Chapter Twenty Seven
A Faithful Servant
When Amethyst found herself, with a shock of surprise, in Sylvester’s presence, her first thought was that he had come to plead the cause of Lucian Leigh, and there was a certain distance in her tone as she said —
“Mr Riddell!”
“Miss Haredale,” said Sylvester, standing up before her, “I have come to beg you not to marry Sir Richard Grattan. Forgive me – forgive me. I am so beyond defence on any ground but one, that no beating about the bush will soften my actions. I love you, therefore I understand you. Your heart is not in this marriage. If you give away your freedom, all the best part of you will die. I am pleading for no one, not for myself nor for Lucian. Oh, don’t deny your heart – your soul – don’t do this thing.”
His voice was full of such strong vibration, though he spoke low, his eyes so full of passionate purpose, the astonishment at his words was so great, that Amethyst stood looking at him for a moment, with wide-open eyes and parted lips. He took courage and went on —
“I know it would be all well enough for some women. I know how often it is done. But it is not right for you – not for you. That which you defy – you don’t think it is your conscience – but it is – it is – it is the Voice of God within you. It is the highest claim that He can make on you.” Sylvester came close to her and grasped her hands. In her wide startled eyes, he seemed to read what he must say. Not one thought of himself marred the intensity of his appeal, and she made no attempt to fence with him, forgot how easily, with one conventional word, she could have put him aside. He seized upon her and dominated her, as no one else had ever done.
“I did not think God ever spoke to me,” she said.
“Oh yes, He does,” answered Sylvester. “I have seen your eyes listen.”
“But,” said Amethyst, “I don’t think you can know. My romance is over. I – till a few days back – I was quite content to marry him. He is quite good. And I am almost bound. It would do such dreadful harm to draw back. It would be wrong just to follow a feeling – a fear – ”
“No, no!” cried Sylvester. “Ten thousand times – no! If so, every martyr, every patriot, who followed his highest instincts, regardless of old ties, every soul that had to save itself at any price, every one who has cut off the right hand, put out the right eye, has been wrong. Oh, the right hand, the right eye, are always so good. There is so much to be said for them! You can make out so good a case! Oh, you are so young, you seem but a child, you don’t know really what you are doing. You think of your duty to others. No one has taught you your duty to yourself.”
“Oh,” said Amethyst, with a sort of sad dignity, “I know much more about it all than you think.” She moved a little away from him, and sat down, then presently went on speaking out her thoughts. Sylvester seemed to her almost like an incarnation of the opposing force within her.
“I don’t think it was wrong as I was – at least for some people there does not seem anything very right. Your father said I was to try for the least wrong – the rather better.”
“Yes,” said Sylvester, “the least wrong – the most right for you!”
“Then – something came over me. It all went flat. Then, you came and told me Lucian was coming back – and – and – I found out in another way, that if – if he brought back my feelings – I could and I would fight it all through – and nothing would stand against me. But oh – the feelings are all gone. I’ve forgotten him! So my feelings can’t be worth much, and – and there doesn’t seem enough to fight about – to give it all up and condemn myself and my sisters to a bad, miserable life – oh, so many degradations!”
“Lucian knows now how deeply he offended you,” said Sylvester, swerving a little from his point, so much did he care what her feelings were.
“It’s not that. It is that I have changed. But I – I couldn’t wrong him. I couldn’t marry him for – for an establishment!”
The last word burst out as if in quotation marks, with a passionate accent of self-contempt and scorn.
“What I want to say is,” said Sylvester, “don’t wrong yourself. Listen! – I believe in counsels of perfection. I don’t judge all the women who have married as you say, and been good and saint-like and self-denying, for other people’s sake. But you – you hear another Voice. Even for your sisters’ sake – listen to it.”
Amethyst turned away, and hid her face against the back of her chair. She was not crying, – but a sense of being overwhelmed was coming upon her. The situation was beginning to make itself felt.
“When one has no feelings,” she said, after a minute – “neither religious nor any others – there is nothing left but doing right.”
