Chapter 9

________________________________________________
_ "Teach me to feel for others' woes,
To hide the fault I see;
The mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me."

Breakfast was just over on the morning following the soirée at the vice chancellor's. Christian sat with the two aunts, quietly sewing.

Ay, very quietly, even after last night. She had taken counsel with her own heart, through many wakeful hours, and grown calm and still. Neither her husband nor Miss Gascoigne had once named Sir Edwin. Probably Aunt Henrietta did not know him, and in the crowded party Dr. Grey might not have chanced to recognize him. Indeed, most likely the young man would take every means of avoiding recognition from the master of his own college, whence he had been ignominiously dismissed. His appearance at St. Mary's Lodge was strange enough, and only to be accounted for by his having been invited by the vice chancellor's young wife, who knew him only as Sir Edwin Uniacke, the rich young baronet.

But, under shadow of these advantages, no doubt he could easily get into society again, even at Avonsbridge, and would soon be met every where. She might have to meet him--she, who knew what she did know about him, and who, though there had been no absolute engagement between them, had suffered him to address her as a lover for four bright April weeks, ending in that thunderbolt of horror and pain, after which he never came again to the farm-house, and she never heard from or of him one word more.

Ought she to have told all this to her husband--was it her duty to tell him now? Again and again the question recurred to her, full of endless perplexities. She and Dr. Grey were not like two young people of equal years. Why trouble him, a man of middle age, with what he might think a silly, girlish love-story? and, above all, why wound him by what is the sharpest pain to a loving heart, the sudden discovery of things hitherto concealed, but which ought to have been told long ago? He might feel it thus--or thus--she could not tell; she did not, even yet, know him well enough to be quite sure. The misfortune of all hasty unions had been hers--she had to find out everything after marriage. The sweet familiarity of long courtship, which makes peculiarities and faults excusable, nay, dear, just because they are so familiar that the individual would not be himself or herself without them--this sacred guarantee for all wedded happiness had not been the lot of Christian Grey.

Even now, though it was the mere ghost of a dead love, or dead fancy, which she had to confess to her husband, she shrank from confessing it. She would rather let it slip to its natural Hades.

This was the conclusion she came to when cold, clear daylight put to flight all the bewilderments and perplexities which had troubled her through the dark hours; and she sat at the head of her breakfast-table with her own little circle around her--the circle which, with all its cares, became every day dearer and more satisfying, if only because it was her own.

And when she looked across to the husband and father, sitting so content, with the morning sun lighting up his broad forehead--wrinkled, it is true, but still open and clear, the honest brow of an honest man--it was with a trembling gratitude that made religious every throb of Christian's once half-heathen heart. The other man, with his bold eyes that made her shiver, the grasp of his hand from which her very soul recoiled--oh, thank God for having delivered her from him, and brought her into this haven of purity, peace and love!

As she stopped her needlework to cross to Arthur's sofa--he insisted on being carried every where beside her, her poor, spoiled, sickly boy--as she arranged his pillows and playthings, and gave him a kiss or two, taking about a dozen in return--she felt that the hardest duty, the most unrequited toil, in this her home would be preferable to that dream of Paradise in which she had once indulged, and out of which she must inevitably have wakened to find it a living hell.

The thanksgiving was still in her heart when she heard a ring at the hall bell, and remembered, with sudden compunction, that this was Miss Bennett's hour, and that she had to speak to her about the very painful matter which occurred yesterday.

She had quite forgotten it till this minute, as was not surprising. Now, with an effort, she threw off all thoughts about herself; this business was far more important, and might involve most serious consequences to the young governess if obliged to be dismissed under circumstances which, unless Miss Gascoigne's tongue could be stopped, would soon be parroted about to every lady in Avonsbridge.

"Poor girl!" thought Christian, "she may never get another situation. And yet perhaps she has done nothing actually wrong, no worse wrong than many do--than I did!"--she sighed--"in letting myself be made love to, and believing it all true, and sweet, and sacred, when it was all--But that is over now. And perhaps she has no friends any more than I had-- no home to cling to, no mother to comfort her. Poor thing! I must be very tender over her--very careful what I say to her."

And following this intention, instead of sending for Miss Bennett into the dining-room, as Miss Gascoigne probably expected, for she sat in great state, determined to "come to the root of the matter," as she expressed it, Mrs. Grey went out and met her in the hall.

"You are the lady whom my sister-in-law engaged as governess?"

