Hugh Crichton's Romance

by Christabel R. Coleridge

The old Rector and his wife would miss her when they gathered their flowers and ate their fruit; the village girls would miss her at church and at school; her own schoolfellows in far-away homes would sadden at the tidings; and Florence Venning might well grieve for the loss of her best-loved pupil and friend.

She grieved for her, when once her senses were set free from the stupefying shock of the sudden tidings, with all the energy of her energetic nature. She sorrowed, as she worked and as she rejoiced—with all her might. It was holiday time, and she had no duties to distract her. Miss Venning was at Redhurst. Clarissa, though somewhat appalled by the violence of her grief, could think of no better course to pursue than to let her alone; and Flossy, all the first day, shut herself into her room, and wept and sobbed, feeling as if the world had come to an end for her and for everyone she cared about. It was the first grief that she had ever realised, for she had been too young to feel acutely her parents’ death; and, perhaps, the fact that it was not exactly her own grief, greatly as it grieved her, made her, as the days went by, more prone to moralise about it. She had seen sorrow, read about it, thought about it, and tried to comfort it. She was not particularly ignorant of the world; their large school connection brought her into contact with many events and many people; and parish work, seriously pursued, teaches girls more of the realities of life than is commonly supposed. She had sympathised with great sorrows, understood great difficulties, and yet now for the first time the sense came to her of what those sorrows had been. How had she dared to try to comfort those who were feeling as she now felt, and not only as she felt, but as she now understood those nearer and dearer must feel. This was sorrow. Could even she take comfort in the thoughts she herself had often suggested; and what comfort could they be to her unhappy friends?

She had often said that the only comfort in sorrow was religion. Now she knew what sorrow meant; did she know what religion meant too? It was a matter of course in these days that so intelligent and so earnest-minded a girl should care about the subject; and Flossy was not only critical of different shades of Church opinion, but held her own with great ardour and no want of reality, impressing them strongly on the young girls whom she sought to influence, and possibly arguing about them more forcibly than meekly. More than this, she dutifully followed the practices and principles they enjoined. And now what did her religion do for her? Perhaps she did not altogether realise the Help to which she looked, but, at least, she felt the necessity of it to the very bottom of her soul. She had not herself sounded the depths of grief, she did not soar to the heights of consolation; but at least she looked the grief and the great Comfort full in the face.

But Flossy’s thoughts were soon turned away from herself to those more immediately concerned. She envied Miss Venning her place among them, and cared for nothing but the accounts she sent of the life at Redhurst from day to day.

Little as she guessed it, there was something in the wild mournful pathos of the story, in the picturesqueness of its incidents, in the admiration which Arthur’s reported gentleness and patience inspired, that did lift it into the regions of romance, and made its exceeding pitifulness a little more bearable to one so young as Flossy, as long as she was not brought into actual contact with it; something that harmonised with the truer and deeper consolation that came with the thought of Mysie’s goodness and innocence, and that made that sunshiny funeral, with its scent of flowers, its sound of music, and its crowd of young faces, a time not absolutely miserable; a recollection that might soften into tenderness, and brighten, perhaps, to the perfect day. But it was with a sense of nothing but the absolute piteous reality of loss and change that she walked up to Redhurst with Clarissa to wish them all goodbye before the final break-up of the household, becoming conscious of nothing but the determination not to cry and so add to the pain with which they might meet her. She forgot how well they were accustomed to the atmosphere of sorrow that struck on her with such a chill; and when Mrs Crichton, seeing her agitation, caressed her and spoke tenderly of her love for their lost darling, Flossy felt as if everyone but herself were capable of efforts of unselfish self-control. While she was listening to James’s explanation of their future plans, and how he had got his leave extended for a day or two to see them off to Bournemouth, suddenly, without warning, Arthur came into the room. She had not expected to see him, and as he came forward rather hastily and took her hand, colouring up a little, she wondered that he looked so like himself.

“I did not know you were here,” he said, and then she heard how the life and ring had gone out of his voice. She could not speak a word, and turned quite white, a strange thing in the pink-faced Flossy.

“Did you want me, Arthur?” said James. “No, I don’t want anything, thank you.” He turned away to speak to Clarissa, and Flossy moved into the window, and stood looking out and seeing nothing. Presently she heard Arthur’s voice at her side.

“Flossy, I wish to give you this. Aunt Lily thinks you would like it.”

Flossy looked, and saw by the shape of the case in his hand that it contained some turquoise ornaments which Mysie had been very fond of wearing.

“Oh, no, no, Arthur,” she burst out, vehement and outspoken as ever, even then; “not those. I never, never could put them on. I have her old school-books and some music. I want nothing.”