So his wife had to wait still. She submitted as to fatality, laid her head on her pillow, and fell at once into that dull, stupid sleep which mercifully comes to some people, and always came to her, in heavy trouble. She did not wake from it till late in the following morning.
A great dread, like a great joy, always lies in ambush, ready to leap upon us the instant we open our eyes. Had Miss Gascoigne known what a horrible monster it was, like a tiger at her throat, which sprang upon Christian when she waked that morning, she, even she, might have felt remorseful for the pain she had caused. Yet perhaps she would not. In this weary life of ours,
"With darkness and the death-hour rounding it,"
It is strange how many people seem actually to enjoy making other people miserable.
Christian rose and dressed; for her household ways must go on as usual; she must take her place at the breakfast-table, and make it cheerful and pleasant, so that the children might not find out any thing wrong with mother. She did so, and sent them away to their morning play—happy little souls! Then she sat down to think for a little, all alone.
Not what to do—that was already decided; but how to do it—how to tell Dr. Grey in the least painful way that his love had not been the first love she had received—and given; that she had had this secret, and kept it from him, though he was her husband, for six whole months.
Oh, had she but told him before her marriage, long, long ago! Now, he might think she only did it out of fear, dread of public opinion, or seeking protection from the public scandal that might overtake her, however innocent. For was she not in the hands of an unscrupulous man and a malicious woman? It was hopeless to defend herself. Why should she attempt it? Had she not better let herself be killed—she sometimes thought she should be killed, to so great a height of morbid dread had risen her secret agony—and die, quietly, silently, thus escaping out of the hands of her enemies, who pursued her with this relentless hatred.
Dying might have felt easier to her but for one fact—she loved her husband—loved him, as she now knew, so passionately, so engrossingly, that all this misery converged in one single fear—the fear that she might lose his love. What the world thought of her—what Miss Gascoigne thought of her, became of little account. All she dreaded was what Dr. Grey would think. Would he, in his large, tender, compassionate heart, on hearing her confession, say only "Poor thing! she could not help it; she was foolish and young," or would he feel she had deceived him, and cast her off from his trust, his respect, his love for evermore?
In either case she hesitated not for a moment. Love, bought by a deception, she knew to be absolutely worthless. Knowing now what love was, she knew this truth also. Had no discovery been made, she knew that she must have told all to Dr. Grey. She hated, despised herself for having already suffered day after day to pass by without telling him, though she had continually intended to do it. All this was a just punishment for her cowardice; for she saw now, as she had never seen before, that every husband, every wife, before entering into the solemn bond of marriage, has a right to be made acquainted with every secret of the other's heart, every event of the other's life that such confidence, then and afterward, should know no reservations, save and except trusts reposed in both before marriage by other people, which marriage itself is not justified in considering annulled.
But, the final moment being come, when a day—half a day—would decide it all—decide the whole future of herself and her husband, Christian's courage seemed to return.