Читать книгу Hugh Crichton's Romance - Christabel R. Coleridge - Страница 16

“They were dangerous guides, the feelings—”

James Crichton had a certain taste for peculiarity, and anything unexpected and eccentric attracted him as much as it repels many other people. He piqued himself on his liberality, and had friends and acquaintances in many grades of society, to whom he behaved with perfectly genuine freedom and equality. He also loved everything that the word “Bohemian” implies to those classes who use it entirely ab extra. His mother’s vision of Jem’s daily life was a confused mixture of shabby velveteen, ale in queer mugs, colours which she was told to admire but thought hideous, mingled with musical instruments of all descriptions. He teased her to ask the Oxley photographer to dinner, and perpetually shocked her by revealing the social standing of acquaintances, whom he spoke of in terms of the greatest enthusiasm, till her dread was that he would marry some of “the sweet girls and perfect ladies” who supported their families by their own exertions in ways, which, though doubtless genteel, were not exactly aristocratic. She would have expected him to fall a victim to Violante at once.

But people do not always act in the way that is expected of them, and Mrs Crichton would have been saved much uneasiness had she known that Jem’s affections, so far as they were developed, were placed on the daughter of an Archdeacon, who dressed at once fashionably and quietly, did her hair in accordance with custom and not art, was such a lady that no one ever called her lady-like, and so exactly what she ought to have been that no one would have ventured to say she was dull. Jem had a great many flirtations, but if ever a vision of the wife that years hence might reward his devotion to his work at the Foreign Office, crossed his mind that vision bore the form of Miss Helen Hayward. It takes a great deal of theory and very strong opinions to contend in practice with the instincts to which people are born; but instincts have less chance where feeling and passion rise up to do battle with them.

James looked into Hugh’s dazzled absent eyes as they stood at his room door on their return from the opera, and felt that it was a bad moment for trying to bring him to reason; but the awkwardness of taking his elder brother to task in cold blood on the following morning made him seek for a conversation at once. So he followed him into his room and began:—

“Did you hear what Tollemache said about going to Rome?”

“Rome? No; do you want to go there?”

“Why, yes! Of course. Who doesn’t?”

“I don’t,” said Hugh quietly.

“No; but isn’t it a pity to miss the opportunity? In short, Hugh,—I say,—you know, aren’t you coming it rather strong in that quarter?” said Jem, who was so astonished at the novel position in which he found himself that he plunged into his task of Mentor at once. “In short, suppose it was Arthur, you know, what should you say?”

“I should say exactly what you want to say to me,” said Hugh, and made a little pause. “If I do this thing,” he went on, looking straight before him, “it will, I know, cause a great deal of vexation for the moment.”

“It’s not that; but it could not possibly answer, Hugh, you can’t be such a fool. Go away and take time to reflect; no one is more reasonable than you.”

Hugh roused himself as if with an effort, and, sitting down on the edge of his bed, looked up at his brother and prepared for the contest. “I will tell you all you are going to say,” he said. “This young lady—for she is a lady, Jem, and the daughter of a lady—is half a foreigner; she is only seventeen, she has no money, she has hardly any education, she has sung in public, on compulsion, and much against her will. If I marry her—”

“You will break mamma’s heart,” said Jem, going back in his vexation to his childish mode of speech.

“No, I shall not. She won’t like it, of course, but she’ll come round to it. Of course some women would not, but she would never make the worst of a thing. There’s an end of her plans for me, what else is there to matter?”

“No one would visit her,” muttered Jem, who had often inveighed at the folly of social prejudice.

“Oh, yes, they would, if my mother received her. It would be a bad match, of course, but not so bad as that when all the circumstances were explained.”

“You seem to have considered it all.”

“Did you suppose I should do it without considering? I’m not the man, James, not to see all these difficulties; I am not going to take a leap in the dark.”

“It’s just as bad if you leap over a precipice in the light!”

Hugh was silent. It was perhaps owing to his clear sense of what was due to everyone, and to his power of seeing both sides of a question, that he was not offended by his brother’s displeasure. What else could James say? He himself, as he had told him, could say it all, had said it, did say it still. And what could he answer? That, though a broken heart was a form of speech, his would in future be a broken life without Violante was a statement that he could not bring himself to make, and which James would not have believed. “Of course I can give her up,” he thought; “but if I do shall I ever live my life whole and perfect again? Is it not in me to be to her what I never have been, never could be, to anyone else?”

