Christian's Mistake. By the author of 'John Halifax, Gentleman' [i.e. Dinah M. Mulock, afterwards Craik], etc

Front matter

1 WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Each in One Volume, price 5s. Elegantly Bound and Illustrated. JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN. 11 This is a very good and a very interesting work. It is designed to trace the career from boyhood to age of a perfect man — a Christian gentleman, and it abounds in incident both well and highly wrought. Throughout it is conceived in a high spirit, and written with great ability. This cheap and handsome new edition is worthy to pass freely from hand to hand as a gift-book in many households." — Examiner. A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN. "These thoughts are worthy ofthe earnest aud enlightened mind, the all-embracing charity, and the well-earned reputation of the author of ' John Halifax.' " — Herald. A LIFE FOR A LIFE. " In ' A Life for a Life * the author is fortunate in a good subject, and has produced a work of strong effect." — Athenæum.

NOTHING NEW. 1 ' ' Nothing New ' displays all those superior merits which have made ' John Halifax ' one of the most popular works of the day." — Post. STUDIES FROM LIFE. " This book will not diminish the reputation of the accomplished author." — Saturday Review. MISTRESS AND MAID. " A good, wholesome book, gracefully written, and as pleasant to read as it is instructive."— Athenæum. HURST AND BLACKETT, Publishers, 13, Great Marlborough St. EY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN," &c. &c. "In the awfui mystery of human life, it is .1 consolation sometimes to believe that our mistakes, perhaps even our sins, are permitted to be instruments of our education for immortality." — Anon. IN ONE VOLUME. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1865. The right oj Translation is reserved. 3Enstrib£JC» af&ttiotraidg to "JOHN AND LUCY."

Chapter I

" So I will do my best a gude wife to be, For Auld Robin Gray is vera kind to me." THINK this will do, my dear ; just listen ; " — and, in a mysterious halfwhisper, good Mrs. Ferguson, wife of James Ferguson, the well-to-do silversmith and jeweller, of High Street, Avonsbridge, read aloud from the sheet of paper in her hand : — " ' On the 21st instant, at the University Church, Avonsbridge, by the Reverend John Smith, the Reverend Arnold Grey, D.D., Master of Saint Bede's College, Avonsbridge, to Christian only child of the late Edward Oakley, Esq., of that place.' Will it do ? Because, if so, James will send it to ' The Times ' at once." "Better askDr. Grey first," answered the bride. As she spoke, Dr. Grey turned round from B the window where he had been conversing — that is, responding to conversation — with Mr. Ferguson, chiefly on the weather ; for it was a snowy December day .

This precise moment — half-an-hour after his marriage — his second marriage — is hardly a fair time to describe Dr. Arnold Grey ; suffice it to say, that he was a gentleman apparently about forty-five ; rather low in stature, and spare in figure, with hair already thin and iron-grey. The twenty-five years between him and his newly married wife showed plainly — only too plainly — as she stood, in all her gracefulness of girl hood, which even her extreme pallor and a certain sharp, worn, unnaturally composed look could not destroy. He seemed struck by this. His face clouded over for a minute, and he slightly sighed. But the pain, whatever it was, was only momentary. He looked like a man who was not in the habit of acting hastily or impulsively ; who never did anything without having previously fully counted the cost.

"What were you saying, Mrs. Ferguson?" said he, addressing her with the grave and some what formal politeness which was his natural manner, but which always somewhat awed that rather vulgar, though kind-hearted and well meaning woman. She put the paper into his hands. " It 's the notice for ' The Times ; ' James and I made it up last night. James thought it would save you trouble, Master, — " Mrs. Ferguson always hesi tated between this common university custom of address, and plain " Dr. Grey." " Thank you ; Mr. Ferguson is always kind," returned the Master of Saint Bede's. " You see," continued Mrs. Ferguson, lowering her tone to a confidential whisper, " I thought it was better only to put ' Edward Oakley, Esquire,' — and nothing more. Wouldn't you like it to be so, sir ?" " I should like it to be exactly as — " he paused, and the colour rushed violently over his thin, worn, and yet sensitive face, as sensitive as if he had been a young man still — " exactly as Mrs. Grey pleases."

