Poor Aunt Maria looked up with a helpless pretense of ignorance.
"What about her. Henrietta, dear?"
"Pshaw! You know as well as I do, only you are so obtuse, or so meek," (A mercy she was, or she would never have lived a week, not to say twenty years, with Henrietta Gascoigne.) "Once for all, tell me what you propose doing?"
"Doing? I?"
"Yes, you. Can"t you see, my dear Maria, that it is your business to inform your brother what you have discovered concerning his wife?"
"Discovered?"
"Certainly; it is a discovery, since she has never told it--never told her husband that before her marriage she had been in the habit of singing duets (love-songs, no doubt, most improper for any young woman) with a young gentleman of Sir Edwin"s birth and position, who, of course, never thought of marrying her--(your brother, I do believe, is the only man in Avonsbridge who would have so committed himself)-- and who, by the light way he speaks of her, evidently shows how little respect he had for her."
"Perhaps," mildly suggested Aunt Maria, "perhaps she really has told dear Arnold."
"Then why did he not tell us--tell me? Why did he place me in the very awkward position of not knowing of this previous acquaintance of his wife"s? Why, in that very unpleasant conversation we had one day at the Lodge, was I the only person to be kept in ignorance of his reasons-- and very good reasons I now see they were--for forbidding Sir Edwin"s visits? Singing duets together! Who knows but that they may meet and sing them still? That new piano! and we turned out of the house directly afterward--literally turned out! But perhaps that was the very reason she did it--that she might meet him the more freely. Oh, Maria!
your poor deluded brother!"
It is strange the way some women have--men too, but especially women--of rolling and rolling their small s...o...b..ll of wrath until it grows to an actual mountain, which has had dragged into it all sorts of heterogeneous wrongs, and has grown harder and blacker day by day, till no sun of loving-kindness will ever thaw it more. In vain did poor Maria e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e her pathetic "Oh, Henrietta!" and try, in her feeble way, to put in a kindly word or two; nothing availed. Miss Gascoigne had lashed herself up into believing firmly every thing she had imagined and it was with an honest expression of real grief and pain that she repeated over and over again, "What ought we to do? Your poor, dear brother!"
For, with all her faults, Miss Gascoigne was a conscientious woman; one who, so far as she saw her duty, tried to fulfill it, and as strongly, perhaps a little more so, insisted on other people"s fulfilling theirs.
She stood aghast at the picture, her own self-painted picture, of the kind brother-in-law, of whom in her heart she was really fond, married to a false, wicked woman, more than twenty years his junior, who mocked at his age and peculiarities, and flirted behind his back with any body and every body. To do Aunt Henrietta justice, however, of more than flirtation she did not suspect--no person with common sense and ordinary observation could suspect--Christian Grey.
"I must speak to her myself, poor thing! I must open her eyes to the danger she is running. Only consider, Maria, if that story did go about Avonsbridge, she would never be thought well of in society again. I must speak to her. If she will only confide in me implicitly, so that I can take her part, and a.s.sure every body I meet that, however bad appearances may be as regards this unlucky story, there is really no- thing in it--nothing at all--don"t you see, Maria?"
Alas! Maria had been so long accustomed to look at every thing through the vision of dear Henrietta, that she had no clear sight of her own whatever. She only found courage to say, in a feeble way,
"Take care, oh, do take care! I know you are much cleverer than I am, and can manage things far better; but oh please take care?"
And when, some hours after, Dr. and Mrs. Grey not appearing, she was called into Miss Gascoigne"s room, where that lady stood tying her bonnet-strings with a determined air, and expressing her intention of going at once to the Lodge, however inconvenient, still, all that Aunt Maria ventured to plead was that melancholy warning, generally unheeded by those who delight in playing with hot coals and edged tools, as Aunt Henrietta had done all her life, "Take care!"
In her walk to the Lodge, through the still, sweet autumn evening, with a fairy-like wreath of mist rising up above the low-lying meadows of the Avon, and climbing slowly up to the college towers, and the far-off sunset clouds, whose beauty she never noticed, Miss Gascoigne condescended to some pa.s.sing conversation with Phillis, and elicited from her, without betraying any thing, as she thought, a good deal-- namely, that Sir Edwin Uniacke was often seen walking up and down the avenue facing the Lodge, and that once or twice he had met and spoken to the children.
"But Mrs. Grey doesn"t like it, I think she wants to drop his acquaintance," said the sharp Phillis, who was gaining quite as much information as she bestowed.
"Why, did they ever--did she ever"--and then some lingering spark of womanly feeling, womanly prudence, made Miss Gascoigne hesitate, and add with dignity. "Yes, very likely Mrs. Grey may not choose his acquaintance. He is not approved of by every body."
"I know that." said Phillis, meaningly.
The two women, the lady and the servant, exchanged looks. Both were acute persons, and the judgment either pa.s.sed on the other was keen and accurate. Probably neither judged herself, or recognized the true root of her judgment upon the third person, unfortunate Christian. "She has interfered with my management, and stolen the hearts of my children;" "she has annoyed me and resisted my authority?" would never have been given by either nurse or aunt as a reason for either their feelings or their actions; yet so it was.
