Christian's Mistake Part 27

"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, pa.s.sive 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 pa.s.sive 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.sert, 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 p.r.o.ne 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, fl.u.s.tered 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 n.o.body--but hurried back as fast as she could walk, through twilight, to her own cottage at Avonside.

Chapter 14.

_"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 pa.s.sionately, 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, compa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.s 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.