“Well, I won’t leave you long in suspense, if I can help it,” said Syl, taking his hat, and going off. He was himself intensely eager to see Amethyst; must she not know, now, the confession that he had made to Una? She would know at what cost he brought Lucian’s message. Why it should seem harder to give her back to his friend, than to see her marry a man whom he detested, he could not tell, except that every day, every hour, increased his restless misery. He would be loyal to Lucian, and then he felt that he did not know what would become of him. There was never much difficulty in getting into Lady Haredale’s house, and he was at once admitted, and told that some of the ladies were at home.
As he came into the drawing-room he saw that, with better fortune than he could credit, Amethyst was there alone. She was sitting in a low chair with her hat on, and a parcel or two on the table near, as if she had just come in from doing some little errands. There was something dejected in her attitude, and, when she heard Sylvester’s name, she blushed intensely, while he was very pale.
“My sister has been doing too much, she is overtired, and will have to rest now,” she said, in answer to his stammering inquiry for Una.
“Miss Haredale,” said Sylvester, standing up before her, “I dare say your sister has told you of her kindness the other night. I do not dare even to apologise for the mistake which I made. My eyes were deceived, but my mind – never! It was of course my first duty to undeceive my friend, whom I so cruelly injured. By a strange chance, Lucian came back from America two days ago. He is in London, and he begs to be allowed to ask your pardon in person. It was not his fault.”
There was a dead silence. Amethyst’s deep blush slowly faded. Either she could not speak or did not know what to say. Then, after what seemed minutes, she spoke.
“That is all a very old story, Mr Riddell. As you may have seen, we do not wish to look back on it in a tragical manner. If Mr Leigh wishes to call here, I am sure my mother will be quite willing to receive him. Why not? As you say, he made a mistake. It was a natural one.”
She spoke with a kind of hauteur, mingling with the smiling coolness of Lady Haredale’s manner. Sylvester’s heart sank within him. Then she did not care what either of them thought of her.
“You would be at home – when?” he stammered.
“Let me see. This afternoon we go to a matinée. We expect a few friends to-night, we shall be at home after dinner. Will you come then – and Mr Leigh, if he wishes.”
Sylvester murmured thanks and acceptance, and having gained his point went away miserable.
When he got back, he did his best to make Lucian as unhappy as himself; so that it was perhaps as well that the latter went off by the next train to Cleverley to fetch the dress-clothes, which he had left behind him there.
Chapter Twenty Four
The Dead Past
On the morning after Miss Grattan’s great ball Miss Annabel Haredale sat alone, in the pretty sitting-room assigned to herself and Miss Carisbrooke. She was very unhappy, almost more unhappy than when, more than two years ago, she had made up her mind to give Amethyst back to her parents – and she was not now so entirely clear in conscience. She had, when something like necessity impelled her, fallen back into a way of looking at things, which she had long cast aside. For many years in her quiet untempted life, she had been in the habit of thinking whether things were right, and now she had returned to early customs of thinking whether they were expedient. As she sat reflecting on the scenes of the night before, there was a tap at the door, and Amethyst came in. Miss Haredale thought that she had come to announce her engagement, and, with a freak of memory, her thoughts flew back to the morning when the girl had rushed in upon her, full of delight to tell her that she had passed an examination!
If Amethyst had good news to tell now, she did not seem much exhilarated by it.
“Aunt Anna,” she said, “there are one or two things I want to ask you about, and I hope you will tell me nothing but the truth about them.”
“Of course, my dear. I am sure you know that I shall.”
“I think you will,” said Amethyst, “though I don’t see how any one can do them, and yet tell the truth about them. Do you mean to let Carrie marry Charles? You have intended it, I know.”
“Why, Amethyst,” said Miss Haredale, “there’s no one but Charles to keep up the family name. He must marry a girl with money, and, though Carrie wants style, he might do worse. And he is making great efforts to reform – of course last night was a sad slip. But I do think he is really anxious to settle. Imagine what it would be, if he couldn’t show when he comes to the title.”
“I want to know how he has been enabled to show now,” said Amethyst, with icy coldness. And then, after a pause – “Did Sir Richard Grattan lend him the money?”
“Well, yes – he did, my dear. He did a great deal for him. The money was nothing to him, you know, and your father was really gratified.”
“And what else has he done for us?” pursued Amethyst.
