Amethyst: The Story of a Beauty

Lord and Lady Haredale declared that unless Lucian, and Mrs Leigh also, withdrew their suspicions at once and wholly, and apologised for having entertained them, they would not allow their daughter to continue her engagement. Amethyst herself, angered and hurt, ashamed and confounded, too inexperienced to follow the dictates of the love that ought to have been stronger than all else, wounded at Lucian’s doubts, and believing that the duty of hiding her mother’s disgrace came before the duty of being open with her lover, was passive and silent. Lucian, with intervals of passionate desire to give up everything rather than lose her, recurred again and again to his instinctive utterance, “She ought to tell me” well knowing that it was out of his power to endure the doubt that had fallen on her. So he fought back the impulse to trust her, as a temptation, and she fought back the longing to tell him, as a sin; and so, forced on by the determination of their elders, the fatal deed was completed. The packets of letters and presents were exchanged, the notes and telegrams to stop the wedding preparations were already being despatched, Amethyst had locked herself into her own room, feeling as if she could never show her face again, and Lucian, in his, was roughly throwing his things into a portmanteau, determining that months should elapse before he again saw Ashfield, if indeed he ever returned there at all, when Mr Riddell, unluckily absent from home all day on clerical business, drove himself back in the cool of the evening in his little pony-trap, his mind recurring to his son’s distress of mind on the night before. Presently he saw Sylvester coming along the road to meet him.

“Oh, father,” said the young man, as the pony pulled up, “this has been a miserable day.”

“What is it? Get in, and tell me about it,” said the Rector.

Sylvester nerved himself to tell the story clearly.

“We did see her. I cannot think otherwise,” he concluded. “But I would stake my soul on it, that there is some way out of the mystery.”

“My dear boy, it doesn’t do to begin married life with a mystery. Wait, and it may be solved yet.”

“Her life will be ruined!”

“No, I hope not; we must try to show her kindness, to help her. But, if all had gone smooth, and she had married Lucian, who can tell how it would have been? He is a good fellow; but she – ”

“She is more than good,” said Sylvester, under his breath, “but – ” then suddenly he flung up his head, and said passionately, “I would have run the risk.”

“I think,” said Mr Riddell, after a moment’s pause, “that I should try to look on this engagement as only delayed. If the attachment between them is of a sterling kind, it will survive much.”

“I expect Lucian will set himself to get over it,” said Sylvester. “He’ll think it a duty.”

He was pale, and had an agitated look, and his father glanced round at him for a moment.

“I think I should regard its renewal as still a possibility,” he said. “Here is the turn to the Mount, perhaps I had better go at once to Mrs Leigh.”

“And I to look after poor Lucy,” said Sylvester with some compunction.

But all the time he was wondering who would comfort Amethyst, and thinking that the woe that her beautiful eyes could express, would be deeper than Lucian’s nature was capable of feeling.

Perhaps he was wrong. Lucian was incapable of speech, indifferent to sympathy. He did not care just then whether Sylvester came to him or not. He would not let his mother say a word to him, except on the business necessary to be gone through; no friendship and no family affection could help him then. Like many happy, unemotional young people, he had taken all these sentiments for granted; the first conscious emotion he had known had been his ill-starred love, and now this love was changed into stinging, burning pain. He had once been for some shooting up to the West of Scotland, he would go there now and walk over the moors, and face it out by himself. It was impossible to oppose him, and Mrs Leigh spared him, as much as possible, the anxious cautions which she longed to give.

Mr Riddell attempted little but a squeeze of the hand and an earnest —

“God bless you, my dear boy, and bring good out of evil.”

“Thank you,” said Lucian. “I shall write, mother, and you know my address.”

“Take care of yourself, my dearest boy. If you would but have let me come with you.”

“I’d rather be alone. Good-bye,” said Lucian.

It was not pride, struggling to control emotion, it was simple incapacity to express, almost to feel, the blow that had come upon him.

Sylvester went to the station with him to meet the evening train, for Mrs Leigh’s satisfaction, and as they walked up and down the platform, waiting for it, Lucian said suddenly —

“Amethyst is very fond of the Rector and Miss Riddell, I hope they’ll go on being kind.”

