Christian's Mistake by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

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"I am very sorry for you--very sorry indeed; but what can I do? Will
you tell me candidly, are you engaged to this gentleman?"

"No, not exactly; but I am sure I shall be by-and-by."

"He is your lover, then? he ought to be, if, as Letitia says, you go
walking together every evening."

"Well, and if I do, it's nobody's business but my own, I suppose; and it's
very hard it should lose me my situation."

So it was. Mrs. Grey remembered her own "young days," as she now
called them--remembered them with pity rather than shame; for she had
done nothing wrong. She had deceived no one, only been herself
deceived--in a very harmless fashion, just because, in her foolish,
innocent heart, which knew nothing of the world and the world's wiles,
she thought no man would ever be so mean, so cowardly, as to tell a
girl he loved her unless he meant it in the true, noble, knightly
way--a lover

"Who loved one woman, and who clave to her"

--clave once and forever. A vague tenderness hung about those days
yet, enough to make her cast the halo of her sympathy over even
commonplace Susan Bennett.

"Will you give me your confidence? Who is this friend of yours, and
why does he not at once ask you for his wife? Perhaps he is poor and
can not afford to marry?"

"Oh. dear me! I'm not so stupid as to think of a poor man, Bless you!
he has a title and an estate too. If I get him I shall make a splendid
marriage."

Christian recoiled. Her sympathy was altogether thrown away. There
evidently was not a point in common between foolish Christian Oakley,
taking dreamy twilight saunters under the apple-trees--not alone;
looking up to her companion as something between Sir Launcelot and
the Angel Gabriel--and this girl, carrying on a clandestine flirtation,
which she hoped would--and was determined to make--end in a
marriage, with a young man much above her own station, and just
because he was so. As for loving him in the sense that Christian had
understood love, Miss Bennett was utterly incapable of it. She never
thought of love at all--only of matrimony.

Still, the facts of the case boded ill. A wealthy young nobleman, and a
pretty, but coarse and half-educated shopkeeper's daughter--no good
could come of the acquaintance--perhaps fatal harm. Once more
Christian thought she would try to conquer her disgust, and win the girl
to better things.

"I do not wish to intrude--no third person has a right to intrude upon
these affairs; but I wish I could be of any service. You must perceive,
Miss Bennett, that your proceedings are not quite right--not quite safe.
Are you sure you know enough about this gentleman? How long have
you been acquainted with him? He probably belongs to the
University."

Miss Bennnett laughed. "Not he--at least not now. He got into a scrape
and left it, and has only been back here a week; but I have found out
where his estate is, and all about him. He has the prettiest property, and
is perfectly independent, and a baronet likewise. Only think"--and the
girl, recovering her spirits, tossed her handsome head, and spread out
her showy, tawdry gown--"only think of being called 'Lady!'--Lady
Uniacke."

Had Miss Bennett been less occupied in admiring herself in the mirrors
she must have seen the start Mrs. Grey gave--for the moment only,
however--and then she spoke.

"Sir Edwin Uniacke's character here is well known. He is a bad man.
For you to keep up any acquaintance with him is positive madness."

"Not in the least; I know perfectly what I am about, and can take care
of myself, thank you. He has sown his wild oats, and got a title and
estate, which makes a very great difference. Besides, I hope I'm as
sharp as he. I shall not let myself down, no fear. I'll make him make
me Lady Uniacke."

Christian's pity changed into something very like disgust. Many a poor,
seduced girl would have appeared to her less guilty, less degraded than
this girl, who, knowing all a man's antecedents, which she evidently
did--bad as he was, set herself deliberately to marry him--a
well-planned, mercenary marriage, by which she might raise herself out
of her low station into a higher, and escape from the drudgery of labor
into ease and splendor.

And yet is not the same thing done every day in society by charming
young ladies, aided and abetted by most prudent, respectable, and
decorous fathers and mothers? Let these, who think themselves so
sinless, cast the first stone at Susan Bennett.

But to Christian, who had never been in society, and did not know the
ways of it, the sensation conveyed was one of absolute repulsion. She
rose.

"I fear, Miss Bennett, that if we continued this conversation forever we
should never agree. It only proves to me more and more the
impossibility of your remaining my daughter's governess. Allow me to
pay you, and then let us part at once."

But the look of actual dismay which came over the girl's face once
more made her pause.

