Hugh Crichton's Romance

Part 3, Chapter XXII.

Dark Days.

“Then he sat down, sad and speechless,
At the feet of Minnehaha—
At the feet of Laughing Water—
At those willing feet that never
More would lightly run to meet him,
Never more would lightly follow.
Then they buried Minnehaha.”

There was very little to be done at Redhurst during the few sad days that followed. Mysie’s fortune was inherited by a second cousin on her father’s side—a middle-aged clergyman, who had never seen her, and who was the father of a large young family, and the letter to announce her death to him was almost the only one of any imperative consequence as a matter of business, while it was a very simple statement of a flairs which Hugh must hand over to him when he came to the funeral, which was fixed for the Saturday morning. A heavier cloud could hardly have descended on any household; but Mrs Spencer Crichton was a person of strong nerves; and, deep and sincere as was her sorrow, it was not quite the desolation that it must have been had Mysie been her own child. She was able to stay with Arthur till his first agony had a little subsided, and he murmured something about “Hugh.”

“Do you want him, my dear?”

“No; but he will want you.”

“Oh yes, presently. Don’t you trouble yourself, Arty. You can tell us by-and-by if there is anything you wish. But I will go if you like to be alone. Shall I tell Hugh anything?”

Arthur felt quite incapable of any explanation; it was an effort even to think of Hugh; his grief was utterly crushing and overwhelming.

“Give him my love,” he said.

His aunt thought it rather an odd message; but she did not wish to tease Arthur with talking, and she knew that it was quite useless to attempt to comfort him, and so left him alone. She encountered James hanging about the hall, looking forlorn and frightened.

“Oh, mamma,” he said, “I don’t know what is to be done.”

“He is better now,” said Mrs Crichton, “and I think it is best to leave him quiet.”

“I’m not thinking about him. It’s Hugh.”

“Hugh?”

“Don’t you know, mother, how it was?” And James, as well as he could, repeated the substance of what had passed at the inquest.

“My dear,” said Mrs Crichton, with energy, “I should never allow such a thing to be repeated. Don’t say a word about it, and it will die out of their minds. I shouldn’t think of regarding it from that point of view. Why, it’s enough to drive them both mad.”

“But it’s true, mother,” said Jem, gloomily. “True? Not at all; those things rest on the turn of a hair, and Hugh must not be allowed to dwell on it. Where is he?”

Even in the midst of his misery James could hardly help smiling at his mother’s view.

“He shut himself into his room,” he said.

“Of course, he might work himself up into thinking anything his fault. It was not his fault. It is a matter which entirely depends on the way in which you regard it; I could not think why he was on Arthur’s mind—he sent him his love.”

“Did he? Oh, he is very—generous,” said James, much affected. “Oh, mother, mother, to think of his life yesterday and now! No wonder Hugh is half mad.”

Mrs Crichton cried irrepressibly for a few minutes. “Jem, she was the sunshine of the place. My dear little girl! But I can’t allow Hugh to take it in the way you speak of, and I beg you never to put it in such a point of view.”

Mrs Crichton rose as she spoke, and went upstairs to her son’s room. Jem followed, totally unable to understand her conduct. He forgot that his confused half-hinted story was not the same thing as the actual scene, or as Hugh’s brief, bitter narration of it, and could not make the same impression. Mrs Crichton knocked, but hardly waited for an answer. Hugh stood facing them.

“Am I wanted?” he said.

“Why yes, my dear, of course. Who else can settle things but you. Poor Arthur can think of nothing.”

“He must not be troubled,” said Hugh, “I will come at once.”

“That is right. I was perfectly certain that you would not give way to any such foolish morbid notions as Jem suggests; they can only cause far more distress to Arthur and to us all. He sent you his love—”

“He need not have done that,” said Hugh, in a hard, cold voice, though he trembled so much that he was obliged to sit down. “Mother, you are mistaken; I, and only I, am to blame. All this wretchedness has been caused by my temper and presumption. Just a moment’s ill-temper,” he added, with intense bitterness.

“That is exactly what I say, my dear. You make matters worse by exaggerating. No one would think of such a thing but yourself. Turn your back at once on the thought. There is quite enough to break all our hearts without that.”

