Amethyst: The Story of a Beauty

A lady was recommended by Miss Riddell to come every morning and teach the three girls, and though Amethyst did not exactly share in the lessons, she talked about them, and helped in the preparation of them, and made them the fashion, and Tory at least began, as she had said, to find education interesting. This home-life went on as a background during all the ensuing weeks, when outer interests began to assert themselves, and the flood of life for Amethyst rolled on fast and full.

But all along, and at first especially, there were many intervals filled up with teaching her sisters the delights of country walks and primrose-pickings; with reading her favourite books to them, stirring them up about their lessons, and, all unintentionally, in giving them something else to think of than the vagaries of their elders’ life.

A “school-room” had really been provided for them, high up in one of the corners of the house, with a window in its angle which caught the sun all day, and looked over the pretty, rough open country in which Cleverley lay. Here, with flowers and books and girlish rummage, was the most home-like spot the Haredale girls had ever known; and here late one sunny afternoon lounged Una, curled up in the corner of an old sofa – doing, as was still too often the case, absolutely nothing.

Suddenly a light step came flying up the stairs, and Amethyst ran into the room, and stood before her in the full glory of the early evening sunlight, saying in her fresh girlish voice —

“Look, Una – look!”

Amethyst was already in her white dinner-dress, and round her neck was clasped a broad band of glowing purple jewels. Stars of deep lustrous colour gleamed in her hair and on her bosom, her eyes shone in the sunshine, which poured its full glory on her innocent eager face, which in that clear and searching light seemed to share with the jewels a sort of heavenly radiance, a splendour of light and colour from a fairer and purer world.

“Amethyst,” exclaimed Una, starting up, “you look like an angel.”

Amethyst laughed, and stepping out of the sunlight, came and knelt down by Una’s side; no longer a heavenly vision of light and colour, but a happy-faced girl, decorated with quaint and splendid ornaments of amethysts set with small diamonds.

“Mamma says that she has given me my own jewels. She says she was so fond of these beautiful stones that she made up her mind to call me after them, and I am to wear them whenever I can. Aren’t they lovely?”

“Yes,” said Una; “I didn’t know my lady had them still. They’re just fit for you.”

Amethyst took off the splendid necklet, and held it in her hands.

“They’re too beautiful to be vain of,” she said, dreamily. “It’s rather nice to have a stone and colour of one’s own. I used to think amethysts and purple rather dull when we chose favourites at school. Amethyst means temperance, you know. It’s a dull meaning, but I expect it’s a very useful one for me now.”

“Why, what do you mean?” said Una.

“Well!” said Amethyst, “I do enjoy everything so very much. I feel as if music, and dancing, and going out with mother, and having pretty things to wear, would be so very delightful. So if the most delightful things of all remind me that I mustn’t let myself go, but be temperate in all things, it ought to be getting some good out of the beauty, oughtn’t it?”

Amethyst spoke quite simply, as one to whom various little methods of self-discipline were as natural a subject of discussion as various methods of study.

“I hope you’ll never look different from what you did just now,” said Una, in a curious strained voice, and laying her head on her sister’s shoulder; “but it’s all going to begin.”

“Why, Una, what is it?” as the words ended in a stifled sob. “Headache again? You naughty child, I’m sure you want tonics, or sea air, or something. And I wish you would let me plait all this hair into a tail, it is much too hot and heavy for you.”

“Oh no, no! not now,” said Una, now fairly crying, “not just now – let it alone. I don’t want to be grown-up!”

“A tail doesn’t look grown-up,” said Amethyst in a matter-of-fact voice. “Any way there’s nothing to cry about. If you want to come down and see the people after dinner, you must lie still now and rest. But you ought to go to bed early, and get a good-night. When people cry for nothing, it shows they’re ill.”

“I dare say it does, but I’m not ill,” said Una.

“Then you’re silly,” said Amethyst, with cheerful briskness; but Una did not resent the tone. She gave Amethyst a long clinging kiss, and then lay back on the sofa; while her sister went off to arrange the jewels to her satisfaction, in preparation for the first state dinner-party at which she was to make her appearance.

Chapter Six

Historical Types

“Well, father – how goes the world in Cleverley? How are you getting on with the charming but undesirable family at the Hall, of whom Aunt Meg writes to me?”

