Hugh Crichton's Romance

“Oh, it was no pretence at the beginning; but the voyage has made another man of me – and – and – let me introduce you to my friends – a – very kind companions on board ship, you know. Mrs Raymond, Mr Arthur Spencer – a – Miss Raymond.”

One glance from his friend’s confused yet joyous countenance to the blushing and smiling young lady revealed to Arthur the state of affairs at once; and, after a few words had been exchanged, Captain Seton drew him aside, and informed him how Mrs Raymond, being in bad health, was returning to spend a year in England with her daughter, who had miraculously spent eighteen months in India without getting married; and how he, having met the young lady twice before, and knowing how charming she was —

“Exactly so,” interposed Arthur, “you don’t feel inclined now for a tour in Italy.”

“No,” Captain Seton apologised and laughed and explained; but he wanted to escort his lady-love to England, to settle his affairs, and to be introduced to various Raymond relations. Perhaps afterwards —

Arthur listened, smiled, and congratulated him, and managed to escape without any questions on his own affairs from his preoccupied friend. He went back to his room at the hotel, and sat down, feeling as if he had lost his one remaining object, and as if the future were an entire blank. He was almost inclined to go away without seeing Seton again. “But no,” he thought, “that would be an unkind, melodramatic sort of proceeding, and he would reproach himself for having given me pain – it would spoil his pleasure.”

So Arthur, feeling that he could not speak of what must come out sooner or later, wrote a note, and told his story in a few brief words. He had been engaged to Miss Crofton, whom, no doubt, Seton remembered, and she was dead. He had come away for rest and change.

Arthur had no cause to complain of Captain Seton’s want of feeling or sympathy. He came hastily to find him; was full of compunction for not having guessed at anything amiss; would come with him anywhere, stay with him, or join him after he had taken the Raymonds to England. Anyway, he would not leave him alone. Arthur, however, though not ungrateful, decided in favour of solitude for the present; and, with a half-proposal for meeting again in Italy after a few weeks, they parted; and Arthur drifted somewhat aimlessly about from one place to another, trying to make an object of sightseeing, but feeling lost and lonely. He was fond of travelling, and even then got some amusement out of its little incidents, finding in it something to do, but very little to think about; climbing mountains and making long expeditions one day, and doing nothing whatever the next; trying to write cheerful letters home, yet shrinking from the answers to them; making acquaintances when they came in his way, and doing much as other travellers, but quite unable to rouse himself to any sort of plan for the future, and neither knowing nor caring where the next week would find him. There was no one for whose companionship he exactly wished, or who could now have been quite the friend he wanted; but, though the solitude and absence of association were productive of present ease, they offered nothing to fill the dead blank, nothing to wake “the low beginnings of content.” The days slipped by somehow, but it was hardly possible to imagine a greater contrast than between them and the days that had been lightened by the hope of such a bright and definite future.

By way of occupation he did a good deal of travelling on foot; and, in the course of his wandering, found himself one evening walking into Caletto and thinking it one of the prettiest places he had ever seen. The lake was shining in the sunset; the tawny colours of the old palace were deepened by the glow; the rich southern foliage clothed the sides of the water, and showed glimpses of picturesque houses in between. There were statues and urns here and there in the palace garden; while its marble balustrade, with steps at either end, gave it something the air of a picture on a fan. There were one or two tables on this terrace, and at one of them stood a girl in white, with a big, flat, straw hat, piling great bunches of white and purple grapes on to a dish before her. Another figure, dressed in some pleasant sort of buff colour, was sitting on the balustrade reading. It was a pretty scene, yet it gave Arthur a pang; for, granting beauty for quaintness, romance for homely simplicity, it was a sort of glorified parody of the little tea-garden at “The Pot of Lilies,” with its wall overhanging the river, its urn of geraniums, its statue holding a lamp, its vine-tressed arbour, and its table with the mustard-pot and the ginger-beer. He turned quickly away, but found himself face to face with a stout, dark-eyed lady who was toiling up the ascent towards the terrace. She scanned Arthur curiously; and he, mustering his best Italian, asked the name of the village and if he could get a night’s lodging there.

She gave him a hearty, gracious smile that showed all her white teeth, and replied by such voluble information that Arthur, quite at fault, begged her pardon and repeated his question.

“I am English,” he said; “I speak very little Italian.”