Mrs. Grey! At the sound of her new name, Christian started, and she, too, turned scarlet. Not the sweet, rosy blush of a bride, but the dark red flush of sharp physical or mental pain, which all her self-control could not hide. " Poor dear ! — poor dear ! — this is a great change for her, and only a year since her father died," said Mrs. Ferguson, still in that myste rious, apologetic whisper. " But indeed, my love, you have done quite right in marrying ; and don't fret a bit about it. Never mind her, sir ; she'll be better by-and-by." This oppression of pity would have nerved any one of reserved temperament to die rather than betray the least fragment of emotion more. Christian gathered herself up — her face grew pale again, and her voice steady. She looked, not at Mrs. Ferguson, but at the good man who had just made her his wife ; and any one looking at him must have felt that he was a good man — then said, gently, but determinedly, — " If Dr. Grey has no objection, I should like to have stated my father's occupation, or my own.

I do not wish to hide, or appear ashamed of either." " Certainly not," replied Dr. Grey ; and taking up the pen, he added, " ' Edward Oakley, Esq., late organist of Saint Bede's." It was the last earthly memento of one who, born a gentleman and a genius, had so lived, that — as all Avons bridge well knew — the greatest blessing which coidd have happened to his daughter was his death. But — as by some strange and merciful law of compensation often occurs — Christian, in heriting mind and person from him, had inhe rited temperament, disposition, character, from the lowlyborn mother, who was everything that he was not, and who had lived just long enough to stamp on the girl of thirteen a moral impress which could resist all after contamination, and to leave behind a lovely dream of motherhood that might, perhaps — God knows! — have been diviner than the reality.

These things, Dr. Grey, brought accidentally into contact with Christian Oakley on business matters after her father's lamentable death, speedily discovered for himself; and the result was one of those sudden resolves which in some men spring from mere passion, in others from an instinct so deep and true that they are not to be judged by ordinary rules. People call it " love at first sight," and sometimes tell wonderful stories of how a man sees, quite unexpectedly, some sweet, strange, and yet mysteriously familiar face, which takes possession of his fancy with an almost supernatural force. He says to himself, " That woman shall be my wife ; " and some day, months or years after, he actually marries her — even as, within a twelvemonth, having waited silently until she was twenty-one, Dr. Grey married Christian Oakley.

But until within a few weeks ago, she her self had had no idea of the kind. She intensely respected him ; her gratitude for his fatherly care and kindness was almost boundless ; but marrying him — or marrying at all — was quite foreign to all her thoughts. How things had come about, even yet she could hardly remember or comprehend. All was a perfect dream. It seemed another person, and not she, who was suddenly changed from Mrs. Ferguson's poor gover ness, without a friend or relative in the wide world, to the wife of the Master of Saint Bede's. That she could have married him, or been thought to have married him, for aught but his own good and generous self, — or that the Mastership of Saint Bede's, his easy income, and his high reputation, had anything at all to do with it — never once crossed her imagination.

She was so simple ; her forlorn, shut-up, unhappy life had kept her, if wildly ro mantic, so intensely, childishly true, that whatever objection she had to Dr. Grey's offer, the idea that this could form one of them — that any one could suspect her — her, Christian Oakley — of marrying for money, or for a home, did not occur to her for an instant. He saw that ; this lover, who, from his many years of seniority, and the experience of a somewhat hard life, looked right down into the depths of the girl's perplexed, troubled, pas sionate, innocent heart — and he was not afraid. Though she told him, quite plainly, that she felt for him not love, but only affection and gratitude, he had simply said, with his own tender smile, , " Never mind ; I love you :" and married her. As she stood in her white dress, white shawl, white bonnet — all as plain as possible, but still pure bridal white, contrasting strongly with the glaring colours of that splendid drawing-room over the shop, which poor Mrs. Ferguson had done her luckless best to make as fine as possible — her tall, slender figure, harmonious movements and tones, being only more noticeable by the presence of that stout, gaudily-dressed, and loud-speaking woman, most people would have said that, though he had married a governess, a solitary, unpro tected woman, with neither kith nor kin to give her dignity, earning her own bread by her own honest labour, the Master of Saint Bede's was not exactly a man to be pitied.

He rose, and having silently shown the paper to Christian, enclosed it in an envelope, and gave it to Mr. Ferguson. " Will you take the trouble of forwarding this to ' The Times ? ' the latest of all your many kind nesses," said he, with that manner, innately a gentleman's, which makes the acknowledging of a favour appear like the conferring of one. Worthy James Ferguson took it as such ; but he was a per son of deeds, not words ; and he never could quite overcome the awe with which — as an Avonsbridge person — he, the jeweller of High Street, regarded the Master of Saint Bede's. Meanwhile, the snow, which had been falling all day, fell thicker and thicker, so that the hazy light of the drawing-room darkened into absolute gloom. " Don't you think the children should be here ?" said Mrs. Ferguson, pausing in her assi duous administration of cake and wine.