“I am sure they will,” said Sylvester, starting at the name which had not yet had time to grow strange to Lucian’s lips. “And, Lucy, any time you send me a word, I’ll come to you.”

“Thanks,” said Lucian, “but I think I’d rather not have any one from here.”

“Well – I will write if – ”

“No,” said Lucian, suddenly and abruptly, “I don’t want to hear.”

Ungracious as the speeches sounded, they did not so strike Sylvester, even though Lucian parted from him with only an ordinary hand-shake, and with no softening of eye or lip.

He went away as he had said, by himself, and spun along through the long night hours, till the morning found him in fresh air, in new scenes, all his past ruined. He walked far and fast, climbed heights, and changed from one place to another, fished by way of occupation, fell in with a reading party of old college acquaintances and joined their expeditions, got invitations for future shooting, planned further travel, wrote short letters home, never about himself. He was exceptionally strong and vigorous, so that his health did not suffer from his trouble; he turned away as much as he could, both by instinct and of set purpose, from thoughts of his past happiness, indeed he thought very little of anything; but now and then he became suddenly conscious of intense misery, and once, poor fellow, as he sat alone on the heather, found himself, before he knew it, shedding bitter tears, not called up by any special image, but by a wave of desolate feeling. His mother wrote that she trusted that he would get over it, but he could not look forward to any change in a feeling that had once possessed him. It was there; why should it alter? But he began to wonder if he ever could “do his duty,” and live at Toppings by himself. What else could he do? He could not invent a new sort of life. He did not feel the least impulse to drown his trouble in any sort of dissipation. He hated London, and gaieties, and rowdyism of all sorts. He liked a country gentleman’s duties, varied with a good deal of sport. But he liked nothing now; he could not even imagine anything that he should like.

Chapter Sixteen

Better

The last day of July had come, the day that should have been the wedding-day was over and past, the fresh green turf of the Cleverley garden was brown and dry, with long hours of scorching sunshine, the flowers looked hot and overblown in the blazing afternoon light. Some empty chairs, and a tea-table with empty tea-cups, stood on the edge of a group of trees, and on the rug in front of them lay Una in a faded shabby frock, and with a face in which there seemed to be no girlish freshness remaining. Her long hair hung heavily round her, her eyes stared wearily out of their dark circles; she had nothing to do but to play with every morbid and unwholesome fancy that can enter the brain of an ill-trained and unhappy girl.

Tony’s wedding-day was fixed. He did not love her now. By and by, when she was grown-up, she would meet him, and make him care for her again, if she didn’t die first. Why not drown herself in the pond in the wood? Una pictured the plunge, the stillness, and herself and her hair floating on the top, like ‘The Christian Martyr.’ But Amethyst did not love her now. How should she? Her life was a ruin too; dying would be much better for them both. Una thought again of the cool dark pond in the wood, with a sense of desire; but her exceeding weariness and languor kept her still. It was not worth while to get up, even to commit suicide.

As she lay still, getting a dreary sort of amusement out of these miserable fancies, she saw Amethyst come out of the house, walk slowly across the brown scorched grass, and sit down on one of the chairs, without noticing her sister’s presence.

She sat perfectly still, with a hard unsmiling face, at variance with the gay trim dress in which she had been entertaining some recent visitors. They were gone, and she could sit still now, and think – think the bitter thoughts in which her cruel disappointment took form.

All that she had lost, still more all that she now had left, passed before her mind, and was weighed in the balance. She had no illusions now. Perhaps the bitterest drop was not so much the loss of Lucian, as the sense that he ought to have read her more truly. He himself had failed her. As for her mother, her eyes were as clear as Tory’s; and her heart, how hard and bitter! And the days had to go on. It was not only that she was not Lucian’s happy wife, she was Amethyst Haredale, with parents whom she despised, and a house in which no good thing could flourish; and yet, her aunt’s anxious entreaty to join her as soon as she would, had no attraction for her. Religion – goodness? Mrs Leigh and Lucian were good and religious, and had cruelly misjudged her. Were good people really much better than bad ones? She had thought herself religious; but she had got below all the religion that she had ever experienced, and with the distrust of all earthly love, came also distrust of the Divine love, from which she had scarcely distinguished it. Amethyst was one of those, to whom trouble comes, not only in vague and overwhelming feelings, but in keen sharp thoughts; and, young as she was, her thoughts hit life’s hard problems like well-aimed arrows.

