Christians Mistake | Page 9

especially the love which, coming late in life, had a
calmness and unselfishness which youthful love rarely possesses. The
sort of love which, as he had once quoted to her out of an American
book, could feel, deeply and solemnly, "that if a man really loves a
woman, he would not marry her for the world, were he not quite sure
he was the best person she could by any possibility marry"--that is, the
one who loved her so perfectly that he was prepared to take upon
himself all the burden of her future life, her happiness or sorrow, her
peculiarities, shortcomings, faults, and all.
This, though he did not speak a word, was written, plain as in a book,
on the face of Christian's husband, as he watched her, still silently, for
another mile, till the early winter sun-set, bursting through the
leaden-colored, snowy sky, threw a faint light in at the carriage
window.
Christian looked up, and closed her eyes again in a passive
hopelessness sad to see.
Her husband watched her still. Once he sighed--a rather sad sigh for a
bridegroom, and then a light, better and holier than love, or rather the
essence of all love, self-denial and self-forgetfullness, brightened up his
whole countenance.
"How very tired she is; but I shall take care of her, my poor child!"
The words were as gentle as if he had been speaking to one of his own

children, and he drew her to him with a tender, protecting fatherliness
which seemed the natural habit of his life, such as never, in her poor,
forlorn life, had any one shown to Christian Oakley. It took away all
her doubts, all her fears. For the moment she forgot she was married,
forgot everything but his goodness, his tenderness, his care over her,
and her great and sore need of the same. She turned and clung to him,
weeping passionately.
"I have nobody in the world but you. Oh, be kind to me!"
"I will," said Arnold Grey.
Chapter 2
"You'll love me yet! And I can tarry Your love's protracted growing:
June reaped that bunch of flowers you carry From seeds of April's
sowing."
Saint Bede's is one of the most ancient of the minor colleges of
Avonsbridge. Its foundress's sweet, pale, suffering face, clad in the
close coif of the time of the wars of the Roses, still smiles over the
fellow's table in hall, and adorns the walls of combination-room. The
building itself has no great architectural beauty except the beauty of
age. Its courts are gray and still, and its grounds small; in fact, it
possesses only the Lodge garden, and a walk between tall trees on the
other side of the Avon, which is crossed by a very curious bridge. The
Lodge itself is so close to the river, that from its windows you may drop
a stone into the dusky, slowly rippling, sluggish water, which seems
quieter and deeper there than at any other college past which it flows.
Saint Bede's is, as I said, a minor college, rarely numbering more than
fifty gownsmen at a time, and maintaining, both as to sports and honors,
a mild mediocrity. For years it had not sent any first-rate man either to
boat-race, or cricket-ground, or senate-house. Lately, however, it had
boasted one, quite an Admirable Crichton in his way, who, had his
moral equaled his mental qualities, would have carried all before him.
As it was, being discovered in offenses not merely against University
authority, but obnoxious to society at large, he had been rusticated.

Though the matter was kept as private as possible, its details being
known only to the master, dean and tutor, still it made a nine-day's talk,
not only in the college, but in the town--until the remorseless wave of
daily life, which so quickly closes over the head of either ill-doer or
well-doer, closed completely over that of Edwin Uniacke.
Recovering from the shock of his turpitude, the college now reposed in
peace upon its slender list of well-conducted and harmless
undergraduates, its two or three tutors, and its dozen or so of gray old
fellows, who dozed away their evenings in combination-room. Even
such an event as the master's second marriage had scarcely power to
stir Saint Bede's from its sleepy equanimity.
It was, indeed, a peaceful place. It had no grand entrance, but in a
narrow back street you came suddenly upon its ancient gateway,
through which you passed into a mediaeval world. The clock tower and
clock, with an upright sundial affixed below it, marked the first court,
whence, through a passage which, as is usual in colleges, had the hall
on one hand and the buttery on the other, you entered the second court,
round three sides of which ran