Part 6, Chapter XLVIII.
The Meeting of the Waters.
“And the brooklet has found the billow,
Though they flowed so far apart,
And has filled with its passionate sweetness
That turbulent, bitter heart.”
The heavy walls of mist slowly lifted themselves, and the purple mountain-sides showed dark and close at hand. The passionate rush of the mountain torrents sounded full and free after the violent rain, and their foam showed white against the grass and heather, ready to dance in the first rays of returning sunshine. Arthur and Hugh walked on for some distance in silence—a silence that confirmed Arthur’s suspicions. It was so strange a revelation, so much in contrast with his life-long surface knowledge of Hugh’s character, that he hesitated to believe it. Yet all Violante’s looks and sayings, which he had understood as referring to Vasari, were now, he perceived, capable of another interpretation. He now recollected his impression that there had been something amiss with Hugh on his first return from Italy, the passing thought that had flashed across him when he had seen them together at the primrose-picking; Violante’s wish to go to England, and her content when she found herself there; and, more than all, Hugh’s flushed, agitated look as he walked on now beside him.
“Hugh,” said Arthur, with sudden courage, “I think I have found the clue to a great deal that has puzzled me. I thought it was the manager-lover for whom Violante was fretting at Caletto. I think now—”
“What do you mean? Fretting? You told me it was Vasari—you confirmed all my suspicions. Tell me the real truth, what was it?” cried Hugh, stopping suddenly, and facing round upon him.
“I made mischief, I am afraid,” said Arthur, “but I had a preconceived idea. I see now that her hints and her little sorrowful ways were on your account only. How could I guess you had anything to do with her?”
“Don’t laugh at me!” cried Hugh, fiercely.
“I don’t want to laugh. I want you to tell me the whole story.”
“Tell you—now?” said Hugh, recollecting himself. “No, no, impossible.”
“You can’t leave me in such a state of conjecture. Here, it’s quite fine and sunny now. Let us stop by this stile, and tell me all about it.”
As he spoke Arthur perched himself on the stone step of the stile, while Hugh leaned against the wall beside him. The white masses of cloud torn in every direction rolled rapidly away, showing great wells of blue between them. Every stone and puddle shone and sparkled in the sunshine; sharp peaks, and large, round masses of rock came one by one into view.
In this unfamiliar scene, to the last person and at the last moment that he could possibly have anticipated, Hugh began to tell his story. Arthur listened with a few well-timed questions, till Hugh spoke of “trying to convince Jem,” when he could not repress a laugh.
“Jem in the seat of judgment!”
Hugh laughed too, and went on, more comfortably:
“He said nothing I did not know before. I meant to carry it through. I could have done so.”
“Then you did not come to an explanation with her?”
“Yes, I did. I thought then I had found out the secret of life,” said Hugh, with an intensity of feeling, which Arthur could well sympathise with.
“But what on earth upset it all?”
“Didn’t I see her with the diamonds, taking them from him?—ah!” Hugh broke off, and drove his heel into the ground, unable to recall the scene without passion that was almost uncontrollable, and turning white with the effort to restrain language and gesture to the dry composure which he had adopted.
“Her father said she was already engaged to him,” he said, after a pause; then hurried on with his story, and demanded:
“Now, what do you say to that?”
“That I would not have believed you could be such a fool,” would have been Arthur’s natural answer, but he modified it into, “Well, I think you were very hasty, and rather hard on the poor child—”
“Hard? Do you think I was hard—don’t you think I was justified in what I did?”
“I don’t think you allowed enough for her father’s authority and her own timidity—certainly.”
“Sometimes I think I acted like a brute,” said Hugh.
“Well, but you see the worse you acted the less you were deceived in her,” said Arthur, plainly. “Well, then you came home and thought it was all over?”
“Yes. Perhaps you can understand now what caused the temper and the conduct which led to—to—. Could I have had any conscience, any feeling, and have renewed my happiness after last year?”
“But how was it?” said Arthur, hardly comprehending a view so unlike his own instincts.
“Well, you know recent circumstances as well as I do. I have become aware that, however it may have been once—I think now she is not indifferent to me, but I saw all the difficulties more plainly—that was not it, she is more than all the world to me—but how could I do it?”
“But, Hugh,” said Arthur, gently, “what good could it possibly do me for you to make yourself miserable?”
“No good,” said Hugh. “I know that now. But I could bear better to see you. I should have hated my own happiness.” Arthur did not answer for a moment, he was thinking how little they had any of them known of Hugh.
“But you make me out rather a dog in the manger,” he said, with a half-smile.
“No, no! You are all that is unselfish. But I was not thinking of you. I know I was mistaken, but lately I have seen things differently.”
“It has been a great comfort to me to have you to look after me lately,” said Arthur, with tact to say the most soothing thing; “and, no doubt, last year you did not know what you felt. But I should not have thought you heartless. There is one person whose feelings I think you have forgotten—Violante herself.”
“When I believed she loved me it seemed too good a thing for me to put out my hand to take,” said Hugh, in a low voice.
“Oh, Hugh,” said Arthur, sadly and earnestly, “don’t throw away a great love. Neither she nor you will ever most likely feel the like again. It is much too good to lose. It’s the best thing in the world, you know.”
“And I must have it. I, while you...” said Hugh, with much agitation.
“You have it. She loves you, and you only can make her happy.”
“You don’t imagine,” said Hugh, passionately, “that I don’t know how precious, how utterly good it is! You don’t think I don’t love her?”
“No, no, I don’t think that.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Hugh said, more lightly:
“And how about my mother, and all that part of the business?”
