Christian's Mistake Part 6

"Because it does me good, and harms n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce 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--pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sure 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 t.i.tia 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 pa.s.siveness; 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 a.s.serting 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.

Chapter 4.

_"The little griefs--the petty wounds-- The stabs of daily care-- 'Crackling of thorns beneath the pot,'

As life's fire burns--now cold, now hot-- How hard they are to bear!_

_"But on the fire burns, clear and still; The cankering sorrow dies; The small wounds heal; the clouds are rent, And through this shattered mortal tent Shine down the eternal skies."_

"Dr. Grey, as to-day is your 'at home'--at least, as much of an 'at home'

as is possible under the circ.u.mstances--I wished to inquire, once for all, what is to be done about the Fergusons?"

"About whom? I beg pardon. Henrietta, but what were you talking about?"

Which, as she had been talking "even on" all breakfast-time, either to or at the little circle, including Let.i.tia and Arthur, was not an unnecessary question.

"I referred to your wife's friends and late employers, the Fergusons, of High Street. As she was married from their house, and as, of course, they will only be too glad to keep up her acquaintance, they will doubtless appear to-day. In that case, much as we should regret it, your sister and myself must decline being present. We can not possibly admit such people into our society. Isn't it so--eh, Maria?"

Maria, thus sharply appealed to, answered with her usual monosyllable.

Dr. Grey looked at his wife in a puzzled, absent way. He was very absent--there was no doubt of it--and sometimes, seemed as shut up in himself as if he had lived a bachelor all his life. Besides, he did not readily take in the small wrongs--petty offenses--which make half the misery of domestic life, and are equally contemptible in the offender and the offended. There was something pathetically innocent in the way he said.

"I really do not quite understand. Christian, what does it all mean?"

"It means," said Christian, trying hard to restrain an indignant answer, "that Miss Gascoigne is giving herself a great deal of needless trouble about a thing which will never happen. My friends, the Fergusons, may call to-day--I did not invite them, though I shall certainly not shut the door upon them--but they have no intention whatever of being on visiting terms at the Lodge, nor have I of asking them."

"I am glad to hear it," said Miss Gascoigne--"glad to see that you have so much good taste and proper feeling, and that all my exertions in bringing you--as I hope to do to-day--for the first time into our society will not be thrown away."

Christian was not a very proud woman--that is, her pride lay too deep below the surface to be easily ruffled, but she could not bear this.

"If by our 'society' you mean my husband's friends, to whom he is to introduce me, I shall be most happy always to welcome them to his house; but if you imply that I am to exclude my own--honest, worthy, honorable people, uneducated though they may be--I must altogether decline agreeing with you. I shall do no such thing."

"Shall you do, then?" said Miss Gascoigne, after a slight pause; for she did not expect such resistance from the young, pale, pa.s.sive creature, about whom, for the last few days she had rather changed her mind, and treated with a patronizing consideration, for Aunt Henrietta liked to patronize; it pleased her egotism; besides, she was shrewd enough to see that an elegant, handsome girl, married to the Master of Saint Bede's, was sure soon to be taken up by somebody; better, perhaps; by her own connections than by strangers. So--more blandly than might have been expected--she asked, "What shall you do?"

"What seems to me--as I think it will to Dr. Grey"--with a timid glance at him, and a wish she had found courage to speak to him first on this matter, "the only right thing I can do. Not to drag my friends into society where they would not feel at home, and which would only look down upon them, but to make them understand clearly that I--and my husband--do not look down upon them; that we respect them, and remember their kindness. We may not ask Mr. Ferguson to dinner--he would find little to say to University dons; and as for his wife"--she could not forbear a secret smile at the thought of the poor dear woman, with her voluble affectionateness and her gowns of all colors, beside the stately, frigid, perfectly dressed, and unexceptionably--mannered Miss Gascoigne--"whether or not Mrs. Ferguson is invited to the series of parties that you are planning, I shall go and see her, and she shall come to see me, as often as ever I please."

This speech, which began steadily enough, ended with a shaky voice and flashing eye, which, the moment it met Dr. Grey's, gravely watching her, sank immediately.

"That is," she added gently, "If my husband has no objection."

"None," he said, but drew ink and paper to him, and sat down to write a note, which he afterward handed over to Christian, then addressing his sister-in-law, "I have invited Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson to dine with us-- just ourselves, as you and Maria will be out--at six o'clock to-morrow.

And oh!"--with a weary look, as if he were not so insensible to this petty domestic martyrdom as people imagined--"do, Henrietta, let us have a little peace."

It was in vain. Even Dr. Grey's influence could not heal the wounded egotism of this unfortunate lady.