"You send me away with no recommendation--and I shall never get
another situation--and I have hardly a thing to put on--and I'm in debt
awfully. You are cruel to me, Mrs. Grey--you that have been a
governess yourself." And she burst into a passion of hysterical crying.

"What can I do?" said Christian sadly. "I can not keep you----I dare
not. And it is equally true that I dare not recommend you. If I could
find any thing else--not with children--something you really could do,
and which would take you away from this town--"

"I'd go any where----do any thing to get my bread, for it comes to that.
If I went home and told father this--if he found out why I had lost my
situation, he'd turn me out of doors. And except this check, which is
owed nearly all, I haven't one halfpenny--I really haven't. Mrs. Grey.
It's all very well for you to talk--you in your fine house and
comfortable clothes; but you don't know what it is to be shabby, cold,
miserable. You don't know what it is to be in dread of starving."

"I do," said Christian, solemnly. It was true.

The shudder which came over her at thought of these remembered days
obliterated every feeling about the girl except the desire to help her,
blameworthy though she was, in some way that could not possibly
injure any one else.

Suddenly she recollected that Mrs. Ferguson was in great need of some
one to take care of Mr. Ferguson's old blind mother, who lived forty
miles distant from Avonsbridge. If she spoke to her about Miss
Bennett, and explained, without any special particulars, that, though
unfit to be trusted with children, she might do well enough with an old
woman in a quiet village, Mrs. Ferguson, whose kind-heartedness was
endless, might send her there at once.

"Will you go? and I will tell nobody my reasons for dismissing you,"
said Christian, as earnestly as if she had been asking instead of
conferring a favor. Her kindness touched even that bold, hard nature.

"You are very good to me; and perhaps I don't deserve it."

"Try to deserve it. If I get this situation for you, will you make me one
promise?"

"A dozen,"

"One is enough--that you will give up Sir Edwin Uniacke."

"How do you mean?"

"Don't meet him, don't write to him--don't hold any communication
with him for three months. If he wants you, let him come and ask you
like an honest man."

Miss Bennett shook her head. "He's a baronet, you know."

"No matter. An honest man and an honest woman are perfectly equal,
even though one is a baronet and the other a daily governess. And, if
love is worth any thing, it will last three months; if worth nothing, it
had better go."

But even while she was speaking--plain truths which she believed with
her whole heart--Christian felt, in this case, the bitter satire of her
words.

Susan Bennett only smiled at them in a vague, uncomprehending way.
"Would you have trusted your lover--that means Dr. Grey, I suppose--
for three months?"

Mrs. Grey did not reply. But her heart leaped to think how well she
knew the answer. No need to speak of it, though. It would be almost
profanity to talk to this women, who knew about as much of it as an
African fetish-worshipper knows of the Eternal--of that love which
counts fidelity not by months and years; which, though it has its root in
mortal life, stretches out safely and fearlessly into the life everlasting.

"Well, I'll go, and perhaps my going away will bring him to the point,"
was the fond resolution of Miss Susan Bennett.

Mrs. Grey, infinitely relieved, wrote the requisite letters and dismissed
her, determined to call that day and explain as much of the matter to
honest Mrs. Ferguson as might put the girl in a safe position, where she
would have a chance of turning out well, or, at least, better than if she
had remained at Avonsbridge.

Then Christian had time to think of herself. Here was Sir Edwin
Uniacke--this daring, unscrupulous man, close at her very doors;
meeting her at evening parties; making acquaintance with her children,
for Titia had told her how kind the gentleman was, and how politely he
had inquired after her "new mamma."

Of vanity, either to be wounded or flattered, Christian had absolutely
none. And she had never read French novels. It no more occurred to
her that Sir Edwin would come and make love to her, now she was Dr.
Grey's wife, than that she herself should have any feeling--except pity--
in knowing of his love-affair with Miss Bennett. She was wholly and
absolutely indifferent with regard to him and all things concerning him.
Even the events of last night and this morning were powerless to cast
more than a momentary gravity over her countenance--gone the instant
she heard her husband calling her from his open study door.

"I wanted to hear how you managed Miss Bennett, you wise woman. Is
it a lover?"

"I fear so, and not a creditable one. But I am certain of one thing. She
does not love him--she only wants to marry him."

"A distinction with a difference," said Dr. Grey, smiling. "And you
don't agree with her, my dear?"

"I should think not!"

