Chapter Ten
Eden’s Gate
When Lucian left her, Amethyst stood leaning over the stile, which, at the end of the long cypress walk, led through a little wood into the fields. She watched his brisk active movements, his tall slight figure, with a proud sense of possession. In the morning he would come back again, through the shade and sunlight of the woodland path, and if, as might be, she were watching for him, would wave a greeting where now he waved a farewell. She turned as he passed out of sight, and started to see her graceful, charming mother coming down the long walk towards her.
“My darling child,” said Lady Haredale, with a little anxious frown on her sweet face, “I made the best of it just now; but I’m in mortal trouble. Will you help me?”
“Oh, mother dear, what is it?” said Amethyst, as Lady Haredale put her arm round her waist, and walked on by her side.
“Well, dear, the truth is that I owe some money. When people are in such a dreadful state of hard-upishness as your poor papa and I, one can do nothing like other people. You see how careful I am about my clothes, I’m not a bit extravagant; but just a little game of cards is a most innocent diversion – when one can afford it. I know it’s just the one pleasure I can’t resist – my poor old daddy couldn’t either – which was why your dear father only got about three farthings with me – a thing Charles has never forgiven.”
“Oh, mother,” said Amethyst, breathlessly, “then don’t buy the velvet dress. And I would just have a plain white to be married in.”
“Oh, darling, that’s nothing to do with it. But I’m going to confide in my girl, and she’ll keep my secret, won’t she?”
“Oh, yes – yes!”
“Well, I lost some money to Lady Saint George, and the awkward thing is, that she is a distant cousin of Mrs Leigh’s; as rich as Croesus the Saint Georges are really. But she hates me – always did – and lately she has made friends with Charles. I wouldn’t know Charles, I think a line should be drawn, but she chose to take him up, and actually ‘confided’ to him my little delay. That was mean, and I hate meanness. Well, Charles and his father had one of their pleasant interviews; Charles wanted money as usual, and when my lord couldn’t give it him, and complained of his constant drains upon him, he had the audacity to say that he was not the only culprit!”
“Oh, mother, can’t you pay it?”
“I must, my dear child; you see poor, good old Tony has managed hundreds of little affairs for me; but now it will be different, as he has told me.”
“Did he lend you money?”
“My dear, he was good-nature itself. Besides, one can’t go oneself and sell one’s poor little things. One would be cheated, and it is so much nicer, isn’t it, to leave those matters to a man to manage?”
“Won’t you – ask father?”
“My dear child, no! He can’t give me any money. It is you, my darling, who must help your poor mother. Will you give up your amethysts at least for a time? They are really of value.”
“I would give up everything on earth,” said Amethyst.
“Well then, you will make it all quite easy. I am writing a note to Tony, and you shall just direct it for me, and take it down to the post.”
“Why should I direct it?”
“Why, he is staying at Loseby. Miss Verrequers, his heiress, is a connection of the Riddells, you know, our Riddells’ cousins. They are there together. I don’t want to appear in the matter at all, but you might be writing to him about your wedding presents. I must be most careful not to make any trouble for him, poor fellow! Miss Verrequers wouldn’t understand our friendship.” Amethyst felt an instinctive shrinking from directing the letter, though she could hardly tell why. She was confused and puzzled. The whole story was so out of her experience, her mother fascinated her so much, that she could not judge the case on its own merits.
“We are going to. Loseby on Thursday,” she said, “to a tennis party.”
“Yes, I know, that will be the opportunity for giving him the amethysts. Come, dearest, and let me give you the note. And, Amethyst, Lucian, of course, mustn’t guess at this little contretemps. You promise?”
Amethyst shrank again. She could not have told Lucian of her mother’s – what? – shame seemed too strong a word – discredit? Yet to promise secrecy towards him went against her, but at her mother’s desire, it never struck her that it was wrong.
“Yes, mamma,” she said confusedly, and followed Lady Haredale into the house, directed the envelope in the modern, upright, school-girl hand, which certainly bore no resemblance to Lady Haredale’s sloping penmanship, and prepared to take it to the post-office. As she came down-stairs she saw Tory standing in the hall, her legs apart and her hands behind her back.
“Amethyst,” she said, “Kat and I mean you to know. It’s quite true what I said just now. Una’s gone nearly off her head over Tony getting married. She’s a perfect fool about him. But it’s his fault, he’s an awful spoon is Tony. So is she; you’d better go and talk to her.”
“But – she’s a child,” said Amethyst; so much taken aback, that she forgot that the precocious Tory was more of a child still.
