Christabel Coleridge - Hugh Crichton's Romance

“Jem,” said Mr Tollemache, as they parted after a desultory discussion of Violante, the opera, the Matteis, and the chances of Violante’s voice being profitable to Signor Vasari, “if you and Hugh care to go on and see a bit more of Italy, to push on to Rome, for instance, for the few days you have left, you mustn’t stand on ceremony with me.”

“Thank you,” said James. “I’ll see what Hugh says; I should like to see the – the Vatican, immensely.”

“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?”