Hugh Crichton's Romance

Part 1, Chapter I

Hugh’s Story

“The light that never was on sea or land.”

Part 1, Chapter II

Violante

The sunshine of a summer evening was bathing Civita Bella with an intensity of beauty rare even in that fair Italian town. When the shadows are sharp, and the lights clear, and the sky a serene and perfect blue, even fustian and broadcloth have a sort of picturesqueness, slates and bricks show unexpected colours, and chance tree tops tell with effect even in London squares and suburbs. Then harsh tints harmonise and homely faces look fair, while fair ones catch the eye more quickly; every flower basket in the streets shows whiter pinks and redder roses than those which were passed unseen in yesterday’s rain, the street gutters catch a sparkle of distant streamlets, and the street children at their play group into pictures. For the sun is a great enchanter, and nothing in nature but sad human hearts can resist his brightness. Civita Bella needed no adventitious aid to enhance its beauty. The fretted spires and carved balconies, quaint gables and decorated walls, were the inheritance of centuries of successful art, and their varied hues were only harmonised by the years that had passed since some master spirit had given them to the world, or since they had grown up in obedience to the inspiring influence of an art-loving generation. Down a side street, apart from the chief centres of modern life, stood an old ducal palace. The very name of its princely owners had long ago faded out of the land, and no one alive bore on his shield the strange devices carved over its portico. It lay asleep in the sunshine, lifting its broken pinnacles and mutilated carvings to the blue sky, still beautiful with the pathetic beauty of “the days that are no more.”

The old palace was let in flats, and on one of the upper stories flower-pots and muslin curtains peeped gaily out of the dim, broken marbles with a kind of pleasant incongruity, like a child in a convent.

Within the muslin curtains was a long, spacious room, with inlaid floor and coloured walls, with a broad band of bas-reliefs round the top leading the eye to the carved and painted ceiling above. There was very little furniture, a grand piano being the most conspicuous object, and the lofty windows were shaded by Venetian blinds; but round the farthest, which was partly open, were grouped a few chairs and tables, with an unmistakable attempt to give an air of modern, not to say English, comfort to one part of the vast, half-inhabited chamber.

A brown-faced, shrewd-eyed Italian woman, with gold pins in her grey hair and gold beads round her neck, and a young lady in an ordinary muslin dress, were standing together contemplating and criticising a young girl who stood in front of them, dressed in the costume of an Italian peasant. That is to say, she wore a short skirt and a white bodice, but the skirt was of rose-coloured silk, the bodice of fine cambric; her tiny hat was more coquettish than correct in detail, and the little hands playing with the cross round her neck had surely never toiled for their daily bread. Yet she looked a little tired and a little sad, and her companions were noticing her appearance with the gravity that pertains to a matter of business.

“I think that will do,” said the young lady, in a clear, decided voice. “She looks very pretty.”

“Oh, bella – bellissima!” said the old Italian woman, clapping her hands. “But when is not la signorina charming?”

“It does not alter her much. Violante, does it inspire you?”

“I think it is very pretty; and you know, Rosa, I shall be rouged, and perhaps my eyes will be painted if they don’t show enough,” said Violante, simply.

“You don’t mind that?” said Rosa, curiously.

“No!” with a half-surprised look in the soft pathetic eyes; “I am glad. Then father will not see when I am pale. It will be hidden.”

“Oh, my child, you will not look pale then. So, Zerlina, you want another bow on your apron; and then this great dress is off one’s mind. We must let father look at you.”

“Do you think he will say I look handsome enough?” said Violante, anxiously.

Rosa laughed. “I don’t know what he may say, but I am sure of what he will think. And besides, he is not the public. Thank you, Maddalena, we need not keep you now.” And, as the old woman departed, Rosa took the little muslin apron and began to sew a bright bow on it; while Violante stood by her side, manifestly afraid of injuring her costume by sitting down in it. She looked very pretty, as her sister had said, but her anxious, serious look was little in accordance with her gay stage costume.

“You see,” said Rosa, as she pinched up her loops of ribbon, “we have a great many friends. All the members of the singing-class will go, so you will not feel that you are acting to strangers.”

