Christians Mistake | Page 3

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'm 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
afterward, "the first sight of three stepchildren, and she, poor dear, such
a mere girl, must be a very unpleasant thing." For her part, she 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 every

body," his wife soundly berated 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 Ferguson's 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 as 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
recognizing her own identity. Women, more than men, are subject to
this strange, somnambulistic, 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--every body 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 to 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
can not 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