Again Dr. Grey smiled. "How fiercely she speaks! What a tiger this
little woman of mine could be if she chose. And so she absolutely
believes in the old superstition that love is an essential element of
matrimony."

"You are laughing at me."

"No, my darling, God forbid. I am only--happy."

"Are you really, really happy? Do you think I can make you so--I, with
all my unworthiness?"

"I am sure of it."

She looked up in his face from out of his close arms, and they talked no
more.

Chapter 10.

_"Get thee behind me, Satan!
I know no other word:
There is a battle that must be fought,
And fought but with the sword--

_"The clear, sharp, stainless, glittering sword
Of purity divine:
I'll hew my way through a host of fiends,
If that strong sword be mine."_

"I wish Mrs. Grey, you would learn to hold yourself a little more
upright, and look a little more like the master's wife--a lady in as good
a position as any in Avonsbridge--and a little less like a Resignation or
a Patience on a monument."

"I am sure I beg your pardon," said Christian, laughing "I have not the
slightest feeling either of resignation or patience. I am afraid I was
thinking over something much more worldly--that plan about Miss
Bennett's new situation of which I have just been telling you"--told as
briefly as she could, for it was not very safe to trust Miss Gascoigne
with any thing. "Also of the people we met last night at the vice
chancellor's."

"And that reminds me--why don't you go and change your dress? I hate
a morning-gown, as I wish you particularly to look as respectable as
you can. We are sure to have callers to-day."

"Are we? Why?"

"To inquire for our health after last night's entertainment. It is a
customary attention; but, of course, you can not be expected to be
acquainted with these sort of things. Besides, one gentleman especially
asked my permission to call today--a man of position and wealth,
whose acquaintance--"

"Oh, please tell me about him after I come back," said Christian,
hopelessly, "and I will go and dress at once."

"Take that boy with you. He never was allowed to be in the drawing-
room. Get up, Arthur," in the sharp tone in which the most trivial
commands were always conveyed to the children, which, no doubt,
Miss Gascoigne thought--as many well-meaning parents and guardians
do think--is the best and safest assertion of authority. But it had made
of Letitia a cringing slave, and of Arthur a confirmed rebel, as he now
showed himself to be.

"I won't go, Aunt Henrietta! I like this sofa. I'll not stir an inch!"

"I command you! Obey me, sir!"

Arthur pulled an insolent face, at which his aunt rose up and boxed his
ears.

This sort of scene had been familiar enough to Christian in the early
days of her marriage. It always made her unhappy, but she attempted
no resistance. Either she felt no right or she had no courage. Now,
things were different.

She caught Miss Gascoigne's uplifted hand, and Arthur's, already raised
to return the blow.

"Stop! you must not touch that child. And, Arthur, how can you be so
naughty! Beg your aunt's pardon, immediately!"

But Arthur began to sob and cough--that ominous cough which was
their dread and pain still. It did not touch the heart of Aunt Henrietta.

"We shall see who is mistress here. I will at once send for Dr. Grey.
Maria, ring the bell."

Poor Aunt Maria, the most subservient of women, was about to do it,
when fate interfered in the shape of Barker and a visiting card, which
changed the whole current of Miss Gascoigne's intentions.

"Sir Edwin Uniacke! the very gentleman I was speaking of. I shall be
delighted to see him. Show him up immediately."

Which was needless, for he had followed Barker to the door. There he
stood, a graceful, well-appointed, fashionable young man, with not a
hair awry in his black curls, not a shadow on his handsome face,
perfectly satisfied with himself and his fortunes--a little flushed,
perhaps, it might be, with what he would call the "pluckiness" of
coming thus to "beard the lion in his den," to visit the master of his late
college. All men have some good in them, and the good in this man
was, that, if a scapegrace, he was not a weak villain, not a coward.

"How kind of you! I am delighted to find a young gentleman so
punctual in his engagements with an old woman," said Miss Gascoigne,
with mingled dignity and _empressement._ "Sir Edwin Uniacke, my
sister, Miss Grey; Mrs. Grey, my sister-in-law."

Certainly Aunt Henrietta's "manners" were superb.

Arthur lay crying and coughing still, but his luckless condition before
visitors was covered over by these beautiful manners, and by the flow
of small-talk which at once began, and in which it was difficult to say
who carried off the position best, the young man or the elderly woman.
Both deserved equal credit from that "world" to which they both
belonged.

Presently a diversion was created by Christian's rising to carry Arthur
away.