“Ah, English, yes,” she answered in that language. “I speak it – but not well. But here are two ladies who will comprehend perfectly. Will you accompany me, signor?” Much surprised at the invitation Arthur followed her up the steps of the terrace.

“Rosa carina,” she said, “here is an English gentleman who has lost his way. Explain to him the situation.”

“I have not lost my way, signorina,” said Arthur, catching the words, as the lady in buff rose and bowed to him. “I took the liberty of asking if a lodging could be got in this lovely place.”

“Oh, yes, I think so,” replied Rosa. “Do you see the house with a balcony by the water? That is an inn, and there is almost sure to be a room there if you are not very particular.”

“Thank you very much. I am quite used to traveller’s fare,” returned Arthur, surprised at the English accent and manner.

“And this place is called?”

“Caletto. English tourists don’t often find it out.”

“So we should make them welcome. Pray, signor, sit down, and take some wine; you have been walking – you are tired. Ah, you understand?”

“Yes, many thanks. But I am so hot and dusty – I am ashamed,” said Arthur, fancying he saw a look of slight disapproval in the younger lady’s face.

“Ah, we can excuse you. We are artists, signor; all comers are welcome. I have been in your country and sung on your boards, and so will Mademoiselle Mattei one of these days, I hope.”

This was in English, and then in a half-aside to Rosa in Italian: “Why not, Rosina? He is a handsome youth – and society is agreeable.”

Handsome young Englishmen were not quite the society Rosa desired at that moment. However, she could not be uncivil, and Arthur really looked both hot and tired so she said politely:

“Pray sit down and rest – it has been a hot day.”

“Thank you, since you are so kind,” said Arthur, seating himself, and thinking, as they drew near the table and Violante silently pushed the bottle of wine towards him: “How Jem would rave at such an encounter!”

“This is a beautiful place,” he said. “I wonder that it is so little known to English people generally.”

“Perhaps we like to keep some places a little to ourselves,” said Rosa, smiling.

“But, excuse me, are you not English?”

“Not exactly. I was brought up in England. I did not mean to be uncivil to English tourists, but you know they do rather spoil a place for the natives.”

“Tourists always do,” said Arthur. “I don’t know, though, what else I can call myself.”

“I suppose tourists are people who travel for pleasure, and not because they are obliged.”

“Well, I am not obliged to travel, certainly.”

“Then you are a tourist,” said Rosa, brightly. “But then you come alone, and an English stranger is rare enough in Caletto to be very welcome. Is it not so, madame?” repeating her words in Italian.

“Oh, as welcome as shade in summer. I have lived in your smoke, sir, and I do not wonder you all escape from it.”

“I am not prepared to admit that we never see the sun,” said Arthur, who all this time was wondering much who his entertainers might be. Rosa, with the address and appearance of a well-bred English lady, completely puzzled him, more especially as he supposed her to be the Mademoiselle Mattei to whom Madame Cellini had referred, and whom he never dreamed of identifying with the silent, childish-looking girl beside him. They were very amusing, out-of-the-way sort, of people, and the scene was wonderfully lovely and picturesque; but he was tired, and admiration was an effort; so he soon rose, and with very courteous thanks prepared to leave them. Madame Cellini accompanied him to the steps to point out the way, and said when she returned: “Ah, I have practised my English. I told him my name. Doubtless he will have heard it, and his – is – ah – Spinchere – Pinchere.”

“Pincher!” said Rosa, with an involuntary accent of disappointment: “That is an English name, certainly.”

“It is not pretty,” said Violante, thinking in her own mind that Spencer Crichton far exceeded it.

So no identity of name came to rouse a suspicion of any connection between their new acquaintance and their old one. There was scarcely any family likeness between Hugh’s pale, regular face, grave and rather massive, and Arthur’s bright, tanned skin, and pleasant though unremarkable features. Besides, Rosa and Violante did not know Hugh’s face without a look of interest and purpose, nor his light, deep-set eyes without the ardour of an eager hope; while, when they saw Arthur, his dark-lashed eyes were absent and languid, and his mouth, though he smiled often, set into sad lines when he fell silent.

But one young English gentleman was sufficiently like another in foreign eyes, and the association of ideas was close enough to make Rosa anxious as to the effect of this encounter on her sister.

