Christian"s Mistake.
by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik.
Chapter 1.
_"So I will do my best a gude wife to be, For Auld Robin Grey is vera kind to me."_
"I think this will do, my dear; just listen;" and in a mysterious half whisper, good Mrs. Ferguson, wife of James Ferguson, the well-to-do silversmith and jeweler, of High Street, Avonsbridge, read aloud from the sheet of paper in her hand:
""On the 21st instant, at the University Church, Avonsbridge, by the Reverend John Smith, the Reverend Arnold Grey, D.D., Master of Saint Bede"s College, Avonsbridge, to Christian, only child of the late Edward Oakley, Esq., of that place." Will it do? Because, if so, James will send it to "The Times" at once."
"Better ask Dr. Grey first," answered the bride.
As she spoke, Dr. Grey turned round from the window where he had been conversing--that is, responding to conversation--with Mr.
Ferguson, chiefly on the weather; for it was a snowy December day.
This precise moment, half an hour after his marriage--his second marriage--is hardly a fair time to describe Dr. Arnold Grey; suffice it to say that he was a gentleman apparently about forty-five, rather low in stature, and spare in figure, with hair already thin and iron-gray. The twenty-five years between him and his newly-married wife showed plainly--only too plainly--as she stood, in all her gracefulness of girlhood, which even her extreme pallor and a certain sharp, worn, unnaturally composed look could not destroy. He seemed struck by this. His face clouded over for a minute, and he slightly sighed. But the pain, whatever it was, was only momentary. He looked like a man who was not in the habit of acting hastily or impulsively--who never did any thing without having previously fully counted the cost.
"What were you saying, Mrs. Ferguson?" said he, addressing her with the grave and somewhat formal politeness which was his natural manner, but which always somewhat awed that rather vulgar, though kind-hearted and well-meaning woman.
She put the paper into his hands. "It"s the notice for "The Times;" James and I made it up last night. James thought it would save you trouble, master--" Mrs. Ferguson always hesitated between this common University custom of address and plain, "Dr. Grey."
"Thank you; Mr. Ferguson is always kind," returned the Master of Saint Bede"s.
"You see," continued Mrs. Ferguson, lowering her tone to a confidential whisper, "I thought it was better only to put "Edward Oakley, Esq.," and nothing more. Wouldn"t you like it to be so, sir?"
"I should like it to be exactly as--" he paused, and the color rushed violently over his thin, worn, and yet sensitive face, as sensitive as if he had been a young man still--"exactly as Mrs. Grey pleases."
Mrs. Grey! At the sound of her new name Christian started, and she, too, turned scarlet. Not the sweet, rosy blush of a bride, but the dark red flush of sharp physical or mental pain, which all her self-control could not hide.
"Poor dear! poor dear! this is a great change for her, and only a year since her father died," said Mrs. Ferguson, still in that mysterious, apologetic whisper. "But indeed, my love, you have done quite right in marrying; and don"t fret a bit about it. Never mind her, sir; she"ll be better by-and-by." This oppression of pity would have nerved any one of reserved temperament to die rather than betray the least fragment of emotion more. Christian gathered herself up; her face grew pale again, and her voice steady. She looked, not at Mrs. Ferguson, but at the good man who had just made her his wife--and any one looking at him must have felt that he was a good man--then said, gently but determinedly,
"If Dr. Grey has no objection, I should like to have stated my father"s occupation or my own. I do not wish to hide or appear ashamed of either."
"Certainly not," replied Dr. Grey; and, taking up the pen, he added, "Edward Oakley, Esq., late organist of Saint Bede"s." It was the last earthly memento of one who, born a gentleman and a genius, had so lived, that, as all Avonsbridge well knew, the greatest blessing which could have happened to his daughter was his death. But, as by some strange and merciful law of compensation often occurs, Christian, inheriting mind and person from him, had inherited temperament, disposition, character from the lowly-born mother, who was every thing that he was not, and who had lived just long enough to stamp on the girl of thirteen a moral impress which could resist all contamination, and leave behind a lovely dream of motherhood that might, perhaps-- G.o.d knows!--have been diviner than the reality.
These things Dr. Grey, brought accidentally into contact with Christian Oakley on business matters after her father"s lamentable death, speedily discovered for himself; and the result was one of those sudden resolves which in some men spring from mere pa.s.sion, in others from an instinct so deep and true that they are not to be judged by ordinary rules. People call it "love at first sight," and sometimes tell wonderful stories of how a man sees, quite unexpectedly, some sweet, strange, and yet mysteriously familiar face, which takes possession of his fancy with an almost supernatural force. He says to himself, "That woman shall be my wife;" and some day, months or years after, he actually marries her; even as, within a twelvemonth, having waited silently until she was twenty-one, Dr. Grey married Christian Oakley.