Sylvester Riddell and his father were walking up and down the centre path of the Rectory kitchen-garden, smoking an after-breakfast pipe together, between borders filled with tulips, daffodils, polyanthuses, and other spring flowers, behind which espaliers were coming into blossom, and early cabbages and young peas sprouting up in fresh and orderly rows. The red tower of the church looked over a tall hedge of lilac trees, and beyond was the little street, soon leading into fields and open, prettily-wooded country, rising into low hills in the distance.

Sylvester had just arrived for a few days’ visit from Oxbridge, where he had recently obtained a first-class, a fellowship, and an appointment as tutor of his college. His father and grandfather had both been scholars, and such honours seemed to them almost the hereditary right of their family.

Sylvester inherited from his father long angular limbs, rugged but well-formed features, and brown skin. But the dreamy look, latent in the father’s fine grey eyes, was habitual in the son’s; while a certain humorous twinkle in their corners had had less time to develop itself, and was much less apparent in the younger man’s face.

The old Rector had shaggy grey hair, eyebrows, and whiskers; he had grown stout, and his everyday clothes were somewhat loose and shabby. Sylvester had brown hair, cut short, and was close shaved, and his dress was neat, and did his tailor credit. Still, the father’s youth was closely recalled by this son of his old age, and the two found each other congenial spirits.

The fox-terrier that barked in front of them, and the old collie that paced soberly behind, turned eyes of kindness alike on both, the great grey cat rubbed against both pairs of trousers, and the old gardener lay in wait to show Sylvester his side of a dispute with “master” as to the clipping of the lilac hedges.

Fifty years or so ago the Rector of Cleverley had been a young undergraduate, remarkable for the fine scholarship and elegant verse-making of his day, but with a touch of genius that made him differ from his fellows; careless, simple, and untidy, yet fond of society and good fellowship, full of the romance and sentiment of his day, – a man who admired pretty women, but had only one lasting love, from whom circumstances had divided him till he married her late in life, and lost her soon after Sylvester’s birth.

When, on his marriage, he took the living of Cleverley, he became an excellent parish priest, the personal friend of all his flock, and deeply beloved by them; a little shy of modern organisation, and more hard on his curates for mispronouncing Greek names than on many worse offenders. He was a gentleman, and a man of the world who had other experiences than those of parochial life, and belonged to a race of clergy more common in the last generation than in this one.

Sylvester was meant to be much the same sort of person as his father; but he was born in a grave and more self-conscious age. He had all the Rector’s cordial kindliness, and much of his keen insight; but the romantic, dreamy side of the character was both more carefully hidden and stronger in the younger man. The sentiment of the eighth decade of the nineteenth century was less cheerful and light-hearted than that of the third or fourth. The Rector had been among those who still laughed and sighed with Moore, and smiled with Praed (he had not been the sort of man to give himself over to Byron). He had fallen in love with the miller’s and the gardener’s fair daughters in the early days of Tennyson. Sylvester dived into Browning, and dreamed with Rossetti. He was haunted by ideals which he did not hope to realise; and, moreover, felt himself compelled frequently to pretend that he had no ideals at all.

And although he had worked hard to attain his university distinctions, he took the duties they involved somewhat lightly, and hardly found in his profession a sufficient interest and aim in life, fulfilling its claims in fact in a somewhat formal fashion.

He was, however, a very affectionate son, and was delighted to find himself at home again, and full of curiosity as to the new-comers at Cleverley Hall.

“Are they as charming as they appeared at first sight?” he asked.

“My dear boy,” said the Rector in a confidential tone, “they are very charming. But I’m sorry for the little girl. There’s something ideal about her. But it’s a bad stock, Syl, a bad stock!”

“So I’ve always heard,” said Sylvester, slightly amused at his father’s tone of reluctant admiration. “But what’s amiss with them? We’re to dine there to-night, I believe?”

“Yes,” said the Rector, “and we shall have a very pleasant evening. You see, my dear boy, the ladies here are rather pleased with Lady Haredale. They were prejudiced – very much prejudiced against her. Now they say she is much nicer and quieter than they expected, and they believe that the reports about her are exaggerated. But they don’t see that she is so handsome. The fact is, you know, Syl,” and here Mr Riddell paused in his walk and spoke in confidential accents, “that she belongs to another order of women altogether – to the fascinating women of history, and her beauty is a fact quite beyond discussion. But she’s not a good woman, Sylvester, and never will be.”

