Amethyst: The Story of a Beauty

Sylvester recalled himself with a start, to what had been an hour before an important ordeal to him. Now, part of the poem seemed to have come to life, and the picture faded before the original.

That same brief three months, which had turned Lucian Leigh’s outward life away from the course that had seemed marked out for it, had given a colour to all Sylvester Riddell’s inward existence. When he began to add another to the many poetical versions of a youth in search of an ideal, that ideal was, for him, embodied in his memory of Amethyst Haredale. He might call her Art, Truth, Womanhood, Beauty, anything he would, she looked at him from the deep grave eyes, and smiled the enchanting smile which had filled his imagination at first sight. To Lucian, every thought of Amethyst was painful, never, if possible, to be recalled; to Sylvester, she was a dream of beauty and delight, and, as he had never seen her since the fatal summer, there was a certain dreaminess in his feelings with regard to her.

But when, encouraged by various successes in the way of criticism and of occasional verses, and having a good deal of leisure on his hands, he began to write a long poem, he had no doubt as to the source of his inspiration.

He had called his poem ‘Iris,’ and the subject was that of a youth pursuing an ideal love. The hero was a minnesinger of the early middle ages, and the story was related in sections of narrative interspersed with suitable lyrics. The subject was not new, and he could only hope that the treatment was. He had not yet decided whether Iris should be for ever unattainable, a rainbow of promise, melt mystically into his hero’s being in some ineffable manner, as a final reward, or identify herself with the maiden who had been his childish friend.

But the sight of the real Amethyst had dimmed this ideal Iris, and he hardly knew whether it was as lover or author, that he blushed and hesitated as his father settled himself in his study to listen. He was so nervous that he read hurriedly and badly, and his father told him that he was not doing himself justice, and made him read a passage over again, in which Amelot, as the minstrel boy was called, played and sang to himself in the sunset, his heart full of longing to express itself in song, till, with the sweetest strains that he had ever uttered, the soft and amethystine colours of sun and air took shape and form, and the lovely eyes of Iris shone upon him, amid rainbow hues and gleaming mists, beckoning him ever onward and upward to more strenuous efforts to attain her.

“Of course,” said Sylvester, hurriedly, as he paused, “I suppose he never did reach her – I think she was always the end of the rainbow.”

Mr Riddell did not appear deeply interested in this question. It did not, he said, affect the intrinsic merit of the poem.

But he pounced on the song with which Iris had inspired Amelot, and after declaring it to be smooth, and not without sweetness, tore it to pieces in its author’s sight, proclaimed one epithet commonplace and another redundant, and finally told him, that he should aim at simplicity of sentiment and perfection of expression.

“What all the world can feel, my dear boy, and only you can say, – that’s poetry.”

“I – I am afraid,” said Sylvester, “that Amelot’s devotion to Iris is rather unusual – the lot of the few. Dante is of course the eternal model, after which one can only labour.”

“A case in point, Syl,” said Mr Riddell, briskly. “Thousands of young men have fallen in love, like Dante, with unattainable young women. He knew how to tell the world of it. Besides, Dante was a prophet; he had another function to fulfil. But the simplest things are the greatest.”

Sylvester did not agree, he was not at all prepared to consider that the devotion of Amelot to Iris was usual; quite the contrary. It was an exceptional grace bestowed on such as could receive it.

The point was, however, rather too personal for comfortable argument. Besides, he did not know yet what his father thought about the poem.

“I gather,” he said, “that you think the sentiment of the poem rather too finespun.”

“Oh dear, no,” said Mr Riddell. “Not at all. I’ve often felt the sort of thing myself. I’m glad young men can still be honestly sentimental. Don’t get too mystical, and avoid unusual words – all sorts of aesthetic slang. The thing has a good deal of merit in its own way. I must go down and see old Tomkins.”

And while Sylvester hardly knew whether he was pleased or not, the Rector rammed on his shabby soft hat, stuck his walking-stick under his arm, and remarked —

“Glad you employ your leisure time so well Very pretty lines – many of them – excellent tone and feeling. Of course the genuine lilt of a perfect love-song only drops from the sky once in a generation.”

Sylvester had hardly expected that his father would tell him that, in Lucian’s language, he had made Tennyson take a back seat; but he felt ruffled and dissatisfied.

Sympathetic as Mr Riddell was, he did not quite know what his verdict was to his son. He had written many a smooth and graceful copy of verses in his own young days, reflecting more or less the style and taste of his generation, and he had long survived the discovery that they had not added much to what it had to tell the world. He had found quite enough to live for, without poetry.

