"No matter, he came, and I certainly had no reason to turn him out. I consider Dr. Grey"s objections to him perfectly ridiculous. Why, one meets the young man every where, in the very best society, and his manners are charming. But that is not the question. The question is just this: Was he, or was he not, an acquaintance of Mrs. Grey"s before her marriage? and if he were, why did she not say so?"
"Perhaps she did."
"Not to me; when he called at the Lodge and I introduced them, they bowed as if they were just ordinary strangers. Now that was a rather odd thing, and a very disrespectful thing to myself, not to tell me they had met before, I certainly have a right to be displeased. Don"t you feel it so, Maria?"
Whether she did or not, Maria only answered with her usual deprecatory smile.
"There is another curious circ.u.mstance, now I recall it. Sir Edwin showed great surprise, which, indeed, I could scarcely wonder at, when I told him--(I forget how it happened, but I know I was somehow obliged to tell him)--who it was your brother had married--Miss Oakley, the organist"s daughter."
"Don"t you think," said Aunt Maria, with a sudden sparkle of intelligence, "it might have been her father he was acquainted with?
Sir Edwin is so very musical himself that it is not unlikely he should seek the company of musicians. As for Christian "--simple as she was, Aunt Maria had not lived fifty years in the world, and twenty with Miss Gascoigne, without some small acuteness--"I can see, of course, how very bad it would have been for poor Christian to have any acquaintance among young gownsmen, and especially with a person like Sir Edwin Uniacke."
"He is no worse than his neighbors, and I beg you will make no remarks upon him," said Miss Gascoigne, with dignity. "As to Mrs.
Grey--"
"Perhaps," again suggested Aunt Maria, appealingly, "perhaps it isn"t true. People do say such untrue things. Mrs. Brereton may have imagined it all."
"It was no imagination. Haven"t I told you that Miss Bennett gave the whole story, with full particulars, exactly as she had learned it lately from the servant at the farm where Mr. Oakley and his daughter once lodged and where Mr. Uniacke used to come regularly? Not one day did he miss during a whole month. Now, Maria, I should be sorry to think ill of her for your brother"s sake but you must allow, when a young person in her station receives constant visits from young gentlemen--gentlemen so much above her as Sir Edwin is--it looks very like--"
"Oh, Henrietta," cried Miss Grey, the womanly feeling within her forcing its way, even through her placid non-resistance, "do stop! you surely don"t consider what you are saying?"
"I am not in the habit of speaking without consideration, and I am, I a.s.sure you, perfectly aware of what I am saying. I say again, that such conduct was not creditable to Miss Oakley. Of course, one could not expect from a person like her the same decorum that was natural to you and me in our girlhood. I do not believe you and William ever so much as looked at one another before you were engaged."
A faint light, half tearful, half tender, gleamed in those poor, faded blue eyes. "Never mind that now Henrietta. Consider Christian. It will be a terrible thing if any ill-natured stories go about concerning poor dear Christian."
"It will, and therefore I am determined, for your brother"s sake, to sift the story to the very bottom. In fact, I think--to end all doubt--I shall put the direct question myself to Sir Edwin Uniacke."
Speak of the--But it would not be fair to quote the familiar proverb against the young man who appeared that instant standing at the wicket-gate.
"Well, I never knew such a coincidence," cried Miss Grey.
"Such a providence rather," cried Miss Gascoigne. And perhaps, in her strange obliquity of vision, or, rather, in that sad preponderance of self which darkened all her vision, like a moral cataract in the eye of her soul, this woman did actually think Providence was leading her toward a solemn duty in the investigating of the past history of the forlorn girl whom Dr. Grey had taken as his wife.
"Speak of an angel and you see his wings," said she, with exceeding politeness. "We were just talking about you, Sir Edwin."
"Thank you; and for your charming parody on the old proverb likewise, I hope I am not the angel of darkness anyhow."
He did not look it--this graceful, handsome young man, gifted with that peculiar sort of beauty which you see in Goethe"s face, in Byron"s, indicating what may be called the Greek temperament--the nature of the old Attic race--sensuous, not sensual; pleasure-loving, pa.s.sionate, and changeable; not intentionally vicious, but reveling in a sort of glorious enjoyment, intellectual and corporeal, to which every thing else is sacrificed--in short, the heathen as opposed to the Christian type of manhood--a type, the fascination of which lasts as long as the body lasts, and the intellect; when these both fail, and there is left to the man only that something which we call the soul, the immortal essence, one with Divinity, and satisfied with nothing less than the divine--alas for him!
A keen observer, who had lived twenty years longer in the world than he, might, regarding him in all his beauty and youth, feel a sentiment not unlike compa.s.sion for Edwin Uniacke.
He sat down, making himself quite at home, though this was only his second visit to Avonside Cottage. But Miss Gascoigne, if only from love of opposition, had made it pretty clear to him that he was welcome there, and that she liked him. He enjoyed being liked, and had the easy confidence of one who is well used to it.
