Hugh Crichton's Romance

Part 5, Chapter XXXVIII

Pin-Pricks

The Rectory drawing-room window was open to the sunshine, and Mrs Harcourt was standing by it, waiting for Flossy. But Arthur turned aside from it, and went round to the door in front.

“Who is that, my dear?” said the old lady, as Flossy ran up to her.

“It is Arthur,” she said. “I met him there. He said he ought to come and see you.”

“Ah, poor boy, I’m glad,” said Mrs Harcourt, as she went to let him in, while Flossy exclaimed nervously:

“Oh, Violante, I forgot you. Never mind, it will be just as well.”

“Is it Signor Arthur?” asked Violante, who sometimes accompanied Miss Florence on half-holiday walks, and had needed no teaching to consider Redhurst sacred ground.

“Yes,” said Flossy, as Arthur and Mrs Harcourt came in. He looked very pale, while Mrs Harcourt, half-tearful, half-hospitable, was eagerly welcoming him.

“Ah, my dear Arthur, we have been longing to see you; but I can’t get out much now; and I know – I know you could hardly come. It is very good of you.”

“I am almost all day in Oxley,” he said, “but I hope you are well, and the Rector?”

“Pretty well, my dear, for our time of life. We have had a lonely winter; but we push along together, you see.”

Arthur managed to smile, but his face went to Flossy’s heart, though neither she nor Mrs Harcourt knew exactly how the fifty years which the old husband and wife had “had wi’ ane anither” had once seemed to stretch before the young lovers, who never saw of them a single day.

“You have been getting some tea for us, Mrs Harcourt?” she said.

“Oh, yes, my dear. Now, do you pour it out, and Arthur will have some. But will your young Italian friend drink tea?”

“Oh, yes, signora, I like tea,” and, with a start of relief, Arthur turned at the sound of her voice.

“Mademoiselle Mattei!” he said; “I did not know you;” and, in truth, Violante was much altered at first sight by her dark winter dress and jacket, and little black hat with a red plume.

Arthur shook hands with her, and asked her how she liked England.

“I like it very much.”

“Why, we were very near an explanation. If you had told me where you were going to school I could have enlightened you much better as to what your life would be like there.”

“But I did not know myself,” said Violante, colouring as she thought of what a difference a few explanations might have made. “I did not know anything,” and her sweet voice faltered with its weight of meaning.

“But I was right, wasn’t I, when I gave you good advice? You have found – ”

“Miss Florence,” said Violante, with a grateful look.

She felt as if Signor Arthur was quite an old friend. He had seen Rosa and her father, and she began to tell him about them, while Flossy made a few words of explanation to Mrs Harcourt as to their previous meeting.

“I expect to find my cousin James at home,” he said. “You remember him?”

“Yes, Arthur,” said Flossy. “It’s the strangest thing that she should have met you without knowing that Mr Crichton and James were your cousins, and that then she should come here!”

“Mr Hugh never comes to see me,” said Mrs Harcourt.

“Doesn’t he?” said Arthur. “I will tell him that he should. There’s the Rector.”

Mr Harcourt, with more tact than his wife, only gave Arthur a warm handshake. Violante rose and curtsied to him in a pretty reverential fashion that pleased and touched him, and while he complimented her, in a little old-fashioned Italian, Flossy said aside:

“It makes Violante very shy to hear of anyone who saw her act; and, as Mary isn’t very fond of the subject, we say very little about it.”

“Ah, yes, poor child! It’s a mortifying recollection if she made a failure of it. She’s a lovely creature. What on earth does she do with herself?”

“Oh, many things. Surely, Arthur, you don’t think she need be useless because she’s pretty?” and, in the little laugh that followed Flossy’s return to her natural inclination for argument, Arthur took his leave.