“The fascinating women of history,” said Sylvester – “Cleopatra, and others, were perhaps a little deficient in moral backbone. But I’m sure, father, Lady Haredale must be a charming hostess. I quite look forward to the party to-night. So she outshines her daughter, I suppose.”

“My dear boy,” said Mr Riddell, “there’s something about that little girl that goes to one’s heart. What is to become of her?”

“But what is it that is so dangerous about Lady Haredale?” said Sylvester. “She doesn’t appear to offend the proprieties.”

“She has no principle, Syl – not a stiver,” said the Rector, “and I like the look of none of their friends. So, my dear boy, I wouldn’t advise you to get drawn into the set too much. They’re very sociable and hospitable. Young Leigh seems a good deal attracted.”

“Old Lucy? Really? Has he succumbed to the historical type of fascination? The young lady must be charming indeed. But, father, I am immensely interested. I must study these historical ladies – at a distance, of course. But there’s Aunt Meg. I must go and ask her how the parish is getting on.”

Miss Riddell, who represented the practical element in the household and family, honestly said that she liked gossip. Sylvester called it studying life. In both, it was really kindly interest in old friends and neighbours.

But to-day, she was so much taken up with the new-comers, and evidently admired them so much, that Sylvester prepared for the dinner-party with much curiosity. As he followed his father and aunt into the long low drawing-room, he was struck at once by its more tasteful and cheerful appearance than when he had last seen it, and by the lively murmur of conversation that filled it, and, as he advanced to receive Lady Haredale’s greeting, he did not think that she was splendidly dressed, or startlingly fashionable, but he perceived at once that she was a great beauty. She introduced “my eldest daughter,” and Sylvester saw, standing by her side, a tall girl, in the simplest of white gowns, but with splendid jewels clasping her slender throat, and shining in her hair. She smiled, and looked at him with the most cordial friendliness, and she struck him as quite unlike the general run of young ladies, with her lithe graceful figure, her full soft lips, and her clear spiritual eyes.

“I know what it is,” thought Sylvester, “she is Rossetti’s ideal; but he never reached her. She is the maiden that Chiaro saw. But she is also a happy girl. By Jove! no wonder the dad was so impressive!”

Presently Mrs Leigh and her son arrived to complete the party, and were greeted by Amethyst as well-established acquaintances.

Sylvester knew Lucian Leigh well, had been at school with him, and believed him to be, in all points, a good fellow. But as he watched him making small talk with greater ease than usual to the young lady, it struck Sylvester as a new idea that it was a pity that Lucian’s appearance was so deceptive; he had not at all the sort of character suggested by the first sight of his face. But that the two faces harmonised well as they sat side by side at the table, was indisputable.

Presently, he saw Amethyst turn to the Rector, who sat on her left hand, and begin to talk to him with pretty respectful courtesy. Evidently she did not think it well-behaved to be absorbed in her younger companion, and Mr Riddell succeeded in amusing her, for she laughed and looked interested, and he evidently put forward his best powers of pleasing.

Sylvester looked with curiosity at the rest of the company. Some, of course, were well-known neighbours; others, strangers staying in the house, who did not greatly take his fancy. The most prominent of these was a middle-aged, military-looking man, who was introduced as Major Fowler, and who struck Sylvester as a specimen of the ‘bad style’ which had been sought for in vain in Lady Haredale and her daughter. Lady Haredale called him Tony, and he seemed on intimate terms in the house, especially with the younger girls, who were found in the drawing-room after dinner – Una with a bright colour in her usually pale cheeks, and a sudden flow of childish chatter. Presently Victoria, with an air of infantine confidence, came up to Sylvester and said —

“Please, are there any primroses growing here?”

“Primroses! why yes; haven’t you seen them?”

“We have never gathered any primroses, we want to go and get some. Will you show us the way?” said Tory, looking up in his face.

“Oh, Tory,” said Amethyst, who, passing near, heard this request; “there are plenty of primroses which we can find quite easily.”

“But I should be delighted to show you the best places for them,” said Sylvester, with alacrity.

“Mr Leigh will come too,” said Tory, turning to Lucian. “We’re Cockneys, we want to be taught to enjoy the country, mother says so.”

“We’ll have a grand primrose picnic,” said Lucian. “My sisters will come too. Miss Haredale, do let us show you your first primrose.”

