Noel’s note came early. It announced that his mother would be ready to receive her visitor any time after eleven. It was full of the strongest assurances of love and constancy, and Christine knew it was meant to comfort and support her in her approaching . She felt so strong to meet this, however, that even Mrs. Murray’s earnest protest that harm would come of the visit failed to her, and she turned a deaf ear to all her good friend’s to her to give it up. Mrs. Murray’s advice was for the marriage and departure for Europe, but Christine’s mind was made up, and could not be shaken.
She was feeling strangely calm as she drove along through a part of the great city she had never ever seen before, where there were none but splendid houses, with glimpses, through richly-curtained windows, of interiors, and where all the people who passed her, whether on foot or in handsome carriages, had an air of ease and comfort and luxury that made her feel herself still more an alien. She did not regret her resolution, but she felt quite hopeless of its result. It would make matters simpler for her, at all events.
When the carriage stopped she got out with a strange feeling of unreality, closed the door behind her, careful to see that it caught, to the driver quietly and told him to wait, and then walked up the steps and rang the bell. During the moment she stood there a boy came along and threw a small printed paper at her feet. It was an advertisement of a new soap, and she was reading it mechanically when the door was opened by a tall man-servant who stood against the background of a stately hall, whose rich furnishings were revealed by the light that came through the stained glass windows. Christine was closely veiled, and coming out of the sunshine it all seemed obscure and dim. She asked if Mrs. Noel was at home, and when the man said yes, and her in she desired him to say to Mrs. Noel that the lady with whom she had an appointment was come.
Then she sat down in the great drawing-room and waited. The silence was intense. She seemed to have shrunk to a very small size as she sat in the midst of all this high-pitched, broad-proportioned stateliness. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness the objects about her seemed to come out, one by one—beautiful pictures, statues, rich draperies and delicate, fine of many kinds. A carriage rolled by outside, one of the horses slipping on the thin coat of ice with which the shady side of the street was covered. The driver jerked him up sharply, with a , and went on. As the sound of wheels died away she could hear a street band far off, playing a popular air. Then that too ceased and the silence without was as profound as the silence within. Christine felt as if she were dreaming. It seemed to her hours that she had waited here, though she knew it was only a very few minutes, before the servant returned. Mrs. Noel requested that she would be kind enough to come up-stairs, he said.
Christine followed him silently up the great staircase, and was ushered into a room near its head. She heard the door closed behind her, and saw a small, slight figure, dressed in black, opposite to her.
“Good-morning. Excuse my asking you to come up-stairs,” a clear, refined voice began; but suddenly it broke off, and perfect silence followed, and the eyes of the two women met. Christine was very pale, and those beautiful eyes of hers had dark rings around them, but they were marvellously clear and true, and, above all, they were with sorrow.
The elder woman advanced to her and took her hand.
“Oh, my child, how you must have suffered!” she said.
“Ah, you know what it is. You have suffered, too. We shall understand each other better for that.”
“My dear, I seem to understand it all. Don’t be unhappy. You need have no fear of me. If you love my son as he loves you, you have my consent. I will not ask to know anything.”
“You must know. I have come to tell you. You will probably change your mind when you have heard.”
The elder woman, who was pale and delicate, and yet in spite of all this bore some resemblance to her strong young son, now led her tall companion to a seat, and sitting down in front of her, said :
“Take off your hat and gloves, my dear. Try to feel at home with me. I love my son too dearly to go against him in the most earnest desire of his life. He has told me nothing, except that you love each other, and that there is something which you consider an obstacle to your marriage, but which he refuses to accept as such. Tell me about it, dear, and let me set your mind at rest.”
Christine took off her gloves, because they were a to her, and now, as she gave her two bare hands into those of Mrs. Noel, she said calmly:
“You think it is some little thing—that lack of fortune or a difference in social position is the obstacle. I would not be here now if it were no more than that—for I do love him!”
The last words broke from her as if involuntarily, and the impulse that made her utter them sent the swift tears to her eyes. But she forced them back, and they had no successors.
“And he loves you, too—oh, how he loves you! I wonder if you know.”
“Yes, I know—I know it all. He has shown and proved, as well as told me. We love each other with a complete and perfect love. Even if I have to give him up nothing can take that away.”
“My dear, you need not give him up. I asked my son one question only: ‘Is her honor free from stain?’”
“And what was his answer?”
“‘Absolutely and utterly. She is as as an angel.’ Those were his very words.”
“God bless him for them! God forever bless him!” said Christine. “I know, in his eyes, it is so.”
“In his eyes!” repeated Mrs. Noel. “Is there any doubt that it would be so in any eyes?”
“Yes,” said Christine, “there is great doubt.”
It was well for her that she had not hoped too much—well that she had kept continually in mind the awful value of the revelation she had come to make. If she had been and confident the look that now came over the face of Noel’s mother would have been a harder thing to bear. But Christine was all prepared for it. It wounded, but it did not surprise nor disturb her perfect calm. There was a distinct change in the tone with which Mrs. Noel now said:
“If you have been unfortunate, poor girl, and have been led into trouble without fault of your own, as may possibly be, no one could pity you more than I. I can imagine such a case, and I could not look at you and think any evil of you. But if you know the world at all, you must know that these things—let a woman be utterly free from fault herself—carry their inexorable consequences.”
“I know the world but little,” said Christine, “and yet I know that.”
“Then, my dear child, you cannot wonder that the woman so unfortunately is thought to be debarred from honorable marriage.”
“I do not wonder when I meet with this in the world or in you. I only wondered when I found in your son a being too high for it—a being to whom right is right and pureness is pureness, as it is to God. You will remember, madame, that it was your son who claimed that I was not debarred from honorable marriage, and not I. Oh, I have suffered—you were right. No wonder that the sign of it is branded on my forehead for all the world to see. I have suffered in a way as far beyond the worst pain you have ever known as that pain of yours has been from pleasure. You have known death in its most awful form when it took from you your dearest ones, but I have known death too. My little baby, who was like the very core of my heart, round which the heartstrings twisted, and the clinging flesh was wrapped, was torn away from me by death, and it was pain and unspeakable—but I have known a suffering compared to which that agony was joy. There can be worse things to bear than the death of your heart’s dearest treasure—at least I know it may be so with women. And it was because you were a woman, with a woman’s possibilities of pain, that I wanted to come to you—to tell you all, and let you say whether I am a fit wife for your son.”
Ah, poor Christine! She felt, as she spoke those words, the silent, still, impalpable in her companion’s heart. She knew the poor woman was trying to be kind and merciful and sympathetic, but she also knew that what she had just said had rendered Noel’s mother the and opposer of this marriage, instead of its friend.
“Go on, tell me all,” his mother said, and that subtle change of voice and manner was distincter still to the acute consciousness of Christine’s suffering soul. “I will be your friend whatever happens, and I honor you for the spirit in which you look upon this thing. I will speak out boldly, though you know I dislike to give you pain. But tell me this: Do you think yourself a fit wife for my son?”
Christine raised her head and answered with a very noble look of pride:
“I do.”
Her companion seemed to be surprised, and a faint shade of crossed her face.
“I know it,” said Christine. “I know he did not say too much when he spoke those blessed words to you and said I was stainless. God saw my heart through everything and He knows that it is so, but the world thinks otherwise. The world, and his own family, perhaps, would think your son lowered and dishonored by marrying me, and I never coul............