Hugh Crichton's Romance

She had often said that the only comfort in sorrow was religion. Now she knew what sorrow meant; did she know what religion meant too? It was a matter of course in these days that so intelligent and so earnest-minded a girl should care about the subject; and Flossy was not only critical of different shades of Church opinion, but held her own with great ardour and no want of reality, impressing them strongly on the young girls whom she sought to influence, and possibly arguing about them more forcibly than meekly. More than this, she dutifully followed the practices and principles they enjoined. And now what did her religion do for her? Perhaps she did not altogether realise the Help to which she looked, but, at least, she felt the necessity of it to the very bottom of her soul. She had not herself sounded the depths of grief, she did not soar to the heights of consolation; but at least she looked the grief and the great Comfort full in the face.

But Flossy’s thoughts were soon turned away from herself to those more immediately concerned. She envied Miss Venning her place among them, and cared for nothing but the accounts she sent of the life at Redhurst from day to day.

Little as she guessed it, there was something in the wild mournful pathos of the story, in the picturesqueness of its incidents, in the admiration which Arthur’s reported gentleness and patience inspired, that did lift it into the regions of romance, and made its exceeding pitifulness a little more bearable to one so young as Flossy, as long as she was not brought into actual contact with it; something that harmonised with the truer and deeper consolation that came with the thought of Mysie’s goodness and innocence, and that made that sunshiny funeral, with its scent of flowers, its sound of music, and its crowd of young faces, a time not absolutely miserable; a recollection that might soften into tenderness, and brighten, perhaps, to the perfect day. But it was with a sense of nothing but the absolute piteous reality of loss and change that she walked up to Redhurst with Clarissa to wish them all goodbye before the final break-up of the household, becoming conscious of nothing but the determination not to cry and so add to the pain with which they might meet her. She forgot how well they were accustomed to the atmosphere of sorrow that struck on her with such a chill; and when Mrs Crichton, seeing her agitation, caressed her and spoke tenderly of her love for their lost darling, Flossy felt as if everyone but herself were capable of efforts of unselfish self-control. While she was listening to James’s explanation of their future plans, and how he had got his leave extended for a day or two to see them off to Bournemouth, suddenly, without warning, Arthur came into the room. She had not expected to see him, and as he came forward rather hastily and took her hand, colouring up a little, she wondered that he looked so like himself.

“I did not know you were here,” he said, and then she heard how the life and ring had gone out of his voice. She could not speak a word, and turned quite white, a strange thing in the pink-faced Flossy.

“Did you want me, Arthur?” said James. “No, I don’t want anything, thank you.” He turned away to speak to Clarissa, and Flossy moved into the window, and stood looking out and seeing nothing. Presently she heard Arthur’s voice at her side.

“Flossy, I wish to give you this. Aunt Lily thinks you would like it.”

Flossy looked, and saw by the shape of the case in his hand that it contained some turquoise ornaments which Mysie had been very fond of wearing.

“Oh, no, no, Arthur,” she burst out, vehement and outspoken as ever, even then; “not those. I never, never could put them on. I have her old school-books and some music. I want nothing.”

“But keep this,” he said, “I know she would have wished it.”

Flossy yielded then. She took hold of Arthur’s hand and squeezed it hard, but she could not speak of her own grief in the presence of his; and he soon moved away, as if he had done what he wanted to do and was indifferent to anything else.

“Flossy,” whispered Frederica, “come out with me. Oh,” she continued, as they came into the garden, “I shall be so glad to go to Bournemouth. It is dreadful here. Only I can’t think what we shall do with Arthur – Aunt Lily and I. He likes best to be with Jem, or quite alone.”

“Mary told us how beautifully he behaves.”

“Oh, yes; but it is so difficult to know what he likes. Hugh, there’s Hugh!”

Taken utterly by surprise Flossy started, with a half-shrinking movement, and, though she recovered herself in a moment and held out her hand, Hugh turned away as if he had not meant to be seen, and was gone at once.

“There!” cried Frederica, passionately; “You feel it too! They may say what they like. I hate him, and so does George; and I wish he would go away and never come back!”

“That is not right, Freddie. I ought not to have started – it must be worst of all for him.”