“Oh, I have gathered plenty of primroses,” said Amethyst, smiling, but with a blush and a puzzled look, as if she did not quite know what it behoved her to say. “But one cannot have too many,” she added after a moment.

The primrose gathering was arranged for the next day, ostensibly between the Miss Haredales, and the girls from Ashfield, escorted by their governess.

“But,” said Tory afterwards with a knowing look, “we shan’t have to gather them by ourselves, you’ll see.”

“Tory!” exclaimed Amethyst, “you should not have asked Mr Riddell and Mr Leigh to come and gather primroses with us! And how could you say that you did not know where they grew, when we got some yesterday?”

“Oh, they’ll like to come,” said Tory, “and I’m quite little enough to ask them.”

She made an indescribable face at Amethyst, and walked away as she spoke.

“Did you like your first party, my pretty girl?” said Lady Haredale, putting a caressing hand on Amethyst’s shoulder.

“Oh yes, mamma, it was delightful.”

“I am going to be the old mother now, you know, Tony. It is this child’s turn now.”

“You will have a great deal of satisfaction in teaching her,” said Tony, with an intonation which Amethyst did not understand, and a look she did not like.

But, as she shut herself into her own room, the images in her mind were full of colour and brightness. She felt that she had begun to live. The manifold relations of family life, the new acquaintances, even the new dresses and jewels, filled her with interest and pleasure so great that it brought a pang of remorse.

“Poor auntie!” she thought, “and now she is dull, without me!”

And, being too much excited to sleep, she sat down to write some of her first eager impressions to Miss Haredale; till, at what seemed to her a wickedly late hour, she heard a light soft foot in the passage.

She opened the door softly, and there was Una, still in her white evening frock, with shining eyes and burning cheeks, starting nervously at sight of her sister.

“Una! Do you know how late it is? Where have you been? How your head will ache to-morrow!”

“I’ve been in the smoking-room and I’ve smoked a cigarette, and tasted a brandy-and-soda!” said Una, with a touch of Tory’s wicked defiance.

“Would mother let you?” said Amethyst slowly.

“Oh yes!” said Una, shrugging her shoulders, “but I shan’t let you!”

She flung her arms round Amethyst and kissed her with burning lips, then scuttled away into her own room.

Chapter Seven

No Cunning to be Strange

“When do you suppose Amethyst will find my lady out?” said Kattern and Tory, as they started for the primrose-picking the next day, and Amethyst ran back again to beg her mother to drive round to the wood and join them.

“Not yet,” said Tory, “my lady is making up to her, as much as ever she did to any man she ever went in for, and Amethyst would believe black was white just at present.”

“I’d like to see her face, if we told her what my lady is really like.”

“You are not to tell her,” said Una, suddenly turning round upon them, “I won’t have it. Let her be happy while she can; I shall tell her, when I think it proper.”

Una looked languid and dull to-day. She did not care for gathering primroses, and she was not strong enough to enjoy long out-door expeditions. She watched Amethyst, with a look on her face, and thoughts in her heart, which would much have astonished the elder girl if she had noticed the one, or guessed at the other.

Amethyst good-naturedly patronised Kate and Gertie Leigh, girls matching in age with Kattern and Tory; she made friends with their governess, who had recently been the head girl at a rival school to Saint Etheldred’s, and was discussing the honours respectively gained by the two institutions at all the recent examinations, with the heartiest interest, when the party was enlarged by the arrival of Miss Riddell and her nephew, and Mrs Leigh and her son. Lady Haredale, Major Fowler, and some of the other guests at Cleverley also turned up. It was a day of rare spring loveliness, blue sky, young green leaves, and springing flowers.

“A day of beginnings,” Sylvester Riddell said, as he noted the budding oak trees, the unfolding blossoms, the opening intercourse that was still in its first spring.

“You like the woods?” he said to Amethyst.

“Oh yes,” she said, “I like everything here; you can’t think how pleasant beginning to be at home is.”

“I suppose you are making several beginnings,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, “I am beginning to know my sisters – and every one here – and next week I am going to my first ball.”

“Beginnings are very charming when they do not imply endings,” said Sylvester tritely; but he was thinking so much of the lovely slender girl before him that he spoke half mechanically.