It was a great relief to have got this afternoon’s work over, and comfortable to find Jem at home when he got there, cheerful and chatty, and taking no apparent notice of his words or looks, yet with a little undercurrent of sympathy that he felt all the time. James amused everybody, and put them into good-humour, taking the burden of cheerfulness off their shoulders; and yet he avoided every word that could have touched painfully on his cousin or brother – or would have done so, had not some mention of a new opera recalled Violante to Arthur after dinner, when both he and Freddie demanded a description of her performances, as he stood on the hearthrug, looking round at his audience. Hugh was sitting on one side of the fire, holding up a “Quarterly Review;” the ladies looked expectant over their work; and Arthur, leaning back in a low chair in front of him, was looking right up in his face.

“Well,” said Jem, apparently measuring his beard, hair by hair; “I only saw her once. She acted badly and sang well, but it was a failure – ”

“How so? She was enough applauded,” abruptly said Hugh; and then could have bitten his tongue out for speaking.

“She is pretty, you know,” said Jem.

“Lovely,” said Arthur. “There’s a sort of pathetic grace about her; but I suppose it didn’t tell at a distance.”

It would be difficult to say whether their admiration, or the careless, critical tone in which it was uttered, enraged Hugh the most.

“Since her public career has ceased,” he said, “it seems a pity to discuss it.”

“Yes. It’s hardly fair,” said Arthur; “but she interested me, poor child, and I was very glad to see her with Flossy. She is sure to be well taken care of, and, perhaps, she’ll forget her troubles.”

“What troubles?” said Hugh, sternly.

“Why, I told you the other day,” said Arthur, regardful of Frederica’s presence. “She looks twice as bright as she did in Italy.”

“Now it seems to me,” said Mrs Crichton, “that you are all making a very unnecessary talk about her. Miss Venning has decidedly stretched a point in having her here. I don’t altogether approve of it. Young ladies shouldn’t have histories, and they should keep her and hers in the background.”

“Aunt Lily, I think that would be mean,” said Frederica.

“Aunt Lily’s never seen her,” said Arthur.

“No, my dear, I don’t feel any curiosity about her,” said Mrs Crichton, didactically.

Jem – no other word will express it – giggled; Hugh sprang to his feet, and, happily for the preservation of his secret, knocked over the lamp beside him, and in the confusion that followed Violante was forgotten, and he contrived to apologise and make his escape.

Such discussions rendered him furious, far more so than any amount of opposition could have done while he had had the one purpose of marrying Violante clear and straight before him. Then he would have borne patiently with his mother’s natural opposition, and would have smiled at anyone else’s. But now that they should all dare to praise her, and judge her, and “take an interest” in her! It made him very angry, and yet he was ashamed of his own connection with it. He would not have had it discovered for the world; and then, when he knew this feeling to be despicable, it was justified by the knowledge of the pain and disturbance any discovery would cause, and increased by his jealousy of Violante’s reported confidences and conversations. Arthur had been eager about nothing else. Hugh had an unbounded belief in Violante’s irresistible charms, and none in the depth and permanency of Arthur’s sorrow, even while that sorrow made his own. He was never in the same mind for five minutes at a time, angry, miserable, jealous, and self-reproachful. He was sacrificing himself, of course, in giving up all his chances of winning her, and yet he could not quite rid himself of the suspicion that he was false and cruel, and that he had been his best self when he defied the world for her sake. If accident had thrown her in his way the whole current of events might have been changed; but he could not and would not seek her, though he thought about her enough to make chance allusions far more his dread than they ever were Arthur’s, who never thought of them till they came; and he bemoaned himself over the Dysart dinner-party, the announcement of which his cousin hardly heeded.

“Hugh has become exceedingly cross,” Freddie said to Jem, with the freedom of speech of the Redhurst household.

“Then, don’t make him more so,” was Jem’s advice, given with equal openness.

