“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 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!”
“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.
It was a pretty scene in the hot, shady room: Rosa in her fantastic dress, her eyes bright, her face full of ardour, acting the part with a force and fervour that seemed marvellous to Violante; and the slender, delicate, white-robed girl, with her bird-like voice, and natural grace that yet lent itself so imperfectly to the gestures and smiles she was trying to copy, so little inspired by the fictitious character and feeling that Don. Giovanni’s vehement and characteristic wooing made her hang her head and blush, forgetful of the coquettish response intended.
Rosa, who had been utterly absorbed in her part, stopped, laughing, and sympathising with the great singer who could not act with Mademoiselle Mattei, while she owned the tribute to her skill.
“Look at me, dear; you are only pretending to be shy, you know. No, not that great innocent stare – through your eyelashes, so. Must I teach my little sister to ‘make eyes,’ as the English say?”
Violante laughed, and the laugh made the next attempt more successful; and in the midst of Rosa’s animated response an unexpected voice cried:
“Brava! bravissima! Why, Rosa, figlia mia, who would have thought it?”
“Oh, father, look at her, she acts so beautifully,” cried Violante, clasping her hands; while Rosa, in her turn confused, paused, colouring deeply.
“Ay, ay! go on, girls; let me see.”
“Courage, courage,” whispered Rosa, and, in the desire to show off her sister, Violante coquetted with praiseworthy archness.
“She can do it now, father, can’t she?”
“Ay, that is better; but you – oh, if the Saints had given you a voice! Again, Rosina mia, here – stand aside, child – play her part, Rosa. I am Don Giovanni.”
Signor Mattei was no contemptible actor, and through the chief parts of half-a-dozen operas he conducted Rosa, praising, encouraging, clapping his hands, as he found how she responded to his hints; while Rosa seemed unwearied. At last he exclaimed:
“It is excellent, most excellent! a real talent, and a face and figure that would make up well. She would be more effective than the child, after all. Now, Violante, you see what it is to have sense.”
“Oh, it is splendid!” said Violante, warmly. “If her voice was better – ”
“Ah, yes, if such a gift was not wasted on her sister. But this is talent, and my heart is warmed – it is on fire with delight! Brava, Rosina!” and Signor Mattei extended his arms and clasped Rosa in them, after a fashion not unsuitable to their recent performances. Violante, as he turned away, sprang to her sister’s side.
“Oh, Rosa, how pleased he is with you!”
“I wish he was as pleased with you, my darling,” said Rosa. “What a generous little thing you are to look so happy!”
“But I am so glad,” said Violante, while Rosa sat down and took up her work sedately, but presently let it fall and leant back with dreamy eyes and smiling lips. Years ago, when she was a very young girl, to be an actress had been the dream of her life. While she learnt and taught in England she had dreamt of hard work for a great object, of the excitement to be found in the use of conscious power, of success, of fame. Then had arisen in her life other, and yet sweeter hopes, which too soon were destined to be destroyed, and then came the obvious duty of returning to take charge of Violante. Since then her want of a voice had, in Italy, been an entire bar to her attempting to take to the stage as a mode of earning her living, and she had never till lately realised that Violante’s distaste was anything but shy childish fear. Now it did seem to her that such a career might offer some consolation even for Hugh Crichton’s desertion; now she felt how she would have valued what to Violante was utter misery. She looked at the girl who, wearied with the exertion of the morning, had dropped asleep on the cushioned window-seat, and a misgiving that had often occurred lately began to deepen in her mind.
Would not the question soon be decided for them – could so delicate a creature bear the strain of long uncongenial effort, added to the trial of wearing disappointment? – in short, would not health and strength go after spirits and energy? Violante’s daily-increasing languor and listlessness made this only too probable.