Chapter Twenty Nine
The Wide, Wide World
Not very long after this abrupt conclusion of so much that had appeared to be but just begun, and in process of continuance, the care-taker at Cleverley Hall uncovered and set to rights three or four of the smaller rooms, and received the four Miss Haredales, who came there to wait till the family plans were somewhat matured, to leave some of their belongings in one locked-up room, while the rest of the house was prepared for letting; and to select and pack all that it was necessary to take with them, for what was likely to be some months, at least, of visiting and wandering.
An inhabited oasis in the midst of brown holland and shutters is not cheerful; but the last few days before the break-up in London had been so wretched that the girls were all thankful for any change, and Amethyst, in particular, packed, contrived, and planned with a vigour and energy that would fain have made the little work into much. Freedom gave her a sense of eager, strenuous life, and there was nothing before her but a long stretch of idle, tiresome days, made lonely by uncongenial companionship.
“How I hate it all!” she thought; but her hatred was living and vigorous, and there was a ring in her voice and a spring in her feet, as she moved about the empty house, which had never been there in the Eaton Square drawing-rooms.
The afternoon was hot, tea was on the school-room table. Kattern, with her pretty face markedly sullen, was slowly sipping her tea. Una lay idly back in a corner of the sofa, and Tory was sitting on the deep ledge of the window, holding the end of her immense plait of hair in her hand, and contemplating Amethyst’s quick, careful packing of small valuables, with a curious elvish expression of critical observation.
“I have been informing the neighbours,” she said, after a silence, “that is, our good Rector’s worthy sister, as my lady used to call her, that we are going abroad for education – for Kat and me. But that first we are going to pay visits to some old friends. Can anything sound more creditable?”
“I don’t care how it sounds,” burst out Kattern; “it’s very dull and disappointing. I wish I was the eldest. I wish I had had even Una’s chances! I wouldn’t have thrown people over at the last minute. I would have got married, and not been called a fiasco in the society papers. I hate going abroad. We may get a little fun out of the visits, but I shall be sent on the dullest, and I haven’t near as many frocks as Amethyst and Una.”
“You have quite as many frocks as you want at present,” said Amethyst; “when you will have any more is another question.”
“Well,” said Tory reflectively, “I mean to keep respectable. The Kirkpatricks’ and Lorrimores’ aren’t very nice places for little girls. I shall have to take care of the rest of you. I’m very tired of our line of life, I should like to go to school. How much better good conduct pays! I dislike being ruined, and having a shady reputation.”
“I hate having all one’s pleasure stopped,” said Kattern.
“Don’t be a cross cat,” returned Tory. “If we go for to quarrel, as girls in goody story-books do, when the author wants them to be naughty for a change, we shall get no comfort in life. Goody! What a story I could write! I know! I’ll be a sensational, realistic author, and make a fortune. Experience is better for that than education. Come along, Katty, let us take farewell of our childish haunts. They weren’t our childish haunts. But no matter – ”
She dragged Kattern up from her chair, and out of the room, as she spoke; while Amethyst laughed.
“I believe there’s something staunch about Tory, at bottom,” she said. “I’d rather trust her than Kat, among shady people.”
Una moved a little, and watched Amethyst for a few moments in silence.
“Amethyst,” she said, suddenly, “setting aside being married, what would you like best to do with your life?”
“I think I should like to enlist for a soldier,” said Amethyst with a laugh.
“But really?”
“Really. Oh, I could keep school, I always liked teaching. When I’m twenty-one, I shall think about it. We shall none of us ever have enough money to be comfortable, if we don’t marry. What can become of us? I think, perhaps, I shall write to Miss Halliday and consult her, though I would rather teach in a High School than go back to Saint Etheldred’s. I think there would be more life in it. I think one’s title might be swallowed, and, as for my beauty reputation, one would be the safest of young women, for there never would be anybody one would care to look twice at.”
“I suppose they wouldn’t like it, if rows of young men went to church to look at you?”
“You’re thinking of some Miss Pinkerton’s academy. Don’t you know that one’s own life would be quite independent of the schoolwork? And I might make such a line possible for Tory. There’s a great deal of spirit in the life.”
“Would it go on being enough for you?” Amethyst laughed again, but this time with some bitterness.