“Oh – little girls are amusing. He thought it didn’t matter. Una ought to have known it was nonsense.”
“But mother said it was nonsense, just now – of Una’s.”
“Very likely. That’s what she would think.”
Amethyst turned and fled. She felt as if she could neither speak nor look. A horror seized her of “kind good Tony,” and she ran across the park, in haste to get the note addressed to him out of her hand.
As she was about to put it into the box, Sylvester Riddell came up with a handful of letters.
“Good afternoon, Miss Haredale,” he said, “I hope this lovely weather will last for my cousin’s party at Loseby.”
The sense of unaccustomed secrecy made Amethyst give a guilty start; she dropped the letter, Sylvester picked it up, and the address in the clear-marked writing caught his eye. He noticed it, of course, by no word or look, but her crimson blush startled him.
Why should she write to a man whom, in common with Lucian Leigh, he detested; and why, if she did so, should she look so frightened and ashamed?
She dropped the letter into the box, and with a murmured excuse of being in a hurry, went back with winged footsteps, but a heavy heart.
She took herself to task for her folly in being so much startled and upset, but the shadow of half-understood evil is very frightful to a young soul; and she turned, with almost a sense of relief, from her mother’s revelations, to what she believed to be more within her comprehension, Una’s “silliness” about Major Fowler.
She had, of course, seen many girls who were “silly,” and meaning to scold and coax Una out of such folly, went straight up to her room in search of her, opening the door without waiting for an answer to her knock.
The girl was crouched up in a chair all in a heap, and glared at Amethyst under her hair, as if she would have liked to spring at her.
“What is the matter, Una?” said Amethyst. “Won’t you tell me all about it? Why are you so miserable, you poor little dear?”
“I mean to tell you. I hate to see you think the world is all sugar, when I know it is so wicked. I’ll teach you knowledge of the world.”
“Well?” said Amethyst composedly, and sitting down on the side of the bed. She was too much of a modern school-girl to be easily impressed by heroics.
“My lady made a great deal of him,” began Una abruptly, “because he lent her money. After he’d told her all about Mrs Fowler’s ill-temper he used to catch me in the passage and kiss me, and say he wished I was his little wife. He took me out long days, and people said I was so little it didn’t matter. And I used to put little notes in his great-coat pocket, and he’d stick his in little corners for me. And when he sat up smoking, I’d slip out when I’d been sent to bed, and run down and have such good times. He told me a great deal more of his sorrows than he ever told my lady! And he’d plan how we’d be married when I was seventeen, and go in a yacht to a lovely island in the south. I was happy then; I didn’t care about being married. It was just enough to love him, love him, love him! And now, he’s been cooling off ever since we came here, and I’ve just been dying for him. And it’s over, it’s over! I won’t live! I won’t exist without him! I’d like to kill him. Last time he was here, he laughed and made jokes. It wasn’t a joke once. He was just a fool about me then. He has sucked out my life like a vampire!”
Amethyst clenched her fingers together.
“I wish I could punish him!” she said. “He is a wicked man – a villain.”
“Oh no, no, no!” screamed Una. “He can’t help it. He’s an angel, and I’d die for him this minute!” and she flung herself down on her bed, sobbing pitifully.
It came slowly over Amethyst how dreadful a story Una had been telling her, how unfortunate a fate had fallen on the poor child. Una might be naughty; but Amethyst saw dimly that no amount of “naughtiness” could bear any relation to the great injury that had been done to her by the thoughtless mother, who had never taken care of her, and by the selfish man who, for his own pleasure, had excited her childish passion.
An instinct of pity greater than she could understand came over her; she could not speak a word of blame, but knelt down, and laid her face close to Una’s, herself crying bitterly. Una nestled up to her, and sobbed more quietly, and at length Amethyst looked up.
“Now,” she said, “however bad it is, we have got to leave off crying. You must go to bed, Una, and I shall see about some supper for you; I’ll take care of you, now I know, and he shall never have anything more to do with you.”
A look, which Amethyst did not follow, came into Una’s eyes; but she gave a long sigh, as of relief to her feelings, submitted to Amethyst’s care, and finally settled herself down to sleep, not perhaps more miserable than usual. Amethyst went away from her, and stood by the passage window in the soft evening light, looking over the grave old garden, the peaceful spot which she had rejoiced in calling “home.”
Affection, emotion, the ignorance of innocent girlhood as to the proportion of one evil to another, confused her; but her brain was clear and strong, and, through all the glamour of her mother’s charm, she saw the face of evil, and never, try as she would, could shut her eyes to it again.
