Christian's Mistake by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

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"You questioned him?"

"Certainly. I felt it to be my duty. He says that he knew you in your
father's lifetime; that he was intimate with you both: that you and he
used to sing duets together; in short, that--"

"Go on. I wish to hear it all."

"That is all. And I am sure, Mrs. Grey, it is enough."

"It is enough. And he has been saying this, and you have been listening
to it, perhaps repeating it to all Avonsbridge. What a wicked woman
you must be!"

The words were said, not fiercely or resentfully, but in a sort of
meditative, passive despair. A sense of the wickedness, the cruelty
there was in the world, the hopelessness of struggling against it, of
disentangling fact from falsehood, of silencing malice and disarming
envy, came upon Christian in a fit of bitterness uncontrollable. She felt
as if she could cry out, like David, "The waters have overwhelmed me,
the deep waters have gone over my soul."

Even if she were not blameless--who is blameless in this mortal Life?--
even if she had made a mistake--a great mistake--her punishment was
sharp. Just now, when happiness was dawning upon her, when the
remorse for her hasty marriage and lack of love toward her husband
had died away, when her heart was beginning to leap at the sound of his
step, and her whole soul to sun itself in the tender light of his loving
eyes, it was very, very hard!

"Well, Mrs. Grey, and what have you to say for yourself?"

Christian looked up instinctively--lifted her passive hands, and folded
them on her lap, but answered nothing.

"You must see," continued Miss Gascoigne, "what an exceedingly
unpleasant story it is, and how necessary it was for me to speak about
it. Such a matter easily might become the whole town's talk. An
acquaintance before your marriage, which you kept so scrupulously
concealed that your nearest connections--I myself even--had not the
slightest idea of it. You must perceive, Mrs. Grey, what conclusions
people will draw--indeed, can not help drawing. Not that I believe--I
assure you I don't--one word against you. Only confide in me, and I
will make the matter clear to all Avonsbridge. You hear me?"

"Yes"

"And now, my dear"--the energy of her protection making Aunt
Henrietta actually affectionate--"do speak out. Tell me all you have to
say for yourself."

"Nothing."

"Nothing? What do you mean?"

It may seem an odd thing to assert, and a more difficult thing still to
prove, but Miss Gascoigne was not at heart a bad woman. She had a
fierce temper and an enormous egotism, yet these two qualities, in the
strangely composite characters that one meets with in life, are not
incompatible with many good qualities.

Pain, most sincere and undisguised, not unmingled with actual pity,
was visible in Miss Gascoigne's countenance as she looked on the
young creature before her, to whom her words had caused such violent
emotion. For this emotion her narrow nature--always so ready to look
on human nature in its worst side, and to suspect wherever suspicion
could alight--found but one interpretation--guilt.

She drew back, terrified at what her interference had done. What if the
story should prove to be, not mere idle gossip, but actual scandal--the
sort of scandal which would cast a slur forever on the whole Grey
family, herself included?

There, above all, the fear struck home. Suppose she had meddled in a
matter which no lady could touch without indecorum, perhaps actual
defilement? Suppose, in answer to her entreaty, Christian should
confide to her something which no lady ought to hear? What a fearful
position for her--Miss Gascoigne--to be placed in! What should she
say to Dr. Grey?

Hard as her heart might be, this thought touched the one soft place in it.
Her voice actually trembled as she said,

"Your poor husband! what would become of him?"

Christian sprang up with a shrill cry. "Yes, yes I know what I will do, I
will go and tell my husband." Miss Gascoigne thought she was mad.
And, indeed, there was something almost frenzied in the way her victim
rushed from the room, like a creature driven desperate by misery.

Aunt Henrietta did not know how to act. To follow Christian was quite
beneath her dignity; to go home, with her mission unfulfilled, her duty
undone, that too was impossible. She determined to wait a few
minutes, and let things take their chance.

Miss Gascoigne was not a bad woman, only an utterly mistaken and
misguided one. She meant no harm--very few people do deliberately
mean harm--they only do it. She had set herself against her brother-in-
law's marriage--not in the abstract, she was scarcely so wicked and
foolish as that; but against his marrying this particular woman, partly
because Christian was only a governess, with somewhat painful
antecedents--one who could neither bring money, rank, nor position to
Dr. Grey and his family, but chiefly because it had wounded her self-
love that she, Miss Gascoigne, had not been consulted, and had had no
hand in bringing about the marriage.

Therefore she had determined to see it, and all concerning it, in the very
worst light to modify nothing, to excuse nothing. She had made up her
mind that things were to be so and so, and so and so they must of
necessity turn out. _Audi alteram partem_ was an idea that never
occurred, never had occurred, in all her life to Henrietta Gascoigne. In
fact, she would never have believed there could be "another side," since
she herself was not able to behold it.

Yet she had not a cruel nature, and the misery she endured during the
few minutes that she sat thinking of the blow that was about to fall on
Dr. Grey and his family, heaping on the picture every exaggerated
imagination of a mind always prone to paint things in violent colors,
was enough to atone for half the wrong she had done.

She started up like a guilty creature when the door opened, and Phillis
entered with a letter in her hand.

"Beg pardon, ma'am, I thought you were Mrs. Grey."

"She is just gone up stairs--will be back directly," said Miss Gascoigne,
anxious to keep up appearances to the last available moment. "Is that
letter for her? Shall I give it to her?"