Nevertheless, when in the hall of the Lodge they came suddenly face to face with Mrs. Grey, entering, hat in hand, from the door of the private garden, the only place where she ever walked alone now, they both started as if they had been detected in something wrong. She looked so quiet and gentle, grave and sweet, modest as a girl and dignified as a young matron--so perfectly unconscious of all that was being said or planned against her, that if these two malicious women had a conscience--and they had, both of them--they must have felt it smite them now.
"Miss Gascoigne, how kind of you to walk home with the children!
Papa and I would have come, but he was obliged to dine in Hall. He will soon be free now, and will walk back with you. Pray come in and rest; you look tired."
Mrs. Grey"s words and manner, so perfectly guileless and natural, for the moment quite confounded her enemy--her enemy, and yet an honest enemy. Of the number of cruel things that are done in this world, how many are done absolutely for conscience sake by people who deceive themselves that they are acting from the n.o.blest, purest motives-- carrying out all the Christian virtues, in short, only they do so, not in themselves, but against other people. And from their list of commandments they obliterate one--"Judge not, that ye be not judged condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned."
But, for the time being, Miss Gascoigne was puzzled. Her stern reproof, her patronizing pity, were alike disarmed. Her mountain seemed crumbling to its original mole-hill. The heap of accusing evidence which she had acc.u.mulated dwindled into the most ordinary and commonplace facts at sight of Christian"s innocent face and placid mien. Nothing could be more unlike a woman who had ever contemplated the ordinary "flirting" of society. As for any thing worse, the idea was impossible to be entertained for a moment. It was simply ridiculous.
Aunt Henrietta sat a good while talking, quite mildly for her, of ordinary topics, before she attempted to broach the real object of her visit. It was only as the hour neared for Dr. Grey"s coming in that she nerved herself to her mission. She had an uneasy sense that it would be carried out better in his absence than in his presence.
Without glancing often at Christian, who sat so peaceful, looking out into the fading twilight, she launched her thunderbolt at once.
"We had a visit today from Sir Edwin Uniacke."
"So I supposed, since I and the children met him on the way to Avonside."
In this world, so full of shams, bow utterly bewildering sometimes is the direct innocent truth! At this answer of Christian"s Miss Gascoigne looked more amazed than if she had been told a dozen lies.
"Was that the reason you turned back and went home?"
"Partly; I really had forgotten something which Dr. Grey wanted, but I also wished to avoid meeting your visitor."
"Why so?"
"Surely you must guess. How can I voluntarily meet any one who is not a friend of my husband"s?"
"Not though he may have been a friend of your own? For, as I understand, you once had a very close acquaintance with Sir Edwin Uniacke."
The thrust was so unexpected, unmistakable in its meaning, that Christian, in her startled surprise, said the very worst thing she could have said to the malicious ears which were held open to every thing and eager to misconstrue every thing, "Who told you that?"
"Told me! Why all Avonsbridge is talking about it, and about you."
This was a lie--a little white lie; one of those small exaggerations of which people make no account; but Christian believed it, and it seemed to wrap her round as with a cold mist of fear. All Avonsbridge talking of her--her, Dr. Grey"s wife, who had his honor as well as her own in her keeping--talking about herself and Sir Edwin Uniacke! What? how much? how had the tale come about? how could it be met?
With a sudden instinct of self-preservation, she forcibly summoned back her composure. She knew with whom she had to deal. She must guard every look, every word.
"Will you tell me. Miss Gascoigne, exactly who is talking about me, and what they say? I am sure I have never given occasion for it."
"Never? Are you quite certain of that?"
"Quite certain. Who said I had "a very close acquaintance"--were not these your words--with Sir Edwin Uniacke?"
"Himself."
"Himself!"
Then Christian recognized the whole amount of her difficulty--nay, her danger; for she was in the power, not of a gentleman, but of a villain.
Any man must have been such who, under the circ.u.mstances, could have boasted of their former acquaintance, or even referred to it at all.
"Kiss and tell?" runs the disdainful proverb. And even the worldliest of men, in their low code of honor, count the thing base and ign.o.ble.
Alas! all women do not.
In the strangely mistaken code of feminine "honorable-ness," it is deemed no disgrace for a woman to chatter and boast of a man"s love, but the utmost disgrace for her to own or feel on her side any love at all. But Christian was unlike her s.e.x in some things. To her, with her creed of love, it would have appeared far less mean, less cowardly, less dishonorable, openly to confess, "I loved this man," than to betray "This man loved me." And it was with almost contemptuous indignation that she repeated, "What! he told it himself?"
"He did. I first heard it through Miss Bennett, your _protegee,_ who has come back, and is now a governess at Mrs. Brereton"s. But when I questioned Sir Edwin himself, he did not deny it."
"You questioned him?"