that, like most of the mistakes and miseries of this world, it was made to be remedied--made possible of remedy. At all events, the pain must be endured, fought through, struggled with, any thing but succ.u.mbed to.

In the five minutes that, after all, she found she had to wait in the drawing-room before the aunts or her husband appeared. Christian took herself seriously to task for this overwhelming, cowardly fear.

What had she really to dread? What harm could he do her--the bad man of whom she had so ignorantly made a girl's ideal? The only testimony thereof was her letters, if he still had them in his possession-- her poor, innocent, girlish letters--very few--just two or three. Foolish they might have been, sentimental and ridiculous, but she could not remember any thing wrong in them--any thing that a girl in her teens need blush to have written, either to friend or lover, save for the one fact that, a girl is wiser to have no friend at all among men--except her lover. And, whatever they were, most likely he had destroyed them long ago.

"No, no," she thought, "he can not do me any harm; he dare not!"

It was difficult to say what Sir Edwin Uniacke would not dare; for, going back to her room for some trifle forgotten, she discovered that he was still lounging, cigar in mouth, up and down the river-side avenue opposite, where he could plainly see and be seen from almost every window in the Lodge.

And there, hurrying to meet him, she saw Susan Bennett. But the meeting appeared not satisfactory, and after a few minutes the girl had left him and he was again seen walking up and down alone.

A vain woman might have been flattered, perhaps allured, by this persistence. In Christian it produced only repulsion, actual hatred, if so gentle a spirit could hate. An honest love from the very humblest man alive, she would have been tender over; but this, which to her, a wife, was necessarily utter insult and wickedness, awoke in her nothing but abhorrence--the same sort of righteous abhorrence that she would have felt--she knew she would--toward any woman who had tried to win her husband from herself. Win her husband? The fancy almost made her smile, and then filled her with a br.i.m.m.i.n.g sense of joy that he was-- what he was, a man to whom the bare idea of loving any woman but his own wife was so impossible that it became actually ludicrous.

She smiled, she even laughed, with an ever-growing sense of all he was to her and she to him, when she heard him open his study-door and call "Christian."

She went quickly, to explain in a word or two, before they went down to dinner, her rencontre with Sir Edwin Uniacke. Afterward, in their long, quiet evenings, to which she so looked forward, she would tell her husband the whole story, and give herself the comfort of feeling that now at last he was fully acquainted with her whole outer life and inmost soul, as a husband ought to be.

But there stood the two aunts, one stately and grim, the other silent and tearful; and it took all Dr. Grey's winning ways to smooth matters so as to make their last meal together before the separation any thing like a peaceful one.

He seemed so anxious for this--nervously anxious--that his wife forgot every thing in helping him to put a cheerful face on every thing. And when she watched him, finding a pleasant word for every one, and patient even with Miss Gascoigne, who today seemed in her sharpest mood, gray-haired, quaint, and bookish-looking as he was, it appeared to Christian that not a young man living could bear a moment's comparison with Dr. Arnold Grey.