Hugh’s speech was somewhat confused; and, perhaps, his mother only partially understood him. He was only beginning to understand himself. For his history, with its attempt at atonement, hopeless till humble love made the offering acceptable and the pardon possible, was surely like a parable of the Greatest of all Histories, of human sin and Divine love, which this deep personal experience might help him profitably to realise. But Mrs Crichton did see that, through all this storm and conflict, the natural spontaneous love for Violante had been as a star in his heart – often obscured, indeed, by clouds of doubt and suspicion; but shining in and out till day returned. Whatever sorrow it had brought, however unwise it might be, it had kept Hugh from despair, and she could not scorn it.
“My dear,” she said, “it is too late for me to oppose what has survived so much. Nor have I the right; at your age you must please yourself. Of course, I wish you had chosen otherwise.”
“I think you will not wish so for long,” said Hugh, as he kissed her warmly.
Mrs Crichton was not ready to accede to this remark; she was troubled and anxious; and when Arthur presently came to see her and Hugh left him with her she expressed her doubts strongly.
“You wouldn’t wish Hugh to lose his better half, Aunt Lily,” he said, half playfully, and then he told of Violante’s simplicity and sweetness till Mrs Crichton was half convinced, though she still held to —
“Yes, my dear, it was very delightful for you all to rave about her; but can you imagine her Hugh’s wife, and an English lady of position?”
“Well, Aunt Lily, I can imagine Hugh very well as her husband, which is the point to interest you, I suppose.”
Mrs Crichton behaved beautifully. She forestalled Hugh’s proposals for an introduction, by going with him the next day to call on Violante, who was now staying with the Greys, from whose house Rosa was to be married.
Violante was alone in the drawing-room, and she started up flushing and trembling, then, without heeding Hugh, she went right up to Mrs Crichton and put her little hand in hers.
“I will try so hard to please you, Signora,” she said, with faltering lips.
“My dear, I am not difficult to please,” said Mrs Crichton, and somehow her fears of incongruity and incompleteness went into the background before the charm of the soft eyes and the sweet humility of the heroine of her son’s romance, which, for good or for evil, was to be the one great reality of his life.
Part 6, Chapter L
The Lesson of Life
“His days with others will the sweeter be
For those brief days he spent in loving me.”
Towards the end of August Florence Venning returned from a visit to her brother, eager, of course, to hear the details of the wonderful event that had taken place during her absence. Her sisters, however, had not much to tell her, as Mrs Crichton had only just returned to Redhurst. Hugh had been perforce busy since he came back, and Arthur had remained for some little time with Jem. They were all at home now, however, and Flossy set off on the afternoon after her return to call on Mrs Crichton and hear the news, with which Oxley was ringing from head-quarters. As she walked along the road she was overtaken by Arthur, who greeted her cordially.
“I am so glad I have met you,” he said; “I have a great deal to tell you, and it is a very long time since we had the chance of a conversation.”
“Yes,” said Flossy. “I never was so astonished, never! Latterly, I had half fancied that Violante had some one on her mind; but that it should be Hugh!”
“No one ever suspected him of such a romance, did they? However, it is all turning out very well, and Aunt Lily likes her very much.”
“I suppose she won’t come back to school?”
“Well, no, I think under the circumstances that would hardly answer. But she, with Mr and Mrs Fairfax – you know her sister was married last week – are to come and pay us a visit; so you will soon see Violante, and, no doubt, she will tell you all her little secrets.”
“I shall be so glad to see her. We shall miss her very much – she is as good and sweet as she is pretty. When?”
“When are they going to be married, do you mean? – I think in October.”
“That is very soon,” said Flossy.
“Yes, but there are reasons. Her father is going to live in Italy, at Civita Bella, and Hugh thinks he will take her there once more. And besides – I have something to tell you, Flossy, about myself.”
Flossy looked up at him, struck by the grave tone. He looked quite well, and had lost his air of languor and preoccupation; but his manner was serious, though now he looked in her face and smiled.
“Well, it is a long story, and I think you will be surprised. I can’t tell you how thoughtful Hugh has been for me through all this, and he knows I have come to a right decision, though he does not like it.”
Flossy still looked at him, unable to frame a question, and he went on:
“Perhaps you don’t know that our Bank has a sort of branch in Calcutta, not absolutely in connection with this one, but belonging to a cousin of my father’s. Our grandfather, I believe, owned them both. Hugh had a letter last week from this cousin, saying that his son, who has been educated in England – I don’t know if you remember him – Walter Spencer – he spent Christmas with us once – had found, on coming out, that India did not suit his health, and had to throw up the good opening out there. He is a very clever fellow, I believe; and, though his father did not exactly say so, I think he hoped that Hugh would make some proposal to him. He offers his vacant place to me, or to George, if I was otherwise provided for – you see he knows nothing of the circumstances.”
Arthur had made many pauses during this long speech; but Flossy did not answer him a word. She turned deadly pale, and there was an expression in her large blue eyes as she resolutely returned his enquiring looks so miserable that he could not forget it. He could not but see that his words affected her very strongly.
“You are going, then?” she said, at length.