“I don’t believe it! I know just how it was; Hugh is so conceited, and so interfering! He ought to be sorry and to know we all hate the sight of him.”

Frederica’s intolerant girlish harshness gave Flossy a shock.

“Hugh,” she said; “whatever you think, what Hugh must feel is far beyond and above anything we can understand, and we must not talk about ‘ought’ and ‘ought not.’”

“Aunt Lily says it is nonsense to say he had anything to do with it; but I know he thinks so himself.”

“Then, that is enough, without your discussing it,” said Flossy, with a sense of irreverence in thus roughly handling events so terrible. She did shrink at the thought of Hugh, but she would not have said so for the world.

Frederica was silenced, but she and her younger brother indulged secretly in much discussion and comment, the excitement of which relieved their dreary hours a little; and Hugh felt the little pricks their childish displeasure gave him. That Arthur showed none of it he attributed to a determination to avoid paining him. Had not Florence Venning shrunk away from him? Jem had fallen into Mrs Crichton’s policy of refusing to recognise any special reason for his unhappiness, and was taken up in softening matters as far as possible for Arthur; so that he was only too thankful to talk occasionally to his brother on other subjects, and with stifling slight pangs of regret that he had used up all his leave without that little run down to the cathedral town where Archdeacon Hayward resided, and without that Sunday when he went to church with Miss Helen and indulged his distant admiration for her.

On the afternoon after Flossy’s visit he remained in the drawing-room alone, readings the paper, for the others had dispersed. Jem sometimes wrote as well as read the papers, and as he perused an art-critique, from which he differed fundamentally, an answer to adorn the pages of the rival journal began to seethe in his brain. He could not help feeling that tones and tints, lights and shades, on canvas, would be a great relief from the overpowering feelings of real life. He murmured to himself: “If accuracy of drawing and truth of colour are to be sacrificed to a – to a meretricious prettiness and a false – ”

“Oh, Jem, look here, read this!” exclaimed Arthur, coming hastily up to him with a letter in his hand. “Don’t you remember Fred Seton, who went to India?”

“What, a light-haired fellow, who came to see you one Christmas? Yes, what of him?”

“He has been very ill; he is coming home on sick-leave. He wants me to meet him at Marseilles.”

James remembered dimly that Arthur had always entertained a strong friendship for this Fred Seton, and had greatly regretted his going to India some two or three years before. He read the letter, which was written evidently in bad health and spirits and in ignorance of Arthur’s engagement, begging him, if possible, to come out and meet him.

“You know, Jem, his people are all dead. He is such a lonely fellow – I must go.”

“But, Arthur, it’s such a dreary errand for you just now,” said James. “If Seton should be worse when you meet him – or you yourself – ”

“I shall not be ill, if that is what you mean. And, Jem, it would be some object. What could I do with myself at Bournemouth?”

“No, that’s true,” said James. “I feel that. But, my dear boy, I don’t like your going away alone to meet no one knows what, when you want looking after so much yourself.”

“No one can help me,” said Arthur. “What can my life be to me? You’re all so good, but the light has gone down for me. Let me go; it will be change – something to look forward to. And I am quite well. I can eat and sleep. I could walk any distance. I must go.”

“Well, I suppose you must, but mother will hate the notion.”

“Will you talk her over? Somehow, I can’t bear to be talked to about myself.” James found his task very difficult. Mrs Crichton naturally entertained a thousand fears for Arthur’s health and spirits, but he was reinforced by Hugh.

“Let him go; of course, if he wishes it. If he can care for any fresh object it will be the best cure. Let him do exactly as he likes now and henceforward. I daresay the change will distract his mind and do him good.”

They were kind words, but there was something hard and sarcastic in the tone in which they were uttered.

“I wish you could have a change too,” said Jem, looking at him.

“Changes don’t make much difference to me,” said Hugh; “perhaps they may to Arthur.”

Mrs Crichton had resolved that the division of poor Mysie’s little belongings should be made at once, and she was right in thinking that it would cost Arthur far less pain now than at any future time. There was no use, she thought, in allowing haunting memories to have a local habitation; and she secretly determined that, during their absence, the house should so be rearranged as to leave no sacred corners; while there was nothing startling now in the sight of Mysie’s books and jewels, when all their hearts were full of Mysie herself.

