Mrs Crichton had resolved that the division of poor Mysie’s little belongings should be made at once, and she was right in thinking that it would cost Arthur far less pain now than at any future time. There was no use, she thought, in allowing haunting memories to have a local habitation; and she secretly determined that, during their absence, the house should so be rearranged as to leave no sacred corners; while there was nothing startling now in the sight of Mysie’s books and jewels, when all their hearts were full of Mysie herself.
Arthur was grateful for having been allowed to have his own way so easily, but even while he arranged his journey with Jem, and felt how intolerable the Bournemouth scheme would have been to him, his heart almost failed him—the long journey seemed such a trouble—and how utterly, how immeasurably sad this turning away from his old life made him! For, young as he was, the loss was as the loss of a wife—it was the dividing of that which had been whole, the changing of every detail of his days. It was not disappointed passion: what lay before him was not life with a dark painful memory in one corner of it; it was life under conditions of which he had never dreamed. It was not that his old delights and hopes had become distasteful, but that they had ceased to exist. He had decided to go to London with Jem, starting late on the Friday evening, and go on to Marseilles on the Saturday; and on the Friday afternoon Hugh, coming back from the bank, found him alone in the drawing-room, sitting there with a mournful, unoccupied look that went to his heart.
“He will be gone soon,” thought Hugh, with a sense of infinite relief. However, he came forward, and said:
“I wanted to ask you, Arthur, have you money enough for this journey?”
“Oh, yes, thank you; quite enough for the present.”
“You have only to ask for what you want—of my mother if you like it better.”
“I’ll ask you,” said Arthur, gently. “I hope you’ll write to me sometimes.”
“If you wish it.”
“And, Hugh, will you have this? It was your present to her, I believe.”
He held out to him a little prettily-bound book, a collection of poetry of which Mysie had been very fond.