Hugh was a self-conscious person, as well as a conscientious one; he was not very young, and thus it will be perceived that he knew well what he was about. He was enough himself to wonder at himself; but in these sweet holiday weeks something had possessed him beyond his own control. He could fly from it, but he could not conquer it.

“Well,” he said, as James continued his arguments, “grant that I should forget her, what should I be worth then? how much of myself should I have lost!”

“Anyone might say that about any temptation of the sort,” said Jem.

“And truly. But—‘halt or maimed,’ you know, Jem. There are times when we must pay the price. You can’t say this is a case in point.”

“But how about the girl?” said Jem. “Have you involved yourself with her?”

“No,” said Hugh, and then added: “Not intentionally.”

“Ah!” said Jem, with a whistle. He was surprised to perceive that the argument of Violante’s probable disappointment had not been the first to be put forward by Hugh. His brother had argued out the question of right and wrong for himself first, though now he eagerly took up this point.

“I think she does like me,” he said, in a much more lover-like manner; “and her father tyrannises over her, poor child: she hates her profession; she would never want to hear of it again.”

“Well, and how did it all come about?” To this question James did not obtain a direct answer; but after about half-an-hour of explanation, description, and rapture, he said:

“Well, Hugh, you are in for it, and no mistake. I’m sorry for you. And, pray, what do you intend to do?”

“I wish to act as considerately as possible to everyone,” said Hugh. “I shall go home and tell my mother myself—”

“Without engaging yourself to Violante?”

“I shall do nothing in a hurry; but you cannot suppose that it needs spoken words to bind me now.”

“But I say,” said James suddenly, “did not some one say she was engaged to the manager?”

“That is not true,” said Hugh, colouring up; “she cannot endure him.”

“Oh!” said James, dryly. “All things considered, I wonder you did not speak before to-night.”

“I should not have expected you to take that view,” returned his brother.

“Well, she’s none the worse for it, of course; but, still, when it comes to one’s wife, you see, Hugh, there are advantages in plain sailing.”

“Look here, James,” cried Hugh, starting up, “we have talked long enough; I’ll take care of my mother, but I love Violante, and I believe she loves me, and our lives shall not be spoilt for anyone’s scruples. Do you suppose I don’t know my own mind? do you think I should act in a hurry, and repent of it afterwards? I would give her up now if I thought it right. It might be right in some cases, but this stands apart from ordinary rules—”

“I think I’ve heard that remark before,” James could not resist interposing.

“Very likely. In my case it is true. Not answer? It shall answer! Do you think I shall ever be afraid of the consequences of my actions?”

Hugh had the advantage of definite purpose and strong feeling. He spoke low, but his whole face lighted up as he, usually scrupulously self-distrustful in his speech, uttered this mighty boast. James, fluent and enthusiastic as he was, had for the moment nothing to say. He meant well; but his objections were vague and inconsistent with much of his own conduct. Hugh had the better of him, and reduced him to looking dissatisfied and cross.

“Well, if you will make a fool of yourself,” he muttered, “I’ll say good night.”

“Good night!” said Hugh, coming out of the clouds. “You were quite right to say your say, Jem.”

James was a very good-tempered person, but this was a little more than he could stand.

“Some day you may wish you had listened to it,” he said. “If you had seen as much of girls as I have, you would know there was nothing extraordinary in being extra silly and sentimental. Good heavens! I might have been married a dozen times over if I’d been so heroic over every little flirtation.”

Not being a woman, Hugh left the last word to his brother. He had no particular respect for Jem’s opinion, and did not care at all whether he approved of his choice or not. He believed that he could make his mother content with it; and his mother’s contentment would silence all active opposition of the outer world. His boy and girl cousins had no right to a remark: he supposed he could put up with Arthur’s nonsense. Here he took the flower out of his coat, and thought that the scent of stephanotis would always remind him of Violante. And then he went and leaned out of his window in the soft starlit southern night, and wondered if Violante was dreaming of her success or of him.

How strange it was that to him, of all people, should have come this wonderful and poetical experience! Hugh was not aware that the beauty of the scene, the clearness of the sky, the delicate shadowy spires and pinnacles that stood out soft and clear against it, the light of the stars, the breath of the south, in any way influenced him; he would have laughed even then at a description of a lover looking at the stars and thinking of his lady. It never occurred to him to call to mind any song or poem that put into words such commonplace romance. For the place, the circumstances, Violante herself, the flower in his hand, the notes yet ringing in his ears, appealed to a simplicity of sentiment any school-girl might have shared with him. Yet real honest feeling might give for once reality to these hackneyed images, just as it could as easily have dispensed with them altogether.