“We did very well with the old Horehams,” said Hugh, “though Colonel Dysart is likely to be a good neighbour. Have you been to the Rectory?”
“Oh, yes, we went over at once. I think the dear old folks want us back again. You should have looked in on them now and then on a Sunday, Hugh.”
“It is you they want, not me,” he said. “I went to Oxley parish church generally. You have not seen the town yet, I suppose, Miss Brabazon?” he added, to change the conversation.
Before the evening was over, Hugh was doubtful whether the cheerfulness around him was not dearly bought by the effort to join in it. There was no want of affectionate feeling in Mrs Crichton; she missed Mysie every hour, and acknowledged their loss to the full; but she was determined that it should be regarded as nothing more than a loss, and that, as she phrased it, “no morbid feelings should be allowed to exist;” and she would not acknowledge that Hugh had any special occasion for sensitiveness. Being, with all her good-nature and easiness of discipline, a person of strong will she was determined to create external cheerfulness. Frederica, who had now, of course, become a more important element in the household, was reserved by nature, and, like many young girls, afraid of the force of her own emotions. She could not bear to speak or hear of Mysie, so she turned vehemently to other things; while, the more her high spirits regained their sway, the less she liked any infringement on them.
Hugh was away at the Bank on the day that Flossy came to see them: but she, too, nervous, and inwardly agitated, was glad to talk of external things—about the new people, and their girls coming to school, and the dear little signorina of whom she was growing so fond, and whose wonderful sweet face was like a poem or a picture.
“You must bring her to see us, Flossy, when Freddie asks some of her schoolfellows,” said Mrs Crichton.
So, little pleasant plans were made, and Redhurst came back into Flossy’s life. Yet, as she walked home through the cold afternoon, the tears rolled down her cheeks. It seemed cruel for the home to be regaining its cheerfulness while Arthur was away, solitary and unhappy. Yet she, herself, how full her life was; how fast the world went on!
“And we forget because we must And not because we will,” thought Flossy, and in this mood Violante’s tears had surely met with warm sympathy.
Colonel and Mrs Dysart were called upon, and the family proved to be what is called in country neighbourhoods an “acquisition.” They had done up their house. Colonel Dysart hunted and was anxious to get some shooting. There were four sons and five daughters, all between nine and twenty-eight, ready to be sociable. Two of the girls went to school with Freddie; one of the elder ones was useful in the village; some among them rode, sang, and drew—it was worth while being attentive to them; and a promising acquaintance began to spring up. Even old Mrs Harcourt found visits from the children enlivening to her, and liked to give them winter apples and Christmas roses. It was a good thing, too, to have someone to take an interest in the choir, and the curate, whom Mr Harcourt’s age had recently rendered necessary, found work for the young ladies; while they spoke together with a certain tender curiosity of her whose sweet life and sad fate was already becoming a tradition, to give to the scenery of the tragedy a certain mournful interest, and to make the touching of Mysie’s doings and the taking-up of her duties something of a rare privilege. So, new lives and new possibilities were springing up, slowly and naturally, as the snowdrops began to peep on Mysie’s grave.
Hugh did not see much of the new comers; he was away all day, and did not always come out from Oxley in the evening; and he paid so little attention to the talk going on around him that he neither discovered the names and ages of the Dysarts, nor heard anything of the charms of Freddie’s new Italian teacher, whose youth and gentleness excited her surprise and delight. But one sunny morning, as he rode into Oxley, a little incident occurred to him. He was passing Oxley Manor, riding slowly under its ivied wall and thinking of nothing less than of its inhabitants, when, from one of the upper windows that looked out close on the road, something fell on his horse’s neck, and then down into the dust at his feet. Hugh looked down—it was a little bunch of violets; then glanced carelessly up at the windows with a laugh. “Those girls must be very hard up! What would Flossy say?” he thought. But no one peeped out to see what had become of her violets, and he rode on, amused as he recalled various boyish pranks of Jem’s and Arthur’s, and left the violets lying in the dust.