“Well – he bought the farms near Haredale. Of course, Amethyst, even with the help of Carrie’s guardians, your father couldn’t have taken this house, unless he had found a good purchaser. Sir Richard did it in the most delicate way – ”
“But if Sir Richard wanted to marry me, I should have thought giving me a season in town did not improve his chances.”
“Why, Amethyst – anyhow you would have gone out with Lady Molyneux. And now, he has had every opportunity. And he improves so much on acquaintance. When you make him happy, he will never think of the trifling obligation. Of course, I suppose the matter is now settled; but he was very anxious that you should feel perfectly free.”
“And all this has been done for the honour of the family. I’ve heard my lady say, that if people had a shady sort of record, it was much better to own it and take the consequences. I think I agree with her. One other thing. Did Mr Carisbrooke make this arrangement about Carrie and Charles?”
“Well, no – but he expressed a great desire that she should join your party. And I don’t know why you speak like this, Amethyst, I never knew you take such a tone before.”
“I never heard you take such a tone in Silverfold, Aunt Annabel.”
“Ah, my dear child, Silverfold days were very happy ones. But you are young, and you can’t realise what family ruin is. You often think things bad for the girls, but they might be far worse. Last spring it was very nearly a case of going to live on the continent – cheap. Now just think of that with you four girls. What would there be for either of your parents but the gaming table, my dear child? And nothing left of mine for you to fall back upon. And the Haredales are not long-lived; if your father died, what would become of you all? Now, when you are well married – Amethyst, of course there’s a great deal I don’t like, but I really do think that there’s nothing, not absolutely criminal, that it’s not a woman’s duty to do to save her family from such a dreadful fate. Oh, my dear, you can’t remember your uncles Percy and Tom, but never shall I forget the details that came out at their deaths, nor seeing poor Percy once abroad. My dear, when one is young and hard, one may think it serves one’s brother right, but one’s nephew – oh no, my dear. And Charles would be kind to a woman who liked him.”
“And it was for the good of the family that my half-sister was made to marry a man she hated? I don’t think it answered in that case.”
“Poor Blanche had no force of character. She was not like any of you. Besides, my dear child, I am sure you do like Sir Richard. I do think your remarkable attractions are quite providential.”
“Don’t you think you had better have let me be a Saint Etheldred’s teacher?” said Amethyst, clasping her hands behind her head, and looking full at her aunt. Amethyst scarcely ever give the rein to her tongue, and poor Miss Haredale hardly knew what to make of it.
“No, my dear,” she said, puzzled, “I can’t think that.”
Amethyst looked at her with a smile like Tory’s. Then she laughed a little, and said —
“Never mind, Auntie; you see, after all, it’s you that I feel at home with, and so I behave ill. It’s such a comfort. I only wanted to know just how the land lay.” And with a kind kiss, she went away, none the happier for her knowledge.
She had not known before how near the other side of the line was, how little lay between her family and an amount of “difficulty” that would make their position untenable. Perhaps she was young and hard; but it was hardly likely she could care for Charles himself, and she distrusted him so entirely that she did not believe that the family name would ever get safe out of his hands.
As she came into the drawing-room, to her intense surprise, there the culprit sat. He never seemed at home nor in place among all the knick-knacks and pretty things, and now he looked sick, shy, and miserable. Charles had none of the nonchalance of his half-sisters, and, truth to tell, he was afraid of them.
“Look here, Amethyst,” he said, awkwardly. “It was deuced unlucky last night, I know. Do tell Grattan I apologise, and all that’s proper. Bad wine at the club, that was all – brandied sherry. Say the kind thing, there’s a good girl.”
“I did not see what passed, and I shall say nothing about it,” said Amethyst, coldly.
“You see – I don’t want Grattan to cut up rough, and though, of course, he’s put his hand in his pocket – I’ve helped him to the connection. He’s not a bad sort, but of course he ain’t a man of family. Put him up to the idea, that the correct thing is to take no notice of anything of that sort.”
“I dare say Sir Richard Grattan can judge of what’s correct,” said Amethyst.
“Then too,” said Charles, shifting a little in his chair, “there’s another thing. – I’d tackle Grattan; but girls hang by each other. You might prevent little Carrie from thinking me a reprobate.”
“How?” said Amethyst.
“Well – tell her it’s nothing uncommon. Might happen to any gentleman. ‘As drunk as a lord’ is a proverb, you know. I shan’t make a bad husband – assure you I shan’t.”
Amethyst stood by the table, perfectly silent. She felt that, if she spoke, her tongue would sting worse than ever Tory’s could.