"You need not go," said Miss Gascoigne. "Ring for Phillis. The child
has been ill, Sir Edwin, and Mrs. Grey has made herself a perfect slave
to him."

"How very--ahem!--charming!" said Sir Edwin Uniacke.

Phillis appeared, but Arthur clung tighter than ever to his step-mother's
neck. Nor did she wish to release him.

"I thank you, no. I can carry him quite easily," she replied to Sir
Edwin's politely offered help, which was, indeed, the only sentence she
had attempted to exchange with him. With her boy in her arms she
quitted the room, and did not return thither all the afternoon.

It was impossible she could. Without any prudishness, without the
slightest atom of self-distrust or fear to meet him, every womanly
feeling in her kept her out of his way. Here was a young man whom
she had once ignorantly suffered to make love to her, nay, loved in a
foolish, girlish way; a young man whom she now knew--and he must
know she knew it--no virtuous girl could or ought to have regarded
with a moment's tenderness. Here was he insulting her by coming to
her own house--her husband's house, without the permission of either.
Had he been humble or shamefaced, she might have pitied him, for all
pure hearts have such infinite pity for sinners. She would have wished
him repentance, peace, and prosperity, and gone on her way, as he on
his, each feeling very kindly to the other, but meeting, and desiring to
meet, no more. Now, when he obtruded himself so unhesitatingly, so
unblushingly, on the very scene of his misdoings and disgrace, pity was
dried up in her heart, and indignation took its place.

"How dare he?" she thought, and nothing else but that. There was not
one reviving touch of girlish admiration, not one thrill of
self-complacent emotion, to see, what she could not help seeing, under
his studiedly courteous manner, that he had forgotten, and meant her to
feel he had forgotten, not a jot of the past. Whatever the episode of
Susan Bennett might mean--if, indeed, such a man was not capable of
carrying on a dozen such little episodes--his manner to Christian
plainly showed that he admired her still; that he saw no difference
between the pretty maiden Christian Oakley and the matron Christian
Grey, and expressed this fact by tender tones and glances, alas! only
too familiarly known by her of old. "How dared he?"

Christian was a very simple woman. She knew nothing at all of that
fashionable world which, in its _blasé_ craving for excitement,
delights, both in life and in books, to tread daintily on the very confines
of guilt. She was not ignorant. She knew what sin was, as set forth in
the Ten Commandments, but she understood absolutely nothing of that
strange leniency or laxity which now-a-days makes vice so interesting
as to look like virtue, or mixes vice and virtue together in a knot of
circumstances until it is difficult to distinguish right from wrong.

Christian Grey was a wife. Therefore, both as wife and as woman, it
never occurred to her as the remotest possibility that she could indulge
in one tender thought of any man not her husband, or allow any man to
lift up the least corner of that veil of matronly dignity with which every
married woman, under whatever circumstances she has married or
whatever may befall her afterward, ought to enwrap herself forever.
"When I am dead," says Shakspeare's Queen Katherine,

_"Let me be used with honor. Strew me over
With maiden flowers, that all the world may know
I was a chaste wife to my grave."_

But Christian thought of something beyond the world. The 'honor' lay
with herself alone; or, like her marriage vow, between herself, her
husband, and her God. She was conscious of no dramatic struggles of
conscience, no picturesque persistence in duty: she arrived at her end
without any ethical or metaphysical reasoning, and took her course just
because it seemed to her impossible there could be any other course to
take.

It was a very simple one--total passiveness and silence. The young
man could not come to the Lodge very often, even if Miss Gascoigne
invited him ever so much, and was really as charmed with him as she
appeared to be. And no wonder. He was one of those men who charm
every body--perhaps because he was not deliberately bad, else how
could he have attracted Christian Oakley? He had that rare
combination of a brilliant intellect, an esthetic fancy, strong passions,
and a weak moral nature, which makes some of the most dangerous and
fatal characters the world ever sees.

But, be he what he might, he could not force his presence upon
Christian against her will. "No, I am not afraid," she said to herself;
"how could I be--with these?"

For, all the time she sat meditating Arthur lay half asleep, near her; and
little Oliver, who had returned to his old habit of creeping about her
room whenever he could, sat playing with his box of bricks on the
hearth-rug at her feet, every now and then lifting up eyes of such
heavenly depth of innocence that she felt almost a sort of compassion
for the erring man who had no such child-angels in his home--nothing
and no one to make him good, or to teach him, ere it was too late, that,
even in this world, the wages of sin is death, and that the only true life
is that of purity and holiness.