“Perhaps not,” she said, shortly. “I wonder what would! But there are some things I should like to take up again.”
“Amethyst – in some ways you are more like what you were when first you came home, than you have been since – since you were engaged to Lucian.”
“I am free,” said Amethyst. “That past is over really, over now for good and all. It has gone, I don’t know where; and I have got, thank heaven! to reconcile myself to no good fortune. I need not tell myself any more lies, nor pare down my feelings to suit my fate. If I am a High School mistress, and want the moon and the sun and the stars, why, I can cry for them. But if I’d married that rich, good, generous man, I should never have dared to wish for anything as long as I lived. Every wish would have opened the gates into the universe. Well, now I’m outside the bars, and it is the universe, and full of stars, and I can look at them, if I can’t have them.”
As Amethyst uttered this tirade, she lifted up her head, and her lovely face glowed with eagerness. Una listened, but her soul gave no response. Amethyst saw her blank expression, and stopped with a blush.
“Oh,” she said, “if you only knew what it is to let myself go! Of course I know we are in for a hateful existence – troubles and bothers of every sort. But I feel as if I should pull through! Nothing can be worse than the last week or two.”
“It has been bad enough,” said Una, sighing.
“Life has a great many sides, as I always told you,” said Amethyst. “Work is a great help, and, as Tory says, I’m tired of men. I wish I could go to Newnham or Girton, and take a first-class. But who’s to pay?”
“You, Amethyst! Oh, don’t take to being blue because you’re disappointed!”
“You little behind-the-world fossil! Blue! Cultured is the proper expression. And how am I disappointed? Una, I’m more in love with my real true natural self than with any one else at present. And I should like to go to college – I read an article about it the other day. I should like a little room to fit up, and to have tea with my friends, and debates, and discussions, and new ideas. Then I needn’t think about being married for the next five years. But there, that packing is finished. I’ll go for a walk, the country is delightful after London.”
She went away as she spoke, and Una heard her run down the long staircase, light of foot, and seemingly light of heart.
“I shall never be able to ‘let myself go,’ as long as I live,” thought she, with a weary sigh. “And I see no stars anywhere. Only – sometimes – that great Light – and then darkness.”
Amethyst walked through the deserted garden, rejoicing in her freedom, for she was free of regrets for Lucian, as well as of pledges to Sir Richard Grattan. She could laugh a little cynically at the girlish dream in which Lucian had seemed an ideal of perfection; she could give thanks, with bated breath, that she had not tied herself to Sir Richard; she could not but be thankful to Sylvester for having saved her; but she looked back upon her interview with him with a sense of shame, as she remembered that he, her lover, had pleaded with her not to debase her womanhood by marrying a man whom she did not love, and had had to plead, long and earnestly, before he won the day. She hoped that the love he had declared had been but the love of a poet’s dream; it seemed so, since he had never followed it up, for she could never wish to see him again, though she hoped never to fall again below his standard of noble maidenhood. His voice seemed to ring in her ears: “I would rather see you die than do it.”
She wondered what Mr Carisbrooke thought of the end of all her prospects. Had he really been Blanche’s first lover, as Una declared Charles to have said? Perhaps there was another side to that old story, and Blanche had broken his heart, not he Blanche’s.
But she had nothing now to do with any of them. Her life was her own, to begin afresh. But what lay before her? The life of intellectual interests and youthful striving was altogether out of her reach. All that was likely was a bad imitation of her London success. She knew well enough the sort of “old friends” among whom her parents’ rank, and her own reputation as a beauty, would still make her a desired guest. She had had glimpses of such society in the last two years.
“I am only twenty,” she thought. “I am strong and I am clever, and I think that I have proved that I am brave, and I should like to be good. Yet it seems that there is no life worth living, open to me. What am I to do? There’s plenty of spring in me. Free? I’m tied up with cobwebs. If any one could tell me what to do?”
As she looked round, as if in search of an answer, she saw Mr Riddell coming towards her, along the very path by which he had come on that day when his few words of advice had seemed to offer her a little help in her early helplessness; when his kindness had given her a little comfort, though all her world had then been unkind.