“There is that left,” he answered, coming nearer. Another silence, then she faltered out —
“Of course – I haven’t got my eyes shut. I do know all you mean – what marrying would be. – You think I couldn’t expect to be helped to be good afterwards – doing it against my instincts. You think it would be so wrong, that it’s worth turning life upside down to stop it – worth what it will be like, not to do it?”
“So wrong,” said Sylvester, kneeling beside her chair, “that I would rather see you die than do it.”
Another pause, then suddenly she stood up, and looked down into his face.
“I will not do it,” she said. “I said no one helped me. That’s not true. You have done a tremendous thing for me. Thank you!”
She held out her hands, and he put them to his lips; then, as he rose up, the inspiration that had brought him there seemed to die out, and left only trembling human passion in its stead. Nothing more was given him to say. He had really spoken in utter singleness of heart, altogether for her sake. Now, he felt that every word would be for his own.
He murmured an echo of her thanks – looked at her for a moment with white face and shining eyes, and went, without one conventional word of apology, or of parting.
When he got out into the street, he found that he could hardly stand. With an instinct of avoiding notice, he crossed over towards the railing of the square garden, and, finding the gate open, went in and managed to reach a bench close by, and sat there, till his head ceased to swim, and he could see and think clearly once more.
He almost felt as if he were waking from a dream. How could he have faced her with such daring words, and how had she come to listen with so much patience?
If he had saved her, he had done it at a cruel cost. He had not looked into her eyes, and touched her soul, without such growth of the passion within him as made his yearning a living pain, instead of a tender dream, or at least an endurable desire. His love had grown a thousandfold in that short quarter of an hour. And she had listened to him as if he had been a voice in the air! And to what a struggle had he persuaded her! – he who took his own life so easily.
As Sylvester sat musing, he knew that his own words, or the love that had prompted them, had changed himself. He had no need to make any outward change in his life, but he knew, as he got up and walked slowly out of the garden and up the square, that his appeal to Amethyst had bound him to live it in a much more strenuous way.
Amethyst, when he left her, stood still, while a crimson blush spread over face, neck, and arms – a deep glow of shame, the reaction from the utter absence of self-consciousness with which she had listened. She had never thought of Sylvester Riddell, while his eyes were shining into hers, and his voice thrilling into her ears; now she felt as if the eyes and the voice would never leave her. Three times he had been concerned in her fate.
Now, he had told her nothing that she did not know before, but he had given her the impulse to act upon her own inner convictions.
Amethyst was a strong and resolute person, but she shuddered as she thought of the battle that lay before her. She had allowed the brilliant and delightful present to distract her mind from its issues, and to blind her eyes to the vanishing point of all her success. She had been so taken up with interests and amusements, and with the triumph of her beauty, that she had suffered herself to forget the nature of the act to which all was tending, had talked, and thought, and prepared for a worldly marriage, without allowing herself to realise what a marriage without love meant. The pomps and vanities of this wicked world had caught her in their toils.
So she had tied her own hands, and put herself in a false position, entangled herself in all sorts of counter obligations, which must be broken through at the cost of honour and faith.
When she turned round, not five minutes after Sylvester had left her, and saw Sir Richard Grattan coming into the room, she felt that in another five minutes all her power of resistance would be gone. She clasped her hands together behind her back, and stood straight up and waited. Sir Richard’s face was disturbed, and not quite that of an eager lover.
“Miss Haredale,” he said, in his harsh, full, resolute voice, “I have heard a good deal this morning to surprise me. But I am a man of honour, and in the face of these distressing circumstances, I come to renew the offer I have more than once made you, and I hope for a favourable answer.”
“You have laid us under great obligations,” said Amethyst, a little more proudly than she would have dared to speak, if he had not referred to his own honour.
“I have acted pretty much with my eyes open, though I did not know of this last – misfortune. I consider it all quite worth my while. It won’t be the last time, I dare say, that difficulties may arise, but I considered all that, or most of it, before I began to address you. I don’t consider that my credit is in any way affected by other people’s conduct. I have acted all through in the hope, the determination to win you, and, as my wife, no annoyances shall be suffered to approach you.”