" That is — I'm sure I beg your pardon, Master — if they are really coming." " I desired my sisters to send them without fail," quietly replied the Master. But another half-hour dragged heavily on ; the bridegroom's carriage, which was to take them across country to a quiet railway station, already stood at the door, when another carriage was heard to drive up to it. " There they are ! " cried Mrs. Ferguson ; and the bride, who had been sitting beside her on the sofa, passive, silent, all but motionless, started a little. " Oh, I am so glad ! " she said, in the first natural tone that had been heard in her voice all day : " I did so want to see the children." Dr. Grey went out of the room at once, and Mrs. Ferguson had the good sense to follow taking her husband with her. "For," as she said afterwards, "the first sight of three step children, and she, poor dear, such a mere girl, must be a very unpleasant thing.

For her part, 6he was thankful that when she married James Ferguson he was a bachelor, with not a soul belonging to him except an old aunt. She wouldn't like to be in poor Mrs. Grey's shoes — dear me, no ! — with those two old ladies who have lived at the Lodge ever since the first Mrs Grey died. She wondered how on earth Miss Oakley would manage them." And upon James Ferguson's suggesting " in the same way as she managed everybody," his wife soundly rated him for saying such a silly thing, though he had, with the usual acuteness of silent people, said a wiser thing than he was aware of. Meantime Christian was left alone, for the first time that day, and many days ; for solitude was a blessing not easy to get in the Fergusons' large, bustling family. Perhaps she did not seek it — perhaps she dared not.

Anyhow, during the month that had been occupied with her marriage preparations, she had scarcely been ten minutes alone, not even at night, for two children shared her room — the loving little things whom she had taught for two years, first as daily, and then a3 resident governess ; and to whom she had persisted in giving lessons till the last. She stood with the same fixed composedness — not composure — of manner ; the quietness of a person who, having certain things to go through, goes through them in a sort of dream, almost without recognising her own identity. Women, more than men, are subject to this strange som nambulistic mental condition, the result of strong emotion, in which they both do and endure to an extent that men would never think of, or find possible. After a minute she moved slightly, took up and laid down a book, but still mechanically, as if she did not quite know what she was doing, until, suddenly, she caught sight of her wedding ring.

She regarded it with something very like affright ; tried convulsively to pull it off; but it was rather tight ; and before it had passed a finger -joint, she had recollected herself, and pressed it down again. " It is too late now. He is so good, — everybody says so. And he is so very good to me." She spoke aloud, though she was alone in the room, or rather because she was alone, after a habit which, like all solitarily reared and dreamy persons, Christian had had all her life — her young, short life — only twenty-one years — and yet it seemed to her a whole, long, weary existence. " If I can but make him happy ! If what is left of me is only enough to make him happy." These broken sentences were repeated more than once, and then she stood silent, as though in a dream still. When she heard the door open, she turned round with that still, gentle, passive smile which had welcomed Dr. Grey on every day of his brief " courting " days.

It never altered, though he entered in a character not the pleasantest for a bridegroom, with his three little children, one on either side of him, and the youngest in his arms. But there are some men, and mostly those grave, shy, and reserved men, who have always the truest and tenderest hearts, whom nothing transforms so much as to be with children, especially if the children are their own. They are given to hiding a great deal, but the father in them cannot be hid. Why should it ? Every man who has anything really manly in his nature, knows well that to be a truly good father, carrying out by sober reason and conscience those duties which in the mother spring from instinct, is the utmost dignity to which his human nature can attain. Miss Oakley, like the rest of Avonsbridge, had long known Dr. Grey's history ; how he had married early, or (ill-natured report said) been married by, a widow lady, very handsome, and some years older than himself.

However, the sharpest insinuations ever made against their domestic bliss, were that she visited a good deal, while he was deeply absorbed in his studies. And when, after a good many childless years, she brought him a girl and boy, he became excessively fond of his children. Whether this implied that he had been disappointed in his wife, nobody could tell. He certainly did not publish hia woes. Men seldom do. At the birth of a third child Mrs. Grey died, and then the widower's grief, though unobtrusive, was sufficiently obvious to make Avonsbridge put all unkindly curiosity aside, and conclude that the departed lady must have been the most exemplary and well-beloved of wives and mothers. All this, being town's talk, Christian already knew ; more she had never inquired, not even when she was engaged to him.