Amethyst believed in the existence of good people. That faith she perhaps owed to the capacity for goodness in herself. She knew that Mr Riddell would never tell her anything that he did not himself believe to be helpful and true. He asked after her family with kindly courtesy.
“We shall see you and your sisters, I hope, at the Rectory,” he said. “My sister and I are alone, for my son has gone to Scotland.”
Amethyst coloured a little, she wondered how much the Rector knew; but she was too worldly-wise to ignore the troubles.
“I suppose, Mr Riddell,” she said, “that you know why we left London so suddenly?”
“Yes, my dear,” he said gently, “I know all that is to be said on that matter. I am sorry.”
“It is a very unhappy prospect for myself and my sisters,” said Amethyst, with straightforward dignity. “I don’t in the least see how we are to lead lives that can be at all good. You were very kind to me once – you told me to try and be a little better, if I could not be good. May I speak to you now?”
“Surely,” said Mr Riddell; then after a moment he added, “My son has told me how fatally he was once mistaken, and how cruel an injury he once did you.”
“Yes,” said Amethyst, “but that is all at an end.” She paused; then said, with a deep blush, “Your son has done me a great service now, far greater than the harm he did then. I don’t want to speak about what is all over. If I could work or study, I could be quite happy. Indeed, I do care for many other things besides society and admiration; but there is such a wretched life before us. We shall never see good or clever people. And I do not feel religion as Una does, though indeed, Mr Riddell, I wish more to be good than for anything else in the world, though I have not been good lately.”
There was something in the simplicity of this final appeal – coming from this rarely beautiful girl, with her look of belonging to the great ones of the earth – that was very touching. Mr Riddell did not answer her for a minute, then he said —
“That trying to be a little better of which you spoke, that relative goodness that no lot can make impossible – it is important to be clear as to what is meant by better. Is it to make life a little smoother, or a little nobler, each day?”
Amethyst looked up as if these words struck her.
“And, Amethyst,” said Mr Riddell, stopping in his walk and taking her by the hand; “there is no need for you to stop at a little —
”‘Pray to be perfect – though material heave
Forbid the spirit so on earth to be.’
“Your life is very full of trial, you have high thoughts and good thoughts. What hinders you from leading it like a saint?”
She looked at him still, but in silence.
“You say you don’t ‘feel religion.’ The word is a little vague. You have felt the guiding hand of God, and He speaks to you in that love of goodness which you possess. He will speak to you, believe me, with a yet clearer voice. He has a great deal yet to say to you. Aim spiritually at the very highest perfection; and, for the rest, my dear, you must indeed try for ‘a little.’ Perhaps a little study might keep your mind fresh, and, though I suppose religious observances will often be difficult to you, do what you can with a little. You have nearly all your life before you, and there is time in it for a great many things.”
A great hope shone in Amethyst’s face, a sense of vigour stole again into her soul. The light dawned in the depths of her earnest eyes, as she still looked up into her teacher’s face.
“The hope of holiness,” said Mr Riddell, “is an inspiration great enough to set against the greatness of the world’s temptations.”
“Yes,” said Amethyst, in full deep tones.
“You see that light, follow it, and you shall have more,” he said solemnly; then, with a change of tone to his usual simple and fatherly manner, he said – “Come and see Miss Riddell, and bring the girls with you. She will give you something to read up, or something to do – something interesting, you know.”
Amethyst laughed a little, and gave his hand a grateful pressure.
“Thank you,” she said earnestly, and sped away.
Mr Riddell looked after her, watching her quick and vigorous step. Then he took off his glasses and wiped them.
“Poor Syl!” he said, as he turned away. “He must have much patience in seeking his Iris. She is in the distance – in the distance, as yet.”
Chapter Thirty
“Ayont the Isle of Skye.”
“Cleverley Rectory.
“August 3rd.