“Sir Richard,” said Amethyst, “I wish to tell you the truth. I have been meaning to – to accept your proposals for a long time. Certainly I have given you reason to think I should. I have to tell you that I find, now, that it is utterly impossible. I beg your pardon. I have behaved very ill. But I cannot fulfil my intention.”
Sir Richard gave a great start.
“I know what this means,” he said abruptly; “some one has come between us. It is your old lover.”
“No,” said Amethyst, “the truth is your due. I refused Mr Leigh’s proposals. I solemnly assure you that you have no rival. There is no one else. I don’t prefer any one. But – it is myself. I have found out that I cannot return your feelings – I never told you that I could. And I know now that I could not make you a good wife. If I married only for the sake of outside things, all the good part of me would die out I never – never ought to have entertained the idea.”
“I am quite aware,” said Sir Richard, somewhat hotly, “that I am not the first in the field, nor the only one. But I was given to understand that your early attachment was entirely at an end.”
“It is so. There is no one that I wish to marry.” When Amethyst had made this assertion to Lucian Leigh, he had implicitly believed her, but as she raised her eyes to Sir Richard, she saw that he did not think that she was telling the truth. Probably he did not expect truth on such a subject from a young lady. She saw that it would be absolutely hopeless to make him understand the real state of her mind, and a sudden sense of violent recoil came to the aid of her courage.
He was very angry, but he made a strong effort to control himself and to behave well.
“I don’t think I have deserved this caprice,” he said.
“No, I don’t think you have,” said Amethyst, “you have offered me much more than I deserve. I have been very wrong; I will not pretend to you that I did not once mean to accept you. But I never shall do so now – never.”
“It would be very unbecoming in me,” said Sir Richard, “if I recalled any of the means by which I have endeavoured to recommend myself. Amethyst, don’t drive me crazy. Don’t you know that I worship you? I will not give you up. I’ve swallowed everything about your family. I am prepared to make a queen of you. There’s nothing my money and your beauty won’t command. You shall be the greatest lady, short of royalty, in England in five years’ time. You’ll take the lead in the county, and with it all, you’ll never have reason to be ashamed of your husband. I’ve a fair square past behind me. My money’s honestly come by, and, by heaven, there’s a great future before me – and my wife. And I love you.”
It was not badly done. It was all true. It was what she had meant her beauty to win for her.
“I can’t,” she said, turning white, and trembling; “you don’t understand what I’m made of. If I loved you, I could be the splendid wife you want, but as I don’t – I should hate all that – and very soon I should hate you?”
She spoke low, but in a voice full of passion. His colour rose, and he came close to her side.
“Who is it? Who has come between us?” he said, when there was the sound of a soft sweep and rustle, and Lady Haredale’s light sweet voice was heard saying —
“Well, I think you have had time enough to settle it, Sir Richard. Am I to give up my little girl?”
Chapter Twenty Eight
Escaped
There ensued for Amethyst some hours which were terrible to endure, and more terrible still to remember. Sir Richard Grattan, not without some dignity, withdrew to lay his case before Lord Haredale, and left the mother to plead his cause with her child. They had already told each other cynical truths, and now mother and daughter stood face to face, and Lady Haredale told Amethyst the truth without a softening word, without an ambiguous phrase. She told the facts of Lord Haredale’s life, and the causes of his money troubles, and also of those of his son. She told her how he was likely to seek consolation for his disgraceful misfortunes, and made her understand the kind of company to which, if their heads once sank below water, they would be condemned. And then, did Amethyst suppose that she herself had been in love with Lord Haredale when she married him at eighteen, for his title, and because she knew her own fortune was all a myth? Amethyst was more lucky, she had got over her romance, Lady Haredale had had to manage hers after marriage, and Sir Richard was a much better man than Lord Haredale had ever pretended to be.
And then the daughter replied that she was not likely to be better than father or mother; she was quite capable of another “romance,” and what then?