"Yes, ma'am. And you are Mrs. Grey?" peering at her with some curiosity; for, as every body knew every thing in Avonsbridge, no doubt Miss Bennett was perfectly well aware that Dr. Grey's young wife was the _ci-devant_ governess at Mr. Ferguson's.

"Will you walk up into my room? I wanted a word with you before lessons."

"Certainly, Mrs. Grey. I hope you are quite satisfied with my instruction of Miss Grey. Indeed, my recommendations--as I told Miss Gascoigne--include some of the very first families--"

"I have no doubt Miss Gascoigne was satisfied," interrupted Mrs. Grey, not quite liking the flippant manner, the showy style of dress, and the air, at once subservient and forward; in truth, something which, despite her prettiness, stamped the governess as underbred, exactly what Aunt Henrietta had said--"not a lady."

"Your qualifications for teaching I have no wish to investigate; what I have to speak about is a totally different thing."

Miss Bennett looked uneasy for a minute, but Christian's manner was so studiously polite, even kindly, that she seemed to think nothing could be seriously wrong. She sat down composedly on the crimson sofa, and began investigating, with admiring, curious, and rather envious eyes, the handsome room, half boudoir, half bed-chamber.

"Oh, Mrs. Grey, what a nice room this is! How you must enjoy it! It's a hard life, teaching children."

"It is a hard life, as I know, for I was once a governess myself."

This admission, given so frankly, without the least hesitation, evidently quite surprised Miss Bennett. With still greater curiosity than the fine room, she regarded the fine lady who had once been a governess, and was not ashamed to own it.

"Well, all I can say is, you have been very lucky in your marriage, Mrs. Grey; I only wish I might be the same."

"That is exactly--" said Christian, catching at any thing in her nervous difficulty as to how she should open such an unpleasant subject--"no, not exactly, but partly, what I wished to speak to you about. Excuse a plain, almost rude question, which you can refuse to answer if you like; but, Miss Bennett, I should be very glad to know if you are engaged?"

"Engaged by Miss Gascoigne?"

"No; engaged to be married."

Miss Bennett drew back, blushed a little, looked much annoyed, and answered sharply, apparently involuntarily, "No!"

"Then--excuse me again--I would not ask if I did not feel it absolutely my duty, in order that we may come to a right understanding--but the gentleman you were walking with yesterday, when you asked Letitia to meet you in Walnut-tree Court, was he a brother, or cousin, or what?"

Susan Bennett was altogether confounded. "How did you find it all out? Did the child tell?--the horrid little--but of course she did. And then you set on and watched me! That was a nice trick for one lady to play another."

"You are mistaken," replied Christian, gravely; "I found this out by the merest accident; and as I can not allow the child to do the same thing again, I thought it the most honest course to tell you at once of the discovery I made, and receive your explanations."

"You can't get them; I have a perfect right to walk with whom I please?"

"Most certainly; but not to take Dr. Grey's little daughter with you as a companion. Don't you see, Miss Bennett"--feeling sorry for the shame and pain she fancied she must be inflicting--"how injurious these sort of proceedings must be to a little girl, who ought to know nothing about love at all--(pardon my concluding this is a love affair)--till she comes to it seriously, earnestly, and at a fitting age? And then the deception, underhandedness--can not you see how wrong it was to make secret appointments with a child, and induce her to steal out of the house unknown to both nurse and mother?"

"You are not her own mother, Mrs. Grey, it don't affect you."

"Pardon me," returned Christian very distantly, as she perceived her delicacy was altogether wasted upon this impertinent young woman, who appeared well able to hold her own under any circumstances, "it does affect me so much that, deeply as I shall regret it, I must offer you a check for your three months' salary. Your engagement, I believe, was quarterly, and I must beg of you to consider it canceled."

Miss Bennett turned red and pale; the offensive tone sank into one pitifully weak and cringing.

"Oh, Mrs. Grey! don't be hard upon me; I'm a poor governess, doing my best, and father has a large family of us, and the shop isn't as thriving as it was. Don't turn me away, and I'll never meet the young fellow again."

There was a little natural feeling visible through the ultra-humility of the girl's manner, and when she took out a coarse but elaborately laced pocket-handkerchief, and wept upon it abundantly, Christian's heart melted.

"I am very sorry for you--very sorry indeed; but what can I do? Will you tell me candidly, are you engaged to this gentleman?"

