abruptly as to make Arthur start.
"Hugh! I did not see you!" he said.
"I am going out. Mother, there is no need for Arthur to go away unless
he likes."
"But, Hugh, nothing could be so bad for health or spirits as staying
here."
"I daresay Aunt Lily is right, Hugh," said Arthur, as if he wanted to
stop the discussion. "But, you see, I don't quite know where I could go
to."
"Why, with us, my dear, to be sure," said Mrs Crichton, as she
explained the plan proposed. "Should you like it, Arthur?"
"Oh, yes. I daresay it would do quite well. Please don't talk about
it," he added, more fretfully than he often spoke, "at least not now."
Hugh saw that well-intentioned consolation or cheering would only worry
the poor boy, who was not able to respond to it, and that he was hardly
fit even for the change proposed; and for a moment the thought flashed
across him of how he would devote himself to soothe Arthur's grief if he
could have him to himself for a little, how he, of his own bitter
experience, would know how to treat the fitful spirits that would only
perplex the rest. Only for a moment; the next he thought how
intolerable the sight of that grief would be, and how his own unwelcome
presence must increase it.
"You must do just as you like," he repeated as he went out of the room.
As he walked up and down on the terrace outside he saw Arthur wander
away from the others and sit down on the distant sofa that he had left.
Presently Snap followed him, and jumped up on his lap. Arthur coaxed
and caressed him, and played with him in a sad, aimless sort of fashion,
and at last laid his head back on the cushions, with the dog nestling
against him. Hugh watched every weary, restless movement with an
intensity of sympathy that seemed to feel how the temples throbbed and
the eyes ached, and how the wretchedness seemed to increase every hour.
And yet he could not say one gentle, tender word. At last the stillness
proved that Arthur had fallen asleep--worn out, perhaps, with the
excitement of the day before. But Hugh paced up and down in the chilly,
windy twilight, and longed for the time when they would all have gone
and he would be left to himself.
PART THREE, CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
FLOSSY.
"And life looks dark
Where walked we friend with friend."
A great sorrow affects the lives of many other people besides those most
immediately concerned, and this not only in the greater or lesser
degrees of grief that it may cause, or in the change which it may make
in more than one set of circumstances, but in the fact that no great
event can come within our ken without presenting life in a new aspect
and more or less making a change in ourselves.
Redhurst was changed, utterly and for ever, by Mysie Crofton's death;
and with the change in Redhurst there came a great change to many
another homestead, a great piece of brightness and pleasantness went out
of many lives.
The old Rector and his wife would miss her when they gathered their
flowers and ate their fruit; the village girls would miss her at church
and at school; her own schoolfellows in far-away homes would sadden at
the tidings; and Florence Venning might well grieve for the loss of her
best-loved pupil and friend.
She grieved for her, when once her senses were set free from the
stupefying shock of the sudden tidings, with all the energy of her
energetic nature. She sorrowed, as she worked and as she rejoiced--with
all her might. It was holiday time, and she had no duties to distract
her. Miss Venning was at Redhurst. Clarissa, though somewhat appalled
by the violence of her grief, could think of no better course to pursue
than to let her alone; and Flossy, all the first day, shut herself into
her room, and wept and sobbed, feeling as if the world had come to an
end for her and for everyone she cared about. It was the first grief
that she had ever realised, for she had been too young to feel acutely
her parents' death; and, perhaps, the fact that it was not exactly her
own grief, greatly as it grieved her, made her, as the days went by,
more prone to moralise about it. She had seen sorrow, read about it,
thought about it, and tried to comfort it. She was not particularly
ignorant of the world; their large school connection brought her into
contact with many events and many people; and parish work, seriously
pursued, teaches girls more of the realities of life than is commonly
supposed. She had sympathised with great sorrows, understood great
difficulties, and yet now for the first time the sense came to her of
what those sorrows had been. How had she dared to try to comfort those
who were feeling as she now felt, and not only as she felt, but as she
now understood those nearer and dearer must feel. _This_ was sorrow.
Could even she take comfort in the thoughts she herself had often
suggested; and what comfort could they be to her unhappy friends?
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 FOUR, CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
CHANCE AND CHANGE.
"Fresh woods and pastures new!"
PART FOUR, CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.
PRIVATE THEATRICALS.
"But a trouble weighed upon her
And perplexed her night and morn,
With the burden of an honour
Unto 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!"