Christian spent the whole afternoon with her children. They tried her a
good deal, for Arthur was fractious, and Oliver went into one of his
storms of passion, which upon him, as once upon his elder brother,
were increasing day by day. It was impossible it should be otherwise
under the present nursery rule.

She sat and thought over plan after plan of getting Oliver more out of
Phillis's hands--not by any open revolution, for she was tender over
even the exaggerated rights of such a long-faithful servant, but by the
quiet influence which generally accomplishes much more than force.
Besides, time would do as much as she could, and a great deal more--it
always does.

Almost smiling at herself for the very practical turn which her
meditations were beginning invariably to take--such a contrast to the
dreamy musings of old--Christian sent the children away, and hastily
dressed for dinner.

It was the first time she had taken her place at the dinner-table since
Arthur's illness, and she felt glad to be there. She sat, with sweet, calm
brow, and lustrous, smiling eyes, a picture such as it does any man
good to gaze at from his table's foot, and know that it is his own wife,
the mistress of his household, the directress of his family, in whom her
husband's heart may safely trust forever.

Dr. Grey seemed to feel it, though he said no more than that "it was
good to have her back again." But his satisfaction did not extend itself
to the rest.

Miss Gascoigne was evidently greatly displeased at something. Angry
were the looks she cast around, and grim was the silence she
maintained until Barker had disappeared.

"Now." said Christian, "shall we send for the children?"

"No," said Miss Gascoigne; "at least not until I have said a word which
I should be sorry to say before young people. Dr. Grey, I wish that
you, who have some knowledge of the usages of society, would instruct
your wife in them a little more. I do not expect much from her, but
still, now that she is your wife, some knowledge of manners, or even
common civility--"

"What have I done?" exclaimed Christian, half alarmed and half
amused.

Miss Gascoigne took no notice, but continued addressing Dr. Grey:

"I ask you, as a gentleman, when other gentlemen come to this house to
pay their respects to me--that is, to the ladies generally, ought Mrs.
Grey to take the earliest opportunity of escaping from the drawing-
room, nor return to it the whole time the visitors stay? No doubt she is
unused to society, feels a little awkward in it, but still--"

"I understand now," interrupted Christian. "Yes, I did this afternoon
exactly as she says. I am fully aware of the fact."

"And, pray, who was the gentleman to whom you were so very rude?"
asked Dr. Grey, smiling.

Christian replied without any hesitation--and oh! how thankful that she
was able to do so-- "It was Sir Edwin Uniacke."

But she was not prepared for the start and flash of sudden anger with
which her husband heard the name.

"What! has he called at my house? That is more effrontery than I gave
him credit for."

"Effrontery!" repeated Miss Gascoigne, indignantly. "It is no effrontery
in a gentleman of his rank and fortune, a visitor at Avonsbridge, to pay
a call at Saint Bede's Lodge. Besides, I gave him permission to do so.
He was exceedingly civil to me last night, and I must say he is one of
the pleasantest young men I have met for a long time. What do you
know against him?"

"What do I know?" echoed the master, and stopped. Then added, "Of
course you might not have heard; the dean and I keep these things
private as much as we can; but he was 'rusticated' a year and a half
ago."

Miss Gascoigne might have known this fact or not; anyhow, she was
determined not to yield her point.

"Well, and if he were, doubtless it was for some youthful folly--debt, or
the like. Now he has came into his property, he will sow his wild oats
and become perfectly respectable."

"I hope so--I sincerely hope so," said Dr. Grey, not without a trace of
agitation in his manner deeper than the occasion seemed to warrant.
"But, in the meantime, he is not the sort of person whom I should wish
the ladies of my family to have among their visiting acquaintance."

The argument had now waxed so warm that both parties forgot, or
appeared to forget Christian, who sat silent, listening to it all--listening
with a kind of wondering eagerness as to what her husband would say--
her husband, a man in every way the very opposite of this man--Sir
Edwin Uniacke. How would he feel about him? how judge him? Or
how much had he known him to judge him by?

On this last head Dr. Grey was impenetrable, he parried, Or gave vague
general replies to all Miss Gascoigne's questions. She gained nothing
except the firm, decided answer, "I will not have Sir Edwin Uniacke
visiting at the Lodge."

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