Amethyst: The Story of a Beauty

“Well, no. The fact is, father has made it up with Charles, and they have agreed to sell some farms in Derbyshire. We are to see Charles sometimes. He is going on better – ”

“And is meant for Carrie! I declare, Amethyst, that’s too bad!” said Una, sitting up. “And have you seen him?”

“No, and I can’t recollect him at all. Can you?”

“I can. Amethyst, he’s a horror! Even long ago we all hated him. I should hate him to come near you?”

“Well, Una,” said Amethyst, shrugging her shoulders. “We must just do the best we can. Least said, soonest mended – as we settled long ago.”

“Oh,” said Una, with tears in her eyes, “it’s awfully hard lines on us! I want to tell you – somehow I couldn’t write. I see everything differently – since I came here – ”

She broke off, and hid her face on Amethyst’s shoulder.

“What is it, dear? What do you mean? Has anything happened to you?” said Amethyst, anxiously.

“The greatest of all things, Amethyst. I know about religion now – I know about Him! The confirmation classes, and all Mr Ross has taught us – and his sermons – oh, it is all so beautiful. I longed, I wanted to be good. If one could go and live in a place like Saint Etheldred’s, out of the temptations of the world! But yesterday he talked to us separately, and I couldn’t help telling him a little, what a bad, wicked child I had been. And he said things. And somehow, last night, as I lay awake, there came the most wonderful feeling, and I knew it was all true, and that there is peace and rest I knew it. One can be happy without earthly love, and – and all the things people care for. It’s quite true, Amethyst, I – I saw Him right in my heart, and I know…”

She lifted her face, all transfigured and radiant, as she uttered the holiest of names in an awe-struck whisper.

Amethyst looked at her, with the dreaming, seeking, unsatisfied eyes which were in such curious contrast to the repose of her beautiful face.

“You knew always,” said Una. “That was what made you so different to us all, when first you came.”

Amethyst smiled a smile that would have been a little cynical, if it had not been so intensely sad.

“I’m not very good, darling,” she said. “Life’s rather a complicated business, as you know very well.”

“Yes,” said Una, “but I feel as if I should not mind anything very much, now. Now there is something to get back into, to hide oneself in. But it is all your doing, my jewel. What should I have been like but for you?”

Una believed, poor child, that the struggle of life was over for her, or at least robbed of all its hardness. These weeks at Silverfold had lifted her into a new world; and when, a day or two after Amethyst’s arrival, the confirmation for which she had been preparing took place, the fervour of her self-dedication seemed to shine through her, as, with a face white as her dress, but beautiful with peace and joy, she came down the little church amid the crowd of stolid white-capped country girls, experiencing a sense of ineffable rest and joy.

Was this but another and more dangerous phase of the varying emotions to which she was subject, a lifting up that was likely to end in a more violent fall?

It might be so. But, only through the higher possibilities of her emotions could salvation come to so emotional a creature; she was one to whom all good must come at risk of fatal loss.

Amethyst had no answering experience. She was a strong and healthy creature, with vigorous spirits and growing energies, which one blow could not crush. In spite of many bitter hours, she had found interests and enjoyments. Vexatious as in many ways the long months abroad with her mother had been, uncongenial as were many of the visits which she had paid with her, she enjoyed seeing new places, she made new friends, took up new pursuits, thought new thoughts.

As for home, the veil had been torn from her eyes, and she never had an illusion again. She did not make herself miserable, but she had learned to expect nothing.

She knew, as far as the London season was concerned, and the career of which she had had last year a foretaste, both that she had claims to a very brilliant one, and also that she was heavily handicapped by poverty and by want of family good repute. She thought that romance and passion were over for her, and that she was free to do the best possible for herself in life; but she meant to be honourable, upright, and modest, there were bounds that she did not intend to pass. Truly, it was in her to be more a woman of the world than her mother, she had so much more forethought, and was so much less swayed by the pleasure and amusement of the moment.

The momentary sight of Lucian and Sylvester had brought back, not the love which she believed herself to have outlived, but a sudden realisation of what that love had been, and an intense resentment against the misjudgment that had destroyed it. She hated Sylvester, and yet felt that she would have died rather than let him guess that the sight of him gave her a moment’s pang.

Into her old place in her aunt’s household she had never again quite fitted. She had spent some time with her after her return from abroad, but she could not take up her former life; she went back to her school as a splendid visitor, and wondered how she could have pictured herself as one of its teachers. Miss Carisbrooke, too, had in some measure taken her place. The little heiress was a pleasant-looking, round-faced, rosy-cheeked girl, with simple tastes and a warm heart. She loved her chaperon heartily, and found life at Silverfold delightful, even while she looked forward eagerly to her London season. She had an enthusiasm for Amethyst’s grace and beauty, and scouted the idea that her own fortune could be a better passport to partners, a constant succession of whom was her idea of social triumph.