"No, thank you, I'll give it myself; and it'll be the last that ever I will
give, for it isn't my business," added Phillis, flustered and indignant, so
much so that she dropped the letter on the floor.

By the light of the small taper there was a mutual search for it--why
mutual Miss Gascoigne best knew. It was she who picked it up, and
before she had delivered it back she had clearly seen it all--
handwriting, seal and tinted envelope, with the initials "E. U." on the
corner.

Some hidden feeling in both of them, the lady and the servant, some
last remnant of pity and charity, prevented their confiding openly in
one another, even if Miss Gascoigne could have condescended so far.
But she knew as well as if Phillis had told, and Phillis likewise was
perfectly aware she knew, that the note came from Sir Edwin Uniacke.

Poor Aunt Henrietta! She was so horrified--literally horrified, that she
could bear no more. She left no message--waited for nobody--but
hurried back as fast as she could walk, through twilight, to her own
cottage at Avonside.

Chapter 14.

_"Peace on Earth, and mercy mild,
Sing the angels, reconciled;
Over each sad warfare done,
Each soul-battle lost and won._

_"He that has a victory lost
May discomfit yet a host;
And, it often doth befall,
He who conquers loses all."_

Christian, after sitting waiting in the study for a long hour, received a
message from her husband that he would not be home that night. He
had to take a sudden journey of twenty miles on some urgent affairs.
This was not unusual. Dr. Grey was one of those people whom all their
friends come to in any emergency, and the amount of other people's
business, especially painful business, which he was expected to
transact, and did transact, out of pure benevolence, was incalculable.

So his wife had to wait still. She submitted as to fatality, laid her head
on her pillow, and fell at once into that dull, stupid sleep which
mercifully comes to some people, and always came to her, in heavy
trouble. She did not wake from it till late in the following morning.

A great dread, like a great joy, always lies in ambush, ready to leap
upon us the instant we open our eyes. Had Miss Gascoigne known
what a horrible monster it was, like a tiger at her throat, which sprang
upon Christian when she waked that morning, she, even she, might
have felt remorseful for the pain she had caused. Yet perhaps she
would not. In this weary life of ours,

_"With darkness and the death-hour rounding it,"_

It is strange how many people seem actually to enjoy making other
people miserable.

Christian rose and dressed; for her household ways must go on as
usual; she must take her place at the breakfast-table, and make it
cheerful and pleasant, so that the children might not find out any thing
wrong with mother. She did so, and sent them away to their morning
play--happy little souls! Then she sat down to think for a little, all
alone.

Not what to do--that was already decided; but how to do it--how to tell
Dr. Grey in the least painful way that his love had not been the first
love she had received--and given; that she had had this secret, and kept
it from him, though he was her husband, for six whole months.

Oh, had she but told him before her marriage, long, long ago! Now, he
might think she only did it out of fear, dread of public opinion, or
seeking protection from the public scandal that might overtake her,
however innocent. For was she not in the hands of an unscrupulous
man and a malicious woman? It was hopeless to defend herself. Why
should she attempt it? Had she not better let herself be killed--she
sometimes thought she should be killed, to so great a height of morbid
dread had risen her secret agony--and die, quietly, silently, thus
escaping out of the hands of her enemies, who pursued her with this
relentless hatred.

Dying might have felt easier to her but for one fact--she loved her
husband--loved him, as she now knew, so passionately, so
engrossingly, that all this misery converged in one single fear--the fear
that she might lose his love. What the world thought of her--what Miss
Gascoigne thought of her, became of little account. All she dreaded
was what Dr. Grey would think. Would he, in his large, tender,
compassionate heart, on hearing her confession, say only "Poor thing!
she could not help it; she was foolish and young," or would he feel she
had deceived him, and cast her off from his trust, his respect, his love
for evermore?

In either case she hesitated not for a moment. Love, bought by a
deception, she knew to be absolutely worthless. Knowing now what
love was, she knew this truth also. Had no discovery been made, she
knew that she must have told all to Dr. Grey. She hated, despised
herself for having already suffered day after day to pass by without
telling him, though she had continually intended to do it. All this was a
just punishment for her cowardice; for she saw now, as she had never
seen before, that every husband, every wife, before entering into the
solemn bond of marriage, has a right to be made acquainted with every
secret of the other's heart, every event of the other's life that such
confidence, then and afterward, should know no reservations, save and
except trusts reposed in both before marriage by other people, which
marriage itself is not justified in considering annulled.

But, the final moment being come, when a day--half a day--would
decide it all--decide the whole future of herself and her husband,
Christian's courage seemed to return.

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-asserted, 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 space 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 principal 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 assume the aspect of lies, and lies so
exceedingly probable that they are by even keen observers mistaken for
truth. Passive 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 God 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 passionate 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 succumbed 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."

Such simple words, such a natural feeling! if that hard heart were only
natural and soft enough to take it in. And it was--for once.

Miss Gascoigne looked incredulously up, then down again, in a
shamefaced, uncomfortable way, then held out her hand, and kissed
Christian, while two tears--only two--gathered and dropped from her
eyes.

But the worst was over. The ice was broken and the stream ran clear.
How long it would run good angels only could tell. But they sang, and
kept on singing, all that day, in Christian's heart, the song of peace--
"peace on earth"--for the battle was over and the foes were reconciled.

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