“Then,” said Lady Haredale, “you must do as others have done. Get out of it without a scandal, and stop in time.”
“I should not stop in time in such a case.”
“Oh yes, you would, my dear; you’re not a fool. Leave all that to take care of itself, and do what’s right now. I have never gone too far. I will tell you for your good – ”
And Amethyst stood and listened to her mother’s experiences, told in her mother’s familiar voice – to her mother’s view of where a woman could always stop, and yet how much might be ventured and no harm come. She listened with a dreadful comprehension of these principles of action, and with a still more dreadful certainty that she never could be certain of following them.
Before she could reply, her father came in upon her, pleading and entreating with her, and throwing himself on her mercy; then, when she stood like a stone, hardened by her mother’s story, he turned upon her with a rage such as she had never imagined, broke out into violent, coarse language such as she had never heard, till she shrank and trembled with sheer physical terror. Then a sound of sobs broke on the scene, and there stood Miss Haredale, and Amethyst flung herself upon her, the real mother of her youth.
“They will kill me!” she cried; but Miss Haredale only wept afresh, and bemoaned all the misery, and gave Amethyst no real support at all. She was holding by another end of the tangle, and began to speak of Carrie and Charles – and what was she to do? while Lord Haredale turned and swore at her, and the flood of wrath and argument surged away from Amethyst for a moment, and then turned back to include her once more. Strained as her nerves already were, she was so frightened at Lord Haredale’s violent tones and gesture, that with a sobbing cry of “Oh, father – oh, father! don’t strike me!” she turned and fled, every other feeling lost in a personal terror that had never crossed her imagination before.
“What a fool the girl is!” cried Lord Haredale; “as if I should hurt her. You’ve managed her confoundedly ill, my lady, to bring all this about.”
“Well, I have,” said Lady Haredale. “When one is so upset and so dreadfully anxious, one is really stupid. And Amethyst has your temper, my lord. I never saw a girl in such a passion, but I’ll set it right presently. As for you, Annabel, if Carrie Carisbrooke is determined to stick to Charles, why not? It’s a straw to cling to.”
“I was a wicked woman to bring her near him,” said Miss Haredale, sobbing; “her heart will be broken, and Amethyst’s too.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Lady Haredale. “Amethyst has a sharp tongue, and, like Una, she’s emotional. Dear me, so we all are! I was just now, myself, and very incautious. But I won’t have the poor child frightened to death, my lord, and I think you’ll have to beg her pardon.” She left the room, leaving the brother and sister alone, the latter still in tears, and Lord Haredale cooling down under his wife’s shower of common sense.
“Well, Anna,” he said presently, “it isn’t the first time that you have heard a man swear, at any rate. You know there’s no disrespect intended.”
“It is a long time, Haredale, since I lived with my relations,” said Miss Haredale, dryly.
“Grattan doesn’t swear,” said Lord Haredale, with a slight accent of contempt, caused, perhaps, by the keen edge of intolerable and ill-requited obligation. “She’ll be a thousand times better off if she marries him.”
“Oh, she will,” said Miss Haredale. “If only she can so feel it!”
“Well,” said Lord Haredale, “her mother’s clever enough; perhaps she’ll bring her round.” His wrath had evaporated in its own violence, and he began to think how he could pass the morning least intolerably, since the haunts of his fellows were not likely to be made pleasant to him for the present. Miss Haredale was full of remorse and misery, but Sir Richard Grattan’s offer represented to her the last straw to hold by, and she had not courage enough to back up Amethyst’s resistance to it.
Amethyst meanwhile got up-stairs, and locked herself into her own room. Then she dropped down on the floor, not fainting, but in a sudden collapse of all her powers. The sudden news, on the day before, of Lucian’s return, the intense excitement at the theatre, the expectation of Lucian’s coming, the change of feeling when she saw him, the night of struggle with herself, the family disgrace, the high exaltation of Sylvester’s appeal, the strain of resolution in her encounter with Sir Richard, the shame of what her mother had said to her, and still more, of what she had answered, the shock and terror of her father’s unseemly violence, had worn out all her strength.