The party was merely to consist of Colonel and Mrs Dysart, their two elder daughters, and one of their sons, who was discovered to be at home and invited at the last minute. It was difficult to see why a few extra people should make any difference, but Jem dressed himself with a sense of preparing to walk on egg-shells, and Arthur felt suddenly reluctant, and as if the sense of even this small festivity was depressing.

“My dear Jem,” his mother had said, “I look to you to make it go off well.” But the second Miss Dysart was very pretty, and just in the style Jem admired, and he was speedily absorbed in discussing a new novel with her, and forgot to guide the rest of the party, who talked of the neighbourhood and the society in the manner of people entertaining new comers. The ladies of the Dysart party were very conscious of the recent history of their entertainers; and, perhaps, Miss Dysart was a little disappointed that Arthur’s manner and conversation were so much like other people’s. The gentlemen were less well-informed, or more forgetful; and about half-way through dinner – after the shops of Oxley, and the excellence of Miss Venning’s school for girls, and the doubtful advantages of the grammar-school for boys, had been well discussed – the inevitable subject of a country dinner-party made its appearance, and young Dysart, across the table, began to ask Arthur about the shooting. Hugh paused suddenly in what he was saying, as Arthur answered: “I am afraid you haven’t much at Ashenfold; but ours is pretty good.”

“You shoot, I suppose?” said young Dysart.

“Oh, yes,” said Arthur, but with a catch in his breath.

“We shall take a day together, now and then, I hope, Mr Crichton?” said Colonel Dysart to Hugh.

“No. I have given it up,” said Hugh, with sudden abrupt emphasis. “I shall let my shooting.” He spoke as if he were confessing his faith on the scaffold; and, in the midst of the dead silence that ensued, James was heard wildly asking his little country-bred neighbour if she had ever been to a pigeon-match at Hurlingham; while Arthur, at the sound of his voice, said, with an effort that he could not conceal:

“The Ribstones are the great sportsmen in these parts. Sir William always has plenty of pheasants;” and Mrs Dysart caught up the Hurlingham shuttlecock and conducted the conversation safely on to the Princess of Wales. Arthur joined in, but his eyes looked absent, and once or twice he missed the answers to what he had said; while Jem’s pretty neighbour looked at him with the tears in her eyes. No one could forget what, had passed; and, indeed, in such a household as Redhurst, this matter of the shooting was a practical difficulty, and a subject that could not be tabooed.

The guests had hardly departed when Hugh said suddenly:

“To set this matter at rest for ever – as long as I live I shall never touch a gun again. Rest assured of it.”

No one answered, till Arthur said, moving away:

“Good night, Aunt Lily, I’ll go to bed. I’m tired.”

Then James broke out:

“Really, Hugh, I am surprised at you!”

“Would you have me let anyone – would you have me let Arthur think that I could ever shoot again?”

“Who cares whether you do or not?” said Jem, angrily. “Neither you nor Arthur can live without hearing the subject mentioned, and the only way is to pass it off quietly. He would have got over it in a minute if you had been silent, and next time it would have been a matter of course to him. Now you have raised up a scarecrow for ever.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Crichton. “It would be all very well to let the shooting for a time – ”

“Of course, mother, I meant with your permission,” said Hugh, who was very punctilious as to invading his mother’s rights.

“Nonsense, my dear. As if I should interfere with you about it! But now you have made our friends uncomfortable, and Arthur will feel the impossibility of it, instead of slipping back to it naturally by degrees. And you have made a most painful scene.” Here Mrs Crichton herself ended in tears – half-nervous and half-sorrowful.

“It only shows,” said Hugh, passionately, “that life here is impossible for Arthur and me. It is a problem that cannot be worked out. What is there left that has not that awful mark on it: the fields, the river – and would you have it supposed that I do not feel it?”

“I thought,” said James, drily, “that it was Arthur’s feelings, not yours, that were in question.”

Hugh paused, manifestly checked by this observation, and James went on: “We all feel enough sorrow, but this is not a question, of feelings but of nerves, as it seems to me. Arthur’s are naturally strong, and these things may not affect him as they do you.”