“Well, Amethyst, do you think, now, there’s any good in being good?”

Una’s voice, with a hard ring through its weary languor, roused her with a start.

“Una! Why do you lie there in the sun? It’s very bad for you!” she said petulantly.

“Suppose it is, what does it matter? There’s nothing doing, and nothing worth living for, that I can see. You can’t say there is.”

“You ought not to say things like that, Una,” said Amethyst. “It is not right.”

“As if being right mattered!” said Una, and then with a sudden change the ready tears filled her eyes. “I am so – so miserable,” she sobbed, “and you are unkind to me now, Amethyst. The children tease me, and you don’t care for me now.”

Amethyst looked round at her. It was quite true. She had not cared. Even now she felt impatient of the trouble that was like a caricature of her own.

“It’s natural you should hate me, when I did all the mischief. But oh, I did try to make up for it – I did!”

“Nonsense!” said Amethyst. “I don’t hate you, but I don’t know that I can say anything to do you any good.”

She started up, and walked away as she spoke, her nerves were all on edge, her temper irritated, her conscience beginning to struggle with her sense of injury. The craving for Lucian came over her, as, with unconscious force, she said to herself, “like a flood of hot lava.” How could she think about other people? She escaped from the sight of Una, and walked along the little path across the fields, towards the village. Then the place recalled the beginning of her troubles. She had come this way to post the fatal letter which Sylvester Riddell had seen. She believed Sylvester to be her worst enemy, and it was with a sense of angry recoil that she saw his father and aunt coming to meet her. What part they had taken, if any, in her affairs, she did not know, and she had seen neither of them since the party at Loseby. Probably they thought that she was a bad girl, and would show it in their manner to her. She stiffened up her head, and would have passed with a bow; but the Rector, who was nearest to her, stopped, raised his hat, and held out his hand.

“How do you do, my dear?” he said in his kindest voice; “my sister was coming to ask a little favour of you.”

“It is this,” said Miss Riddell, without waiting for Amethyst to speak; “I want to interest some of the young girls about here in improving their minds. There are a good many in Cleverley without much object in life; I think some of them might be encouraged to work for an examination. As your experience is so fresh, and you were so successful, I wondered if you would come to tea to-morrow afternoon, and tell us a little about it.”

“So fresh?” Yes, only three months old; but what a fiery gulf seemed to roll between. Amethyst was quick enough to see that this proposal was meant most kindly as a link with her old life, and also, to show the neighbourhood that, in the opinion of the Rectory, Miss Haredale was an example to be followed, a companion to be desired.

She hesitated and was silent.

“The kindness would be very great,” said the Rector. Miss Riddell moved a little away, and he continued, “You have had a great trial, nothing seems attractive to you now. Will this be more than you are ready for?”

“I don’t feel as if I could remember about it,” said Amethyst, with a sudden impulse, the change in her face showing that she was still child enough to be touched by the first kind word.

“No, my dear, but don’t you think it would be good for you to recall it?”

“I can’t be good, I wasn’t made to be,” said Amethyst, in a tone which she thought was wickedly defiant, but which really showed confidence in her listener’s comprehension.

“No, my dear,” said the Rector again; “very few of us are. But we are all made to be a little better by effort, and prayer.”

“I am worse,” said Amethyst, tears filling her eyes, while her whole figure trembled.

“Yes, no doubt; but I think you will find it possible to make each day a little better. And I have always found it worth while, Amethyst. It makes all the difference in the long run between one man and another. I am sure there is a better and a worse before you in life, my dear, even if you think there is not a very good.”

Perhaps this was the consolation of age rather than of youth. But it came to Amethyst as a truth. It might not be worth while to be a little less self-absorbed, a little less wretched; but she knew that it was possible.

“God bless you, my dear child, and good-bye,” said Mr Riddell, “you shall come or not to the Rectory to-morrow, as you like.”

