Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

“ Christian had inquired no farther. 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 childless 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 ”

“ In-numerable flowing gowns, of all shapes and colors, marked the college dons; then there were the gayly-clad gentlemen commoners, and two or three young noblemen, equally fine; while, painfully near the door, a few meek-looking undergraduates struggled under the high honor of the vice chancellor's hospitality.
As to the women, few were young, and none particularly lovely yet Christian enjoyed looking at them. Actually, for the first time in her life, did she behold "full dress"—the sparkle of diamonds, the delicate beauty of old point lace, the rustle of gorgeous silks and satins. ”

“ Christian did not as yet; but she recognized her husband's love, and it penetrated with a strong sweetness to her inmost soul. Mingled with it was an acute pain, a profound regret, a sad humility. Not hers, alas! the joyful pride, the full content, of a heart which is conscious in its sweetest depths that it gives as much as it receives.
This was all. She had done nothing wrong, nothing unworthy of either herself or Dr. Grey; nothing but what hundreds of women do every day, and neither blame themselves nor are blamed by others. ”

“ It is a law most absolute and inevitable that love, however great, however small, never remains quite stationary; it must either diminish or increase. When Christian awoke out of the stunned condition which had been hers both before and after her marriage, she began to awake also to the dawning consciousness of what real marriage ought to be—the perfect, sacred union, so seldom realized or even sought for, and yet none the less the right aim and just desire of every true man and woman, which, when not attained, makes the life imperfect, and the marriage, if not a sin, a terrible mistake. ”

“ To have the Lodge made into a real home—a home altogether her own—and emptied of all but those who were really her own, with a glad welcome for any visitors, but still only as visitors, coming and going, and never permanently interfering with the sweet, narrow circle of the family fireside; to be really mistress in her own house; to have her time to herself; to spend long mornings with the children; long evenings alone with her husband, even if he sat for hours poring over his big books and did not speak a word—oh, how delicious it would be! ”

“ We often come to learn that change—which includes growth—is one of the most blessed laws in existence; but it is only weak natures who, in changing, lose their identity. If Dr. Grey saw, what any one who loved Christian could not fail to have seen, this remarkable change in her, he also saw deep enough into her nature neither to dread it nor deplore it.
A few civil speeches having been interchanged about the weather, their journey, and so forth, the master, suddenly looking round him, inquired. "Maria, where are the children?"
"I sent them to bed," said Miss Gascoigne, with dignity. ”

“ Miss Bennett shook her head. "He's a baronet, you know."
"No matter. An honest man and an honest woman are perfectly equal, even though one is a baronet and the other a daily governess. And, if love is worth any thing, it will last three months; if worth nothing, it had better go."
But even while she was speaking—plain truths which she believed with her whole heart—Christian felt, in this case, the bitter satire of her words.
Susan Bennett only smiled at them in a vague, uncomprehending way. "Would you have trusted your lover—that means Dr. Grey, I suppose—for three months?" ”

“ Ferguson tried the door, and knocked.
"Dr. Grey is waiting, my dear. You must not keep your husband waiting."
"My husband!" and again, came the wild look, as of a free creature suddenly caught, tied, and bound. "What have I done? oh what have I done? Is it too late?"
Ay, it was too late.
Many a woman has married with far less excuse that Christian did—married for money or position, or in a cowardly yielding to family persuasion, some one who she knew did not love her, or whom she did not love, with the only sort of love which makes marriage sacred. ”

“ His look expressed such unutterable pain that Christian came forward and
spoke out strongly, almost angrily.
"It is fear that makes a liar, even as harshness and injustice create deceit and underhandedness. Love a child and trust it, and if it does wrong, punish it neither cruelly nor unfairly, and it will never tell falsehoods. Titia will not—she shall not, as long as I am alive to keep her to the truth."
Dr. Grey looked fondly at his wile's young, glowing face and even Miss Gascoigne, the hard, worldly woman, viewing all things in her narrow, worldly way, was silenced for the time. ”

“ Miss Grey, the elder, was a little roly-poly woman, with a meek, round, fair-complexioned face, and pulpy soft-hands—one of those people who irresistibly remind one of a white mouse. She was neither clever nor wise, but she was very sweet-tempered. She had loved Dr. Grey all her life. From the time that she, a big girl, had dandled him, a baby, in her lap; throughout her brief youth, when she was engaged to young Mr. Gascoigne, who died; up to her somewhat silly and helpless middle-age, there never was anybody, to Miss Grey, like "my brother Arnold." Faithfulness is a rare virtue ”

“ This was a lie—a little white lie; one of those small exaggerations of which people make no account; but Christian believed it, and it seemed to wrap her round as with a cold mist of fear. All Avonsbridge talking of her—her, Dr. Grey's wife, who had his honor as well as her own in her keeping—talking about herself and Sir Edwin Uniacke! What? how much? how had the tale come about? how could it be met?
With a sudden instinct of self-preservation, she forcibly summoned back her composure. She knew with whom she had to deal. She must guard every look, every word. ”

“ There evidently was not a point in common between foolish Christian Oakley, taking dreamy twilight saunters under the apple-trees—not alone; looking up to her companion as something between Sir Launcelot and the Angel Gabriel—and this girl, carrying on a clandestine flirtation, which she hoped would—and was determined to make—end in a marriage, with a young man much above her own station, and just because he was so. As for loving him in the sense that Christian had understood love, Miss Bennett was utterly incapable of it. She never thought of love at all—only of matrimony. ”