“As to that, Jem was right, of course, at an early stage of the proceedings; but it is not such an extreme case but what I think it may all be managed. Violante is differently placed now, and is herself all anyone could wish. And you wouldn’t be worth much without her, Hugh.”
“Just nothing,” said Hugh.
“Well, then,” said Arthur, boldly, “why don’t you go home to-morrow morning and see her?”
Hugh leant over the wall in silence, enduring a conflict of feeling that only such natures ever know. He desired this thing with passionate intensity; he knew, from bitter experience, that he could not bear its loss. He was not one whose feet went creditably along the paths of self-denial, or from whom voluntary self-sacrifice came with any grace. And yet he felt how little he deserved this blessing, how utterly beyond his merits it would be, with such humiliation that he could hardly bear to put out his hand to take it. To feel himself crowned with such undeserved joy, to take it almost from Arthur’s hand—to find that there was left for him no expiation, no penance even for the wrong he had done—to know “that no man may deliver his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him,” was a pang unknown to humbler, simpler souls, but bitter as death to him.
It was almost inconceivable to Arthur, with his unconquerable instinct for making the best of things, and his readiness to accept consolation from any quarter. He had no particular insight into character, nor any inclination to sit in judgment on his neighbours; but he did perceive that Hugh was distressed by the contrast between their fortunes, and that he was suffering under an access of self-reproach, so he said:
“You can’t tell how much good you have done me lately. It has been the greatest rest to be with you; but this will only be pleasure to me. I know you would put it all off to save me any pain, but I shall be happier for it—I shall indeed—don’t have a single scruple.”
Hugh hung down his head; he knew that to seek his own happiness was the only right thing left.
“Utterly undeserved,” he murmured.
“As to that,” said Arthur, with much feeling, “who could deserve love like—like theirs? I felt that, thoughtless fellow as I was, always. I had done nothing. I was nothing much, you know. I said so once to Mysie, and she thought it over, and that last Sunday afternoon I remember she said as we walked back together, that she had been considering what I said—I’m afraid I had never thought of it again—and that she did not think anyone need trouble about not deserving the love that was given them; for did not undeserved love lie at the very foundation of the Christian religion, yet the love of God made people happy, and we made each other happy by our love? Wasn’t it a wonderful, wise thing for a girl to say? And it’s true; when I think of her love, I can better bear the want of herself.”
How well Hugh recognised the sweet, well-expressed wisdom of Mysie’s little sayings! It struck home with an application far deeper than Arthur guessed. Had not his whole history during the past year been one long attempt to expiate his own sin, to atone himself for his errors, to absolve his own conscience from its remorse?
He looked up, with his eyes swimming in tears, at Arthur.
“I shall go, then,” was all he said.
“That’s right; let’s get on, then, and you can have a look at Bradshaw.”
Hugh laughed at this practical suggestion, and presently remembered that, as Miss Venning’s holidays had begun, Violante would not be in Oxley.
“Well, you could find out her uncle’s address—Jem knows it.”
“Oh, I know where he lives,” said Hugh, declining to encounter Jem. “Come what may, I shall come back to you at once,” he said.
“Well—send me a telegram, and I could come and meet you. You know we should have gone home in a week or so, anyhow.” Violante was alone at Signor Mattei’s lodgings. Rosa’s wedding was to take place in about a fortnight, and the little drawing-room was full of preparations for it. Rosa’s modest trousseau, her uncle’s gift, looked magnificent lying on the chairs and sofa, where her cousins had been inspecting it before taking her out to make further purchases. It was a hot, sunny afternoon, and Violante, as she stood in the window, thought how dusty the trees looked in the little garden, how brown the grass, and how shabby altogether was the aspect of London in August. For almost the first time she thought, with a faint sense of regret, of Civita Bella, with its harmonious colours, its fretted spires, the deep blue of the skies, the flowers. She glanced at Rosa’s white bridal wreath, just sent home, and took it up in her hand—orange flowers, myrtle, and stephanotis, but these were dry and false; those other blossoms— Violante heard a little noise, she turned her head, and there stood Hugh Crichton, tall and stately, just as he had come towards her over the old palace floor more than a year ago. She was so utterly surprised, and yet his presence fitted in so justly with her thoughts that she stood waiting, with her eyes on his face, without one conventional word of greeting. Hugh had rehearsed a thousand greetings; what he uttered was a new one—
“Violante—Violante! will you forgive me?—can you love me still?”
He held out both hands imploringly. Violante looked up in his face; she dropped the wreath, and in a moment, neither knew how, he held her in his arms, and the long year of parting was a year that was past. He had come back; what had she to do with mistrust or pride?
“My darling—oh, my darling! I have not been so faithless as I seemed,” he said.
“I was misled, and then—”
“I never broke my promise,” sobbed Violante; “before you were gone I threw the diamonds away. I was never engaged to him—never.”
“It was all my own wrong-headed folly and suspicion. And then, you know our terrible story?”
“I know many things now,” said Violante, withdrawing a little. “Mr Crichton, I have seen your home, and I know the difference between us. I have not wondered lately that you did not come back.”
“Never think of that,” cried Hugh, “for my life is worth nothing without you. I have been so miserable that I could lead no life at all. Oh, my darling, give yourself back to me, and I will—I will be good to you! I will make you happy. I have loved you every moment of this bitter year. Oh, make the rest of my life better!”
So Hugh pleaded, with all that past bitterness giving force to his words. And she, who needed no urging, whose love had been his without an hour’s wavering, felt all her troubles floating away, till the dusty suburban drawing-room was filled with a sunlight as glorious as the Italian palace, and there needed no scent of southern flowers to bring back the charm of their one half-hour of happiness. It had come back to them, and by the long want of it they knew far better what it was worth.