Miss Riddell went away with only a kind smile and hand-shake, and Amethyst, left alone, burst into a rain of tears. The kindness, the sense of trust in the speakers had been like her native tongue in a foreign land. It was natural; while her own people were strange. She remembered the kind of girl she used to be, as if her girlhood were twenty years away; bliss and misery had alike blotted it out.

But the habits and the instincts of her whole training were not utterly killed; the sense of duty began to lift its head. It was better to be kind to Una, and to show her that there was “a better” in life, than to acquiesce in her despair. It was better to read history, and to practise or to walk with the girls, than to sit alone and brood over her injuries, or to read, in the novels left about by her mother, of far worse injuries leading to worse despair, to learn from these books to what her infant passions were akin, and to bite deeper into the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge – of herself. Of course, she did not put it so. “It was better not to feel like those wicked people, at least not to think of feeling like them.” And slowly and dully she turned her steps homewards through the wood; a bad way to come, since she and Lucian had loved it together. Oh, what was he doing? Did he feel as if life was done? Perhaps the most agonising moment she had known, was when the conviction came to her that it was not in him to feel as she did.

“If I had thought that he had gambled or betted, or been wicked, I would have held on tighter, to help him to be good. But he gave up me!”

“But if you had thought he was faithless to you?” came an answering voice in her soul. It was no thought, but an impulse of fury, that seized upon Amethyst in reply. And then —

“But I could not think so, he could not be bad, he could not be false. But oh, he is – he is – for he has no faith in me. ‘Better!’ There’s no ‘better.’ If he were to come back now, if he ever finds out and believes, I shall never forget?”

She flung herself down on the ground, on the bank where they had sat together by the little pool where they had fished for water-lilies, where they had exchanged forget-me-nots; the very revival of spirit, caused by the friendly words, making her grief more articulate, and for the moment more bitter.

Her tears were dried up; she lay with her hands clenched in the grass, absolutely still. Suddenly a rustling, creeping sound came among the herbs and water-weeds near, then panting, sobbing breath.

Amethyst lifted her head. Not twenty yards from her stood Una, her hands clasped, her eyes fixed on the water, her foot extended. Amethyst sprang to her feet, Una gave a violent start, and either lost her balance and fell, or suddenly jumped into the water.

“Una, Una!” screamed Amethyst, all else forgotten in a moment. She scrambled through the rushes, and caught at her sister’s hands and dress.

Una was on her feet, the water was shallow, but the bottom was soft and muddy; she sank to her knees, and Amethyst, her own foothold insecure in the rushes, could not hold her up.

The young life woke up strong in them both, they screamed and struggled; Amethyst slipped off the bank up to her knees in the pool. As the cold water, the slimy mud, touched her feet, the warm sun struck on her head, the light and the blue of the sky were round and over her.

“Oh, God – oh, God! I don’t want to die! Oh, save us! oh, save us!” she cried.

There was a ringing shout.

“Stand still – stand still! For your lives, don’t struggle! It’s all right, I’ll help you!” And Sylvester Riddell came with a rush towards them, set his foot on a firmer tuft of rushes, grasped Una by the waist, and lifted her, sobbing and shaking, on to dry land, then pulled Amethyst out of the water, and in another moment they were safe on a mass of chervil, campion, stitchwort and sting-nettles high above the water’s edge, wet and miserable, covered with mud and water-weed.

Half an hour later, Sylvester came back to the Rectory with a rapid step and brilliant eyes, but with an amount of mud on his trousers that required explanation. This he gave in rather an off-hand fashion. Una Haredale had slipped into the pond, gathering lilies he supposed, and he had helped her sister to pull her out.

“Was she hurt?” said Miss Riddell, rather curiously.

“No, but she was faint and frightened, and wet through. I helped Miss Haredale to get her home. It was an awkward accident.”

It seemed, however, to have raised Sylvester’s spirits, which had been down to zero of late. He was going abroad with a friend, but he had lingered and put off his start in the hope of once more seeing Amethyst, a sight which he had nevertheless dreaded unspeakably. They had met now, with no time for resentment or embarrassment, and his one feeling was that she was now free. He saw her once again; for she came to the Rectory on the next afternoon, just as he was setting out on his journey.

