Christians Mistake | Page 5

is neither likely, necessary, nor
desirable; so, to anyone who has known a perfect first marriage--the
whole satisfaction of every requirement of heart and soul and human
affection--unto such, a second marriage, 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
previously taught; as most people are so fatally ready to teach children,
the usual doctrine about step-mothers, and also quite ready to rebel
against the same?
The step-mother likewise, what could she do, even had she recognized
and felt all that the children's behavior implied?
Alas! (I say "alas!" for this was as sad a thing as the other) she did not
recognize 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 of 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 toward whom, by the laws of God and
man, she was bound to fulfill 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, involuntary 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 to her. "And to think that his
mother never saw him. Poor thing! poor thing!"
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 humility--"I will try."
For another half hour, at her entreaty, the children staid, though Letitia
and Arthur never relaxed from their dignified decorum farther 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 would not 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 the caress lingered on her mouth like a
chrism of consecration, sanctifying her for these 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 thing at all, as if in the

successive links of circumstances 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