“Madame Cellini is so fond of company she cannot pass anyone by,” she said, rather petulantly, when the two girls were alone.

“She is very fond of talking,” replied Violante, “but I like her now that I am not forced to sing to her. And it would not have been kind not to ask Signor – what did you call him? – Pincher, to rest, when he looked so hot and tired.”

“All Englishmen like to tire themselves out,” said Rosa.

“You told him we were not English, Rosa; that was not true.”

“My dear child, I could not tell him our family history – what did it matter? I daresay he thought us very odd; but I am not tired of solitude, even if Madame Cellini is.”

“Oh, no, nor I. I should like to stay here always.”

“Some time we must, I suppose, go back to Civita Bella.”

“Yes!” with a long sigh. “Rosa mia, I will be good and useful if I can. Perhaps father is dull without us.”

“His engagement is almost over. Violante, how should you like to go to England?”

“To England?” echoed Violante, with a startled blush. “I shall never go there —now. Now I cannot sing,” she added.

“I think Uncle and Aunt Grey will perhaps ask us – you and me, I mean, to stay for a time and see what we could do.”

“But what would become of father?”

“I think he would like to travel about for a little. Perhaps he would come to England too.”

“And should you teach our cousins as you used to do?” said Violante.

“No, the girls are all grown up, and so are the boys. But I might find other children to teach – or – or – In short, Violante, I cannot tell exactly; but you know Uncle Grey has always wished to see you, and now that you are free to leave home I should not wonder if he asked us.”

Violante sat musing.

“I will go, then,” she said, after a pause. Rosa could hardly help laughing at the unconscious decision of the tone, which, though Violante had merely meant acquiescence, showed that the idea was not distasteful to her.

Part 4, Chapter XXVIII

Signor Arthur

“The sound of a voice that was still.”

Madame Cellini was not likely to be shy of making a new acquaintance, nor were her young companions accustomed to the profound seclusion in which Italian girls are usually trained. Rosa would have accepted an intimacy with a compatriot readily enough, and even Violante was used to a certain amount of intercourse with her father’s friends. Here at Caletto Madame Cellini had a few intimates, and when Arthur Spencer lingered on there she discovered that French formed a possible medium of communication, and took a great fancy to the pleasant-mannered young Englishman.

“Folly, Rosina!” she said, as Rosa ventured a remonstrance. “I read your fears. You think the Signor Inglese at the late looked too often above his music at our Violantina. Never fear! So will many another. And as for Signor Pinchere, talk to him yourself, Rosina!”

And the old lady gave an indescribably mischievous smile, and then laughed broadly. Rosa was angry, but she did not choose to enlighten Madame Cellini any further as to the real state of the case; and, unable to prevent the intercourse by Italian restrictions, nor to justify it by the more English manner of ignoring the possibility of a chance acquaintance signifying to anyone, she was obliged to leave it in the neutral ground of “being Madame Cellini’s way.”

She need not have alarmed herself. Arthur knew that it was all very amusing, and accepted it as an incident in his travels; but would not have cared if anything had turned his steps in another direction. Nothing, however, did turn them; so he tried to distract his thoughts by Madame Cellini’s wonderful stories, and to interest himself in her confidences about the young cantatrice whose career had been so suddenly checked. He had given the nearest town as an address where letters might find him, and having written to Hugh before his arrival he expected an answer. Somehow, Arthur’s thoughts turned to Hugh with a sort of fellow-feeling. He, too, was suffering; and perhaps would not only pity him, but would understand how no change of scene did him any good. If Hugh had but known! but he only thought that Arthur was well spared the sight of him.

Arthur, however, congratulated himself on having obtained some materials for a letter to Jem, a little less like a guide-book than his ordinary correspondence, describing old Madame Cellini, and telling the wrong end of Violante’s history. “She was to have made a great sensation, and married the manager, and the poor child lost her lover and her voice at once. So she looks sad and pathetic; and isn’t it a miserable little story for the sunny south? You write too anxiously about me. I am very well, and make a fair fight for it. If that poor little girl can hold up her head after such a storm, one ought to have better courage.”