“My dear Syl, —
“I found your letter very good reading. Thinking of you far away in Ultima Thule, in the scenes of that dearest of books to my youth, The Pirate, quite stirs my blood, and the Fitful Head and the Stones of Stennis come vividly into my mind. By the way, I hope you have ‘read’ The Pirate. If not, I will send you a shilling copy, that you and Lucian may remedy the defects of your education. Here we have been seeing a great deal of the four Haredale girls, and lately something of their mother, who joined them a few days ago. Lady Haredale is a wonderful woman. She has nearly made me believe her to be the most unselfish of people by the cheerful, matter-of-course way in which she accepts their ruined condition. Lord Haredale is abroad. She and the two elder girls are to pay some visits, and then join him. Kattern and Tory are to be sent to their aunt at Silverfold. Miss Carisbrooke is still with her, and her part in all the strange story I don’t understand. The girls are to go to classes at Saint Etheldred’s School. Tory has brains; but I am afraid she will be a fish out of water. I should not myself like to have charge of Miss Kattern; nor indeed of Una, though she is an interesting creature, and might do well in good hands. Poor child, she is likely to be in very bad ones, I fear. She has taken a great fancy to Miss Waterhouse, my old friend, who has been having a holiday here from her work among the East London wild girls and women. Una seems never to tire of hearing of them, and has undertaken to sew for them. I hope she may keep up with anything so practical. As for Amethyst, your father calls her a fine, brave, growing creature; but what a life lies before her! She has not half lived out her girlhood, in spite of all her troubles, and would be ready for all the wholesome interests and natural ambitions of clever, thoughtful girls. I have put her in the way of some correspondence-lessons in Latin and mathematics, and supplied her with the books. She means to work, when she can, with a view to a possible future. She is anxious to show that she is not all society beauty. But, dear me, how beautiful she is! I don’t see how her mind is to rival her face, and how she will be thrown away!
“I could find it in my heart to wish she had married the rich baronet; but your father shakes his head, and says ‘No.’ I believe the whole family are to meet in the south of France in the winter. Lady Haredale smiles, and says she can’t think what they are going to live on.
“My love to Lucian. How long do you stay with him?
“Your loving aunt, —
“Margaret Riddell.”
Sylvester read this letter as he and Lucian lay on the short fine turf of a bluff headland in the Isle of Orkney, not far from Kirkwall, looking over the northern sea, now blue and dancing in summer sunshine. The air was sweet, clear, and bracing; white sea-birds floated over the sparkling waves; a lark sang high in the pure sharp air; the charm of spring had hardly yet departed from the far advanced summer; tiny flowers sprinkled the down, and the little hardy black-faced lambs that cropped them, were still in the prettiest stage of their youth.
“My education is in advance of the shilling copy,” said Sylvester, reading the first sentence of his letter aloud; and then, after a moment’s hesitation, passing it to his companion.
When he had answered Lucian’s letter of invitation to join him at Oban, he had briefly acknowledged the truth of the guess indicated by the return of the photograph; but since then no word on the subject, so near the hearts of both, had passed between them.
Lucian had regained much of his usual look and manner, and did not appear to be occupied with anything but the business of his yacht and with the places that he had come to look at.
Now he put down his pipe, which he was preparing to re-light, and, leaning on his elbow, read the letter through, more than once perhaps, for he was a long time silent. Then he looked up at Sylvester.
“I was a fool,” he said, “a fool to be gulled by any evidence against her denial. I ought to have known her better. I wasn’t man enough to trust her. That’s why she has forgotten me.”
Though Sylvester had often said as much to himself, the avowal was startling, in Lucian’s slow, clear voice, the accents hardly varying from those in which a few minutes before he had asked his companion to give him a light.
“You were so young,” he said. “But how – ”
“How do I know it now? I don’t know. I found it out by seeing her again. You understand her better.”
“I’d give my right hand never to have been forced to meddle with the matter,” said Syl.
“I want to say,” said Lucian, “that I’m not a dog in the manger. If you could get her – I – I – I think it would be the best thing for her. I – hope you’ll try.”
“I have no reason to think she could care for me,” said Sylvester hurriedly; “but – well, Lucy – of course you know I shall try – some day. And thank you.”
There was silence again, and then Lucian said —
“I’m going, as I told you, to try Toppings. That’s what I have to look to. My mother will be glad my chance is over.”
“She wishes you to settle down?”
“Yes, of course. I could never have anything said about the past – and her, from my mother’s point of view; and knowing that she felt so strongly, has made a sort of separation. But I shall ask her if she likes to bring the girls to Toppings. The life there would suit her.”
“But, Lucy,” said Sylvester, “why should you give up the white bears that you had set your heart on? Two years hence, as you said, is quite time enough for you to settle down at Toppings.”