Sylvester was of a more intense and less many-sided nature; worthy and sufficient objects in life did not seem to him so easy to find. He had secretly lived much for his poem, and he needed to find it worth living for.

Now, the thing most worth living for seemed to be the hope of seeing Amethyst again. Fate had kept them apart hitherto by a series of chances; but now, if the poem was finished, if it came out and was a success, if he met her in London, if she did not cherish any resentment against him – if she could ever know that Iris —

So Sylvester dreamed. But Lucian went up to London to meet the friend who shared his aspirations as to the bears of the Rocky Mountains, and made arrangements for an immediate start in pursuit of them.

Chapter Eighteen

Glimpses of Heaven

Miss Haredale’s pretty little drawing-room at Silverfold was gay with tulips and hyacinths, and bright with a cheery mingling of sun and firelight.

In the sunny bay-window sat Una Haredale, with a book in her lap, but with eyes eagerly gazing down the pleasant bit of country road, shaded with tall trees and edged with broad pieces of turf and freely growing hedges, that was visible from the window.

Una was now seventeen, a slender, limp creature, with languor and want of strength apparent in every gesture, and a look of extreme delicacy in her pale face and large eager eyes. Her expression had softened and sweetened, her hair was fastened up on the top of her head, though its thick coils still seemed as if they were too heavy for the long over-slender neck. As she caught sight of a figure approaching the garden gate, her face lighted up into a look of positive rapture. She sprang up, and flew out to the door.

“Amethyst, Amethyst! my darling, my darling! Here you are at last I’ll never, never let you go again!”

The last words were spoken as she clung round her sister’s neck, almost stifling Amethyst’s words of greeting.

“My darling, you won’t let me speak, or look at you! Where’s Aunt Anna, – not at home?”

“She has taken Carrie to have a singing lesson. Come in; I am to give you tea, and take care of you.”

Soon Amethyst was sitting in a low chair by the fire, with Una kneeling at her side, leaning against her, and clinging to her, as some one had once said, like bindweed round a lily, a comparison resented by Amethyst as derogatory to Una. She alone knew what this clinging, dependent creature had been to her ever since, for Una’s sake, she had tried to “make things better.”

“Are you quite well, dear? and do you like being here? Have you got on with Aunt Anna?” she asked, tenderly.

“Oh, as well as can be without you. I do like it. Oh! I have a great deal to tell you. Only first I want to hear how everything is settled. Is the house in Eaton Square nice?”

“Yes, there will be plenty of room for Auntie and Carrie Carisbrooke, and you know mother will let them be quite independent. And you are all to be there. Mother wouldn’t hear of sending even Kattern and Tory to Cleverley; and as for you, she insisted on your going to the Drawing-room, and coming out regularly.”

“I? I should be half-killed with an hour of a London party. What can my lady want me for?” said Una, with a startled look.

“She says she may never be able to give you so good a chance. I said I thought that London was bad for you, and that I was sure you could not do much. But she said that it was more amusing for you to do what you could, and she liked to have us all with her. So I must take great care of you, and we must see how it answers for you.”

Una gave a long sigh.

“It keeps me with you,” she said. “But oh, it tires me to think of it! and I shall want heaps of new clothes.”

“Mother says you had better have them when you can. She is delighted at getting the London house.”

“I dare say,” said Una. “You’ll see, Kattern and Tory will get everywhere, except to the Drawing-room and the stiff balls. Kat looks grown-up, and she’s getting rather sweet in her own way – pretty milk-maid style, you know. And she looks best in a straw hat and pink cotton – which is cheap.” Amethyst laughed.

“I don’t know about Kat,” she said, “but Tory declares she’s not going to spoil her chances by and by. She means to wear a sailor hat, and go to classes. She has found out some, and I do think she will, she is very clever.”

Una twisted herself round so as to look up into Amethyst’s face.

“There’ll be the rich heiress,” she said, “and the great beauty. There’s only the good girl left for me! Which will win, I wonder – you or Carrie? She ought to have a poor peer, and you a rich cotton-spinner. But you might pull caps for a duke.”

“He should fall to you, if you are to be the good girl,” said Amethyst. “But I don’t see him anywhere on the horizon at present.”

“No, but the cotton-spinner? Of course the Grattons are going to be in town? In Eaton Square too, perhaps?”

“Yes,” said Amethyst, “on the opposite side. Carrie is to ride with the girls.”

“And you?”

“Too expensive!” said Amethyst, with an odd slow smile. “There’ll be enough to contrive for without that.”

“Where is the money coming from? Is the house all Carrie’s?”