Christian's Mistake Part 14

"Miss Bennett has left for the day, has she not, t.i.tia? You are not going out with her, or going out again at all?"

"No," said t.i.tia, with her head bent down.

It was always Christian's belief--and practice--that to accuse a child, unproved, of telling a lie, was next to suggesting that lies should be told. She always took truth for granted until she had unequivocal evidence to the contrary.

"Very well," she said, kindly. "Is that a nice book you have? 'Arabian Nights?' Then sit and read it quietly till you go to bed. Good-night, my dear."

She kissed her, which was always a slight effort; it was hard work loving t.i.tia, who was so cold and prim, and unchildlike, with so little responsiveness in her nature.

"I hope all is safe for today," thought Christian, anxiously, and determined to speak to t.i.tia's father the first opportunity. He was dining in hall today, and afterward they were to go to the long-delayed entertainment at the vice chancellor's, which was to inaugurate her entrance into Avonsbridge society.

Miss Gascoigne was full of it; and during all the time that the three ladies were dining together, she talked incessantly, so that, even had she wished, Mrs. Grey could not have got in a single word of inquiry concerning Miss Bennett. She however, judged it best to wait quietly till the cloth was removed and Barker vanished.

Christian was not what is termed a "transparent" character; that is, she could "keep herself to herself," as the phrase is, better than most people. It was partly from habit, having lived so long in what was worse than loneliness, under circ.u.mstances when she was obliged to maintain the utmost and most cautious silence upon every thing, and partly because her own strong nature prevented the necessity of letting her mind and feelings bubble over on all occasions and to every body, as is the manner of weaker but yet very amiable women. But, on the other hand, though she could keep a secret sacredly, rigidly--so rigidly as to prevent people's even guessing that there was a secret to be kept, she disliked unnecessary mysteries and small deceptions exceedingly.

She saw no use and no good in them. They seemed to her only the petty follies of petty minds. She had no patience with them, and would take no trouble about them.

So, as soon as the ladies were alone, she said to Miss Gascoigne outright, without showing either hesitation or annoyance.

"I met Miss Bennett in the hall to-day. Why did you not tell me that you and Aunt Maria had chosen a governess for Let.i.tia?"

Sometimes nothing puzzles very clever people so much as a piece of direct simplicity. Aunt Henrietta actually blushed.

"Chosen a governess? Well, so we did! We were obliged to do it. And you were so much occupied with Arthur. Indeed, I must say,"

recovering herself from the defensive into the offensive position, "that the way you made yourself a perfect slave to that child, to the neglect of all your other duties, was--"

"Never mind that now, please. Just tell me about Miss Bennett. When did she come, and how did you hear of her?"

She spoke quite gently, in mere inquiry; she was so anxious neither to give nor to take offense, if it could possibly be avoided. She bore always in mind a sentence her husband had once quoted--and, though a clergyman, he did not often quote the Bible, he only lived it: "As much as in you lieth, live peaceably with all men." But she sometimes wondered, with a kind of sad satire, whether the same could ever, under any circ.u.mstances, be done with all women.

Alas! not with these, or rather this woman, Aunt Maria being merely the adjective of that very determined substantive, Aunt Henrietta. She braced herself to the battle immediately.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Grey; but I cannot see what right you have to question me, or I to answer. Am I not capable of the management of my own sister's children, who have been under my care ever since she died, and in whom I never supposed you would take the slightest interest?"

This after her charge of Arthur--when she had nursed the child back to life again, and knew that he still depended upon her for everything in life! But, knowing it was so, the secret truth was enough to sustain her under any heap of falsehoods--opposing falsehoods, too, directly contradicting one another; but Miss Gascoigne never paused to consider that. Lax-tongued people seldom do.

"I will not question the point of my interest in the children. If I can not prove it in other ways than words, the latter would be very useless. All I wish to say is, that I should like to have been consulted before any thing was decided as to a governess, and I am afraid Miss Bennett is not exactly the person I should have chosen."

"Indeed! And pray, why not, may I ask? She is a most respectable person--a person who knows her place. I am sure the deference with which she treats me, the attention with which she listens to all my suggestions, have given me the utmost confidence in the young woman; all the more, because, I repeat, she knows her place. She is content to be a governess; she never pretends to be a lady."

The insult was so pointed, so plain, that it could not be pa.s.sed over.

Christian rose from her seat. "Miss Gascoigne, seeing that I am here at the head of my husband's table, I must request you to be a little more guarded in your conversation. I, too, have been a governess, but it never occurred to me that I was otherwise than a lady."

There was a dead silence, during which poor Aunt Maria cast imploring looks at Aunt Henrietta, who perhaps felt that she had gone too far, for she muttered some vague apology about "different people being different in their ways."

"Exactly so and what I meant to observe was, that my chief reason for doubting Miss Bennett's fitness to instruct t.i.tia is what you yourself allow. If she is 'not a lady,' how can you expect her to make a lady of our little girl?"