Lucian was silent for a minute, then he said —
“I don’t care much about the bears, so it’s better to do what suits other people. Besides, I had rather know what happens to her, and I couldn’t hear if I was in the Arctic regions.” Sylvester sat up and looked at him. It had never occurred to him to think that Lucian suffered from solitude or want of sympathy, or indeed to think that his life had been permanently saddened by his disappointment. He had always believed the interests which he picturesquely symbolised as “white bears” to be enough for the strong, healthy, active youth; and even his faithfulness to Amethyst had seemed to Sylvester to spring more from a sense of what was due to himself, than from involuntary yearning for her.
“I suppose,” Lucian went on, before he could speak, “that you meant – her – in that poem of yours all the time.”
“Well, yes,” said Syl, half laughing, “I suppose I did.”
“Its quite true,” said Lucian, “I couldn’t say all that; but there seems nothing else to think of, and icebergs would make no difference at all.”
“I didn’t think, Lucy, that you would spend your life in looking for the rainbow’s end.”
“I shall not. There are plenty of things to do. But, since I misjudged her so, there can be no peace till she is happy. You see, at first, I felt as if I could never get over knowing that I had been wrong, when all the comfort I’d ever had in the matter, had been thinking that giving her up was the only right thing to do. I went once that wretched afternoon – right up to the Hall – and then I turned back, and thought I wouldn’t be made a fool of – when all the while I was making a fool of myself.”
“We were all infernal fools,” said Sylvester. “Then,” said Lucian, “I remembered that it didn’t matter so much about me, since I had found out that she was – what I’d always thought her. I’m glad now it was all my fault and not hers. Something in your poem put that into my head.”
He gave a little smile as he spoke, and Sylvester noticed for the first time how grave his face had grown. It had never been exactly lively, but surely the weight on the straight, clearly-marked brows was new.
“I suppose I hadn’t given her up really,” he went on after a minute, “because I seem to have to begin quite new. It’s odd how hard it is to believe that I’m going to settle down at Toppings. I feel as if something must happen to prevent it. But it won’t now. It will be all right if she is happy – and good. So I mean what I said, Syl; I hope you’ll get her. I think I always knew you did love her, and that made me shy off when you meant to be kind to me. Then it will be all right – for her.”
He sat up and looked out over the sunny sea. The ache at his heart was hard to bear, all the harder perhaps that even now he had hardly found the right words for it. There seemed so little to look forward to. Sylvester, full of hopes and fears, interests and longings, with a future from which Amethyst was not shut out, and able to rejoice even in the suffering which brought to him so intense a life, could hardly realise the passion that only made itself felt as want and loss.
“Let’s walk on,” said Lucian presently. “We had better look up some of the Pirate places by and by. We might get down to the beach now, perhaps.”
There was a little rough path, a mere sheep-track, leading off the headland down a steep descent to the shore. The turf gave place to jagged rocks and loose stones. Lucian went on with rapid, practised tread, and presently turned off from the descent and followed the track along the cliff side. The rocks grew more precipitous, and the track narrower, the sea dashed up at their feet in great breakers of foam.
“You don’t get dizzy, do you, Syl?” he called back; “this is rather a nasty corner.”
“No,” said Syl. “I can look at the soap-suds.”
“All right. Here’s a splendid great wash-tub.”
He turned round the rock, there was a little crash. Sylvester hurried forward, but the path and Lucian had alike disappeared.
“All right, only a slip,” he shouted from below, and, looking down, Syl saw that he had caught by the rough projections of the rock, and was holding himself on by hands and feet, above the jagged rocks and the boiling sea. Sylvester threw himself on his face, and stretching out his hand, caught Lucian’s wrist.
“Can you pull yourself up a little nearer?” he said.
The sea roared in his ears, and foamed under his eyes, beneath Lucian’s upturned face.
“Let go; give me your hand,” said Lucian.
Sylvester obeyed, and Lucian loosened the hold of his right hand from the rock, and grasped Sylvester’s, holding on to a firmer projection with his left. Then he cautiously raised himself, not a very difficult feat for so active a person – another moment, and he would be safe; but, as he moved and strained upwards, to his horror Sylvester saw the face beneath him whiten and change.
