She sat trembling, yet not altogether hopeless; very humble and yet strong, with the strength that the inward consciousness of deeply loving--not of being loved, but of loving--always gives to a woman, and waited till Dr. Grey came home.
When the parlor door opened she rushed forward, thinking it was he, but it was only Phillis--Phillis, looking insolent, self-important, contemptuous, as she held out to her mistress a letter.
"There! I"ve took it in for once, and given it to you, by yourself, as he bade me, but I"ll never take in another. I"m an honest woman, and my master has been a good master to me."
"Phillis!" cried Mrs. Grey, astonished. But when she saw the letter she was astonished no more.
The tinted perfumed paper, the large seal, the dainty handwriting, all were familiar of old.
Fierce indignation, unutterable contempt, and then a writhing sense of personal shame, as if she were somehow accountable for this insult, swept by turns over Christian"s soul, until she recollected that she must betray nothing; for more than her own sake--her husband"s--she must not put herself in her servant"s power.
So she did not throw the letter in the fire, or stamp upon it, or do any of the frantic things she was tempted to do; she held it in her hand like a common note, and said calmly.
"Who brought this? and when did, it come?"
"Last night, only I couldn"t find you. It was nigh dropping into Miss Gascoigne"s hands, and a pretty mess that would have been. And I warn you--you had better mind what you are about--Miss Susan Bennett told me all about it; and a nice little story it is, too, for a married lady. And Miss Gascoigne has scented it out, I"ll be bound and if Dr. Grey once gets hold of it--"
"Stop!" said Christian, firmly, though she felt her very lips turning white. "You are under some extraordinary delusion. There is nothing to be got hold of. Take this letter to my husband"s study--it is his affair. I have no communications whatever with Sir Edwin Uniacke."
Phillis looked utterly amazed. Though her mistress did not speak another word, there was something in her manner--her perfect, quiet conviction of innocence, self-a.s.serted, though without any open self- defense, which struck the woman more than any amount of anger would have done.
"If I"ve made a mistake, I"m sure I beg your pardon, ma"am," began she quite humbly.
"What for? Except for receiving and bringing to me privately a letter which should have been left with Barker at the door, it being Barker"s business, and not yours. Remember that another time. Now take the letter to the study, and go."
Phillis hesitated. She looked again and again at that calm, proud, innocent lady, whom she had so wickedly misjudged and maligned, how far and how fatally her own conscience alone could tell. And Phillis knew what innocence was, for, poor woman, she had known what it was not. Malice also she knew; and judging her mistress by herself, she trembled.
"If you"re going to bear spite against me for this, I"d best give warning at once, Mrs. Grey--only it would nigh break my heart to leave the children."
"I have no wish for you to leave the children, and I never bear spite against anybody. Life is not long enough for it," added Mrs. Grey, sighing. Then, with a sudden impulse, if by any means she could smooth matters and win a little household peace, "I desire to be a good mistress to you, Phillis; why should you not be a good servant to me?
You love the children; you are to them a most faithful nurse; why can not you believe that I shall be a faithful mother? Let us turn over a new leaf, and begin again."
She held out her hand, and Phillis took it; looked hard in her mistress"s face--the kind, friendly face, that was not ashamed to be a friend even to a poor servant; then, with something very like a sob, she turned and ran out of the room.
But when she was gone, Christian sat down exhausted. With a desperate self-control she had wrenched herself out of Phillis"s power, she had saved herself and her husband from the suspicion that it was possible Dr. Grey"s wife could receive, or give occasion to receive, a secret letter, a love-letter, from any man; but when the effort was over she broke down. Convulsive sobs, one after the other, shook her, until she felt as if her very life were departing. And in the midst of this agony appeared--Miss Gascoigne.
Aunt Henrietta had spent the whole night, except a brief s.p.a.ce for sleeping, in thinking over and talking over her duties and her wrongs, the two being mixed up together in inextinguishable confusion. Almost any subject, after being churned up in such a nature as hers for twelve mortal hours, would at the end look quite different from what it did at first, or what it really was. And so, with all honesty of purpose, and with the firmest conviction that it was the only means of saving her brother-in-law and his family from irretrievable misery and disgrace, poor Miss Gascoigne had broken through all her habits, risen, dressed, and breakfasted at an unearthly hour, and there she stood at the Lodge door at nine in the morning, determined to "do her duty," as she expressed it, but looking miserably pale, and vainly restraining her agitation so as to keep up a good appearance "before the servants."
"That will do, Barker. You need not disturb the master; I came at this early hour just for a little chat with your mistress and the children."
And then entering the parlor, she sat down opposite to Christian to take breath.
Miss Gascoigne was really to be pitied. Mere gossip she enjoyed; it was her native element, and she had plunged into this matter of Sir Edwin Uniacke with undeniable eagerness. But now, when it might be not gossip, but disgrace, her terror overpowered her. For disgrace, discredit in the world"s eye, was the only form the matter took to this worldly woman, who rarely looked on things except on the outside.
Guilt, misery, and their opposites, which alone give strength to battle with them, were things too deep to be fathomed in the slightest degree by Miss Gascoigne.
Therefore, as her looks showed, she was not so much shocked as simply frightened, and had come to the Lodge with a frantic notion of hushing up the matter somehow, whatever it was. Her princ.i.p.al terror was, not so much the sin itself, but that the world might hear of it.