Violante was as unconscious of the garbled form in which her story had reached the English stranger’s ears, and of the reflections which he drew therefrom for his own benefit, as she was of the connection of Signor Arthur – or Arturo, as he had taught Madame Cellini to call him, finding her conceptions of his surname beyond correction – with the chief actor in it. But she felt drawn towards him, and ceased to be shy of one so kindly in manner, while a sort of instinct of fellow-feeling made her say, after a few days, to Rosa: “She was sure Signor Arthur was unhappy, and she wondered why.”

“I think he seems very cheerful,” said Rosa, rather dryly.

“Still, I am sure,” persisted Violante; but news came to them at this time which put Signor Arthur entirely into the background. Rosa received a letter from her uncle, Mr Grey, which suggested a complete change in all the conditions of their existence. It bore date from his house in Kensington, and ran as follows:

“My dear Rosa, —

“Your aunt and I have been very sorry to hear of Violante’s illness and of the change it has made in her future prospects. Under the circumstances we have always felt that it was best that she should pursue the career that your father marked out for her, and have never entertained any prejudice against it. But as she has lost the exceptional power that made it expedient, and is still, I believe, under eighteen, it seems desirable that she should turn her mind in another direction. I do not know what openings your father could find for her in Italy; but as you write that things are somewhat at a stand-still with all of you, I wish very much that you and she should come and pay us a long visit, after which you might form such plans as seem desirable. If you were likely to remain in London I think I know where you could find pupils, and as for Violante, as she is so young, it is possible that she might make up her mind to finish her education at an excellent school, where her music and her Italian would be helpful, and where your aunt’s recommendation would be quite sufficient. However, this is for the future; and in the meantime your cousins will be delighted to see you both, as will also your aunt and myself. With love to Violante, —

“I am, your affectionate uncle, —

“Richard Grey.”

Rosa was sitting under the verandah of the cottage where they lodged as she read this letter. Great flowering creepers and large-leaved vines shaded her from the sun; before her stretched the fair Italian landscape, and at a little distance Violante was feeding and playing with a little white kid, the pet of the household; while two little brown-skinned girls, the children of their landlady, were chattering away to her at the top of their Italian voices. Violante had scarcely ever known a child in her limited life at Civita Bella, but she had taken to these little ones from the first of her coming to Caletto, and delighted in their society. With her short, curly hair and slender shape, she looked scarcely more than a child herself, and resembled nothing less than a disappointed prima donna.

Yet, after all her history, there seemed something ridiculous in the idea of sending her to school, something utterly incongruous in the thought of that Kensington house in a London atmosphere, with the blue southern skies and the marble palaces of her native town. It was strange; but Rosa – who had practically been very happy in an ordinary English life and was by far the best fitted of the party to resume it – could not help regarding the loss of Violante’s future, and of their somewhat rambling artistic career, with a half-sentimental regret. She felt, like her father, that it was a come-down, that something had been lost that could never be regained. She called to Violante and put the letter into her hand.

Violante sat down on the step, and read it carefully through in silence.

“Well, Violante, what do you think?” said Rosa.

“I have been thinking —much,” said Violante softly.

“Indeed? What about?”

“Myself,” replied the girl. “Rosa, father would be happier without me now I cannot sing. When he sees me he thinks: ‘Ah, what she might have been!’ It breaks his heart, I know it.”

“I think father might do very well with out us for a time, and then he might himself come to England,” said Rosa.

“And,” said Violante, “I know nothing – nothing but my music, but I think now – now that is over, I could learn.”

“But you would not like to go to school, Violante?”

“It does not seem possible to have what we like,” said Violante; “but it would not be like acting.”

“No, indeed!”

“And I must work somehow. And, oh, Rosa mia! how my heart would ache if father every day looked at me and grieved, and we had no money.”

“Yes, my darling, that would be hard for you. But, oh, Violante! to think that all we hoped for you should end like this!”

“I am very sorry,” said Violante, meekly; “but I think our uncle will be kind, and – we cannot help it; let us go.”

So it was Violante who spoke the common-sense consenting words and recognised the new necessity. But, indeed, since all her faculties had not been absorbed in the effort to perform an impossibility, a new self-reliance seemed to have come upon her and her unreasoning terror had disappeared. Soft and clinging she must always be, as she laid her head on Rosa’s knee and whispered: “We shall both go, Rosa mia! we shall be together.” But the strange land seemed to have no terror for her. Either she feared her father and Civita Bella more, or some strange unrecognised attraction hung over her lover’s country. Did Hope, with her wings cut, still flutter feebly at the bottom of her heart; or was it merely that a glamour still hung over English life and English people that made the novelty attractive instead of dreadful? Did she think an English school-girl less removed from Hugh Crichton than an Italian cantatrice? She thought nothing of all this, but she recognised, without an effort, that it was right to accept her uncle’s invitation. Those secret unknown currents, below our wishes, below our sense of duty, below our resolutions, can float the ship against the wind, or hold it back, spite of a fair breeze and all sails unfurled.