“I think Madame Tollemache will go,” said Violante.

“Of course, and her son, and Emily, and they will take Mr Crichton.”

A sudden brightness came over the girl’s soft eyes and lips, as she stood behind her sister’s chair.

“Rosa, mia,” she said, “you understand about England. What is it il signor – ah, I cannot say his name – does in his own country?”

“Violante, you talk a great deal of English, why cannot you learn how to call people’s names? Crichton; Spencer Crichton.”

“He should not have two hard names,” said Violante, with a little pout. “I would rather call him il signor Hugo.”

“Well, as you like,” said Rosa, laughing. “And he lives in a beautiful palazzo, with trees and a river?”

“Does he?” said Rosa, “I should doubt it exceedingly. I dare say he has a very nice house. There are no palaces, Violante, in England, except for bishops, and for the Queen; certainly not for bankers.”

“And what is a banker?”

“Well,” said Rosa, a little puzzled in her turn; “he takes care of people’s money for them; it is a profession.”

“And he is not noble?”

“No; but as he has this country-seat, I suppose he has a position somewhat equivalent to what we mean here by noble. You can’t understand it, dear; it is all different. Mr Crichton works very hard, no doubt, in his own country, and I suppose his long holiday will soon be over.”

Violante started, and as she stood behind her sister’s chair, she hid her face for a moment in her hands.

“But his brother is coming – his brother, who so loves art,” she said, after a pause.

“Ah, yes; then I daresay they will go home together. But you will have this artistic gentleman to look at you on Tuesday; and we must take care and please your chief admirer before all.”

“Shall I please him?” said the girl, with a smile shy and yet half-confident.

“I hope so. Signor Vasari’s opinion is of importance.” Violante’s face fell, as if it were not the manager of the Civita Bella opera-house whose opinion she had thought of such consequence, but she did not speak till a hasty step sounded on the stair without.

“That is father!”

“Yes! Here, the apron is ready; tie it on. Oh, my darling, do not look so frightened; you will spoil it all!”

Violante crept close to her sister and took her hand; her bosom heaved, her mouth trembled. Manifestly either the result of the inspection was of supreme importance, or she greatly feared the inspector.

Rosa kissed her, and, with an encouraging pat on the shoulder, put her away, and Violante stood with her gay fantastic dress, a strange contrast to the timid, uneasy face of the wearer.

“Ah ha, Mademoiselle Mattei! So; very pretty, very pretty. But no; this is fit for a drawing-room. She might go and drink tea with Madame Tollemache at the Consulate; she might wear it on a Sunday to church.”

“Oh, father, I am sure I could not!” cried Violante, scandalised.

Signor Mattei stood with his head on one side, contemplating her with critical attention, and stroking his long grizzled beard the while. “She will be effaced by the footlights and the distance! More ribbons, Rosa; more braid, more chains, more gilding. A knot there, a bow there; here a streamer, here some – some effect!”

“But, father, Zerlina was only a peasant girl,” said Violante, timidly.

“Tut-tut, what do you know about it?” he said, shortly. “A peasant girl! She is the sublimated essence of the coquetry and the charm of a thousand peasant girls; and till you see that, you silly child, you will never be her worthy representative!”

“I understand, father,” interposed Rosa, hastily. “It is soon done. Will you go and take the dress off, Violante?”

But as Violante moved, there was the sound of another arrival, and Maddalena announced “Il signor Inglese.”

“Stay, child,” cried Signor Mattei, as Violante was escaping in haste. She paused with a start which might have been caused by the sudden sound of her father’s voice, for he let his sentences fall much as if he were cracking a nut. “Stop! I have no objection to give the world a tiny sip of the future cup of joy! What, how will you face the public on Tuesday, if you are afraid of one Englishman, uneducated, a child in Art?”

The little cantatrice of seventeen stood flushing and quivering as if only one atom of that terrible public were enough to fill her with dread. But perhaps her father’s eye was more terrible than the stranger’s, for she stood still, a spot of gaudy colour in the centre of the great bare room, yet shrinking like a little wild animal in the strange new cage, where it looks in vain for its safe shady hole amid cool ferns and moss.