Nor did Dr. Grey volunteer any information. The strongest and most soothing part of his influence over her was his exceeding silence. He had never troubled her with any great demonstrations, nor frightened her with questionings. From the time of their engagement he had seemed to take everything for granted, and to treat her tenderly, almost reverently, without fuss or parade, yet with the consideration due from a man to his future wife. So much so, that she had hardly missed, what indeed in her simplicity she hardly expected, the attentions usually paid to an affianced bride from the relatives of her intended. Dr. Grey had only two, his own sister and his late wife's. These ladies, Miss Gascoigne and Miss Grey, had neither called upon nor taken the least notice of Miss Oakley. But Miss Oakley — if she thought about the matter at all — ascribed it to a fact well recognised in Avonsbridge, as in most university towns, that one might as soon expect the skies to fall, as for a college lady to cross, save for purely business purposes, the threshold of a High Street trades man.

The same cause, she concluded, made them absent from her wedding, and when Dr. Grey had said simply, " I shall desire my sisters to send the children," Christian had inquired no further. Only for a second, hanging on the brink of this first meeting with the children — her husband's children, hers that were to be — did her heart fail her, and then she came forward to meet the little group. Letitia and Arthur were thin, prim-looking, rather plain children; but Oliver was the very picture of a father's darling, a boy that any child less man would bitterly covet, any childless woman crave and yearn for, with a longing that women alone can understand. A child who, beautiful as most childhood is, had a beauty you rarely see. Bright, frank, merry, bold ; half a Bacchus and half a Cupid, he was a perfect image of the golden age.

Though three years old, he was evidently still "the baby," and rode on his father's shoulder with a glorious tyranny charming to behold. "Who's that?" said he, pointing his fat fingers, and shaking his curls that undulated like billows of gold. " Papa, who's that ?" Hardly could there have been put by any one a more difficult question. Dr. Grey did not answer, but avoided it, taking the whole three to Christian's side, and bidding them, in a rather nervous voice, to " kiss this lady." But that ceremony the two elder obstinately declined. "I'm a big boy, and I don't like to be kissed," said Arthur. "Aunty told us, since we had no mamma of our own, we were not to kiss any body but our aunts," added Letitia. Dr. Grey looked terribly annoyed, but Christian said calmly, — "Very well, then shake hands only.

We shall be better friends by-and-by." They suffered her to touch a little hand of each, passively rather than unwillingly, and let it go. For a minute or so the boy and girl stood opposite her, holding fast by one another, and staring with all their eyes ; but they said nothing more, being apparently very "good" children, that is, children brought up under the old-fashioned rules, which are indicated in the celebrated rhyme, — " Come when you're called, Do as you're bid : Shut the door after you, And you'll never be chid." Therefore, on being told to sit down, they gravely took their places on the sofa, and continued to stare. The father and bridegroom looked on, silent as they. What could he say or do ? It was the natural and necessary opening up of that vexed question, second marriages, concerning which moralists, sentimentalists, and practical people argue for ever, and never come to any conclusion.

Of course not, because each separate case should decide itself. The only universal rule or law, if there be one, is that which applies equally to the love before marriage ; that as to a complete, mutual first love, any after love is neither likely, necessary, nor desirable ; so, to any one who has known a perfect first marriage — the whole satisfaction of every requirement of heart, and soul, and human affection, — unto such, a second mar riage, like a second love, would be neither right nor wrong, advisable nor unadvisable, but simply impossible. What could he do, — the father who had just given his children a new mother, they being old enough not only to understand this, but having been previously taught, as most people are so fatally ready to teach children, the usual doctrine about stepmothers, and being quite ready to rebel against the same ?

The step-mother likewise, what could she do, even had she recognised and felt all that the children's behaviour implied ? Alas ! (I say " alas ! " for this was as sad a thing as the other) she did not recognise it. She scarcely noticed it at all. In her countenance was no annoyance — no sharp pain, that even in that first bridal hour she was not first and sole, as every woman may righteously wish to be. There came to her no sting of regret, scarcely unnatural, to watch another woman's children already taking the first and best of that fatherly love which it would be such exquisite joy to see lavished upon her own. Alas, poor Christian ! all these things passed over her as the wind passes over a bare February tree, stirring no emotions, for there were none to stir. Her predominating feeling was a vague sense of relief in the presence of the children, and of delight in the exceeding beauty of the youngest.

" This is Oliver. I remember you told me his name. Will he come to me ? Children generally do," said she, in a shy sort of way, but still holding out her arms. In her face and manner was that inexplicable motherliness which some girls have even while nursing their dolls. Some never ; ay, though they may boast a houseful of children, — never ! Master Oliver guessed this by instinct, as children always do. He looked at her intently, a queer, mischievous, yet penetrating look ; then broke into a broad, genial laugh, quite Bacchic, and succumbed. Christian, the solitary governess, first the worse than orphan, and then the real orphan, without a friend or relative in the world, felt a child clinging round her neck — a child towards whom, by the laws of God and man, she was bound to fulfil all the duties of a mother, — duties which, from the time when she insisted on having a " big doll," that she might dress it, not like a fine lady, but " like a baby," had always seemed to her the very sweetest in all the world.