"No, not exactly; but I am sure I shall be by-and-by."

"He is your lover, then? he ought to be, if, as Letitia says, you go walking together every evening."

"Well, and if I do, it's nobody's business but my own, I suppose; and it's very hard it should lose me my situation."

So it was. Mrs. Grey remembered her own "young days," as she now called them--remembered them with pity rather than shame; for she had done nothing wrong. She had deceived no one, only been herself deceived--in a very harmless fashion, just because, in her foolish, innocent heart, which knew nothing of the world and the world's wiles, she thought no man would ever be so mean, so cowardly, as to tell a girl he loved her unless he meant it in the true, noble, knightly way--a lover

"Who loved one woman, and who clave to her"

--clave once and forever. A vague tenderness hung about those days yet, enough to make her cast the halo of her sympathy over even commonplace Susan Bennett.

"Will you give me your confidence? Who is this friend of yours, and why does he not at once ask you for his wife? Perhaps he is poor and can not afford to marry?"

"Oh. dear me! I'm not so stupid as to think of a poor man, Bless you! he has a title and an estate too. If I get him I shall make a splendid marriage."

Christian recoiled. Her sympathy was altogether thrown away. There evidently was not a point in common between foolish Christian Oakley, taking dreamy twilight saunters under the apple-trees--not alone; looking up to her companion as something between Sir Launcelot and the Angel Gabriel--and this girl, carrying on a clandestine flirtation, which she hoped would--and was determined to make--end in a marriage, with a young man much above her own station, and just because he was so. As for loving him in the sense that Christian had understood love, Miss Bennett was utterly incapable of it. She never thought of love at all--only of matrimony.

Still, the facts of the case boded ill. A wealthy young nobleman, and a pretty, but coarse and half-educated shopkeeper's daughter--no good could come of the acquaintance--perhaps fatal harm. Once more Christian thought she would try to conquer her disgust, and win the girl to better things.

"I do not wish to intrude--no third person has a right to intrude upon these affairs; but I wish I could be of any service. You must perceive, Miss Bennett, that your proceedings are not quite right--not quite safe. Are you sure you know enough about this gentleman? How long have you been acquainted with him? He probably belongs to the University."

Miss Bennnett laughed. "Not he--at least not now. He got into a scrape and left it, and has only been back here a week; but I have found out where his estate is, and all about him. He has the prettiest property, and is perfectly independent, and a baronet likewise. Only think"--and the girl, recovering her spirits, tossed her handsome head, and spread out her showy, tawdry gown--"only think of being called 'Lady!'--Lady Uniacke."

Had Miss Bennett been less occupied in admiring herself in the mirrors she must have seen the start Mrs. Grey gave--for the moment only, however--and then she spoke.

"Sir Edwin Uniacke's character here is well known. He is a bad man. For you to keep up any acquaintance with him is positive madness."

"Not in the least; I know perfectly what I am about, and can take care of myself, thank you. He has sown his wild oats, and got a title and estate, which makes a very great difference. Besides, I hope I'm as sharp as he. I shall not let myself down, no fear. I'll make him make me Lady Uniacke."

Christian's pity changed into something very like disgust. Many a poor, seduced girl would have appeared to her less guilty, less degraded than this girl, who, knowing all a man's antecedents, which she evidently did--bad as he was, set herself deliberately to marry him--a well-planned, mercenary marriage, by which she might raise herself out of her low station into a higher, and escape from the drudgery of labor into ease and splendor.

And yet is not the same thing done every day in society by charming young ladies, aided and abetted by most prudent, respectable, and decorous fathers and mothers? Let these, who think themselves so sinless, cast the first stone at Susan Bennett.

But to Christian, who had never been in society, and did not know the ways of it, the sensation conveyed was one of absolute repulsion. She rose.

"I fear, Miss Bennett, that if we continued this conversation forever we should never agree. It only proves to me more and more the impossibility of your remaining my daughter's governess. Allow me to pay you, and then let us part at once."

But the look of actual dismay which came over the girl's face once more made her pause.

"You send me away with no recommendation--and I shall never get another situation--and I have hardly a thing to put on--and I'm in debt awfully. You are cruel to me, Mrs. Grey--you that have been a governess yourself." And she burst into a passion of hysterical crying.