But until within a few weeks ago she herself had had no idea of the kind. She intensely respected him; her grat.i.tude for his fatherly care and kindness was almost boundless; but marrying him, or marrying at all, was quite foreign to her thoughts. How things had come about even yet she could hardly remember or comprehend. All was a perfect dream. It seemed another person, and not she, who was suddenly changed from Mrs. Ferguson"s poor governess, without a friend or relative in the wide world, to the wife of the Master of Saint Bede"s.
That she could have married, or been thought to have married him, for aught but his own good and generous self, or that the mastership of Saint Bede"s, his easy income, and his high reputation had any thing to do with it, never once crossed her imagination. She was so simple; her forlorn, shut-up, unhappy life had kept her, if wildly romantic, so intensely, childishly true, that, whatever objections she had to Dr.
Grey"s offer, the idea that this could form one of them--that any one could suspect her--her, Christian Oakley--of marrying for money or for a home, did not occur to her for an instant. He saw that, this lover, who, from his many years of seniority, and the experience of a somewhat hard life, looked right down into the depths of the girl"s perplexed, troubled, pa.s.sionate, innocent heart, and he was not afraid.
Though she told him quite plainly that she felt for him not love, but only affection and grat.i.tude, he had simply said, with his own tender smile, "Never mind--I love you;" and married her.
As she stood in her white dress, white shawl, white bonnet--all as plain as possible, but still pure bridal white, contrasted strongly with the glaring colors of that drawing-room over the shop, which Poor Mrs.
Ferguson had done her luckless best to make as fine as possible, her tall, slender figure, harmonious movements and tones, being only more noticeable by the presence of that stout, gaudily-dressed, and loud- speaking woman, most people would have said that, though he had married a governess, a solitary, unprotected woman, with neither kith nor kin to give her dignity, earning her own bread by her own honest labor, the master of Saint Bede"s was not exactly a man to be pitied.
He rose, and having silently shown the paper to Christian, enclosed it in an envelope, and gave it to Mr. Ferguson.
"Will you take the trouble of forwarding this to "The Times," the latest of all your many kindnesses?" said he, with that manner, innately a gentleman"s, which makes the acknowledging of a favor appear like the conferring of one.
Worthy James Ferguson took it as such; but he was a person of deeds, not words; and he never could quite overcome the awe with which, as an Avonsbridge person, he, the jeweler of High Street, regarded the master of St. Bede"s.
Meanwhile the snow, which had been falling all day, fell thicker and thicker, so that the hazy light of the drawing-room darkened into absolute gloom.
"Don"t you think the children should be here?" said Mrs. Ferguson, pausing in her a.s.siduous administration of cake and wine. "That is--I"m sure I beg your pardon, master--if they are really coming."
"I desired my sisters to send them without fail," quietly replied the master.
But another half hour dragged heavily on; the bridegroom"s carriage, which was to take them across country to a quiet railway station, already stood at the door, when another carriage was heard to drive up to it.
"There they are!" cried Mrs. Ferguson; and the bride, who had been sitting beside her on the sofa, pa.s.sive, silent, all but motionless, started a little.
"Oh, I"m so glad!" she said, in the first natural tone that had been heard in her voice all day. "I did so want to see the children."
Dr. Grey went out of the room at once, and Mrs. Ferguson had the good sense to follow, taking her husband with her. "For," as she said afterward, "the first sight of three stepchildren, and she, poor dear, such a mere girl, must be a very unpleasant thing." For her part, she was thankful that when she married James Ferguson he was a bachelor, with not a soul belonging to him except an old aunt. She wouldn"t like to be in poor Mrs. Grey"s shoes--"dear me, no!"--with those two old ladies who have lived at the Lodge ever since the first Mrs. Grey died. She wondered how on earth Miss Oakley would manage them. And upon James Ferguson"s suggesting "in the same way as she managed every body," his wife soundly berated him for saying such a silly thing, though he had, with the usual acuteness of silent people, said a wiser thing than he was aware of.
Meantime Christian was left alone, for the first time that day, and many days; for solitude was a blessing not easy to get in the Ferguson"s large, bustling family. Perhaps she did not seek it--perhaps she dared not.
Anyhow, during the month that had been occupied with her marriage preparations, she had scarcely been ten minutes alone, not even at night, for two children shared her room--the loving little things whom she had taught for two years, first as daily, and then as resident governess, and to whom she had persisted in giving lessons till the last.
