A pang, the full meaning of which she then did not in the least understand, shot through Christian"s heart. "You should not feel grateful to his _mother._"
"Do you mean, really, that you love him like--like a mother?"
"Of course I do."
Dr. Grey said nothing more, but his wife felt him put his arm round her.
She leaned her head against him and, though she still wept--for the tears, once unsealed, seemed painfully quick to rise--still she was contented and at rest. Worn and weary a little, now the suspense was over the reaction came, but very peaceful. Unconsciously there ran through her mind one of the foolish bits of poetry she had been fond of when a girl:
_"In the unruffled shelter of thy love, My bark leaped homeward from a stormy sea, And furled its sails, and, like a nested dove--"_
"Mother!" called out Arthur"s feeble, fretful voice, and in a minute the poetry had all gone out of her head, and she was by her boy"s side, feeding him, jesting with him, and planning how the first day of his convalescence should be celebrated by a grand festival, inviting the two others to tea in his room. It was her own room, from which he had never been moved since the first night. How familiar had grown the crimson sofa, the tall mirror, the carved oaken wardrobe! The bride had regarded these splendors with a wondering half-uneasy grat.i.tude; but now, to Arthur"s nurse and "mother," they looked pleasant, home- like, and dear.
"We will pull the sofa to the fire. Help, papa, please, and place the little table before it. And we will send written invitations which papa shall deliver, with a postman"s knock, at the nursery door. We won"t send him one, I think?"
"Very well," said Dr. Grey, with a great pretense of wrath; "then papa will have to invite himself, like the wicked old fairy at the christening of--Who was it, Arthur?"
Arthur clapped his hands, which proceeding was instantly stopped by Christian. "It was the Sleeping Beauty, which you don"t know one bit about, and I do, and ever so many more tales. She used to tell me them in the middle of the night, when I couldn"t sleep, and they were so nice and so funny! She shall tell you some after tea. And we"ll make her sing too. Papa, did you ever hear her sing?"
"No," said Dr. Grey.
"Oh, but I have. She"ll sing for me," returned Arthur, proudly. "She said she would, though she had meant never to sing again."
Christian blushed violently, for the boy, in his unconscious way, had referred to a little episode of his illness, when, having exhausted all efforts to soothe him into drowsiness, she had tried her voice, silent for many months--silent since before she had known Dr. Grey. She had wished it so--wished to bury all relics of that time of her youth deep down, so that no chance hand could ever dig them up again.
"Do you really sing?" asked Dr. Grey, a little surprised, and turning full upon her those grave, gentle, tender eyes.
She blushed more painfully than ever, but she answered steadily, "Yes, I was supposed to have a very fine voice. My father wished it cultivated for the stage. It might have been so if things had been different."
"Would you have liked it?--the stage, I mean."
"Oh no, no!" with a visible, unmistakable shudder. "I would have resisted to the last. I hated it."
"Was that why you left off singing?"
It would have been so easy to tell a lie--a little harmless white lie but Christian could not do it. She could keep silence to any extent, but falsehood was impossible to her. She dropped her eyes; but the color once more overspread her whole face as she answered, distinctly and decisively, "No."
It surprised her somewhat afterward, not then--her heart was beating too violently for her to notice any thing much--that her husband asked her no farther question, but immediately turned the conversation to Arthur"s tea-party, in the discussion of which both were so eager to amuse the invalid that the other subject dropped--naturally, it appeared; anyhow, effectually.
But when the two other children came in to see Arthur, he again recurred to her singing, which had evidently taken a strong hold upon his imagination.
"Papa, you must hear her. Mother, sing the song with pretty little twiddle-twiddles in it--far prettier than Aunt Henrietta"s things-- something about warbling in her breath."
"Oh no, not that," said Christian, shrinking involuntarily. What from?
Was it from a ghostly vision of the last time she had sung it--that is properly, to a piano-forte accompaniment, played by fingers that had afterward caught hold of _her_ trembling fingers, and been a living comment on the song? It was that exquisite one from Handel"s "Acis and Galatea:"
_"Love in her eyes sits playing, And sheds delicious death; Love on her lips is straying, And warbling in her breath."_
Probably never was there a melody which more perfectly ill.u.s.trated that sort of love, the idealization of fancy and feeling, with just a glimmer of real pa.s.sion quivering through it--the light cast in advance by the yet unrisen day.
"Not that song, Arthur. It is rather difficult besides, Papa might not care to hear it."