Arthur was grateful for having been allowed to have his own way so easily, but even while he arranged his journey with Jem, and felt how intolerable the Bournemouth scheme would have been to him, his heart almost failed him – the long journey seemed such a trouble – and how utterly, how immeasurably sad this turning away from his old life made him! For, young as he was, the loss was as the loss of a wife – it was the dividing of that which had been whole, the changing of every detail of his days. It was not disappointed passion: what lay before him was not life with a dark painful memory in one corner of it; it was life under conditions of which he had never dreamed. It was not that his old delights and hopes had become distasteful, but that they had ceased to exist. He had decided to go to London with Jem, starting late on the Friday evening, and go on to Marseilles on the Saturday; and on the Friday afternoon Hugh, coming back from the bank, found him alone in the drawing-room, sitting there with a mournful, unoccupied look that went to his heart.

“He will be gone soon,” thought Hugh, with a sense of infinite relief. However, he came forward, and said:

“I wanted to ask you, Arthur, have you money enough for this journey?”

“Oh, yes, thank you; quite enough for the present.”

“You have only to ask for what you want – of my mother if you like it better.”

“I’ll ask you,” said Arthur, gently. “I hope you’ll write to me sometimes.”

“If you wish it.”

“And, Hugh, will you have this? It was your present to her, I believe.”

He held out to him a little prettily-bound book, a collection of poetry of which Mysie had been very fond.

“You are very good to me,” said Hugh, almost inaudibly and with bent head, not taking the book.

“Hugh,” said Arthur, evidently with great effort, “I don’t feel as you suppose. I cannot speak of – of that – ”

“No, no, don’t, don’t speak of it. I know what you feel,” interposed Hugh. “Don’t force yourself to anything else for me.”

The long strain on his nerves had made poor Arthur much less capable of self-control than at first; and though he succeeded in saying, as he put his hand on Hugh’s: “I don’t force myself; you could not help it” – the shudder of horror at the bare allusion to the fact might well be mistaken by Hugh for a struggle to perform an act of forgiveness. It was agony to Hugh to see him suffer; but, if he could have forgotten that and tried to soothe the suffering, the misapprehension would have passed away and the real sympathy between them have comforted both. As it was, he felt a pang of humiliation, and was relieved when James’s entrance spared him the need of a reply; though he knew that his brother would blame him for Arthur’s obvious agitation. As James began to talk, half-coaxingly, about the arrangements for their start, and finally carried Arthur off to have something to eat, the thought that came into Hugh’s mind, spite of himself, was: “He need not wish to change with me, after all.”

Part 4, Chapter XXIV

Chance and Change

“Fresh woods and pastures new!”

Part 4, Chapter XXV

Private Theatricals

“But a trouble weighed upon herAnd perplexed her night and morn,With the burden of an honourUnto which she was not born.”

Between the date of Hugh Crichton’s return from Italy and the day when he was left alone to set up for himself in the old Bank House barely two months elapsed. Those days that had been for Arthur and Mysie so sweet, so rich and full, had been long days indeed, the long days of summer, but they had been very few in number, so few that the first tints of autumn had not touched the trees when they were over, though the roses had been fully in bloom when they began. It was still summer, they were still long hot days, when Mysie was buried, and Arthur set forth on his solitary journey, and Florence Venning turned back to her usual pursuits and wished the holidays over, that some sort of life and interest might come back to the Manor again. It was an endless summer, Hugh thought, as he was left alone to reflect on all that it had brought to him, and wondered – in the intervals of wondering how Arthur managed to shift for himself, and how far change of scene would affect his trouble – in between whiles he wondered if the opera season at Civita Bella were over and the manager and his prima donna had had time for their wedding.

It was a long summer, too, in Civita Bella, for Violante had to live through the days though Hugh Crichton was gone; there were still seven in each week, and they brought many incidents with them.