“I – can’t – I’m hurt. Don’t pull me,” gasped Lucian.
Sylvester grasped the straining hand with all his strength, but his own position was cramped and insecure, he could do no more than hold on. If Lucian fainted! Lucian shut his eyes and moved his hand till it grasped Sylvester’s wrist, and gave him a firmer hold. Then he made another attempt to lift himself up, and then – . He opened his eyes, his whole face drawn with agony, and looked up at Sylvester. Sylvester held himself firm with every force of body and soul, but the forces were beginning to fail, the ground was slipping beneath him. Then – Lucian unclasped his fingers, and slipped slowly down the rough face of the rock, and fell backwards, not into the sea, but on to the rough, slippery rocks, just above the foaming water, where he lay motionless on his back.
Then Sylvester staggered up on to his feet, and, leaning his back against the rock, steadied his limbs, which trembled with the strain he had put upon them. Another moment, and, a pace or two further back, he had let himself down from the path, and with risk and difficulty reached the ledge of rock on which Lucian lay. It was so narrow and unsafe that he could not get beside him, could not see his face, only his fair hair shining in the sun, could but just reach forward and touch his lips and brow. He called to him, but found his voice was only a sob, inaudible to himself. Lucian lay motionless, and Sylvester looked round for any chance of help. He saw that the tide was going down, and leaving more and more rocks bare beneath him. The sea was smooth enough, the foaming eddy was only caused by the hollowing of the rocks. The sky was blue and bright; he could, as his nerves stilled a little, hear the lambs bleat above his head. Then Lucian’s head quivered under his hand, there was a movement, and then a sharp cry of agonising pain – a sound which, in a grown man’s voice, Sylvester, a homebred man of peace, had never heard before.
“Lucy – dear boy, I can’t reach you. I am here. You are terribly hurt.”
There was no answer, except that the cry was stifled into a moan, and Lucian turned his face a little towards Sylvester’s hand, pressing his cold cheek against it.
Then Sylvester, clinging on to the shelving rock, shouted with all his strength; and his shout was answered from the down above. What he uttered in his outcry of hope he never knew; but there was an answer back.
“All right! Hold on – we’re coming round.”
There was a dreadful pause, and then on the lower rocks, now bared by the ebbing tide, three young men, in tourist garb, appeared, scrambling round from behind, and came near enough for speech.
“What is it? A fall – are you both hurt? Good heavens! It’s Riddell of Cuthbert’s! There’s footing now – the tide’s going out.”
And in another minute Sylvester was pulled down from his dangerous perch and held up, as he staggered for a moment with cramp and stiffness, by the strong hands of three of his own scholars – youths whose faces at lecture had never greatly interested him, but who seemed now very angels of deliverance.
“Are you hurt, sir? Lean on me, Mr Riddell. We can soon get a boat up to the rocks.”
“Can we reach him? He fell over the cliff.”
The footing was much less secure beneath the spot where Lucian lay, but beneath again was a broad slab of rock now laid bare; and between them all they managed to lift Lucian, now quite senseless, and lay him down with his head on Sylvester’s knee. Then two of the lads went off to get a boat which could be brought up to a little strip of sand below at low tide, and the other remained to give what help he could.
Lucian moved a little again presently, when some whiskey, which the young men were carrying on their walking tour, had been put upon his lips and temples. He knew Sylvester’s voice and whispered —
“Are you safe, Syl?”
“Oh, yes. But you – can you say where you are hurt?”
“I’m glad I let go,” murmured Lucian; while it came over Sylvester with a flash of certainty that the clasping hand had not given way from faintness, but had loosed its hold rather than risk pulling him over. “I am – done for,” gasped Lucian. “I am hurt – inside – I can’t speak – Mother – my love – and her.”
He sank again into unconsciousness, and Howard, the young undergraduate, put his arm round Sylvester to support him as he held Lucian’s weight, and put the whiskey-flask to his lips.
“Is he your brother?” he whispered.
“No; my friend, and he has given his life for mine. Oh, my God! Can the boat get there?”
It came at last, and as they lifted Lucian into it, there was a sob of pain that showed life at least. And life, Sylvester tried to feel, meant hope.