It is not always wise to ignore passionate feeling, even when it is supposed to be unreasonable. Hugh felt keenly that his mother gave him no sympathy in the trial which he believed to be more bitter than that of Arthur, whom he had seen her soothe and caress. He had neither the tact to conceive nor the unselfishness to carry out the idea that, as the miserable truth did greatly add to the pain of all concerned, it would be better to bury it and his remorse in his own breast. Rather would he do penance for it in every way that he could.

“There is enough to break hearts,” he said, “and it is through my means they are broken. But don’t fear that I shall shrink from anything that has to be done. There is no need that Arthur should see me.”

“Arthur must rest, and you too, Hugh,” interposed James. “There is nothing very pressing. Go to bed, you were up all night—do, now, there’s a good fellow.”

“Thank you, I want no rest,” said Hugh. “If mother likes I will come and write letters and settle matters now.”

“Yes, my dear, that will be best,” said Mrs Crichton, “and will help you to recover your balance better.”

Hugh thought his mother unfeeling; Arthur clung to her as his kindest comforter. She thoroughly understood and acknowledged the one grief, and it was such that no one could turn their backs on it; but Mrs Crichton was a person whom nature had gifted with an almost over-amount of that rare quality, a tendency to make the best of things. It was her nature to ignore grief where it was possible, to smoothe it over and hide it, to seize on its most tolerable side; and she could not understand Hugh’s impulse to drink the cup to the dregs. Her mind went on, even in these first sad days, to plans for a little lightening the cloud that covered them; and she was not a person who could sympathise with an unhappiness of which she did not thoroughly admit the necessity, or the duration of which she thought extreme. Moreover, there was some sense in the view that least said was soonest mended, as far as Hugh was concerned, and that the unhappy words which had accompanied the fatal shot were best forgotten. Here James agreed with her. He had more power of realising the feelings of those around him; but the black oppression was very trying to his kindly nature, and, in the intervals of being as kind and helpful as he knew how, would creep out into the shrubbery with a book or his pipe, or get a little taste of the outside world by answering enquiries or undertaking commissions. Hugh did everything that was necessary, and did not renew the discussion; but he avoided Arthur entirely, and looked so worn out with misery as to excite the pity of everyone who saw him. He pictured to himself the dread that Arthur must have of meeting him, till his own dread grew so intense that nothing but his sense that he deserved any and every punishment could have induced him to face the hour when they must stand side by side at Mysie’s grave.

The truth was that Arthur had hardly thought about him at all, had scarcely noticed that when he occasionally came downstairs or sat on the terrace Hugh was not there. His own future life had not yet come before him; the causes that had so changed it were all swallowed up in the great fact of the change. It was of Mysie that he thought hour after hour, of her face and her voice and her sweet eyes, and of every word and look they had exchanged during their brief and sweet betrothal. He was very gentle and grateful for the kindness shown him, and his habitual unselfishness made him considerate of all the rest; but, though there was a sort of surface readiness to be comforted about him, nothing really touched him much. They were all very kind, but he loved none of them with the intense and personal love which only could have gone to his heart then. He made no effort to hide or deny his sorrow, admitting it simply; but he did not talk much about Mysie, and not at all about himself. He did not seem conscious of any want of occupation, though he did little or nothing, and suffered less physically than might have been expected after such a shock. But that awful scene which seemed to have burnt itself in on Hugh’s eyeballs as yet scarcely haunted Arthur—partly because he had acted in it, not seen it; but more entirely because he was so much absorbed in his sorrow that he had not begun to think of how it had come about. They said he bore it beautifully, because he uttered no outcries against fate and could smile when people were kind to him; but, in truth, his spirit was too much crushed for rebellion; even his own loneliness and changed life had hardly yet come before him. At night, or when he had been long alone, his first sense of unreality would again recur to him and the truth come upon him in its first freshness as he met the sad faces of the others, or as he looked on the face, not sad, but still and fair, of his lost love. On that face Hugh never looked; but it was as Arthur knelt beside her that he saw Mr Harcourt again. The old rector laid his hands on his head, and once more repeated the blessing he had given him so short a time before.

“She will have fifty happy years, my boy,” he said.

“But I—but I—” and poor Arthur hurried away, utterly overpowered, though afterwards he tried to say something to James about “Mr Harcourt’s kindness, and there was one thing he wished.”

“Anything you wish, Arthur. What is it?”