“That can never be,” said Amethyst, with sudden gravity. “My school-days are ended, and my living with my aunt. Beginnings must come out of endings – but then they are beginnings,” she added; and stooping, she picked a primrose, round which still lingered the large faded leaves of last year, and showed it to him, with a grave smile on her soft young lips.

Sylvester never forgot her as she stood there, dressed all in mossy green that harmonised with the woods. He had a dim sense that a beginning was coming to him, as he took the fresh primrose and the faded leaf out of her hand.

“One ought to be able to spin a poem out of this,” he said; but just then Lucian Leigh came springing down the bank, a picturesque figure in his brown suit, and looking, as the little girls climbed and scrambled after him, as like a young wood god, as Amethyst was like a wood nymph.

“They matched exactly,” Sylvester thought, as they drew by instinct together, and through all the merry afternoon, seemed the motive of the picture, the centre of the piece.

“It is quite charming to be so rustic,” said Lady Haredale; while Tory and Kattern forgot about being charming as they scrambled about with their contemporaries, and Amethyst drank in happiness with the sun and the air. To-day was indeed a delightful beginning.

It began a great deal. Lady Haredale was a person who liked something to be always going on, and hardly a day passed without some little scheme of pleasure, some opportunity for meetings something that gave colour and brightness to the days. Distant neighbours seemed to come nearer, and Cleverley had never been so gay within the memory of man.

Yet it all seemed quite simple. Lady Haredale, the Cleverley ladies said, liked simple pleasures, and freely owned that she must have inexpensive ones. There was the county ball for a climax, and various set entertainments given at the country houses round for salient points; but Lady Haredale did little but keep open house in a sort of free and easy way. Lord Haredale was a good deal absent in London, and Major Fowler, so old a family friend, acted as a sort of deputy master of the house, showed the young men the way to the sideboard, set games of billiards on foot, took a hand at whist in the evenings. Sometimes, when there were young people, they all played round games, and put three penny bits into the pool. It could not be true, that whisper of Lady Haredale playing for high stakes and losing money, or she could not have laughed so merrily over the threepenny “vingt-un with variations.”

Then, when the wind was cold after playing tennis, for which the season was still early, she made such pretty fun over producing champagne and claret cup at afternoon tea, that, though such was not the Cleverley custom except at large garden-parties, there seemed nothing to wonder at; – though it was a pity that so young a girl as Una Haredale should be allowed to drink it.

Lady Haredale did not dress too youthfully, or try to keep her beautiful daughter in the background; on the contrary, everything was arranged to make a good time for Amethyst; Lady Haredale chose her dresses with the utmost care, and taught her how to arrange them becomingly, with so outspoken a delight in the girl’s beauty as almost rendered her flattery harmless. Those were happy weeks. Now and then came little shocks and startling incidents; but they fell on unheeding ears.

A very few words are enough to tell Amethyst’s story. She and Lucian Leigh fell in love with each other; suddenly, rapturously, without delay or misgiving, almost at the first sight of each other’s fair faces, almost with the first sense of an answering stir in each other’s souls, Lucian courted her in a quiet but most unmistakable fashion; and soon, life for Amethyst meant his presence, his words and looks. She was carried off her feet, caught out of herself. Even as she knew “what made the assembly shine” for her, she was well assured that she “made the ball fine” for him. She did not remain unconscious or ignorant of what had befallen her. Love did not come to her with slow, cautious, and imperceptible footsteps, he caught her in a sweet frenzy, which left no space for misgivings; while her quickly answering warmth probably hastened and intensified the passion, which might have seemed alien to Lucian’s slower and shyer nature.

A few social meetings and games of tennis together – one or two encounters “by chance,” which yet were so important that it seemed as if the whole course of life must have been arranged to bring them about – a sunny Sunday or two, in the same church, singing the same hymns – a belief in each other’s goodness, so that no misgivings troubled their joy in each other’s charms, scraps of talk – wonderful glances – the county ball, where Amethyst’s success woke Lucian to the sudden fear of rivalry, and where the world began to say that she was a great beauty – a dance the next night at a neighbour’s house – a long, long waltz together, then, dim lights, heavy-scented flowers, a wonderful sense of being alone, after the crowd of dancers; then feelings found words, words hardly needed, his arms were round her, his kiss on her lips, and, after scarcely a doubt or a fear, in three short weeks, in a dozen meetings, Amethyst’s heart was won, her promise given, and all her story, as she believed, told.