"Our little girl?"

"Yes, our" the choking tears came as far as Christian's throat, and then were swallowed down again. "My little girl, if you will; for she is mine--my husband's daughter and I wish to see her grow up every thing that his daughter ought to be. I say again, I ought to have been consulted in the choice of her governess."

She stopped for, accidentally looking out of the window, where the lengthened spring twilight still lingered in the cloisters, she fancied she saw creeping from pillar to pillar a child's figure; could it possibly be t.i.tia's? Yes, it certainly was t.i.tia herself, stealing through two sides of the quad-rectangle and under the archway that led to Walnut-tree Court.

Without saying a word to the aunts--for she would not have accused any body, a child, or even a servant, upon anything short of absolute proof--Christian went up to her from the window of which she could see into Walnut-tree Court. There, walking round and round, in the solitude which at this hour was customary in most colleges, she distinguished, dim as the light was, three figures--a man, a woman, and a child; in all probability. Miss Bennett, her lover, and t.i.tia, whom, with a mixture of cunning and shortsightedness, she had induced to play propriety, in case any discovery should be made.

Still, the light was too faint to make their ident.i.ty sure; and to send a servant after them on mere suspicion would only bring trouble upon poor little t.i.tia, besides disgracing, in the last manner in which any generous woman would wish to disgrace another woman, the poor friendless governess, who, after all, might only be taking an honest evening walk with her own honest lover, as every young woman has a perfect right to do.

"And love is so sweet, and life so bitter! I'll not be hard upon her, poor girl!" thought Christian, with a faint sigh. "Whatever is done I will do myself and then it can injure n.o.body."

So she put on shawl and bonnet, and was just slipping out at the hall door, rather thankful that Barker was absent from his post, when she met t.i.tia creeping stealthily in, not at the front door, but at the gla.s.s door, which led to the garden behind; to which garden there was only one other entrance, a little door leading into Walnut-tree Court, and of this door Barker usually kept the key. Now, however, it hung from the little girl's hand, the poor frightened creature, who, the minute she saw her step-mother, tried to run away up stairs.

"t.i.tia, come back! Tell me where you have been, without Phillis or any body, and when I desired you not to go out again."

"It was only to--to fetch a crocus for Atty."

"Where is the crocus?"

"I--dropped it."

"And this key. What did you want with the key?"

"I--I don't know."

The lie failed, if they were lies; but perhaps they might have been partly true; the child hung her head and began to whimper. She was not quite hardened, then.

"Come here to me," said Christian, sadly and gravely, leading her to the gla.s.s door, so that what light there was could s.h.i.+ne upon her face; "let me look if you have been telling me the truth. Don't be afraid; if you have I will not punish you. I will not be hard upon you in any case, if you will only speak the truth. t.i.tia, a little girl like you has no business to be creeping in and out of her papa's house like a thief. Tell at once where have you been, and who was with you?"

The child burst out crying. "I daren't tell, or Phillis will beat me. She said she would if I stirred an inch from the nursery, while she went down to have tea with cook and Barker. And I thought I might just run for ten minutes to see Miss Bennett, who wanted me so."

"You were with Miss Bennett, then? Any body else?"

"Only a gentleman," said Let.i.tia, hanging her head and blus.h.i.+ng with that painful precocity of consciousness so sad to see in a little girl.

"What was his name?"

"I don't know. Miss Bennett didn't tell me. She only said he was a friend of hers, who liked little girls, and that if I could come and have a walk with them, without telling Phillis or any body, she would let me off all the hardest of my French lessons. And so--and so--Oh, hide me, there's papa at the hall door, and Aunt Henrietta coming out of the dining- room. And Aunt Henrietta never believes what I say, even if I tell her the truth. Oh, let me run--let me run."

The child's terror was so uncontrollable that there was nothing for it but to yield; and she fled.

"t.i.tia! t.i.tia!" called out her father. "Christian, what is the matter?

What was my little girl crying for?"

There was no avoiding the domestic catastrophe, even had Christian wished to avoid it, which she did not. She felt it was a case in which concealment was impossible--wrong. Dr. Grey ought to be told, and Miss Gascoigne likewise.

"Your little girl has been very naughty, papa; but others have been more to blame than she. Come with me--will you come too, Aunt Henrietta?--and I will tell you all about it."

She did so, as briefly as she could, and in telling it she discovered one fact--which she pa.s.sed over, and yet it made her glad--that Dr. Grey, like herself, had been kept wholly in the dark about the engagement of Miss Bennett as governess.

"I meant to have told you today, though, after I had given her sufficient trial," said Miss Gascoigne, sullenly; "I had with her the best of recommendations, and I do not believe one word of all this story--that is," waking up to the full meaning of what she was saying, "not without the most conclusive evidence."