Christian's Mistake Part 9

Christian sought his eyes; she was convinced he had heard and understood every word. But still it had not affected him, except to a wistful watchfulness of herself, so tender that her indignation sank down.

"Shall I wait till to-morrow before I write? Perhaps, Dr. Grey, after all, it would be as well for us to accept these invitations?"

"Perhaps," said he, and said no more. There was no need. Whether or not they loved, without doubt the husband and wife perfectly understood one another. So next morning, after a brief consultation with Dr. Grey, Christian sat down and wrote to these grand University ladies, who, though not an atom better than herself, would, she knew well--and smiled, half amused at the knowledge--a year ago have scarcely recognized her existence, that Mrs. Grey "accepted with pleasure" their kind invitations.

When the day came round she dressed herself, for the first time in her whole life, in proper evening costume--white silk, white lace, ornaments, and flowers. Not too youthful a toilet, for she had no wish to appear young now, but still bridal--a "bride adorned with her jewels," only these were but few. She was fastening her one opal brooch, and looking into the mirror, half sad, half wondering to see herself so fair, when Dr. Grey entered.

He had a jeweler's case in his hand. Awkwardly, even nervously, he fastened a cross round her neck, and put a bracelet on her arm. Both were simple enough, but, little as she knew about such things, Christian could see they were made of very magnificent diamonds,

"Do you like them? They are for you."

"You have not bought them on purpose?"

"Oh no, that extravagance was quite beyond me; but I had them re-set.

They belonged to my mother, and have never been worn till now. Will my wife wear them?"

Christian drooped her head. Great tears were gathering under her eyelids.

"I am so foolish--so very foolish; and you are so good to me--so unfailingly, unceasingly good. I try to be good too; I do indeed. Don't be angry with me."

"Angry! My darling!"

People may write sentiment by the page, or talk it by the hour, but there is something in real love which will neither be discussed nor described.

Let us draw over it the holy veil of silence: these things ought to belong to two alone.

Dr. Grey's wife knew how he loved her. And when he quitted her to order the carriage which was to take them to the grand dinner party, she stood, all in her fine garments, a fair, white, bridal-like vision--stood and wept.

It is a law most absolute and inevitable that love, however great, however small, never remains quite stationary; it must either diminish or increase. When Christian awoke out of the stunned condition which had been hers both before and after her marriage, she began to awake also to the dawning consciousness of what real marriage ought to be--the perfect, sacred union, so seldom realized or even sought for, and yet none the less the right aim and just desire of every true man and woman, which, when not attained, makes the life imperfect, and the marriage, if not a sin, a terrible mistake.

"I have sinned! I have sinned!" was the perpetual cry of Christian's heart, which she had thought was dead as a stone, and now discovered to be a living, throbbing woman's heart, which needed its lord, was ready to obey him, love and serve him, nay, fall down in the very dust before him, if only he could be found! And she knew now--knew by the agony of regret for all she had missed, that he never had been found; that the slain love over which she had mourned had been a mere fancy, not a vital human love at all.

Now her husband never kissed her that she would not have given worlds to feel that his were the only lover's lips which had ever touched hers; he never called her by one tender name that she did not s.h.i.+ver to think she had ever heard it from any other man. There was coming into her that sense of awed self-appropriation, that fierce revulsion from any intrusion on the same, which comes into any woman's nature when beginning to love as she is beloved. Christian did not as yet; but she recognized her husband's love, and it penetrated with a strong sweetness to her inmost soul. Mingled with it was an acute pain, a profound regret, a sad humility. Not hers, alas! the joyful pride, the full content, of a heart which is conscious in its sweetest depths that it gives as much as it receives.

This was all. She had done nothing wrong, nothing unworthy of either herself or Dr. Grey; nothing but what hundreds of women do every day, and neither blame themselves nor are blamed by others. She had but suffered a new footstep to enter her young life's garden, without having had the courage to say of one little corner in it, "Do not tread there, it is a grave." Only a grave; a very harmless grave now, tricked with innocent, girlish flowers, but still containing the merest handful of dust.

It would never corrupt, and might even serve to fertilize that simple heart, which, out of its very simplicity, had made for itself a pa.s.sing idol out of what was essentially fake and base, which would have shortly crumbled to pieces out of its own baseness, had not Fate--or Providence--with kindly cruel hand forever thrown it down. Still, this was a grave, and her husband did not know it was there.

n.o.body ever had known. The day of delusion had been so short, and the only relics left of it were those four letters, burnt by herself on her marriage morning. The whole story, occupying in all only four weeks, had gone by exactly like a dream, and she had awakened--awakened to find out what love really was, or what it might have been.

She wept, not loudly, but quietly, till she dared not weep any more. A sudden thought made her struggle at once for composure, and try to efface every external trace of tears.

"I am Dr. Grey's wife," she said to herself and resolved that the grand University magnates should find out nothing in her unworthy of that name--nothing that could make people say, even the most ill-natured of them--and, alas! she had lately come to learn that the world is filled, not, as she thought, with only bad and good, but with an intermediate race, which is merely ill-natured--say, with a sneer, that Dr. Grey's second marriage had been "a mistake."