“As to that,” said Hugh, “one thing is as bad as another. I have shirked no associations. They don’t affect me.”

“Then, if not,” said his mother, “why did you speak as you did to-night?”

“Because I was thinking of him,” said Hugh. “Must I not feel them through him? What would he think of me if I seemed not to care? Am I not bound to spare him?”

“You set to work about it in a very odd manner,” said James.

“My dear,” said Mrs Crichton, “it is what I always told you. You will insist on looking on this matter from a morbid point of view. Just drop that, and time will heal all things – even such grief as ours and poor Arthur’s. And I don’t think he will feel these things after the first. He never had any nerves, as a boy, you know.”

“You cannot drop facts,” said Hugh, wearily, “but I have been wrong, as it seems, somehow. There’s no use in arguing about it.”

“Yes, my dear, you were quite wrong,” said Mrs Crichton, cheerfully, as he left the room; “so there’s an end of it.”

Arthur, meanwhile, was reflecting on the practical aspect of the case. Although Redhurst was not a household where sport was made the business of life, it was one into the ordinary habits of which it entered considerably; and, perhaps, from his connection with the town, Hugh was a little tenacious of this privilege of the county. He liked sporting matters to be well managed, and Arthur was a very good shot and genuinely fond of the pursuit. He really could not conceive how the civilities of life could go on, or the ordinary intercourse with their neighbours be maintained, as the year went round, without it. Certainly, they must see and hear of it, if they declined to join in it themselves. Arthur had formed no resolutions about it; and, but for his experience in the Ashenfold woods, would have been ready to take it up by degrees, with a heavy heart enough and with little interest, but as part of the life he had got to struggle back to. And, surely, that would never happen to him again. Arthur was much more ready to resist these involuntary sensations than the listlessness and dejection that seemed to have become natural to him. Hugh’s speech had, of course, been intensely painful; but without it he would have gone gallantly through the discussion and felt the better for his victory. But he knew that Hugh had spoken for his sake. He would try not to be such a worry to them all. He had a bad night, however, and was, perhaps, not in the best tune the next morning for trying experiments on himself, but he would not falter; so, coming down early, he went into the little back-room, where they smoked, and kept and cleaned their guns, and began to look for his own. He found it in its usual cupboard and took it out; but the sight, the touch, the very thought of the sound of it, were more than he could bear. He just managed to put it back, and rushed out into the garden. No, he could never touch it again! But there was no use in telling anyone that he had such strange sensations; and James and his aunt, only seeing the outside, agreed that he was as well and cheerful as could be expected.

“My parting advice,” said James, “is that everyone should let everybody else alone.”

The shooting was let for a year to Colonel Dysart without more discussion, and only Hugh discovered that Arthur shrank from every trace of it. But, though some of Jem’s words rankled, he was far too much afraid of seeming to forget his own share in the matter to offer the support and sympathy which might have been better than the let-alone system.

Part 5, Chapter XXXIX

Divided!

“Again I called, and he could not come.”

During the weeks that were so comfortless and disturbed at Redhurst, Violante’s school-life went on, on the whole, peacefully; but, still, with various ups and downs of feeling – fits of longing for Rosa, of loneliness and discouragement; times when she could not learn her lessons nor interest herself in the little trifles that interested her companions. Yet she never thought of giving in and going away from Oxley Manor. When she was unhappy she dreaded lest Rosa should discover it. All the interest of life lay close at hand – here anything might happen, elsewhere the scene was closed. Not that Violante gave herself this reason for her perseverance. No; she could not bear to foil a second time; and Miss Florence was so kind to her, she was learning to bear the little rubs of life. So she mused one soft, line morning, as she stood leaning out of the window of the little upstairs class-room, where she superintended the girls’ practising. As she waited for her pupils she thought to herself that she was growing brave and sensible – more like Rosa – who let nothing interfere with her work.