“If an English winter should be too cold for you?” said Rosa.

“Oh, I am so much better. I don’t think it will hurt me. You know I never feel strong in the heat.”

“Well,” said Rosa, “I shall like to see the girls again very much.”

“You used to talk of Beatrice and Lucy.”

“Yes, Lucy is married, you know. Then there are Mary and Kitty, my pupils, a little older than you; and Charlie divides the two pairs of girls. Ned is the youngest. Yes – I shall like to see them all. How strange to be in England again!”

Rosa sat silent and thoughtful. After all, it was not four years since that English life of hers had ended abruptly with her mother’s death; and four years is not a very long time in which to lose vivid impressions. She had grown up almost ignorant of her parents and little sister; and when she was a bright, handsome girl of twenty, full of ardour and enthusiasm, she made, in the course of a set of private theatricals, the discovery that she had a taste and talent for acting of no ordinary kind. She did not love teaching, and reversed Violante’s subsequent history by trying with all her might and main to gain her uncle’s consent to earn her living on the stage. She was in the full tide of an enthusiasm which was only increased by opposition, and which no one expected in the good sedate girl who was her aunt’s right hand, when – a new acquaintance, a few weeks’ intercourse, a few opposing hints, and Rosa’s persistency drooped and faded, and her hot Italian nature took another turn.

He could not marry an actress. Poor Rosa! either circumstances were irresistible or she was deceived altogether; but she sacrificed ambition to love, for it was a sacrifice, and the love failed her too. She never knew what separated them; but it was well for her that the summons home took her right away from both disappointments, and gave her an object in life in Violante.

She was a brave, strong girl, and she had won the battle. How she had mistrusted and hated Hugh Crichton none could say! How she had dreaded her own fate for Violante! Now, when she thought of returning to England, that first ambition returned in a more moderate form to her mind. She felt fairly certain of her own powers, and the attraction of the life was undiminished; but she felt that it would be almost impossible to fix herself permanently in England, and that, now that Violante was useless, she would probably be obliged to take a larger share in earning the family living. She had expected that Violante would regard the idea of a visit to England with horror, and was relieved, though surprised, to find how easily she resigned herself to it.

Violante had a very clear picture in her mind of what it would be to go back to Civita Bella, idle and useless; freed, indeed, from the burden of her profession, but exposed to her father’s regrets and reproaches. Life had been very hard before, it would be very dreary and objectless now. The ghosts of happy and unhappy hours would alike haunt the familiar places; and England, over the thought of which a soft sweet halo rested, seemed like a refuge.

Mr Grey’s letter had been received on a Saturday, and on the Sunday morning Violante was sitting by herself on the terrace, doing what she called, with a reminiscence of her mother’s early training, “reading her chapter,” this being one of the few religious observances which had survived their unsettled life. Violante had a sort of half-superstitious reverence for the English Bible, her English mother’s gift. She always said her prayers in English, and dutifully read a chapter on Sunday. She was not very particular which; but since she had known Hugh Crichton she had indulged in some self-congratulation that her religion as well as her blood was English. Rosa had bestowed a small amount of technical instruction on her, but it fitted on to nothing; and as the elder sister had never thought it her duty to make Violante unhappy about the Sunday operas, which she could not have possibly avoided, and as Signor Mattei was nearly equally indifferent to his own religion and to theirs, Violante’s faith was chiefly negative. On this Sunday morning she sat, with her Bible in her hand, looking at the groups of peasants who were making their way to the little church, and listening to the bell tinkling softly through the murmur of the trees, and the sharper sound of the gay Italian voices. By-and-by they would dance under the trees. Violante began to wonder what Sunday would be like in England. She was surprised at herself for not having asked Rosa more questions about it; but her mind had been absorbed in its difficult present, and she had been first too passive for curiosity, and then too deeply-interested to express it.