"Yes, I am ready to avouch, this is the prettiest little paradise within miles of Avonsbridge. No wonder you should have plenty of visitors, I met a tribe coming here--your sister-in-law (charming person is Mrs.
Grey!) your nephews and niece, and that gipsy-looking, rather handsome nurse, who is a little like the head of Clytie, only for her sullen, underlying mouth and projecting chin."
"How you notice faces, Sir Edwin!"
"Of course. I am a little bit of an artist."
"And a great piece of a musician, as I understand. Which reminds me,"
added Miss Gascoigne, eager to plunge into her mission, which, in her strange delusion, she earnestly believed was a worthy and righteous one, in which she had embarked for the family benefit--"I wanted to ask whether you did not know Mrs. Grey"s father, the organist? And herself too, when she was Miss Oakley?"
"Every body knew Mr. Oakley," was the evasive answer. "He was a remarkable man--quite a genius, with all the faults of a genius. He drank, he ate opium, he--"
"Nay, he is dead," faintly said Aunt Maria.
"Which, you mean, is a good reason why I should speak no more about him. I obey you, Miss Grey."
"But his daughter? Did you say you knew his daughter?" pursued Miss Gascoigne.
"Oh yes, casually. A charming girl she was! very pretty, though immature. Those large, fair women sometimes do not look their best until near thirty. And she had a glorious voice. She and I used to sing duets-together continually."
He might not have thought what he was doing--it is but charity to suppose so; that he spoke only after his usual careless and somewhat presumptuous style of speaking about all women, but he must have been struck by the horrified expression of Miss Gascoigne"s face.
"Sing duets together! a young man in your position, and a young woman in hers! Without a mother, too!"
"Oh, her father was generally present, if you think of propriety. But I do a.s.sure you, Miss Gascoigne, there was not the slightest want of propriety. She was a very pretty girl, and I was a young fellow, rather soft, perhaps, and so we had a--well, you might call it a trifling flirtation. But nothing of any consequence--nothing. I do a.s.sure you."
"Of course it was of no consequence," said Aunt Maria, again breaking in with a desperate courage. And still more desperate were the nods and winks with which she at last aroused even Aunt Henrietta to a sense of the position into which the conversation was bringing them both, so that she, too, had the good feeling to add,
"Certainly it is not of the slightest consequence. Dr. Grey is probably aware of it all?"
"Which may be the reason I am never invited to the Lodge," laughed the young man, so pleasantly that one would hardly have paused to consider what he laughed at or what it implied. "By-the-by, I hear they had such a pleasant gathering there last night--a musical evening, where every body sang a great deal, and Mrs. Grey only once, but then, of course, divinely. I should like to hear her again. But look, there are the children. Shall I take the liberty of unfastening for them the latch of your garden gate?"
He sprang out of the low window, and came back heading the small battalion of visitors--Phillis, Arthur, Let.i.tia, and Oliver. But Mrs. Grey was not there. She had come half way, and returned home alone.
"Well, I must say that is very odd, considering I invited her to spend the day, and, I think, rather disrespectful of me--to us both, Maria."
"She might have been tired after the party last night," put in Aunt Maria.
"No, she wasn"t tired, for she never told me so." said Arthur. "She told me to say--not you, Phillis, mother always trusts me with her messages-- that she had gone back on account of papa"s wanting her, and that if he came to fetch us, she would come here with him in the evening."
"Very devoted! "An old man"s darling and a young man"s slave," runs the proverb; but Mrs. Grey seems to reverse it. She will soon never stir out an inch without your brother, Maria."
"And I am sure my brother never looks so happy as when she is beside him," said Aunt Maria. "We shall quite enjoy seeing them both together to-night."
"And I only wish it had been my good fortune to join such a pleasant family party," observed Sir Edwin Uniacke.
It was rather too broad a hint, presuming even upon Miss Gascoigne"s large courtesy. In dignified silence she pa.s.sed it over, sending the children and Phillis away to their early dinner, and after an interval of that lively conversation, in which, under no circ.u.mstances, did Sir Edwin ever fail, allowing him also to depart.
As he went down the garden, Miss Grey, with great dismay, watched him stop at her beautiful jessamine bower, pull half a dozen of the white stars, smell at them, and throw them away. He would have done the same--perhaps had done it--with far diviner things than jessamine flowers.
"Yes," said Miss Gascoigne, looking after him, and then sitting down opposite Miss Grey, spreading out her wide silk skirts, and preparing herself solemnly for a wordy war--that is, if it could be called a war which was all on one side--"yes, I have come to the bottom of it all. I knew I should. Nothing ever escapes me. And pray, Maria, what do you think of her now."
"Think of whom?"
"You are so dull when you won"t hear. Of your sister-in-law, Christian Grey."