“ And almost as if it were a real mother's heart, Christian felt hers yearn over the poor pale face, growing every minute more ghastly.
"I wonder where papa can be! Letitia, go and look for him. Tell him to send Barker for the doctor at once."
And then she gave her whole attention to Arthur, forgetting everything except that she had taken upon herself toward these children all the duties and anxieties of motherhood. How many—perhaps none—would she ever win of its joys? But to women like her duty alone constitutes happiness. ”

“ And when she reached them, what gloomy rooms they were, leading one out of another, up a step and down a step, with great beds that seemed only fit to lie in state in, after having turned one's face to the wall and slipped out of weary life into the imagined freedom of the life beyond. Home! If that was home, Christian shivered.
"Are you cold? Barker, send Mrs. Grey's maid with her warm shawl. Every body feels the Lodge cold at first, but you will get used to it. Wait one minute," for she was pressing eagerly to the gleam of light through the half-opened nursery door. ”

“ There is an old rhyme,
"A spaniel, a woman, and a walnut-tree, the more ye thrash 'em, the better they be;"
which rhyme is not true. But there lies a foundation of truth under it, that no woman ever perfectly loves a man who is not strong enough to make her also obey.
As Dr. Grey went out of the room, and the minute following, as with an after-thought, put in his head again, saying, "Christian, I want you!" she followed him with a lighter heart than she had had for many weary days. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, for the time being, Miss Gascoigne was puzzled. Her stern reproof, her patronizing pity, were alike disarmed. Her mountain seemed crumbling to its original mole-hill. The heap of accusing evidence which she had accumulated dwindled into the most ordinary and commonplace facts at sight of Christian's innocent face and placid mien. Nothing could be more unlike a woman who had ever contemplated the ordinary "flirting" of society. ”

“ Grey's words and manner, so perfectly guileless and natural, for the moment quite confounded her enemy—her enemy, and yet an honest enemy. Of the number of cruel things that are done in this world, how many are done absolutely for conscience sake by people who deceive themselves that they are acting from the noblest, purest motives—carrying out all the Christian virtues, in short, only they do so, not in themselves, but against other people. ”

“ She spoke quite gently, in mere inquiry; she was so anxious neither to give nor to take offense, if it could possibly be avoided. She bore always in mind a sentence her husband had once quoted—and, though a clergyman, he did not often quote the Bible, he only lived it: "As much as in you lieth, live peaceably with all men." But she sometimes wondered, with a kind of sad satire, whether the same could ever, under any circumstances, be done with all women.
Alas! not with these, or rather this woman, Aunt Maria being merely the adjective of that very determined substantive, Aunt Henrietta. ”

“ Do you mean to say that it is I who make dispeace! But if you, having known what a good, obedient wife really is, can submit to such unwarrantable dictation; and if I, or Maria, your own sister (Maria, why don't you speak?) , can not offer one word of advice to a young person, who, as might be expected, is entirely ignorant of the usages of society—is, in fact, a perfect child—"
"She is my wife!" said Dr. Grey, so suddenly and decisively that even Christian, who had been reading the note with a grateful heart for kindness shown for her sake, involuntarily started. ”

“ 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? ”

“ A strange, unwonted thrill ran through Christian's heart as she recognized, beyond possibility of doubt, that this was the secret source of her delight—of the feeling as if a new existence were opening before her—as if the heavy weight which had oppressed her were taken off, and she could move through those old gloomy rooms, which had once struck a chill through her whole being, with a sense as if she were as light as air, and as merry as a bird in the spring. ”

“ Avonsbridge lay still deep in February snow, for it was the severest winter which had been known there for many years. But any one who is acquainted with the place must allow that it never looks better or more beautiful than in a fierce winter frost—too fierce to melt the snow; when, in early morning, you may pass from college to college, over quadrangles, courts, and gardens, and your own footsteps will be the only mark on the white untrodden carpet, which lies glittering and dazzling before you, pure and beautiful as even country snow. ”

“ Christian Grey was a wife. Therefore, both as wife and as woman, it never occurred to her as the remotest possibility that she could indulge in one tender thought of any man not her husband, or allow any man to lift up the least corner of that veil of matronly dignity with which every married woman, under whatever circumstances she has married or whatever may befall her afterward, ought to enwrap herself forever. ”

“ No wonder the "reading man" who had been so insensible to the picturesque in nature, turned his weary eyes to look after her, or that a bevy of freshmen, rushing wildly out of chapel, with their surplices flying behind them like a flock of white—geese?—should have stopped to stare, a little more persistently than gentlemen ought, at the solitary lady, who was walking where she had a perfect right to walk, and at an hour when she could scarcely be suspected of promenading either to observe or to attract observation. But Christian went right on, with perfect composure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What agonies such women must have endured, if they had any spark of feminine feeling left alive, they themselves know; and what Christian, far more guiltless than they, also endured during the three minutes that she kept Mrs. Ferguson waiting at the locked door, was a thing never to be spoken of, but also never to be forgotten during the longest and happiest lifetime. It was a warning that made her—even her—to the end of her days, say to every young woman she knew, "Beware! Marry for love, or never marry at all." ”

“ 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, unprotected woman, with neither kith nor kin to give her dignity, earning her own bread by her own honest labor, the master of Saint Bede's was not exactly a man to be pitied. ”

“ She started up, and stood gazing round the cheerful, bright, handsome room, where every luxury that a comfortable income could give had been provided for her comfort, every little fancy and taste she had been remembered, with a tender mindfulness that would have made the heart of any newly-married wife, married for love, leap for joy, and look forward hopefully to that life which, with all its added cares, a good man's affection can make so happy to the woman who is his chosen delight. But in Christian's face was no happiness ”