“But of course,” said Charles, more freely, and getting a little angry, “if you tell her that when a fellow’s once down he’s always down, she’ll give me the sack. And that’s what all you women do think, specially the religious ones. You think yourselves so much better than other people!”
“No, Charles, we don’t,” said another voice; and Una, who had come into the room while he was speaking, came forward, and stood near him, her slight swaying figure leaning against the table, and her large melancholy eyes fixed on his face. “Indeed we don’t think that. We know – religion – will help every one.”
“Hallo!” said Charles, “little Una talking goody! What? Do you think I shall turn pious?”
“I think,” said Una, “that God will help you just as much as He helps me. And, indeed, we don’t despise you.”
“Oh, Una!” said Charles, in an odd, simple voice, “He’ll punish me. Why, I never said my prayers since I went to school. But I should go to church, if my wife wanted me to, and I’d rather she was strict. You can tell little Carrie so, Una. And look here – a man don’t mean anything, you know, if a word slips out ladies aren’t accustomed to, specially after dinner. Tell her so – there’s a good girl. You mean to say a kind thing.”
What Una might have answered was interrupted by the entrance of Lord Haredale, who called his son away, rather curtly, and Amethyst broke out —
“Una! How can you. How can any one like that repent? Why, I don’t believe that he has left himself all his senses!”
“I am so sorry for him,” said Una.
“I cannot be, when I think of his wanting a good girl to marry him!”
“But, Amethyst, he might be changed. You believe that?”
“Well, yes – in a way, of course, I believe it. But people after all are what they have made themselves. He can’t repent, so as to be much good, in this world, at any rate.”
Amethyst spoke harshly and recklessly. There was something in Charles’s half-ruffianly, half-foolish manner, that revolted her past any sense of pity for him, and she was in no mood for toleration. She had no great inward impulse to set against the force of circumstances, and to be driven by necessity is a very different thing from being urged forward by a force within.
There was nothing for it but to marry Sir Richard Grattan, she had scarcely a choice left. She believed that she should always be mistress enough of herself to play her part with success; and interests, such as her friendship with Mr Carisbrooke, who happily did not want to marry her, might keep her spirit alive. Yes, she was acting rightly, and yet she felt it utterly impossible to ask for the help of which Una had spoken.
Still in this humour on the next morning, while she had so far managed to avoid the actual, final “Yes” to Sir Richard’s suit, she heard Sylvester’s announcement and request, which she answered with a certain sense of defiance both of herself and of him.
But, when he was gone, she knew that she was shaken almost to pieces by her interview with him, and she could hardly string herself up to go, as arranged, with her aunt and Carrie, to a fashionably patronised matinée in which a débutante, in whose performance Mr Carisbrooke was interested, was to play Juliet.
Amethyst was too high-strung a creature not to be susceptible to dramatic excitement; she was no critic of acting, and was not perhaps so familiar with the play, that it did not come upon her with some freshness. Its influence seized her like a sort of madness, possessing and changing her. Whether the spirit breathed airs from heaven or blasts from hell, it was absolute. Given a Romeo, Juliet’s was the only course – the charnel-house rather than the County. This was a force to which her own nature answered, which Mr Carisbrooke had already done something to awaken. Here was a great and mighty impulse, which would make life worth living, or death worth dying. She did not cry, or melt with pity over the woes of Juliet, she felt the force of such passion in herself, she saw the power of such self-devotion. Her real self seemed to flash into life, as she recalled her own brief love-story, her own young love. And to-night she was to see her old lover again. Not only prudence, expediency, worldly wisdom, would go down before the flood, but right and wrong, if there was any right but allowing such a force of nature to have its way.
She went home, and put on her simplest white dress, and clasped the amethysts round her neck, and put the purple stars in her hair, just as she had worn them at Cleverley more than two years ago.
When she went in to Una, who was glad enough to make her health an excuse for not meeting the two young men, the girl looked at her half frightened.
“Amethyst,” she said, “you never looked so lovely in your life.”
So thought Sylvester Riddell, as he came into the drawing-room among the other guests of the evening, with Lucian Leigh by his side. He was pale and nervous, and felt intensely the awkwardness of the situation as they walked up to Lady Haredale. Lucian’s extreme straightforwardness saved him from the difficulty.
“Lady Haredale,” he said very low, “I have to beg your pardon.”
“What for, Mr Leigh? Oh, I haven’t at all a good memory, but all our Cleverley friends are welcome, as I told my daughter when she happened to mention that you were coming. Mrs Leigh is not in town?”
