Amethyst: The Story of a Beauty

“I do not think it is, Mr Leigh,” said Lady Haredale. “You have refused to accept her word as to the nature of her interview with Major Fowler. I will not say anything about Mrs Leigh’s extraordinary misapprehension, or what motive she may have had in bringing it forward; but, unless you at once withdraw all your suspicions, and apologise to my daughter for your words this morning, neither Lord Haredale nor myself will allow her to continue her engagement.”

Lucian could not fail to see that this speech was intended to offend him, and, taken in conjunction with Lady Haredale’s previous excuses, that it was intended to conceal the truth. He turned away from her, and caught Amethyst roughly by both hands.

“What have you to say?” he said. “You must tell me the truth. If you don’t, I shall go mad. I do believe you, I will believe you, but you must speak out. You owe it to me to make everything clear.”

“It can never be clear,” said Amethyst. “I don’t think you could trust me, and so – if that’s so – we had better part.”

She spoke calmly, and looked him full in the face; he showed much more emotion, turning white and red, and losing the thread of what he meant to say. He dropped her hands, and walked over to the window, leaning against the shutter for a moment or two, and trying to collect himself enough to speak. At last he turned round and said —

“I see it in this way. I couldn’t stand any mystery about my wife. I should not forget it. Amethyst, tell me.”

The misery of the doubt showed itself in stern displeasure. He looked so hard a judge with his clear eyes and frowning brows, that Amethyst, angered and embittered already by the dreadful experience she had undergone, felt that, having once doubted, he would never have faith again.

“Then you had better not marry me,” she said. “I think you have every right to distrust me; but since you do, I will never marry you. I dare say I am bad – or shall be; I will not injure you.”

She turned and went out of the room, with a sudden movement, and in the instant’s pause that followed, they heard her girlish rush up the long staircase before Lady Haredale said —

“It is your own fault, Mr Leigh; my daughter is above suspicion.”

“No, Lady Haredale,” said Lucian, fiercely, “that cannot be under the circumstances. There is no more to be said.”

He went out by the open window, walking with long strides across the bright sunny lawn, away from the place that had been as a Paradise to him, leaving all the trustful joy of his young life behind him.

Chapter Fifteen

All Over

Matters did not end at once. Interview after interview filled up the rest of that miserable day. Lord Haredale came down from London, apparently already determined to break off the engagement. Mrs Leigh’s determination went steadily in the same direction. She scouted Una’s letter as a manifest falsehood, of a piece with the story of the purse, and declared that nothing would induce her to accept Lady Haredale’s daughter as her son’s wife. As Lucian would not own himself convinced, she proposed a private appeal to Major Fowler, but this he fiercely negatived, saying that the facts were valueless, except as coming from Amethyst herself, and also that Major Fowler could do nothing but echo the denial.

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.