“That Sunday,” said Arthur—as if, poor fellow, it had been some day last year—“they sang a hymn, and she spoke of it. If, to-morrow—”

“I remember,” said Jem. “Yes, we’ll have it. Mr Crofton has come,” he added.

“Has he? I think I ought to come down and see him.”

“Hugh is there,” said James.

“Oh, yes, but I shouldn’t leave it all to him,” said Arthur, as he prepared to come down, evidently caring little either way for Hugh’s presence, and less for his own heavy eyes and white face. He did not heed who saw the tokens of a grief that could surprise no one. He wanted to show respect to Mysie’s cousin. Mr Crofton was a kind, sensible-looking clergyman, and when James said nervously: “This is my cousin Arthur, Mr Crofton,” he could hardly utter a commonplace greeting as he pressed the hand Arthur held out to him.

Hugh set his mouth hard and sat quite still in his corner. Arthur said simply: “I am glad to see you, Mr Crofton,” and sat down by Hugh on the sofa, but without giving him any special greeting; and then asked some little question about Mr Crofton’s journey.

Mr Crofton had two or three sons, and as many daughters. He held a small living, and he had never seen the little cousin whose fortune he had inherited; but as he heard Arthur’s gentle, courteous voice, and saw his young face with its heavy shadows, he felt as if the inevitable sense of relief that had come to him at the first had been a deadly sin. He hardly knew to whom to address himself, but before Arthur’s arrival he had managed to make them understand that all Mysie’s personal property, all her ornaments, every relic of herself, must still belong to those who had loved and lost her; and Mrs Crichton now spoke a little of how much she had been loved, and how many tokens of grief had been shown both by rich and poor.

“There will be crowds to-morrow,” she said.

“That can be put a stop to,” said Hugh, suddenly.

“My dear Hugh! Surely not!”

“I should not have thought you would have wished to gratify idle curiosity. Under the circumstances we cannot keep it too much to ourselves,” said Hugh, unable to bear the thought of meeting the eyes of all the village.

“I should like everyone to come who wishes it,” said Arthur.

“It was for your sake I spoke,” said Hugh.

“I? I shall not mind! There are so many who—who—I am sure Mr Crofton will excuse me now,” he added abruptly, as he got up and went away.

“You forget,” said Hugh, “how public all this has become. We shall have newspaper reporters and all the tag-rag of Oxley.”

“It cannot be helped,” said his mother, “and you should not put it into Arthur’s head to mind it.”

“He will not care,” said Hugh; “why should he? He will have plenty of sympathy from them all.”

“He will not care, indeed,” said James, indignantly.

James was wrong. When Arthur saw lane and churchyard and church itself filled with those who had loved Mysie the sense of sympathy struck no discordant note, just as the blue unclouded sky and the happy sunlight did not mock his sorrow, but seemed only a fitting tribute to her happy life. Arthur felt a sense of friendly fellow-feeling, as if the love and the flowers and the sunlight were part of the brightness he could hardly feel to be gone for ever; but he could not have described afterwards one tearful face, one flowery wreath—perhaps he hardly distinguished one word in the solemn service, which yet he felt to be right and fitting, and which did soothe him with a sense of union with Mysie, and of the existence of a support of which he might one day take hold.

But Hugh’s intense self-consciousness gave to everything the vivid and yet weird distinctness of objects seen in an electric light. Every sob that he heard, every token of affection, seemed to him a reproach. He was conscious of Arthur’s every movement, and of every anxious look which his mother and James cast at him; he realised far more intensely than his cousin how pitiful it was that the earth should fall on this bright young creature, and that her story should break off short in the early chapters. He realised this till the tears came to his eyes, and, though he was probably the only person present who cared whether his grief were noticed or not, everyone went home to say how vain his efforts at self-control had been.

The long day was over; they had parted with Mr Crofton, Arthur showing him the little attentions that Hugh wondered he could recollect at such a moment—the week which seemed to join on to no other weeks was over, and they must begin life again. Any change was welcome to Hugh’s restlessness; and to the others—Jem especially—the lightening of the outward signs of mourning, the resumption of ordinary habits, was a relief. But to Arthur it brought the first sense of irretrievable loss, the first necessity for any effort to put aside the grief which he had borne, indeed, without resistance, but under which he could not stand upright.