Rosa came forward and shook hands with the new comer, saying, in English, “How do you do, Mr Crichton? You find us very busy.”

“I hope I am not in the way. I came for one moment to ask if I might bring my brother to the singing-class to-morrow. He is very fond of music.”

The speaker had a pleasant voice and accent, spite of a slight formality of address, and although he carried himself with what Signor Mattei called “English stiffness,” there was also an English air of health and strength about his tall figure. The lack of colour and vivacity in his fair grave features prevented their regularity of form from striking a casual observer, just as a want of variety in their expression caused people to say that Hugh Spencer Crichton had no expression at all. But spite of all detractors, he looked handsome, sensible, and well bred, and none of his present companions had ever had reason to say that he was grave because their society bored him, formal because he was too proud to be familiar, or silent because he was too unsympathetic to have anything to say. Such remarks had sometimes been made upon him, but it is always well to see people for the first time under favourable circumstances, and so we first see Hugh Crichton in the old Italian palace, enjoying a private view of the future prima donna in her stage dress.

“We shall be delighted to see your brother, signor,” said the musician, “as your brother, and, I understand, as a distinguished patron of our beloved art.”

“He would much enjoy being so considered,” said Hugh, with a half smile; and then, to Violante, “Is that the great dress, signorina?”

“It is only a rehearsal for it,” said Rosa, as Violante only answered by a blush.

“No doubt it is all it should be,” said Hugh.

It was not a very complimentary speech, and Hugh offered no opinion as to the details of the dress. It were hard to say if he admired it. But Violante looked up at him and spoke.

“They don’t think it fine enough,” she said.

Hugh gave here a quick sudden glance, and a smile as if in sympathy either with the words or the tremulous voice that uttered them. Then he said something both commonplace and extravagant about painting the lily, which satisfied Signor Mattei, and astonished Rosa, who thought him a sensible young man, and, saying he was bound to meet his brother, he rather hastily took his leave.

Violante went into her own room and gladly took off Zerlina’s dress, for it was hot and heavy, and her shabby old muslin was far more comfortable. She pulled her soft hair out of the two long plaits into which Rosa had arranged it, and let it fall about her shoulders, and then she went to the window and looked out at the deep dazzling blue. She could see little else from the high casement but the carving of the little balcony round it, a long wreath of rich naturalistic foliage among which nestled a dove, with one of its wings broken. Violante’s pet creepers twined their green tendrils in and out among their marble likenesses, a crimson passion flower lay close to its white image, and sometimes a real pigeon lighted on the balcony and caressed the broken one with its wings. Violante encouraged the pigeons with crumbs and sweet noises, and trained her creepers round her own dove, making stories for it in a fanciful childish fashion, she would go and sing her songs to it, and treat it like a favourite doll. But she took no heed of it now, she gazed past it at the sky as if she saw a vision. She was not thinking of the brilliant dreaded future that lay before her, not consciously thinking of the scene just past. She was only feeling to her very finger tips the spell of one glance and smile. Poor Violante!

Part 1, Chapter III

Mr Spencer Crichton

“Just in time to be too late.”

Hugh Crichton walked away from the musician’s apartments towards the railway station, where he had promised to meet his brother. His tweed suit and large white umbrella were objects as incongruous with the picturesque scene around him as the somewhat similar figure often introduced into the foreground of photographs of buildings or mountains; but his thoughts, possibly, were less unworthy of the soft and lovely land in which he found himself, were less taken up with the home news which he expected to receive than perhaps they should have been.

Hugh was scarcely eight and twenty, but the responsibilities of more advanced life had early descended on him, and he owed his present long holiday to a fall from his horse, from the effects of which, truth to tell, he had some time since entirely recovered. But busy men do not often reach Italy, and his friend, the English consul, was about to leave Civita Bella for a more lucrative appointment, and why should not Hugh see as much as possible, when he would never have another chance? “Never have another chance.” Those words echoed in Hugh’s ears and bore for him more than one meaning.