“Yes,” said Arthur, “I have made up my mind to go. I should like to tell you all my reasons, because, Flossy, you have always listened to my troubles, and I know how you grieved with me as well as for me.”
“Oh, yes – yes!” faltered Flossy, thankful for the tears that seemed to bring her senses back, and for this excuse for them.
“The idea made Hugh wretched,” said Arthur, “but yet he knew there was a great deal of sense in it. He knows that here everything brings back what’s lost. I cannot bear it. I cannot forget what I hoped my life would be. The best would be a sort of make-shift. But my life is before me, and I must not look on it as only fit to throw away. I must make something of it yet, if I can. And as for the parting with them all, that’s the lot of hundreds. I have fewer ties than most.”
“It is such an ending, Arthur!” said Flossy, sadly.
“No. I hope it will be a beginning – with God’s help. You told me once that she would have made a life for herself without me. I don’t think she would wish mine to have no future.”
“And has Hugh consented?”
“Yes. You know he said at first that I made a mistake in coming home; but that is not so. Last winter I could not have decided on such a step as this. And now he has made me promise that I will give it up if I am ill, or if I dislike it very much. But the first is not likely to happen, and the second – shall not.”
“But what does Mrs Crichton say?” asked Flossy.
“Oh, they are all very sorry, Flossy, and so am I,” said Arthur, with an odd sort of smile, “but – they’ll get on very well without me, and I must make my way for myself as others do. I cannot be the worse,” he added, in a lower tone, “for – for her memory.”
Flossy walked on in silence – it was almost more than she could bear. She hardly knew which was the saddest – that no one seemed to depend on Arthur for happiness, or that he seemed to regret their independence so little.
“What shall I do?” was in her heart, and she was speechless, lest it should find its way to her tongue.
“You know, Flossy,” he said, after a pause, “a sorrow like mine swallows up everything. I can’t care very much for lesser partings. Don’t think me heartless. I shall never forget any of you; but things are so changed that, now that I have partly got over the shock, I feel as if an outward change were only the natural consequence of the inner one.”
It was natural enough. Arthur had had many affections, but only one love. There had always been a sort of self-reliance about him; while he had taken gratefully all the sympathy and all the tenderness that was offered him he had never been able to depend on any of it. There was a great risk of hardening; but he had the safeguards of an unselfish disposition, the pure and perfect love that could not die with its object, and a most earnest desire not to fall short of what Mysie’s betrothed had hoped to be. He would try hard to hold himself upright, and it might be trusted that, with the blessing of the prayers of those who loved him, he might realise a yet higher love than Mysie’s, and keep his heart soft and open for the days when even another earthly love might come to fill it. There was no thought of such a time in the heart of the poor girl by his side, who endured, not, indeed, the most passionate, or the most keen, but, perhaps, the most depressing grief a woman can know. But Flossy was young and bright and strong; and, moreover, the passion that only an idealistic nature could have entertained needed very little nourishment, and could find some satisfaction in imagination, admiration, and just the spark of possibility that would not define itself into hope.
In other words, so long as Flossy knew that Arthur’s life was all she could wish it to be, she would lead her own, having no closer ties to remember, without intolerable disturbance or dissatisfaction. It would not spoil all other interests, because the world held for her an interest surpassing them all.
But the last days were very hard to endure; and, though the impulsive outspoken girl guarded every word and look, though Arthur parted from her as from a sister, there came a day when the new depths in her clear, honest eyes, the new tones in her fresh, firm voice, came back on his recollection and suggested a new ending to her story.
To Hugh, in the midst of his own happiness, and such happiness as he had never imagined for himself, it was a great pang to find that Arthur must seek content without his help, and find it away from his side. His judgment acquiesced, and, perhaps, nothing showed how well he had learnt his late hard lessons as the way in which he made everything easy, and secured for his cousin the lot that he had chosen as best for himself.
So Arthur went forth from among them whither these pages cannot follow him, as his young energies recovered their force, and a new life gradually roused his old interest in new hopes and new ambitions.
At home the old canal gave place to the new railroad, and the wedding parties no longer drank tea at the “Pot of Lilies;” but rushed over it and beyond it to more distant and exciting places of entertainment, before the old rector and his wife entered into the promise of their golden wedding, after the fifty years that “were such a little bit of eternity.”
A new generation of girls, among whom Emily Tollemache was for a short time numbered, found Miss Florence still bright and enthusiastic, Miss Clarissa full of her little nephews, while, away in London, Rosa Fairfax congratulated herself that teaching was over for her for ever. Signor Mattei, in sunny Italy, dreamed over and composed the opera that was to be more famous than his daughter’s voice; while the precious china bowl held the place of honour in the Bank House drawing-room, and was discovered by Jem to be quite in the highest style of art, and worth anything to a collector.
“People find things out in time,” said Hugh, with a smile, as his romantic choice was justified by the real happiness that resulted from it. For Violante was all that Hugh needed, and what more could she need herself? His love and his happiness made her own.
But there never came a day that Hugh forgot to look for Arthur’s letters, or to feel responsible for his fortunes; never a day when the incompleteness of Arthur’s life did not mar the perfection of his own. Nor ever will, till, amid the scenes of the sorrow that closed his youth, Arthur finds the happiness of his manhood.
The End.