She stood with the same fixed composedness--not composure--of manner; the quietness of a person who, having certain things to go through, goes through them in a sort of dream, almost without recognizing her own ident.i.ty. Women, more than men, are subject to this strange, somnambulistic, mental condition, the result of strong emotion, in which they both do and endure to an extent that men would never think of or find possible.
After a minute she moved slightly, took up and laid down a book, but still mechanically, as if she did not quite know what she was doing until, suddenly, she caught sight of her wedding-ring. She regarded it with something very like affright; tried convulsively to pull it off; but it was rather tight; and before it had pa.s.sed a finger-joint she had recollected herself and pressed it down again.
"It is too late now. He is so good--every body says so--and he is so very good to me."
She spoke aloud, though she was alone in the room, or rather because she was alone, after a habit which, like all solitarily reared and dreamy persons, Christian had had all her life--her young, short life--only twenty-one years--and yet it seemed to her a whole, long, weary existence.
"If I can but make him happy! If what is left to me is only enough to make him happy!"
These broken sentences were repeated more than once, and then she stood silent as though in a dream still.
When she heard the door open, she turned round with that still, gentle, pa.s.sive smile which had welcomed Dr. Grey on every day of his brief "courting" days. It never altered, though he entered in a character not the pleasantest for a bridegroom, with his three little children, one on either side of him, and the youngest in his arms.
But there are some men, and mostly those grave, shy, and reserved men, who have always the truest and tenderest hearts, whom nothing transforms so much as to be with children, especially if the children are their own. They are given to hiding a great deal, but the father in them can not be hid. Why should it? Every man who has anything really manly in his nature knows well that to be a truly good father, carrying out by sober reason and conscience those duties which in the mother spring from instinct, is the utmost dignity to which his human nature can attain.
Miss Oakley, like the rest of Avonsbridge, had long-known Dr. Grey"s history; how he had married early, or (ill-natured report said) been married by, a widow lady, very handsome, and some years older than himself. However, the sharpest insinuations ever made against their domestic bliss were that she visited a good deal, while he was deeply absorbed in his studies. And when, after a good many childless years, she brought him a girl and boy, he became excessively fond of his children. Whether this implied that he had been disappointed in his wife, n.o.body could tell. He certainly did not publish his woes. Men seldom do. At the birth of a third child Mrs. Grey died, and then the widower"s grief; though un.o.btrusive, was sufficiently obvious to make Avonsbridge put all unkindly curiosity aside, and conclude that the departed lady must have been the most exemplary and well-beloved of wives and mothers.
All this, being town"s talk, Christian already knew; more she had never inquired, not even when she was engaged to him. Nor did Dr. Grey volunteer any information. The strongest and most soothing part of his influence over her was his exceeding silence. He had never troubled her with any great demonstrations, nor frightened her with questionings. From the time of their engagement he had seemed to take every thing for granted, and to treat her tenderly, almost reverently, without fuss or parade, yet with the consideration due from a man to his future wife; so much so that she had hardly missed, what, indeed, in her simplicity she hardly expected, the attention usually paid to an affianced bride from the relatives of her intended. Dr. Grey had only two, his own sister and his late wife"s. These ladies, Miss Gascoigne and Miss Grey, had neither called upon nor taken the least notice of Miss Oakley. But Miss Oakley--if she thought about the matter at all-- ascribed it to a fact well recognized in Avonsbridge, as in most University towns, that one might as soon expect the skies to fall as for a college lady to cross, save for purely business purposes, the threshold of a High Street tradesman. The same cause, she concluded, made them absent from her wedding; and when Dr. Grey had said simply, "I shall desire my sisters to send the children," Christian had inquired no farther. Only for a second, hanging on the brink of this first meeting with the children--her husband"s children, hers that were to be--did her heart fail her, and then she came forward to meet the little group.
Let.i.tia and Arthur were thin, prim-looking, rather plain children; but Oliver was the very picture of a father"s darling, a boy that any childless man would bitterly covet, any childless woman crave and yearn for, with a longing that women alone can understand; a child who, beautiful as most childhood is, had a beauty you rarely see-- bright, frank, merry, bold; half a Bacchus and half a Cupid, he was a perfect image of the Golden Age. Though three years old, he was evidently still "the baby," and rode on his father"s shoulder with a glorious tyranny charming to behold.
"Who"s that?" said he, pointing his fat fingers and shaking his curls that undulated like billows of gold.
"Papa, who"s that?"
Hardly could there have been put by anyone a more difficult question.