Christian's Mistake Part 5

"It was. Many things in life, quite inevitable, have yet to be met and borne, conquered even, if we can."

"Ay, _if_ we can!"

And Christian looked up wistfully, almost entreatingly, to her husband, who, she now knew, and trembled at the knowledge, so solemn was the responsibility it brought, had loved her, and did love her, with a depth and pa.s.sion such as a man like him never loves but one woman in all his life.

"Christian," he began again, with an effort, "I want to say something to you. Once in my life, when I was almost as young as you are, I made a great mistake. Therefore I know that mistakes are not irretrievable.

G.o.d teaches us sometimes by our very errors, leading us through them into light and truth. Only we must follow Him, and hold fast to the right, however difficult it may be. We must not be disheartened: we must leave the past where it is, and go on to the future; do what we have to do, and suffer all we have to suffer. We must meet things as they are, without perplexing ourselves about what they might have been; for, if we believe in an overruling Providence at all, there can be no such possibility as 'might have been.'"

"That is true," said Christian, musingly. She had never known Dr.

Grey to speak like this. She wondered a little why he should do it now; and yet his words struck home. That great "mistake"--was it his first marriage? which, perhaps, had not been a happy one. At least, he never spoke of it, or of his children's mother. And besides, it was difficult to believe that any man could have loved two women, as, Christian knew and felt, Dr. Grey now loved herself.

But she asked hint no questions; she felt not the slightest curiosity about that, or about any thing. She was like a person in a state of moral catalepsy, to whom, for the time being, every feeling, pleasant or painful, seems dulled and dead.

Dr. Grey said no more, and what he had said was evidently with great effort. He appeared glad to go back into ordinary talk, showing her what he had done in the room to make it pretty and pleasant for his bride, and smiling over her childish delight to see again her maiden treasures, with which she had parted so mournfully.

"You could not think I meant you really to part with them, Christian?"

said he. "I fancied you had found out my harmless deceit long ago.

But you are such an innocent baby, my child--as clear as crystal, and as true as steel."

"Oh no, no!" she cried, as he went out of the room--a cry that was almost a sob, and might have called him back again--but he was gone, and the moment had pa.s.sed by. With it pa.s.sed the slight quivering and softening which had been visible in her face, and she sunk again into the impa.s.sive calm which made Christian Grey so totally different, from Christian Oakley.

She rose up, took off her bonnet and shawl, and arranged her hair, looking into the mirror with eyes that evidently saw nothing. Then she knelt before the fire, warming her ice-cold hands on which the two- weeks' familiar ring seemed to s.h.i.+ne with a fatal glitter. She kept moving it up and down with a nervous habit that she was trying vainly to conquer.

"A mistake," she muttered, "Perhaps my marriage, too, was a mistake, irretrievable, irremediable, as he may himself think now, only he was too kind to let me see it. What am I to do? Nothing. I can do nothing.

'Until death us do part.' Do I wish for death--my death, of course--to come and part us?"

She could not, even to herself, answer that question.

"What was he saying--that G.o.d teaches us by our very errors--that there is no such thing as 'might have been?' He thinks so, and he is very wise, far wiser and better than I am. I might have loved him. Oh that I had only waited till I did really love him, instead of fancying it enough that he loved me. But I must not think. I have done with thinking. It would drive me out of my senses."

She started up, and stood gazing round the cheerful, bright, handsome room, where every luxury that a comfortable income could give had been provided for her comfort, every little fancy and taste she had been remembered, with a tender mindfulness that would have made the heart of any newly-married wife, married for love, leap for joy, and look forward hopefully to that life which, with all its added cares, a good man's affection can make so happy to the woman who is his chosen delight. But in Christian's face was no happiness; only that white, wild, frightened look, which had come on her marriage day, and then settled down into what she now wore--the aspect of pa.s.sive submission and endurance.

"But I will do my duty. And he will do his, no fear of that! He is so good--far better than I. Yes, I shall do my duty?"

_"Faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."_

There is a deeper meaning in this text than we at first see. Of "these three," two concern ourselves; the third concerns others. When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it.

When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us the reason why.

Christian went down stairs slowly and sadly, but quite calmly, to spend--and she did spend it, painlessly, if not pleasantly--the first evening in her own home.

Chapter 3.

_"When ye're my ain goodwife, la.s.sie, What'll ye bring to me?

A hantle o'siller, a stockin' o' gowd?

'I haena ae bawbee.'_

_"When ye are my ain goodwife, la.s.sie, 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, la.s.sie, Mine for gude an' ill, Will ye bring me three things la.s.sie, My empty hame to fill?"_

_"A temper sweet, a silent tongue, A heart baith warm and free?

Then I'll marry ye the morn, la.s.sie, 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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.body should care to see it but yourself, except perhaps a solitary gownsman, a reading man, taking his usual const.i.tutional 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ident.i.ty 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 s.h.i.+vered 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 circ.u.mstances, 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, rus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s. 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 a.s.surance. "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?"