She smiled with cheerful sweetness, but Lucian felt as if she had dashed a cup of cold water in his face.
He looked handsome and striking, with his tall slight figure, and his delicate, regular face bronzed with travel, and marked by an intense gravity of expression.
“Oh, my stars,” whispered Tory to Kattern, “he’s a deal more thorough-bred than Sir Richard!” While Miss Haredale sighed over the wild insanity that had allowed him to appear at this juncture.
Amethyst was standing under a chandelier; she had the faculty of being able to stand perfectly still. Several people were round her, among them Sir Richard, and Oliver Carisbrooke. A lady congratulated Sir Richard on his delightful ball.
“It was not a success for me,” he said carelessly, “but my sister is thinking of a big water-party, if this fine weather continues. That, I hope, will go off better.”
Lucian began to cross the room.
“Where shall you go?” said the lady.
Lucian was close at hand.
“No,” said Oliver Carisbrooke, in a low full voice, which only Amethyst heard. “No, it will not be.”
Lucian bowed, and Amethyst held out her hand to him.
“Thank you for allowing me to come,” he said. He did not try to look unconscious. He meant every one to see that he came with an object. Sylvester, at once admiring and suffering, owned that he could not have done it half so well.
“You have come back suddenly to England,” said Amethyst.
“Yes, my friend had an accident.”
“That was very unfortunate for you?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“But weren’t you going to the Rocky Mountains? Haven’t you brought back any bears?” said Amethyst.
She was of course obliged to say something, and her manner grew easier as the light slowly faded out of her face.
Here Mr Carisbrooke claimed Lucian’s acquaintance, and a few courtesies passed. Sylvester wondered what next. Even Lucian could hardly go down on his knees under the chandelier. He spoke a few needful words, but Sylvester, rather to his surprise, saw that he had turned conspicuously pale. He barely waited till the bystanders were not absolutely looking and listening, then said abruptly —
“May I speak to you?”
She hesitated a moment, and then skilfully moved a little away into the window, with a few light words about the lovely night which gave him a chance to follow, while Sylvester dashed at Sir Richard, and told him that he considered the leader of his political party a drag on the wheels of progress, and likely at the same time to plunge the country into anarchy.
Lucian and Amethyst stood in the open window. The trees in the square were motionless as pictures in the utter stillness of a London summer night, the flowers on the balcony were colourless in a flood of moonlight. There was a great silence, in which the roar of the traffic was but as the roar of the sea.
“Amethyst,” said Lucian, “can you forgive me? I was wrong.”
“Oh yes,” said Amethyst, “I have long known that you could not help it.”
“Of course,” he said, “I have always loved you exactly the same. Nothing could change that, I want you to understand at once that I am just the same. Will you go back?”
“But I am not at all the same,” said Amethyst. “I can’t say that I have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.”
“Have you forgotten that time?”
“No,” said Amethyst, with passion in her voice.
“Then you can’t have forgotten me? Are you too angry?”
“No, no.”
“Two years wouldn’t seem like two minutes, if we come together.”
“Two minutes – two ages! Lucian, I might say fifty things and put you off, and leave it doubtful. But I’ll only say one, and I surely know it. I don’t love you now.”
“You love some other man?”
“No, I don’t, but,” – with a sudden outburst, “you killed my love for you, dead, and it won’t come to life again. It’s no good – no good – for I shall never have it again – never!”
“I – surely you cannot tell. I will wait – let me come again. I had to let you know I was yours – but on your side – when I knew you had been true to me, and that I wronged you – that you really loved me, I never thought it possible your love could change.”
“Well, I have changed,” said Amethyst. “It is all gone by, I can’t go back. I had to turn into a different person, and I can’t put back the clock. I shouldn’t fall in love with you, if I met you now. But I wish I had died when I did love you.”
She darted back into the shelter of the lights and the crowd, and soon she saw Lucian and his friend bow to her mother and go. Sir Richard Grattan came up to her to say good-night.
“May I come to-morrow?” he said, with meaning.
Amethyst looked full at him, as if she were then and there appraising him, and making up her mind. Then, very slowly and distinctly, she said —
“Yes.”
No! Lucian was not her Romeo, and she was not to find her deliverance in the flood-tide of passion. A girl with weaker brain, or of less concentrated feeling, might have doubted and wondered, and tried to conjure up the old magic, but Amethyst was too clever and too intense for self-deception.
Lucian was nothing to her but a handsome boy, and the love of her girlhood was gone for ever. She had left it behind her.