For the first time he shrank from them all, for the first time the sunlight seemed cruel, and kind words like blows; the Sunday bells brought memories that he could not bear, and he shut himself into his room, only begging to be left there in peace. Hugh went to church with the younger ones—what right had he to spare himself any pain?

The day turned chilly and gloomy, and they gathered in the drawing-room in the afternoon. George and Frederica went to church again for the sake of something to do; but they could not go to the Rectory afterwards, and came home to find their aunt, James, and Miss Venning gathered round a small, unaccustomed-looking fire, with some tea on the table, while Hugh sat at the far end of the long room by himself.

“How is Arthur?” asked Frederica.

“He has a bad headache,” replied James.

“Do you think he is going to be ill, Jem?”

“Oh, no; I hope not. I don’t think it’s likely.”

“Mother,” said Hugh, coming forward, “Arthur ought to go away somewhere at once.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Crichton, “I think he should. We all must as soon as we can manage it.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, with a sudden sense of relief, “and I would go to the Bank house and stay there.”

“I don’t see any need for that. Miss Venning and I have been talking. I thought we might all go to the sea till the holidays were over. Miss Venning kindly promises to come with us, and then she would take Freddie back as a boarder for the next term—poor child, it is too sad for her here.”

“Oh, auntie, I had much rather be sad,” interposed Frederica, with a burst of tears.

“No, darling—nonsense. I could not have that. Jem, I suppose, must go back to town.”

“On Thursday,” said Jem.

“But I am sure the rest of us had better keep together.”

“I shall be much too busy to leave home,” said Hugh, with an emphasis that made Jem smile. “I shall do very well by myself.”

Mrs Crichton began to discuss the rival merits of Hastings and Brighton, while Hugh went back to his place, and James and Miss Venning exchanged a few words as to how far the arrangement would be good for Arthur, when, rather to their surprise, Arthur himself came in.

He sat down on the sofa by his aunt, and she asked him tenderly if his head was better.

“Oh, yes, thank you. How cold it is—the lire looks pleasant.”

“You must have some tea—Freddie!” But Freddie’s tears choked her and upset her aunt too; while Miss Venning hastily interposed and poured out the tea. Arthur got up and handed it, and tried to make a little talk, seconded by Jem, till Mrs Crichton said:

“My dear boy, we have been talking about going away. It will be good for you to have a change.”

“I don’t want to go away,” said Arthur, languidly.

“My dear, it would never do for you to stay here. We all want the break.”

“Why do you urge him to do anything he does not like?” said Hugh, so abruptly as to make Arthur start.

“Hugh! I did not see you!” he said.

“I am going out. Mother, there is no need for Arthur to go away unless he likes.”

“But, Hugh, nothing could be so bad for health or spirits as staying here.”

“I daresay Aunt Lily is right, Hugh,” said Arthur, as if he wanted to stop the discussion. “But, you see, I don’t quite know where I could go to.”

“Why, with us, my dear, to be sure,” said Mrs Crichton, as she explained the plan proposed. “Should you like it, Arthur?”

“Oh, yes. I daresay it would do quite well. Please don’t talk about it,” he added, more fretfully than he often spoke, “at least not now.”

Hugh saw that well-intentioned consolation or cheering would only worry the poor boy, who was not able to respond to it, and that he was hardly fit even for the change proposed; and for a moment the thought flashed across him of how he would devote himself to soothe Arthur’s grief if he could have him to himself for a little, how he, of his own bitter experience, would know how to treat the fitful spirits that would only perplex the rest. Only for a moment; the next he thought how intolerable the sight of that grief would be, and how his own unwelcome presence must increase it.

“You must do just as you like,” he repeated as he went out of the room. As he walked up and down on the terrace outside he saw Arthur wander away from the others and sit down on the distant sofa that he had left. Presently Snap followed him, and jumped up on his lap. Arthur coaxed and caressed him, and played with him in a sad, aimless sort of fashion, and at last laid his head back on the cushions, with the dog nestling against him. Hugh watched every weary, restless movement with an intensity of sympathy that seemed to feel how the temples throbbed and the eyes ached, and how the wretchedness seemed to increase every hour. And yet he could not say one gentle, tender word. At last the stillness proved that Arthur had fallen asleep—worn out, perhaps, with the excitement of the day before. But Hugh paced up and down in the chilly, windy twilight, and longed for the time when they would all have gone and he would be left to himself.