"What can I do?" said Christian sadly. "I can not keep you----I dare not. And it is equally true that I dare not recommend you. If I could find any thing else--not with children--something you really could do, and which would take you away from this town--"

"I'd go any where----do any thing to get my bread, for it comes to that. If I went home and told father this--if he found out why I had lost my situation, he'd turn me out of doors. And except this check, which is owed nearly all, I haven't one halfpenny--I really haven't. Mrs. Grey. It's all very well for you to talk--you in your fine house and comfortable clothes; but you don't know what it is to be shabby, cold, miserable. You don't know what it is to be in dread of starving."

"I do," said Christian, solemnly. It was true.

The shudder which came over her at thought of these remembered days obliterated every feeling about the girl except the desire to help her, blameworthy though she was, in some way that could not possibly injure any one else.

Suddenly she recollected that Mrs. Ferguson was in great need of some one to take care of Mr. Ferguson's old blind mother, who lived forty miles distant from Avonsbridge. If she spoke to her about Miss Bennett, and explained, without any special particulars, that, though unfit to be trusted with children, she might do well enough with an old woman in a quiet village, Mrs. Ferguson, whose kind-heartedness was endless, might send her there at once.

"Will you go? and I will tell nobody my reasons for dismissing you," said Christian, as earnestly as if she had been asking instead of conferring a favor. Her kindness touched even that bold, hard nature.

"You are very good to me; and perhaps I don't deserve it."

"Try to deserve it. If I get this situation for you, will you make me one promise?"

"A dozen,"

"One is enough--that you will give up Sir Edwin Uniacke."

"How do you mean?"

"Don't meet him, don't write to him--don't hold any communication with him for three months. If he wants you, let him come and ask you like an honest man."

Miss Bennett shook her head. "He's a baronet, you know."

"No matter. An honest man and an honest woman are perfectly equal, even though one is a baronet and the other a daily governess. And, if love is worth any thing, it will last three months; if worth nothing, it had better go."

But even while she was speaking--plain truths which she believed with her whole heart--Christian felt, in this case, the bitter satire of her words.

Susan Bennett only smiled at them in a vague, uncomprehending way. "Would you have trusted your lover--that means Dr. Grey, I suppose-- for three months?"

Mrs. Grey did not reply. But her heart leaped to think how well she knew the answer. No need to speak of it, though. It would be almost profanity to talk to this women, who knew about as much of it as an African fetish-worshipper knows of the Eternal--of that love which counts fidelity not by months and years; which, though it has its root in mortal life, stretches out safely and fearlessly into the life everlasting.

"Well, I'll go, and perhaps my going away will bring him to the point," was the fond resolution of Miss Susan Bennett.

Mrs. Grey, infinitely relieved, wrote the requisite letters and dismissed her, determined to call that day and explain as much of the matter to honest Mrs. Ferguson as might put the girl in a safe position, where she would have a chance of turning out well, or, at least, better than if she had remained at Avonsbridge.

Then Christian had time to think of herself. Here was Sir Edwin Uniacke--this daring, unscrupulous man, close at her very doors; meeting her at evening parties; making acquaintance with her children, for Titia had told her how kind the gentleman was, and how politely he had inquired after her "new mamma."

Of vanity, either to be wounded or flattered, Christian had absolutely none. And she had never read French novels. It no more occurred to her that Sir Edwin would come and make love to her, now she was Dr. Grey's wife, than that she herself should have any feeling--except pity-- in knowing of his love-affair with Miss Bennett. She was wholly and absolutely indifferent with regard to him and all things concerning him. Even the events of last night and this morning were powerless to cast more than a momentary gravity over her countenance--gone the instant she heard her husband calling her from his open study door.

"I wanted to hear how you managed Miss Bennett, you wise woman. Is it a lover?"

"I fear so, and not a creditable one. But I am certain of one thing. She does not love him--she only wants to marry him."

"A distinction with a difference," said Dr. Grey, smiling. "And you don't agree with her, my dear?"

"I should think not!"

Again Dr. Grey smiled. "How fiercely she speaks! What a tiger this little woman of mine could be if she chose. And so she absolutely believes in the old superstition that love is an essential element of matrimony."

"You are laughing at me."

"No, my darling, God forbid. I am only--happy."

"Are you really, really happy? Do you think I can make you so--I, with all my unworthiness?"

"I am sure of it."

She looked up in his face from out of his close arms, and they talked no more. _

Read next: Chapter 10

Read previous: Chapter 8

Table of content of Christian's Mistake


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book