Chapter Eleven
As it Looked
“Oh yes, I always knew that she was Lucian’s property. They were marked out for each other from the first. But no man can keep such loveliness all to himself; it is the inheritance of humanity, like the great beauties of nature. I am convinced that Amethyst Haredale is the embodiment of the ideal of our generation. Rossetti – Burne Jones – they aim at her, they cannot reach her. It does not matter whom she belongs to, she is – ”
“It strikes me, Sylvester, that you are talking nonsense.”
“No, Aunt Meg, not to the initiated,” said Sylvester, pulling the collie’s ears, and looking dreamily out at the sunny Rectory garden, one day shortly after his return home at midsummer. “There is Beauty, you know, and sometimes it takes shape. Dante had his Beatrice; Faust, or Goethe himself, sought, but never found – ”
“I have always understood that Goethe was interested in several young women,” interrupted Miss Riddell.
“Yes, but you see the ideal always escaped him; he never quite believed in it. But when one has once seen it, you know, life must be the richer and the fairer. – Eh, dad? Have you been listening?” as he suddenly met his father’s eyes fixed on him over the top of the county paper.
“Yes, my dear boy, I have. But young men’s ideals have been in the habit of taking shape ever since Adam woke up and saw Eve.”
“Oh, a man’s own ideal,” said Sylvester impatiently, and colouring a little; “but I meant the ideal of the race. That is impersonal, and exists for all.”
“H’m!” said the Rector. “The two ideals had a way in my day of seeming identical. I strongly suspect they ran together, as far back as Plato, and will be found, in the same person, however many philosophies may succeed his.”
“And I don’t think,” said Miss Riddell, “that that cheerful, healthy-looking girl is at all like those melancholy pictures that I see in the Grosvenor Gallery.”
“Oh,” said Sylvester, starting up and laughing, “there is no use in talking about the ideal to either of you.”
Perhaps he had been impelled to do so, by the consciousness that his feelings concerning the engagement were watched.
He had known, as he said, from the first, that Amethyst was Lucian’s property; but she had so filled his imagination, that he could not help thinking of her, and fancied he had found a way of doing so, compatible with the turn events had taken. Of course he was not quite in earnest, or rather, he hid the earnestness of which he was conscious, under a veil of fine talking.
He thought of little except of Amethyst and Lucian, but by talking of her he could prove to himself that the thinking was not painful. No, rather it was sweet to compare her to all the fair impersonations of poetry and art.
This peculiar feeling for her was surely quite compatible with his own happiness, when she was Lucian’s wife. Then came the encounter at the post-office, perplexing him extremely; so that he thought of little else, until the day arrived for the garden-party at his cousin’s at Loseby Hall, to which he repaired with his father and aunt, thinking only that he should there see Amethyst. The weather was fine, the gardens beautiful, and half the neighbourhood were gathered on the wide smooth lawn, or scattered about in the paths and shrubberies.
Sylvester, in the midst of many greetings, soon detected the various groups of which he was in search. Major Fowler, handsome and military, and very sprucely got up, was walking about with a pale dark young lady, not very young, nor very pretty, but dressed in a costume, the wonderful lace and embroidery of which was noticeable, even in the crowd of well-dressed women.
Mrs Leigh as usual, elegant and appropriate, was with Lucian; and Amethyst, all white, with a large white hat, was beside him. Lady Haredale was there also, in a style which at first sight looked appropriately matronly, but which yet was like that of no other matron there. The little Leighs and Haredales were together, and Una, promoted to a long white frock, and with her hair turned up, stood by Amethyst’s side, looking in air and style very like her. Sylvester went up to join them, and, as he shook hands with Amethyst, he fancied that she blushed, and that her eyes had a new expression of anxiety in their depths.
“Come, Leigh,” said one of the young men of the house, “you won’t be an available bachelor much longer – so come and play tennis. Sylvester, I believe you are always lazy. Miss Haredale, will you play?”
Amethyst was not prepared to play on the present occasion, and preferred looking on. She liked to watch Lucian, who went away good-humouredly, knowing that he was by far the best player in the neighbourhood. As he moved, Major Fowler came up and introduced Miss Verrequers to Lady Haredale with great propriety, and then to all the young ladies in succession. Miss Verrequers was polite, but a little formal, and it occurred to Sylvester that she had heard a good deal about Lady Haredale, and did not intend to become intimate with her. Observant as he was, nothing struck him but that Una was an unpleasant-looking girl, as her eyes glared out under her big hat. As a cousin of the house, he had to help in getting seats for the ladies, and arranging for them to see the tennis; but Miss Verrequers did not sit down, and presently she and Major Fowler walked away towards the house.