She lay perfectly still, without conscious thought or feeling, till gradually her strong nerves began to recover themselves, and a flicker of light came into her heart. She had broken free.
For many weeks she had been holding herself in, keeping herself in a prison of necessity, expediency, and pleasure, refusing to think long-stretching thoughts, to feel high-reaching feelings, to pray genuine prayers. She had been afraid to break through the soft, tempting satisfactions of the world’s good things, afraid to shake the foundations of the philosophy by which she justified her choice to herself.
Now she was free, out in the rain and the storm, with the wide world around her, and the wide sky above her head – free to be lonely, dissatisfied, miserable, to long and to dread, to love and to hate, to be all of herself once more.
“The snare is broken, and I am delivered!” she said; and great vigorous throbs of painful life came back to her soul.
Una’s voice broke in upon her.
“Amethyst, darling – won’t you let me in? Dearest, do open the door.”
Amethyst rose, still trembling and unsteady, and unlocked the door, then dropped back into a low chair, as Una ran in, and started at the sight of her face.
“Oh, my dear, you are half-killed,” she said. “Wait one moment.”
She went away again, and came back with a glass of wine in her hand.
“You must drink this. It’s my turn to be nurse now.”
“I’m not ill,” said Amethyst, taking the wine; but she laid her head on Una’s shoulder, and submitted passively to her caresses.
“Now,” she said, after a few minutes, “tell me all you know about things.”
“I know it all,” said Una. “We heard a great deal, and then mother came and told us. She was crying, and she said that she had been so much upset, that she’d actually made a scene, which was quite against her principles, and frightened you. But she says she hasn’t ‘said die’ yet, so she is going to take Kat and Tory to the duchess’s garden-party, and ‘see how she can represent things.’ They had better see a great party once, she said, if they never could again. And Sir Richard is to come again, then she thinks you won’t refuse him.”
“Oh yes, I shall, Una – I have,” said Amethyst, with a fresh ring in her voice for a moment.
“Then it seems that now,” continued Una, “it is quite impossible for Charles to marry, and Aunt Anna does nothing but cry, and repent bitterly of having thrown Carrie in his way. But Carrie turned round like a little fury, and said that she had told Charles that she liked him, and so she did, and that she meant to keep her word, and she has appealed to her uncle. He must have known all along how wrong it was. Isn’t it hard upon her?”
“Yes,” said Amethyst, “but I must get through my own business first. I am going to write Sir Richard a note which will stop him from coming, and you must take care that he gets it in time.” There was a vigour in her manner which astonished Una, as she rose and bathed her face, and wrote a few lines in a fairly steady hand.
“Dear Sir Richard, —
“I will not let you deceive yourself nor be deceived by others about me. I did intend to accept your offer, for I wished to be content with all the good things you would give me. But I cannot, and I shall never change my mind again. I cannot ask you to forgive me, but I acknowledge that I have behaved very ill to you. You have been most generous. All I can do now, is to spare you doubt and delay. I beg you to take this as a final refusal from —
“Amethyst Haredale.”
Amethyst knew that her letter was abrupt and outspoken, but in the effort to leave no doubt behind, she could do the ungracious and cruel thing in no softer fashion.
She gave the letter to Una, with strict injunctions to say nothing about it, but to take care that it was sent at once. Then she threw herself down on the bed, and, when Una came back again, she found her dead asleep, her face white and still, her limbs relaxed, in the reaction from the intense strain which she had been enduring. While she slept, Lady Haredale got herself up in a marvellously charming toilette, and drove off to her great garden-party with Kattern, full of the unexpected pleasure, and Tory, looking unwontedly serious. Miss Haredale and Carrie were shut up in their own rooms.
Una had been called down-stairs by her mother before she started, to receive orders to take care that Amethyst saw Sir Richard – orders which Una may be forgiven for receiving in silence.