“You will be able to have a great many more pretty frocks than we shall, Carrie,” said Una, one day when the three girls were together.

“Ah, but if I was a partner, I shouldn’t think about Amethyst’s frock. I wish I was a man. I would fall in love with her, and give her the most lovely flowers, and when she said yes, I would take her to Ashfield Mount and live there. Don’t you think it’s a pretty place, Amethyst?”

“It is a very pretty place,” said Amethyst, coolly.

“You wouldn’t marry me for the sake of it?” laughed Carrie. “Nobody else shall! But I’m so glad I am going to be with you all in London. You don’t know how much happier I’ve been since I came to live with dear Miss Haredale. She’s much more like a relation than Uncle Oliver is.”

“Don’t you like your uncle?” asked Una.

“No,” said Carrie, with some emphasis, “I don’t, but there are a great many people who do. Don’t fall in love with him, Amethyst; he will with you, directly he sees you.”

Carrie laughed as she gave this warning; but it struck both the shrewd, observant Haredales, that she had made a point of uttering it.

“I shall take the dogs for a walk,” she said, without waiting for an answer. “Poor things, they will be very dull when we are in London.”

“You should go too, Amethyst,” said Una, as Carrie went out; “you are pale. If you did your duty, you would be considering exactly what amount of exercise would give the right shade of pink to your cheeks.”

“I shall consider nothing of the kind,” said Amethyst, crossly. “Even my lady wouldn’t plan and scheme in that way. At least she does things because she likes them.”

“Darling, I did not mean to vex you,” said Una, distressed, as Amethyst started up and went over to the window, with an impetuous movement, unlike her ordinary self-restraint.

“Oh, not you, Una. But every one plans and schemes; Aunt Annabel does. I know what all this talking about ‘poor Charles’ means very well. She would do anything, in spite of all her religion, to ‘support the title,’ as she calls it. I’d rather live honestly for my own pleasure. But, there – we all plan and scheme, as I say, and make up our lives. And we can never make them as they were once intended to be.”

Her breast heaved and her eyes filled, as the thought forced itself upon her, that, let her success in life be what it would, it could never give her anything better, anything nearly so good as one hour with Lucian in the woods at Cleverley.

“That was Paradise,” she thought; “but I couldn’t live in it now!”

“I’d rather be downright wicked than worldly,” she said, defiantly.

“Oh, my darling,” said Una, “you don’t know what being wicked is like! But, Amethyst, our lives are made for us. That is what I have found out – made just as they ought to be.”

“Oh yes, in a sense, of course,” said Amethyst, “but there’s a good deal of making left for ourselves and other people, and we, or they, don’t make them very well.”

“Yes,” said Una, with shining eyes, “outside things; but not the real life, not the life within. Amethyst, the feel of that Presence is as real to me, as the feel of your arms round me when I am tired and miserable – as real, and even better. Come what may, I shall have it to remember. I know now, how the Martyrs could smile when they were burnt to death!”

Amethyst gazed at her, uncomprehending, almost wishing that Una was not going to enter on grown-up life with this new strange force within her. She recalled a saying that she had once heard Mr Riddell quote, “that a great deal of religion needed a great deal of looking after,” and she felt half afraid. She was correct and careful in the performance of the religious duties in which she had been trained; but all the glow of feeling, with which she had knelt by Lucian’s side in Cleverley Church, had departed with the earthly love from which she had hardly distinguished it.

“I’m afraid, dear,” she said gently, “that Eaton Square won’t be a very heavenly sort of place for either of us. If we are tied to any stakes there, no doubt we shall have to smile at them, but I doubt whether the smiles will come from heaven!”

“I shall not mind Eaton Square now,” said Una.

“Well,” said Amethyst, giving herself a sort of mental shake, “anyhow, we have to live there for the next three months. So we must do the best we can.”

Chapter Nineteen

Marshalling the Company

“I never did see any use in making pretences. People always see through them, and then where are you? If I did try to look as if I had thousands to spare, not a soul would believe me. Nothing answers like telling the truth.”

This beautiful sentiment was uttered by Lady Haredale one bright afternoon, some few weeks after the arrival of the party from Silverfold at the house in Eaton Square.

The big drawing-rooms were flooded with all the sunlight that a spring day in London could supply, perhaps in illustration of Lady Haredale’s contempt of pretences; for their handsome fittings and furniture had seen many sets of tenants for the season, and were by no means in their first freshness. But, as Lady Haredale said, “Who cared? – There were some houses, she believed, where people were asked to come and see the furniture, but she asked people to come and see herself and her girls – and they generally came.”