Never before had Christian thought much of these outside things; but she did now--at least she tried her best. There was not a lock unsmoothed in her fair hair, not a fold awry in her silks or laces, and not a trace of agitation visible in her manner or countenance when Mrs.

Grey opened her door to descend the stairs.

She was considering whether it would not be courteous to knock at Miss Gascoigne's door, and ask if she too were ready, when she heard a loud outcry in the nursery above. This, alas! was no novelty. More than once Christian had rushed wildly up stairs, expecting some dreadful catastrophe, but it was only the usual warfare between Phillis and the children, especially Arthur, who was no longer a baby to be petted and scolded, or a little girl to be cowed into obedience, but a big boy to be ruled, if at all, _vi et armis_--as Mrs. Grey had more than once suspected Phillis did rule.

"I wont! I won't! and you shan't make me!" was the fierce scream which caught her ear before she entered the nursery door.

There stood Phillis, her face red with pa.s.sion, grasping Arthur with one hand, and beating him with the other, while the boy, holding on to her with the tenacity of a young bull-dog, was, with all the might of his little fists, returning blow for blow--in short, a regular stand-up fight, in which the two faces, elder and younger, woman and child, were alike in obstinacy and fury. No wonder at t.i.tia's sullenness or Atty's storms of rage. The children only learned what they were taught.

"Phillis, what is the matter? What has the boy done amiss?"

Phillis turned round with the defiant look which she a.s.sumed every time Mrs. Grey entered the nursery, only a little harder, a little fiercer, with the black brows bent, and the under-hung mouth almost savage in its expression.

"What has he done, ma'am? he has disobeyed me. I'll teach you to do it again, you little villain you!"

"Phillis!"

Never before had Phillis's new mistress addressed her in that tone; it made her pause a second, and then her blows fell with redoubled strength on the shrinking shoulders, even the head, of the frantic, furious boy.

Now there was one thing which in all her life Christian never could stand, and that was, to see a child beaten, or in any way ill used. The tyranny which calls itself authority, the personal revenge which hides under the name of punishment, and both used, cowardly, by the stronger against the weaker, were, to her keen sense of justice, so obnoxious, so detestable that they always roused in her a something, which is at the root of all the righteous rebellions in the world--a something which G.o.d, who ordained righteous authority, implants in every honest human heart as a safeguard against authority unrighteous and therefore authority no longer. If Christian had been a mother, and seen the father of her own children beating one of them in the way Phillis beat Arthur, it would have made her, as she was wont to say, with a curious flash of her usually quiet eyes, "dangerous."

She wasted no words. It was not her habit. She merely with her firm, strong hand, wrenched the victim out of the oppressor's grasp.

"Arthur, go to my room. I will hear what you have done amiss. Phillis, remember, henceforward no children in my house shall be struck or punished except by their father or myself."

Clear and determined rang out the mistress's voice--mother and mistress--in this, her first a.s.sertion of both her rights. Phillis drew back astonished, and then, recovering herself, darted after the retreating boy. But it was too late; he had already gained the staircase. It was steep, dark, twisted, very unsafe for children; still, in his fear, Arthur plunged down it. In a minute there was heard a cry and a heavy fall.

Fierce-tempered woman as she was, Phillis had a heart. She rushed down after the child, but he turned screaming from her, and it was his stepmother who lifted him up and carried him into her own room.

Christian, young as she was, had had necessarily much experience with children. She soothed the boy, and felt that no limbs were broken; indeed, he complained of nothing, but he turned whiter and whiter, and shrank from the slightest touch.

"Something is certainly wrong with him. We must send for the doctor.

Whom do you have ordinarily?"

The question was put to Phillis, who, her fury all gone, stood behind the sofa almost as pale as the poor child. She answered humbly, and named Dr. Anstruther, whom Christian well knew by report; an old man, who for forty years had been the depository of the sicknesses and the sorrows of half Avonsbridge.

"Go, then, tell your master I think Barker ought to be sent for him at once; and say to Dr. Grey--only don't frighten him, for it may be a mere trifle after all--that I am afraid he will have to dine out without me today. Go quick, Phillis; there is no time to lose." For the little face was sinking back paler and paler, and there was an occasional faint moan.

Almost for the first time since her entrance into the Grey family, Phillis, against her will, actually obeyed orders and slipped away so hastily that she stumbled over Let.i.tia, and gave her a good box on the ear; however, the little girl did not cry, but gathered herself up, as if quite used to such treatment, and crept over to the sofa.

"Will Atty die, do you think?" she whispered in much curiosity--only curiosity there was not a tear in her eyes. "Because then he would never thump me any more."

Christian's very soul recoiled, and then melted into the deepest pity.

What sort of bringing up could it have been which had resulted in feelings like these?

She took no notice of what was said, but merely desired the little girl to bring pillows and a footstool, so that she could hold Arthur as easily as possible till the doctor came. And then she bade her take off the diamond bracelets and the hanging lace, and told her where to put all this finery away, which Let.i.tia accomplished with apt.i.tude and neatness.

"There, that will do. Thank you, my dear. You are a tidy little girl.

Will you come and give me a kiss."

Let.i.tia obeyed, though with some hesitation, and then came and stood by her step-mother, watching her intently. At last she said,

"You are crumpling your pretty white silk dress. Won't that vex you very much?"

"Not very much--if it can not be helped."