She had offended Signor Vasari – not mortally, perhaps; not without hope of restoration to his favour; but so that he determined to punish her and her family by the temporary withdrawal of his suit. With all her shortcomings she was too valuable to him, and perhaps he was too much in love with her, for an entire break, but he intended to make her feel his displeasure. Her failures were no longer treated with indulgence, and her stage-life was made indeed hard to her. Perhaps in so acting he gave her a shield against his pertinacity, in the passionate resentment which such conduct excited; and, had this been the only battle which Violante had to fight, there might have been fire enough in her nature to help her through with it. She could not be scornful, but she could be utterly, passively indifferent, absolutely unconscious of the little flags of truce he now and then held out, careless whether he praised or blamed. So she appeared at first; but, though she was not much afraid of Signor Vasari, she was very much afraid of her own father, and, in these languid weary days, she often justly incurred his displeasure.

When Hugh turned away in anger, she felt as if nothing could ever matter to her again; but the habit of seeing professional engagements fulfilled at all costs all her life, and knowing that no amount of disinclination made it possible to break them, prevented her, there being no perversity in her nature, from giving way to her longing for quiet and rest.

But, though she did everything that she was told to do, a sort of dead weight of incapacity seemed to have fallen upon her. She forgot the music that she had learnt already, and a fresh part she was utterly unable to master. She gave her time to it, but with no result. Rosa did not wonder that Signor Mattei exclaimed, in a transport of indignation, that he had never had so perverse a pupil as his own daughter. Every performance seemed to cost Violante more and to be less successful than the last, and the private rehearsals on which Signor Mattei insisted were worst of all, since she could scarcely speak, much less act, in his presence.

There they were one morning: Signor Mattei with an opera score in his hand, singing, acting, dancing about, scolding, gesticulating, running his hands through his hair; and Violante, white, trembling, and motionless, with her little hands dropped before her and her eyes utterly blank; Rosa, who had had a hard time of it of late, at work in a corner. She had not been in the habit of seeing Violante practise her acting, as her father had only recently insisted on these private performances, and they were a revelation to her of the extent of her sister’s incapacity.

“What possesses the child,” she thought, herself almost angry. “If I had half her voice, let alone her beauty, I would have sung every soprano part on the stage by this time! Ah, if I only had! She is stupid. It must be sheer fright. Oh dear! there she is singing that coquettish bit like a dirge. What will father say to her? I wonder if I could make her see how to do it – it seems such incredible incapacity. And she is not in good voice either – how should she be, poor child?”

And Rosa’s lips moved, and her face assumed half-unconsciously the expression appropriate to the part.

“Violante! It is incredible, most incredible. Here am I a lamb of meekness and mildness. I am not going to beat you, child. Santa Madonna! I really believe I could; you are as obstinate as a mule. Laugh, child, laugh – smile; you can do that. Eleven o’clock! I must go to my pupils, and I am tired to death already. Don’t tell me you have tried – No, Rosa – no excuses. See that she knows it better when I come back;” and, flinging the score across the room in his irritation, Signor Mattei departed.

“Oh, Violante!” exclaimed Rosa, “what can possess you? I have seen you do it a thousand times better than that.”

Violante stood where her father had left her, with scared stupid eyes and listless figure. She turned slowly, and, sitting down on the floor by Rosa’s side, laid her head against her knee, as if stillness and silence were all she cared for. Rosa was afraid to probe to the bottom of her distress; what could she say about Hugh that could do any good? That must be left to time, and she must address herself to the matter in hand.

“Come now,” she said, cheerfully, “how is it that you sang so badly this morning?”

“I don’t know,” said Violante, “it is always so.”

“Is it because father frightens you?”

“That makes it worse – but I cannot understand what he wants.”

“Well, Violante, I don’t think you can. And yet it seems so easy. Oh, dear, if I had your voice – ”

“I wish you had it!”

“Hugh – I won’t have you say that; but it seems so strange. Why, don’t you want to say the words rightly?”

“Oh, yes!” said Violante, misunderstanding.

“I mean,” cried Rosa, eagerly, “don’t you feel as if you were Zerlina, as if it had all happened to yourself – doesn’t it seem real to you?”

“No!”

“Why, it carries me away even to see you do it. Why! I could express so all sorts of feelings. Don’t you know, Violante, there is so much within us that cannot come out, and art – music – acting is a means of expressing it. I should feel myself that I– I myself – had offended my lover, and wanted to coax him to be friends. Don’t you see?”