Amethyst and Una, with other young ladies, walked up and down, and looked on. Fresh streams of guests poured out on to the lawn, till it was crowded with gay costumes, and the air filled with laughter and chatter. When Sylvester was left at leisure again after various greetings, he missed Amethyst. Lady Haredale had Una by her side, and was apparently introducing her to some friends; Lucian’s set of tennis was still in progress. Sylvester strolled about restlessly, he did not own to himself that he was searching for the one figure that he could not see; but he wandered about, and turned up sunny path and shady nook, lingered in gay conservatory and green fernery, exchanged chit-chat with numerous groups, till at last he turned to come back to the lawn through a bit of shrubbery between the house and the tennis ground. Walking in front of him, with their backs towards him, were Amethyst and Major Fowler. They were talking, or at least Amethyst listened, with a drooping head. At a side path they paused, Amethyst took something from her pocket and put it into her companion’s hand. He concealed it rapidly in the breast of his coat, and after another word or two went up the path towards the house. Amethyst turned round, and saw Sylvester on the long walk some paces off. There was an indescribable look of distress and disturbance on the girl’s face, but she held up her head, and walked towards him, saying with, as it seemed to him, something of her mother’s smile, and a tone in her voice that he had never heard before —
“Major Fowler is in a hurry – naturally – just now. Will you take me back to the tennis ground, Mr Riddell?”
Well, she was an acknowledged beauty, and a bride-elect, and her notice was a favour. She must have learned as much as that, since she had told him that the world was beginning for her among the Easter primroses! As she walked beside him, and they talked easy nothings, there was a dignity in her manner altogether new, which impressed him strangely, but the fearless joy that had been essential to his ideal of her was there no longer.
As they came out on to the sunny lawn, Una came up to meet them.
“Where have you been, Amethyst?” she said petulantly. “Lucian has finished playing. What have you been doing?”
“I have been in the shrubbery,” said Amethyst, “with Mr Riddell.”
As she spoke, Lucian appeared, exclaiming eagerly —
“Syl, you haven’t taken her to see all the glories of the place without me? I want to show her the gold fish in the fernery.”
“We haven’t been looking at the gold fish,” said Sylvester.
“Come then, Amethyst, I’ve done my duty by the tennis. Now let us enjoy ourselves.”
“But I can’t leave Una by herself,” said Amethyst. “She is a young lady to-day, and doesn’t want to go with the children.”
“Will Miss Una come with me, and have an ice?” said Sylvester; and Una, not displeased by the proposal, went off willingly.
As Sylvester talked to her, with due regard to her rôle of grown-up young lady, and thought of what he had seen, he felt that in that short five minutes of his walk in the shrubbery, there had passed away a glory from the earth.
Una very soon had enough of Mr Riddell, who did not greatly amuse her, and found other companions for herself, exactly when she wished to do so, without the slightest awkwardness. Sylvester’s disturbance of mind took the form of disturbance of temper. The music and the ices and the gaiety annoyed him, and he was making an attempt to get out of the way of the crowd, when he met Mrs Leigh, also alone, and, as in duty bound, asked her if she would like to come and have some fruit, or an ice.
“There are some fascinating little tables in the conservatory by the house, with fruit of the most picturesque description,” said Mrs Leigh. “If I don’t make the most of my opportunities on these occasions, I always feel that I defraud myself, and pay my hosts a bad compliment. Besides, I enjoy a talk with you, Sylvester, so if I am not keeping you from the young ladies – ”
“We can discuss the young ladies,” said Sylvester, “and admire them from a distance.”
He and Mrs Leigh were very good friends, and liked each other’s company; but to-day he perceived that she, as well as himself, was abstracted and preoccupied – out of spirits, in fact; and he set it down to the approaching loss of her son from her family circle. He could not, however, make cheering remarks on the subject, just now; so with words that hardly touched the surface of the thoughts of either, he conducted her into the spacious conservatory which made of Loseby a show-place. It was very large and lofty, with nooks and bowers, formed of rare shrubs and creepers, and cunningly-contrived vistas, through which, framed in clematis or taxonia, part of the lawn, and long green walks leading away into the park and woods, were visible.
Sylvester found his companion a seat, and supplied her with a peach; but he had a curious feeling of something impending, of thunder about to burst. As he watched the groups passing before him, and remarked casually on them to Mrs Leigh, he knew that he was really dreading the reappearance of the pair whom he had once before interrupted; and, as he said to himself that it was not likely that such another risk would be run, Mrs Leigh suddenly exclaimed —
“There is Amethyst alone! What can she be doing?”