Some thirty years before, the Bank of Oxley, a large town not very far from London, with the old red-brick house belonging to it, had descended to a young James Spencer, who thenceforth held one of the best positions in the neighbourhood. For Oxley was a town of considerable importance, and the Spencers had been bankers there for generations, and had intermarried with half the families round. Nevertheless, when Miss Crichton, sole heiress of Redhurst House, refused Sir William Ribstone to marry Mr Spencer, it was said by her friends that she might have looked higher, and by his relations that no name, however aristocratic, should have been allowed to supersede the old Spencer, with all its honourable and respected associations. But Lily Crichton laughed and said that Sir William’s father had drunk himself to death, and had been known to throw a beef steak at the late Lady Ribstone, and she was afraid that the practices might be hereditary. Mr Spencer smiled and said that he hoped his friends would find Spencer Crichton as safe a name as Spencer had been before it, he would not refuse his wife’s estate because this condition was attached to it, and he could come into the Bank every day from Redhurst. And so, in Redhurst House, Mr and Mrs Spencer lived and loved each other, and their two sons, Hugh and James were born; while in course of time the banker’s younger brother died, and his three children, Arthur, Frederica, and George, were transferred to their uncle’s guardianship, and a little cousin of his wife’s, Marion or Mysie Crofton, was left with her eight thousand pounds in the same kind and efficient care.

These boys and girls, all grew up together in the careless freedom of so-called brother and sisterhood, till the sudden death of the father clouded their happiness, and, in the absence of near relations, left all these various guardianships to his wife and to his son Hugh.

It was a great honour for a young man of twenty-five to be so trusted, and a great burden; but Hugh was sensible and steady, his cousin Arthur was already nearly of age, and his mother, whose elastic spirits soon recovered more or less from the shock of grief, was, of course, practically responsible for the girls. Hugh’s own career at Rugby and at Oxford had been unexceptionable: he had no intention of making his office a sinecure. Conscientious and inflexible both in opinion and action, it would have been strange indeed if at twenty-five he had not been also rather hard and dictatorial; but the mischievous effects of these qualities was much modified by a certain clearness of judgment and power of understanding his own position and that of others which almost seemed to stand him in the stead of skilful tact, or even of gentle charity. He was really just, and, therefore, he saw difficulties as well as duties, and knew exactly where it would be foolish to strain an authority which he was too young to support, where it was wise to take the advice of others, and where it was necessary to depend on himself. He was often lenient in his judgment of others’ actions; but then he thought that there was not much to be expected of most people, and he was seldom made angry, because other people’s folly did not signify much as long as he was perfectly sure that he was acting rightly himself. If a man did do wrong he was a coward if he would not own it, even to a child. And so Hugh on the rare occasions when he was cross or unjust, invariably begged pardon. But he did not care at all whether he was forgiven. He had done his part, and if the other side cherished anger, that was their own look out.

The ownership of the bank had descended to him, and he lived with his mother and helped her to manage the Redhurst property, which would some day be his own, fulfilling all his various offices with much credit to himself, and, on the whole, much advantage to other people. For if he thought most of what was due to himself, his view of his own duty included great attention to the interests of others, even to self-sacrifice on their behalf. Indeed, as his cousin Arthur said, “although the old saying might have been parodied with regard to Hugh, that —

“Though he never did a cruel thing, He never said a kind one.”

“Neither did he ever say anything unkind, so they might all be thankful. Most likely old Hugh thought them all prodigies if they could only see into his heart.”

“You never were more mistaken in your life, Arthur,” said Hugh with perfect truth and much coolness.

“Now, why won’t you take the credit of having some fine feelings to repress?” said Arthur, who was often guilty of trying to get a rise out of Hugh for the benefit of the younger ones.

But Hugh was so unmoved that he did not even reply that he did not care about credit.

“You’ll get a scratch some day, Arthur,” said James, who nearest in age to Hugh, and exempt from his authority might say what he pleased.

“Oh no, he won’t,” said Hugh, with a not unpleasant smile. “At least, if he does, I shall be much ashamed of myself.”