Her heart leaped with a sudden ecstasy, invo luntary and uncontrollable. " My bonny boy ! " she murmured, kissing the top of that billowy curl which extended from brow to crown, — "my curl," — for Oliver immediately and proudly pointed it out to her. " And to think that his mother never saw him. Poor thing ! poor thing ! " c Dr. Grey turned away to the window. What remembrances, bitter or sweet, came over the widower's heart, Heaven knows ! But he kept them between himself and Heaven, as he did all things that were incommunicable and inevitable, and especially all things that could have given pain to any human being. He only said on returning, — "I knew, Christian, from the first, that you would be a good mother to my children." She looked up at him, the tears in her eyes, but with a great light shining in them too.

" I will try." Poor Christian ! If her hasty marriage, or any other mistake of her life, needed pardon, surely it might be won for the earnest sincerity of this vow, and for its self-forgetful, utter hu mility—" I will try." For another half-hour, at her entreaty, the children stayed ; though Letitia and Arthur never relaxed from their dignified decorum, further than to inform her that they were sometimes called "Titia" and "Atty;" that their nurse was named Phillis ; and that she had remained in the carriage, because "she said she wouldn't come in." Still, having expected nothing, the young step-mother was not disappointed. And when the three left, Oliver having held up his rosy mouth voluntarily for "a good large kiss," the sweetness of that caress lingered on her mouth like a chrism of consecration, sanctifying her for those new duties which seemed to have been sent to her without her choice, almost without her volition.

For she often felt, when she paused to think at all, as if in the successive links of circum stances which had brought about her marriage, she had been a passive agent, led on step by step, like a person half asleep. Would she ever awake ? When Mrs. Ferguson, re-entering, ready with any amount of sympathy, found the young step mother kissing her hand to the retreating carriage with a composed smile, which asked no condo lence, and offered no confidences, the good lady was, to say the least, surprised. "But," as she afterwards confessed to at least two dozen of her most intimate friends, "there always was some thing so odd, so different from most young ladies, about Miss Oakley." However, to the young lady herself she said nothing, except suggesting, rather meekly, that it was time to change her dress.

"And just once more let me beg you to take my shawl — my very best — instead of your own, which you have had a year and half. Ah ! " sigh ing, " if you had only spent more money on your wedding clothes." Chnstian's Mistake. 20 " How could I ? " said Christian, and stopped, seeing Dr. Grey enter. This was the one point on which she had resisted him. She could not accept her trousseau from her husband's gener osity. It had been the last struggle of that fierce, poverty-nurtured independence, which nothing short of perfect love could have extinguished into happy humility, and she had held to her point, resolute and hard. So much so, that when with a quiet dignity peculiarly his own, Dr. Grey had yielded, she had afterwards almost felt ashamed. And even now a slight blush came in her cheek, when she heard him say cheerfully, — "Do not trouble her, Mrs. Ferguson, about her shawl.

You know I have taken her — that is, we have taken one another, ' for better, for worse;' and it is little matter what sort of clothes she wears. Christian, as she passed him, gave her husband a grateful look. Grateful, alas ! Love does not understand, or even recognise, gratitude. But when the door closed after her, Dr. Grey's eyes rested on it like those of one who misses a light. He sat down, covering his mouth, — his firmly set but excessively sensitive mouth, with his hand, — an attitude which was one of his peculiarities. For he had many, which the world excused because of his learning; and his friends — well, because of himself. If ever there was a man who, without the slightest obtrusiveness or self-assertion of any kind, had unlimited influence over those about him, it was Arnold Grey.

Throughout a life spent entirely within his College walls, he had, from freshman to fellow, from thence to tutor, and so on to the early dignity of Mastership, the most extraordinary faculty of making people do whatsoever he liked, — ay, and enjoy the doing of it. Friends, acquaintances, undergraduates, even down to children and servants, all did, more or less, sooner or later, the good pleasure of Dr. Grey. Perhaps the secret of this was, that his " pleasure " was never merely his own. None wield such absolute power over others as those who think little about themselves. Had circumstances, or his own inclination, led him out further into the world, he might have been noticeable there, for he had very great and varied acquirements, — more acquirements, perhaps, than originalities. He had never written a book, but he had read almost every book that ever was written, — or, at least, such was the belief current in Avonsbridge.