"You see, Mrs. Grey, I am come again," said she, very earnestly. "In spite of every thing, I have come back to advise with you. I am ready to overlook everything, to try and conceal everything. Maria and I have been turning over in our minds all sorts of plans to get you away till this has blown over--call it going to the seaside, to the country with Arthur--any thing, in short, just that you may leave Avonsbridge."
"I leave Avonsbridge? Why?"
"Yon know why. When you had a lover before your marriage, of whom you did not tell your husband or his friends--when this gentleman afterward meets you, writes to you--I saw the letter--"
"You saw the letter!"
There was no hope. She was hunted down, as many an innocent person has been before now, by a combination of evidence, half truths, half lies, or truths so twisted that they a.s.sume the aspect of lies, and lies so exceedingly probable that they are by even keen observers mistaken for truth. Pa.s.sive and powerless Christian sat. Miss Gascoigne might say what she would--all Avonsbridge might say what it would--she would never open her lips more.
At that moment, to preserve her from going mad--(she felt as if she were--as if the whole world were whirling round, and G.o.d had forgotten her)--Dr. Grey walked in.
"Oh, husband! save me from her--save me--save me!" she shrieked again and again. And without one thought except that he was there-- her one protector, defender, and stay--she sprang to him, and clung desperately to his breast.
And so, in this unforeseen and unpremeditated manner, told, how or in whom, herself or Miss Gascoigne, or both together, Christian never clearly remembered--her one secret, the one error of her sad girlhood, was communicated to her husband.
He took the revelation calmly enough, as he did everything; Dr. Grey was not the man for tragic scenes. The utmost he seemed to think of in this one was calming and soothing his wife as much as possible, carrying her to the sofa making her lie down, and leaning over her with a sort of pitying tenderness, of which the only audible expression was, "Poor child, poor child!"
Christian tried to see his face, but could not. She sought feebly for his hand--his warm, firm, protecting hand--and let him take hers in it.
Then she knew that she was safe.
No, he never would forsake her, he had loved her--once and for always--with the love that has strength to hold its own through every thing and in spite of every thing. Whatever she was, whatever the world might think her, she was his wife, and he loved her. She crept into her husband"s bosom, knowing that it was her sure refuge, never to be closed against her until she died.
The next thing she remembered was his speaking to Miss Gascoigne-- not harshly, or as if in great mental suffering, but in his natural voice.
"And now! Henrietta, just tell me the utmost you have to allege against my wife. That Sir Edwin was known to her father and herself, of which acquaintance she never told her husband; that she has accidently met him since a few times; and that he has been rude enough to address a letter to her--where is it?"
It was lying on the table, for Phillis, in her precipitate disappearance, had forgotten it. Dr. Grey put it into his pocket unopened.
"Well, Aunt Henrietta, is that all? Have you any more to say, any thing else of which to accuse my wife? Say it all out, only remember one thing, that you are saying it to a man, and about his wife."
Brief as the words were, they implied volumes--all that Dr. Grey was, and every honest man should be, toward his wife, whom he has taken to himself, to cherish and protect, if necessary, against the whole world-- everything for which the bond of marriage was ordained, to be maintained unannulled by time, or change, or faultiness, perhaps even actual sin. One has heard of such guardianship--of a husband pitying and protecting till death a wife who had sinned against him; and if possible to any man, this would have been possible to one like Arnold Grey.
But in his manner was not only protection, there was also love--the sort of" love which pa.s.sionate youth can seldom understand; but Paul the apostle did, unmarried though he was, when he spoke in such mystical language of a husband"s "nourishing and cherishing" his wife "as the Lord the Church." And now Christian seemed to comprehend this, when, looking up to her husband, she felt that he was also her "lord,""
ruling and guiding her less by harsh authority than by the perfect law of love.
"Nay," she said, faintly, "don"t blame your sister: she meant no harm, nor did I. I only--"
"Hush!" Dr. Grey replied, laying his hand upon her mouth; "that is a matter solely between you and your husband."
But whether, thus met at all points, Miss Gascoigne began to doubt whether her mountain were not a mere molehill after all, or whether she involuntarily succ.u.mbed to the influence of such honest love, such unbounded trust, and felt that to interfere farther between this husband and wife would be not only hopeless, but wicked, it is impossible to say. Perhaps--let us give her the credit of a good motive rather than a bad one--she really felt she had been wrong, was moved and softened, and brought to a better mind.
In any case, that happened which had never been known to happen before in Miss Gascoigne"s existence--when asked to speak she had literally nothing to say!
"Then," continued Dr. Grey, good-humouredly, still holding his wife"s hand, and sitting beside her on the sofa, "this mighty matter may come to an end, which is, indeed, the best thing for it. Since I am quite satisfied concerning my wife, I conclude my sister may be. We will consider the subject closed. Make friends, you two. Christian, will you not?"
Christian rose. She had never kissed Miss Gascoigne in her life, had had no encouragement to do it, and it would have seemed a piece of actual hypocrisy. Now it was not. The kiss of affection it could hardly be, but there is such a thing as the kiss of peace.
She rose and went, white and tottering as she was, across the room to where Miss Gascoigne sat, hard, bitter, and silent, determined that not a step should be taken on her side--she would not be the first to "make friends."
"Forgive me, Aunt Henrietta, if I ever offended you. I did not mean it.
Let us try to get on better for the future. We ought, for we are both so fond of the children and of Arnold."