Sylvester started, as Amethyst, with a hurried step, and glancing nervously about her, came into the conservatory at the further end, and after pausing as if in search of some one, passed out of sight behind a trellis covered with heliotrope and scarlet geraniums.
“She has gone into the house,” said Mrs Leigh; “let us join her.”
She rose and followed Amethyst’s footsteps round the geranium-covered trellis, behind which an open window led into a small ante-room, also adorned with flowers, and, at first sight, empty. In a moment, the white figure came again into view followed by Major Fowler. He took her by the hand, drew her close up to him, bending his face over hers, and kissed her under her hat. She clung to him for a second, then pulled herself away, and covered her face with her hands. Both moved out of sight in separate directions, and the whole thing was over in half a minute. Mrs Leigh had stopped, with a clutch at Sylvester’s arm. Now she walked hurriedly forward into the ante-room, and Sylvester, with an instinct of checking a scene then and there, dashed past her, with a loud and incoherent remark on the creepers. The ante-room was empty. Only strangers were in the drawing-room beyond. Mrs Leigh sank down into a chair, speechless and overpowered. Sylvester was pale, he neither liked to leave her, nor to speak to her, and he suffered so much that he almost forgot her.
“Sylvester,” she said at length, faintly, “I have been miserable – miserable! But such as this I never thought of.”
“No,” said Sylvester, stupidly, “no – of course not.”
“I have been warned,” said Mrs Leigh. “I have hated the connection. I would be thankful to break off the match. But a child of eighteen! – What can I do for the best?”
“Don’t say a word – don’t tell Lucian now. Speak to Miss Haredale yourself alone, first. She is, as you say, a child. Major Fowler’s position in the family, his engagement, – an unsuitable joke – ”
“Sylvester,” said Mrs Leigh, “That was a parting with a meaning, and you know it. But of course nothing can be done to-day, and here I will save her. I will not make a scandal, but that girl shall never be my Lucian’s wife.”
There was relief as well as dismay in Mrs Leigh’s voice, and she stood up, and walked out again through the conservatory on to the terrace in front of the house. Lucian came hurrying across the lawn, looking perplexed and angry.
“What has become of Amethyst?” he said. “I missed her all in a moment. Has she been with you? Lady Haredale and the little girls are on the lawn.”
“Amethyst has not been with me, Lucian,” said Mrs Leigh in a tone which Sylvester thought must at once have arrested Lucian’s attention; but he only looked about restlessly, till round the corner of the house came Amethyst herself, walking beside Miss Verrequers, with Major Fowler in attendance. There was an anxious look in her eyes as she approached, but she was quite self-possessed, and did not look guilty.
“I have been looking for you everywhere. Where did you vanish to?” said Lucian, in a tone of boyish vexation, that sounded utterly trivial in the anxious ears of the others.
“Well, I thought that you would look for me, if you wanted me,” said Amethyst; “and, you see, here I am.”
It was a not unnatural girlish retort; but it wanted to Sylvester’s ear the crystal candour of Amethyst’s ordinary utterances.
“I have been having the pleasure of making Miss Haredale’s acquaintance,” said Miss Verrequers, pleasantly.
“We are going to find my mother,” said Amethyst, “because Miss Verrequers wishes to settle a day to come over to Cleverley. Will you come, Lucian?”
He walked on by her side, a little rebuked, and, as it were, kept down by her manner. But, as they all followed in a stream, Sylvester saw her turn her head aside for a moment, and a look swept over her face, of utter misery and shame, a look gone even while he noted it.
The rest of the day was for him like a miserable dream. He thought of every kind of excuse, of the free and easy manners of great houses and fashionable folk, of childish freedom, and girlish coquetry, but every theory degraded Amethyst’s stately maidenhood, and none fitted the despair in her eyes. He could hardly bear his part with his father and aunt, as they went home, in the discussion of the party, and Mr Riddell noticed his silence and preoccupation, over their evening pipe.
“Not such good company as usual to-night, my dear boy,” he said.
“No, dad, I dare say not Father,” he added, as he turned to go up-stairs, “if ever you pray for your stray lambs, do so to-night. There’s trouble ahead, though you might not think it.”
“Ah?” said Mr Riddell, with a long inquiring intonation. “But, Syl, I know my lambs by name, and I forget none of them; no more when their feet are in the green pastures, than when they are wandering on the mountain.”
“Thank you!” said Sylvester, with unconscious fervour.
Mr Riddell looked at him as he hurried up-stairs, and, in his prayers that night for those in trouble and distress of mind, he did not forget his well-beloved son.