Amethyst: The Story of a Beauty

By and by, when he was able to leave Lucian, Sylvester went out on to the hill-side under silvery olive woods, and over broken ground covered with rosemary and thyme. The sun was bright, and the sea pure, clear blue beneath it. He thought that he had come to seek solitude and silence; but, when he saw Amethyst coming towards him, he knew that he had been really in search of her.

She came up to him, and stood by his side, and they looked into each other’s faces.

“It did not hurt him?” she said presently in a trembling voice.

“Oh, no, he will be more at rest now.”

“Oh,” said Amethyst, with a fresh burst of tears, “oh – I am so sorry – so sorry for him! Oh – I think I’d die, if he could get well and be happy.”

They were passionate words; but her tone and look lifted the dread from Sylvester’s heart. It was for Lucian, not for herself, that she was weeping.

“One cannot dare to wish, for such as he,” he said.

“But I was so cruel to him, when he came back, in London. I hurt him more than I need. Oh, I have been a wicked girl, always trying to get something for myself, to make up for having been ill-treated! I despised every one. I despised him. Oh, I’ve had a lump of ice instead of a heart, I hate myself for it!”

“But now the ice has melted?”

“Yes,” said Amethyst, with childish directness, “I am sorry now.”

They walked on slowly, side by side. Words were difficult; but a great peace came over them both.

“Do you think,” said Amethyst, presently, “is he worse? It will not be very soon, will it?”

“I don’t know,” said Sylvester. “He is much weaker than he was. I am glad my father is coming next week. Poor Lucy was meant for living! But he does suffer frightfully, night and day. I shall not leave him – I have arranged for that – and I couldn’t possibly go away now.”

“He likes to have you.”

“Yes, the dear boy! He always has clung to me, though, heaven knows, I often manage badly enough for him. But whatever he likes – There’s one thing I must tell you. You know I tried to hold him up when he fell. My strength was going – in another minute he must have pulled me over. And he knew it – and let my hand go!”

Sylvester could hardly speak of that most awful moment, and Amethyst grew paler with sympathy. “Oh – that was splendid of him!” she said.

Then her heart gave a great throb and bound, and she knew which life was the dearest to her. The blood rushed back to her temples, she could see nothing, but she felt that Sylvester held her hand close in his own, and presently she heard his voice whispering —

“You know what makes my life worth living?” She turned, and at once giving him her hands, and putting him away from her, she said —

“Oh, we will do everything for him, we will not think of anything but him – while he wants us.”

She fled away as she spoke; but her words seemed to Sylvester the most beautiful answer that she could have given him, the perfect expression of their according hearts.

In his pocket-book was still preserved the young primrose springing from dead leaves, with which, long ago, Amethyst had illustrated her saying that “beginnings come out of endings.”

It was no inapt type of the sweet hopes springing up in these days of mourning – hopes all the sweeter for the generous reverence with which they waited for fulfilment.

Chapter Thirty Five

The Power of the Past

While all the bitterness of past wrongs was thus, for Amethyst, softening into a tender haze of memory, it became apparent to Una that a new future was offered to herself.

The pleasant, wholesome intercourse that had begun for her at Restharrow, had made the days cheerful at Bordighera, and, together with health much improved by the southern climate, had brought her for the first time something of the natural gaiety of her eighteen years. She very soon knew quite well, that her presence made the pleasure for Wilfred Jackson, that he sought her at every possible moment, and offered her the natural and innocent courtship of a warm-hearted youth, which ought to have been the opening of all the joys and rights of her young womanhood.

But behind her lay, not the “duties enough and little cares” of unawakened childhood, not the playful preferences of attractive girlhood, but the searing, burning memory of premature passion.

She let the pleasant thing go on, she hesitated and doubted, for she liked Wilfred Jackson very much, and she liked – she always would like – intercourse that was touched with possibilities of emotion. And she would have been so glad to forget all her miserable past, to go on into a happy future.

She knew that she was watched by Tory and Kattern, and she did not put them off the scent; she knew that Amethyst was only blind because her thoughts were absorbed by Lucian’s condition; she knew how welcome her engagement would be to every one belonging to her. But day by day her heart grew heavier within her, and she dreaded more and more the moment of decision.

It came one day, among the olive trees, over a bed of violets, with the blue sea behind them, and the white peaks before, a sweet sense of spring-time in the air, and everything befitting the spring of fresh young hope.

He was alone with her, and his tongue was loosed, and all his honest love and his eager longings were laid at her feet, and the prospect of a good and happy life was offered to her, all the blessings the value of which she had learned to know full well.

And her heart turned from it utterly, she shrank from his hand and his kiss. She had had her day – a day almost before the dawn – and she thought that she could never give herself to any man again.

She refused him, with a rain of tears and a passion of self-reproach, knowing that she had allowed him to expect another answer. Her words were so wild, and her manner so strange, that Wilfred, as he stood, pale and bitterly disappointed, felt as if he had wooed a mermaid, some incomprehensible, uncanny creature of a different race from his own. But he was stunned.

“Una,” he said, “I think you gave me a right to expect another answer. You have given me a bitter blow. I shall go away where I cannot see your face – your cruel face. But I don’t give you up. I shall try again!”

Una fled away from him, and rushed home, where she threw herself into Amethyst’s arms, and sobbed out all her self-reproach and her self-despair.

“Oh, my dear, I should have looked after you better!” said Amethyst regretfully. “But are you sure? Can’t you ask him to give you a little time?”

“Oh, Amethyst, I like him, I hoped it would come to me, till yesterday, when we were picking flowers, he kissed my hand, and then – then all last night I dreamt of other kisses, oh, I felt them – I can feel them now. I’ve none left!”

“Dear Una, the past is not meant to spoil our future – there is forgiveness and peace – ”

“For you – for you – You look back on a paradise, and I on – ”

“Oh, Una – but it’s all over, you have all your life left!”

“I have – I have!” cried Una, lifting her face from Amethyst’s shoulder, “I would not have that past again, not the maddest moment of it! I will live – I will be good for something in spite of it. Oh – I should like to give my life to telling girls that one can be different. I think I’d die to keep another child from my fate! But it has been – and alas and alas, it will be!”

This was the wrong that Tony had done her.

She had saved her soul alive, but the first spring of her heart was gone for ever, and if a second came, it might not be till the chances of life were over for her.

She threw herself on her knees when Amethyst left her.

“Oh, God!” she whispered, “let me not look back – let me look forward up, up to Thee!”

There was a great outcry, when Wilfred stirred up his sisters to go back with him on the next day to Nice. The girls were angry, and declared that Una was a heartless flirt and had led him on; but Wilfred would not hear a reproach cast at her, and went up to the Leighs’ villa to bid Lucian farewell, and to tell his story.

It was a bad day with Lucian, indeed each day began to show failing strength, and the shadow lay so heavily on all around him, that it was no wonder that Wilfred Jackson’s affairs had never been guessed at. Lucian could not talk to him, but lay and listened while Sylvester put in occasional questions, and shortened the interview as much as possible. Then it came over Wilfred, that he was bidding his friend farewell for the last time, and he felt how much he had let himself be diverted from his state by a new interest. He muttered something, he hardly knew what, as he squeezed Lucian’s hand, but it ended in “never forgetting the Rockies.”

“All right,” said Lucian, “and don’t forget either that – I said – that I hoped, when you’re dying, you may thank God for your love, as I do – though we’ve neither of us been lucky.”

Wilfred was utterly overcome, and could only hurry away with another hand-squeeze. Lucian felt that the first of the final partings had come for him, and his breath came a little quickly.

“You’ll stay with me, Syl, won’t you?” he whispered.