“I never would!” said Violante, half to herself. “I never could!”

“I don’t believe you have a scrap of imagination,” cried Rosa, growing excited.

“Of course, it is not the same thing. Can’t you translate your feelings into the other girl’s nature. You have feelings. Now I would show through my acting all that must be buried else. When I came to happy scenes acting them would be something like happiness, sad ones would be a relief, and if – only if – Violante, I had ever cared for anyone, I should know how to say those words, and even the shadow of the past would be sweet – ”

“Oh, Rosa,” faltered Violante, hot and shame-faced, “as if he could remind me – ”

Rosa came suddenly down from her tirade, perceiving how utterly it fell flat.

“My darling, I meant nothing to distress you. If you don’t understand me, never mind.”

“But,” she added, half to herself, “if you had the soul of an actress in you, you would.”

“Do you think, Rosa,” said Violante, after a pause, in low reflective accents, “that anyone could be coaxed to make friends?”

“Why, yes, I suppose so,” said Rosa, lightly. “You see it succeeded in the case of Masetto.”

“That is only a play,” said Violante, in a tone of contempt.

“Ah, well, Violante, real life certainly doesn’t work itself out quite like a play. But it was of plays we were talking, you know.”

“Yes. Rosa mia, I am not so silly but that I can tell the difference between my own acting and other people’s. It is not only that I am frightened – and unhappy – it is that I cannot do it. Do you think I could ever learn how?”

There was not a shade of pique or of mortified pride in the anxious, humble question, and Rosa could not help fancying that even in sweet Violante nothing but utter indifference and incapacity could have made failure so endurable.

“Well,” she said, “I don’t suppose you will ever make a great hand at it; but I should think you might get to act well enough not to spoil your singing if you were stronger and less frightened.”

“Can you tell me – I am sure you could act?”

“Yes,” said Rosa, with a colour in her cheeks, and an odd light in her eyes, “I believe – I am sure I could. But I have no voice, there is no good in it. I never think of it now. However, stand up. Just sing through Masetto’s part, and I will be Zerlina. I know the music, but I shall croak like a raven. Now, then.”

In another moment Violante started with surprise, for, without change of dress, Rosa seemed to have disappeared, and the half-coquettish, half-penitent peasant-girl, who, bewildered for a moment by Don Giovanni’s flatteries, still is at heart faithful to her own lover, was there in her stead. She ran up to the amazed Violante, face and gesture full of pathetic entreaty. True, her voice was weak and harsh, but a hundred bits of byplay, which Violante had never dreamed of, seemed to come by nature – her face flushed, her eyes beamed.

“Rosa, it is marvellous! How can you do it?”

“Oh,” said Rosa, recalled, “I am only showing you. Don’t you see? – Now, do you try.”

“No, no – go on. The scene with Don Giovanni, that is what I cannot manage.”

“Oh, where he makes love to her, and she is just a little inconstant to Masetto. Very well, you are Don Giovanni,” and Rosa’s hesitating coquetry, struggle with herself, and bewitching airs were so surprising that Violante exclaimed:

“Why, I never saw you look so before.”

“No, of course not – I am not Rosa – I am Zerlina. However, you don’t know what I may have done in my time – when I was young.”

“But you do it so beautifully. Ah, what a pity you have not my voice – you would be the greatest prima donna in Italy!”

“Do you think so?” said Rosa, gratified. “But, ah, I have no voice, so there is no chance for me here. I do believe I should have gone on the stage if I had stayed in England; that is, I thought so once.”

“I know now,” said Violante, “that I shall never be an actress; never.”

“Oh, but I think you can do something. Look at me.”

And Rosa, nothing loth, went through the different pieces, Violante imitating her with sufficient success, now that she was quite at her ease, to put her in better spirits, as Rosa gave abundant praise to her efforts.

“Ecco,” said Violante, “you shall be Don Giovanni, and I will be Zerlina; then I shall see if I can remember what you have told me.”

Rosa caught up an old hat of their father’s, set it sideways on her brow, twisted a scarf dexterously across her shoulders, delighted at making Violante laugh.