She sat down in the drawing-room to collect her senses a little, and to wonder what would happen next, when there was a step behind her, and she turned and saw her brother. He came slowly down the long room towards her, looking pale and ill, and with that look of being down on his luck, which, though he was perfectly well-dressed, gave him the air of being out at elbows.
“The fellows said you were alone, Una, so, as you’re a kind little girl, I came to speak to you. It’s all up now, and I want you to tell Carrie so.”
“But, Charles – had you – is it because of what happened at Epsom?”
“Well, no, my dear, not exactly. But there are plenty of other things for Clyste to rout up, you see. I never was so clear from – difficulties – as I gave Grattan and his lordship to understand. No fellow ever can go to the bottom of his affairs, you see. I always knew that whitewashing me couldn’t be done. There’s not money enough, and I haven’t impudence enough, Una, to carry it out. So I’m going to make myself scarce again.”
“But, Charles – what shall you do?”
“Oh, well, there are ways and means of which you don’t know anything, and I know myself down among them; I was a fool to try this business. But I liked Carrie’s little round face, and if I’d been a better fellow, or if being a bad fellow was the sort of thing she thinks it is, I might have tried. But you ought to know a little more about it than she does, Una.”
“Yes, I never did see how you could marry her.”
“I never had a chance, Una. Blanche and I were left to the worst lot of servants ever known. Our nursemaid was a bad one to begin with. Then your mother first flattered and made much of me when I was a rough lout, and then turned upon me, and set me all across with his lordship. And then you know how things go with a fellow.”
Una did know, much better than it was well that she should, the hopeless history of her brother’s career.
“Does Grattan stick to Amethyst?” he said.
“Yes, but she has refused him. She does not like him.”
“Well,” said Charles, “it doesn’t matter what she does, men will always run after her. But I say, Una, tell her to keep clear of Carisbrooke. He has made ducks and drakes with some of Carrie’s money, and that was why he was so ready to consent to marry her to me. But he’s regularly gone upon Amethyst in the process. Don’t you know he was Blanche’s first love, when she was staying away with those hunting friends of hers, the Carshaltons? He carried on with her, and spoiled her chances when she was sixteen. He always had the sort of talk to take a girl’s fancy. He’s a very poor lot, so tell Carrie – ”
“I’m here, Mr Haredale,” said a resolute little voice, as Carrie Carisbrooke, pale and tear-stained, came into the room. “I’ve not been deceived, I always knew that you had been – a dissipated man. But Miss Haredale said you had repented, and I mean to keep my word, and to help you through your troubles; I shouldn’t think of going back because of family misfortunes.”
“But I can’t do it, Carrie,” said Charles, in his odd, half-shame-faced, half-rough voice. “I can’t marry you, my dear, as you’d see, if I could tell you anything about it, or if you could understand, which you couldn’t – please God you never will. Good-bye.”
“Then didn’t you ever really care for me?” interposed Carrie, with a sudden flash.
Charles looked at her and then at Una, and shook his head.
“I’ll never forget you, Carrie,” he said, “nor your having liked me. I’d have married you if I could. Good-bye, Una. Will you give me a kiss?”
Una put her arms round his neck.
“Oh, Charles,” she whispered, “don’t give up altogether. Indeed – indeed – He does save sinners. He always went after the bad ones.”
Charles looked into her eager, tear-filled eyes.
“Why, you’re the sort that can persuade people to turn religious,” he said. “Good-bye, little Una.”
He kissed her very affectionately, then took hold of Carrie’s hands.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Between you, you’ve made me wish I’d had a chance of being a decenter fellow.”
He stooped down, and kissed her forehead quickly and shyly, then went hurriedly away. Poor Carrie made no further protest. She cried bitterly, as well she might; for her first fresh fancy, and her girlish peace, had been sacrificed to the unjustifiable effort to escape from the inevitable consequences that follow on sinful lives.
Una stood still for a moment. Ideas always came to her in sudden flashes, and, with her erring, hopeless brother’s last words, there came before her the momentary vision of a possible future for herself.