Christians Mistake | Page 8

took up; it opened at the Marriage Service, which they had been inquisitively conning over; and the first words which flashed upon Christian's eyes were those which had two hours ago passed over her deaf ears, and dull, uncomprehending heart--
"For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh."
She started, as if only now she began to comprehend the full force of that awful union--"one flesh" and "till death us do part."
Mrs. 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. 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."
When she descended, every ray of color had gone out of her face--it was white and passionless as stone; but she kissed the children all around, gave a little present to Isabella, who had been her only bridesmaid, shook hands and said a word or two of thanks to honest James Ferguson, her "father" for the day, and then found herself driving through the familiar streets--not alone. She never would be alone any more.
With a shudder, a sense of dread indescribable, she remembered this. All her innocent, solitary, dreamy days quite over, her happiness. vanished; her regrets become a crime. The responsibility of being no longer her own, but another's--bound fixedly and irrevocably by the most solemn vow that can be given or taken, subject to no limitations. provisions, or exception while life remained. Oh. it was awful--awful!
She could have shrieked and leaped out of the carriage, to run wildly anywhere--to the world's end--when she felt her hand taken, softly but firmly.
"My dear, how cold you are! Let me make you warm if I can."
And then, in his own quiet, tender way, Dr. Grey wrapped her up in her shawl and rolled a rug about her feet. She took no notice, submitted passively, and neither spoke a word more till they had driven on for two or three miles, into a country road leading to a village where Avonsbridge people sometimes went for summer lodgings.
Christian knew it well. There, just before her father's death, he and she had lived, for four delicious, miserable, momentous weeks. She had never seen the place since, but now she recognized it--every tree, every field, the very farm-house garden, once so bright, now lying deep in snow. She began tremble in every limb.
"Why are we here? This is not our right road. Where are we going?"
"I did not mean to come this way, but we missed the train, and cannot reach London tonight; so I thought we would post across country to E___," naming a quiet cathedral town, "where you can rest, and go on when or where you please. Will that do?"
"Oh yes."
"You are not dissatisfied? We could not help missing the Train, you see."
"Oh no."
The quick, sharp, querulous answers--that last refuge of a fictitious strength that was momentarily breaking down--he saw it all, this good man, this generous, pitiful-hearted man, who knew what sorrow was, and who for a whole year had watched her with the acuteness which love alone teaches, 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,