The weather had changed, and the sky was grey. Amethyst wore a grey frock and hat. She was pale, and looked much less pretty than usual, and her manner was cold, and, he fancied, showed displeasure.

Sylvester’s train was due, he could only shake hands and inquire for her sister.

“She was very much upset and frightened; but she has not been well lately. We must take much more care of her, then I hope she will be better.”

With the last word, she lifted her eyes for a moment to the Rector’s face as he stood behind his son; but they did not meet Sylvester’s, and in a moment she had passed into the drawing-room out of his sight.

He thought of her, as he had seen her first with the glowing amethysts on her brow and neck, an angelic vision; at the primrose-picking, a fresh and joyous girl; when he had come home at Midsummer, happy and proud in her betrothal; at the fatal garden-party, with eyes that had fallen before his own, with a cloud of doubt on her face. He had admired her, idealised her, and, he knew it now, all the while he had loved her, and yet his fate had given him a share in breaking her heart. Now he had seen her again, pale and sad, in the light of common day.

Sylvester took his ticket for London, labelled his luggage, got into the train, and exchanged a newspaper with a friend.

But, in his heart, he vowed himself to Amethyst’s service, he took her for the lady of his love, as if with her colours in his helmet, he had ridden forth to cry her name in the battle-field, and die with it on his lips.

Chapter Seventeen

“Iris.”

One sunny afternoon in spring, Lucian Leigh was sitting on a bench in the garden at Ashfield Mount. Nearly two years had passed since he had left Cleverley in the agony of his great disappointment, and he had now come back to it for the first time.

The flowers were as gay as when he had walked among them during the brief days of his betrothal, the house looked as cheerful and comfortable as of old; the great deer-hound that sat at his feet was unchanged during his absence, but Lucian himself had grown from youth to manhood, and though the expression of his impassive, regular-featured face had changed but little, it was so effectually bronzed, that hair, and even eyes, showed light against the sunburn.

He sat still and smoked, and patted Donald’s head – he liked the feel of it – till footsteps approached, and he was hailed from the neighbouring shrubbery.

“Ha, Syl!” he said, jumping up, “so there you are. Glad to see you.”

“I’m uncommonly glad to see you,” said Sylvester, grasping his hand. “I began to think you were never coming home any more, but were permanently given over to tigers and elephants. Did you like India?”

“No,” said Lucian, “the big game is the only thing worth going there for. I’ve had a shot, I believe, at everything there is there to shoot at I know all the tracks of them, but so do so many other men. Now I think of trying bears in the Rockies for a change; and I should like to go north – an arctic expedition would be rather jolly.”

“You want to add a polar bear’s hide to all the tiger skins you have sent home to adorn the hall at Toppings, before you settle down to pot your own partridges.”

“Yes,” said Lucian.

“But what does Mrs Leigh say to that?”

“She doesn’t like it. She wants me to go to London now, and, as she calls it, ‘keep up our old connection,’ and then keep open house at Toppings in the autumn, have shoots, and so on. I have been there with her now, you know, for two months.”

“And you don’t see it?”

“No, not yet. I must, of course, finally. But Evans is a very good agent, and the Rectory people look after the tenants. I subscribe properly to everything, – schools, and hunt, and county show, and so on; but I’m not going to live there now. Why should I?”

“Well, you might see a little more of the world first, certainly.”

“In two years’ time Miss Carisbrooke comes of age, and the lease of this house will be up. The mother will have to make a new start somewhere then, and it will be time for Kate, at any rate, to come out. That ought to be in our own neighbourhood, so I must be in England then.”

“Does Miss Carisbrooke mean to live here?”

“I believe so. My mother had her to stay here, and liked her, before I came home. You might try your luck, Syl, she’s a catch. Her only relation is a youngish uncle, her guardian. I believe he lives abroad a good deal.”

Lucian paused, then said —

“She has been living for the last year with that old Miss Haredale, who lost her money. She chaperons Miss Carisbrooke, and is to bring her out, I believe, in London this year.”

There was a little silence. Perhaps it had been from a kind of embarrassment that Lucian had at once rained facts upon Sylvester, and put him in possession of his intentions. Now he said —