"Papa might if he were tried," said Dr. Grey, smiling, "Why not do to please me what you do to please the children?"
So Christian sang at once--ay, and that very song. She faced it. She determined she would, with all the ghosts of the past that hovered round it. And soon she found how, thus faced, as says that other lovely song of Handel"s, which she had learned at the same time:
_"The wandering shadows, ghostly pale, All troop to their infernal jail: Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave."_
Her ghosts slipped one by one into the grave of the past. She had begun her song feebly and uncertainly; but when she really heard the sound of her own voice echoing through the lofty room, with a gush of melody that the old walls had not known for centuries, there came upon her an intoxication of enjoyment. It was that pure enjoyment which all true artists--be they singers, painters, poets--understand, and they only-- the delight in mere creation, quite distinct from any sympathy or admiration of others; and oh how far removed from any mean vanity or love of praise.
Christian was happy--happy as a lark in the air, just to hear--and make-- the sound of her own singing. Her face brightened; her figure, as she stood leaning against the mantel-piece a.s.sumed a new grace and dignity. She was beautiful--absolutely beautiful and her husband saw it.
Was it fancy if, glancing at her, Dr. Grey half sighed? Only for a moment; then he said cheerily:
"Arthur was right. Children, tell your mother that she is the best singer we ever heard in all our lives."
"That she is. She sings just like a bird in a tree. And, then, you see, papa, she is our own bird."
Christian came down from the clouds at once, and laughed heartily at the idea of being Arthur"s own bird.
"t.i.tia," said Dr. Grey, with sudden energy, as if the thought had been brewing in his mind for many minutes, "is there not a piano in the drawing-room? There used to be."
"Yes, and I practice upon it two hours every day," answered Let.i.tia, with dignity. "But afterward Aunt Henrietta locks it up and takes the key. She says it is poor mamma"s piano, and n.o.body is to play upon it but me."
As the child said this in a tone so like Aunt Henrietta"s, her father looked--as Christian had only seen him look once or twice before, and thought that there might be circ.u.mstances under which any body displeasing him would be considerably afraid of Dr. Arnold Grey.
"Did you know of this, Christian?"
"Yes," she answered, very softly, with a glance, half warning, half entreating, round upon the children. "But we will not say anything about it I never did, and I had rather not do so now."
"I understand. We will speak of it another time?"
But he did not, neither that night, nor for several days and Christian felt only too grateful for his silence.
Sometimes, when, after ringing at intervals of five minutes for some trifling thing, Barker had sent up "Miss Gascoigne"s compliments, and the servants couldn"t be spared to wait up stairs;" or the cook had apologized for deficiencies in Arthur"s dinner by "Miss Gascoigne wanted it for lunch;" and especially when, to her various messages to the nursery, no answer was ever returned--sometimes it had occurred to Christian--gentle as she was, and too fully engrossed to notice small things--that this was not exactly the position Dr. Grey"s wife ought to hold in his--and her--own house. Still she said nothing. She trusted to time and patience. And she had such a dread of domestic war--of a family divided against itself. Besides, some change must come, for in a day or two she would have to resume her ordinary duties, to take her place at the head of her husband"s table, and once more endure the long mornings, the weary evenings, to meet and pa.s.s over the sharp speeches, the unloving looks, which made the continual atmosphere of the Lodge.
"Oh!" she thought to herself, glancing round upon those four walls of the sick-chamber, which had seen, with much of anxiety, much also of love that never failed, and patience that knew no end, "I could almost say with Arthur, "It is so nice to be ill!""
He seemed to think the same for on the day he left it he grumbled dreadfully at being carried in Phillis"s strong arms--which he had fiercely resisted at first--to the drawing-room, where he was to hold his second tea-party--of aunts.
There they sat waiting, Aunt Maria fond and tearful, Aunt Henrietta grim and severe. And shortly--nay, before Arthur was well settled on the sofa, and lay pale and silent, still clinging to his step-mother"s hand, the cause of her severity came out.
"Dr. Grey, what have you been doing? Buying a new piano?"
Yes, there it was, a beautiful Erard; and Dr. Grey stood and smiled at it with an almost childish delight, as if he had done something exceedingly clever, which he certainly had.
"To buy a new piano--without consulting me! I never heard of such a thing. Mrs. Grey, this is your doing!"
"She never saw it before, or knew I meant to buy it; but, now it is bought, I hope she will like it. Try it, Christian."