“What?” said Arthur, “I should respect myself for ever if I could put Hugh in a rage.”

“People should never be in a rage,” said Hugh – “they should control themselves.”

“If they can,” said Arthur, conscious of the minor triumph of having caused Hugh to be very sententious.

Hugh was silent. It is one thing to have a theory of life, and quite another to mould your character and tame your passions into accordance with it. Years before, when Hugh was at Oxford and James had just left school for a public office; they, in the curious repetition and reversal of human events, had come across a certain Miss Ribstone, the daughter of their mother’s old admirer, to whose many charms Hugh, then scarcely twenty, fell a victim. For one whole long vacation he had ridden, danced, talked fun and sentiment with her, until the whole thing had been put an end to by the announcement of her engagement to – somebody else. Then Hugh’s pride and self-control proved weak defences against the sudden shock, and he met the girl and her half-saucy, half-sentimental demand for congratulations with such passionate reproaches as she never forgot. Probably she deserved them, but the mortification of having so betrayed himself, almost killed regret in Hugh’s bosom. “It was not my fault, I was not to blame,” he said to his brother. “I should have remembered that,” and as he spoke he made a holocaust of all the notes and flowers and ribbons he had hitherto cherished.

“Dear me,” said sentimental James, “what a pity, I keep dozens of them.”

“I’ll never have another,” said Hugh.

The incident was only remembered as “Hugh’s old flirtation with Nelly Ribstone,” but Hugh forswore fine ladies and folly, and never forgot that he had once lost all control of his own words and actions. But all that was long ago when he had been a mere boy, not a shadow of sentiment hung over the recollection of it, and Hugh awaited his brother’s arrival at Civita Bella with a certain self-consciousness and desire to appear specially pleased to see him, which perhaps he had not experienced since his relations had been wont to wonder “what Hugh could be doing again at Ribstone House.” He had not left himself much time to wait, for as he came up to the station, a slender little man in a velvet coat, with a conspicuously long, silky light brown beard, advanced to meet him.

“Ah, Hugh, there you are yourself.”

“How d’ye do, Jem? I never knew the train so punctual. I thought I’d ten minutes to spare. I’m so glad you have got your holiday.”

James Spencer would have been a much handsomer man than his brother if he had not been on so small a scale; as it was, the delicacy of his features, and the fairness of his complexion, gave him something of a finicking aspect; which was not diminished by the evident pains taken with his dress, hair, and beard; which were arranged with a view to the picturesque, rather trying to the patience of an ordinary observer. But on a close inspection, he had a good-tempered and kindly expression, which showed that he combined appreciation of other things and people with admiration for himself. And though he was very fond of talking Bohemianism, he went to his office every morning, and to church every Sunday with the regularity of a Philistine.

“Well, you look uncommonly jolly,” he said. “The Mum was afraid that as you had made so few expeditions, your back was not strong yet.”

Hugh despised excuses, so we will not suppose that this ready-made one offered him any temptation as he answered —

“Oh no; I was quite well a week after I got here. There is plenty to see here, I assure you.”

“I believe you,” said James ecstatically. “Were ever such colours and such a sky? Look there,” seizing his brother’s arm, “there’s a girl in a red petticoat – under that arch in the shadow – white on her head – oh!”

“You will have to get used to girls under archways in red petticoats,” returned Hugh.

“How were they all at Oxley?”

“Oh, very well; the mother was groaning after you. She said she couldn’t get the fences mended, and Jones’ cow had eaten the geraniums. Oh, and she wants to have a garden-party.”

“Well,” said Hugh, “what should hinder her having a dozen if she likes?”

“She can’t do it without you.”

“Isn’t Arthur there?”

“Arthur? yes. But it isn’t worth while asking the Miss Clintons to meet Arthur.”

“I should think that chattering Katie Clinton was just the girl he would admire.”

“Should you?” said Jem, rather meaningly. “However, Hugh, when are you coming home?”

“As soon as you do.”

“I have only a fortnight.”

“Then we can go back together. That church is considered very fine. Look at the spire.”