Chapter Sixteen
Better
The last day of July had come, the day that should have been the wedding-day was over and past, the fresh green turf of the Cleverley garden was brown and dry, with long hours of scorching sunshine, the flowers looked hot and overblown in the blazing afternoon light. Some empty chairs, and a tea-table with empty tea-cups, stood on the edge of a group of trees, and on the rug in front of them lay Una in a faded shabby frock, and with a face in which there seemed to be no girlish freshness remaining. Her long hair hung heavily round her, her eyes stared wearily out of their dark circles; she had nothing to do but to play with every morbid and unwholesome fancy that can enter the brain of an ill-trained and unhappy girl.
Tony’s wedding-day was fixed. He did not love her now. By and by, when she was grown-up, she would meet him, and make him care for her again, if she didn’t die first. Why not drown herself in the pond in the wood? Una pictured the plunge, the stillness, and herself and her hair floating on the top, like ‘The Christian Martyr.’ But Amethyst did not love her now. How should she? Her life was a ruin too; dying would be much better for them both. Una thought again of the cool dark pond in the wood, with a sense of desire; but her exceeding weariness and languor kept her still. It was not worth while to get up, even to commit suicide.
As she lay still, getting a dreary sort of amusement out of these miserable fancies, she saw Amethyst come out of the house, walk slowly across the brown scorched grass, and sit down on one of the chairs, without noticing her sister’s presence.
She sat perfectly still, with a hard unsmiling face, at variance with the gay trim dress in which she had been entertaining some recent visitors. They were gone, and she could sit still now, and think – think the bitter thoughts in which her cruel disappointment took form.
All that she had lost, still more all that she now had left, passed before her mind, and was weighed in the balance. She had no illusions now. Perhaps the bitterest drop was not so much the loss of Lucian, as the sense that he ought to have read her more truly. He himself had failed her. As for her mother, her eyes were as clear as Tory’s; and her heart, how hard and bitter! And the days had to go on. It was not only that she was not Lucian’s happy wife, she was Amethyst Haredale, with parents whom she despised, and a house in which no good thing could flourish; and yet, her aunt’s anxious entreaty to join her as soon as she would, had no attraction for her. Religion – goodness? Mrs Leigh and Lucian were good and religious, and had cruelly misjudged her. Were good people really much better than bad ones? She had thought herself religious; but she had got below all the religion that she had ever experienced, and with the distrust of all earthly love, came also distrust of the Divine love, from which she had scarcely distinguished it. Amethyst was one of those, to whom trouble comes, not only in vague and overwhelming feelings, but in keen sharp thoughts; and, young as she was, her thoughts hit life’s hard problems like well-aimed arrows.
“Well, Amethyst, do you think, now, there’s any good in being good?”
Una’s voice, with a hard ring through its weary languor, roused her with a start.
“Una! Why do you lie there in the sun? It’s very bad for you!” she said petulantly.
“Suppose it is, what does it matter? There’s nothing doing, and nothing worth living for, that I can see. You can’t say there is.”
“You ought not to say things like that, Una,” said Amethyst. “It is not right.”
“As if being right mattered!” said Una, and then with a sudden change the ready tears filled her eyes. “I am so – so miserable,” she sobbed, “and you are unkind to me now, Amethyst. The children tease me, and you don’t care for me now.”
Amethyst looked round at her. It was quite true. She had not cared. Even now she felt impatient of the trouble that was like a caricature of her own.
“It’s natural you should hate me, when I did all the mischief. But oh, I did try to make up for it – I did!”
“Nonsense!” said Amethyst. “I don’t hate you, but I don’t know that I can say anything to do you any good.”
She started up, and walked away as she spoke, her nerves were all on edge, her temper irritated, her conscience beginning to struggle with her sense of injury. The craving for Lucian came over her, as, with unconscious force, she said to herself, “like a flood of hot lava.” How could she think about other people? She escaped from the sight of Una, and walked along the little path across the fields, towards the village. Then the place recalled the beginning of her troubles. She had come this way to post the fatal letter which Sylvester Riddell had seen. She believed Sylvester to be her worst enemy, and it was with a sense of angry recoil that she saw his father and aunt coming to meet her. What part they had taken, if any, in her affairs, she did not know, and she had seen neither of them since the party at Loseby. Probably they thought that she was a bad girl, and would show it in their manner to her. She stiffened up her head, and would have passed with a bow; but the Rector, who was nearest to her, stopped, raised his hat, and held out his hand.
“How do you do, my dear?” he said in his kindest voice; “my sister was coming to ask a little favour of you.”
“It is this,” said Miss Riddell, without waiting for Amethyst to speak; “I want to interest some of the young girls about here in improving their minds. There are a good many in Cleverley without much object in life; I think some of them might be encouraged to work for an examination. As your experience is so fresh, and you were so successful, I wondered if you would come to tea to-morrow afternoon, and tell us a little about it.”
“So fresh?” Yes, only three months old; but what a fiery gulf seemed to roll between. Amethyst was quick enough to see that this proposal was meant most kindly as a link with her old life, and also, to show the neighbourhood that, in the opinion of the Rectory, Miss Haredale was an example to be followed, a companion to be desired.
She hesitated and was silent.
“The kindness would be very great,” said the Rector. Miss Riddell moved a little away, and he continued, “You have had a great trial, nothing seems attractive to you now. Will this be more than you are ready for?”
“I don’t feel as if I could remember about it,” said Amethyst, with a sudden impulse, the change in her face showing that she was still child enough to be touched by the first kind word.
“No, my dear, but don’t you think it would be good for you to recall it?”
“I can’t be good, I wasn’t made to be,” said Amethyst, in a tone which she thought was wickedly defiant, but which really showed confidence in her listener’s comprehension.
“No, my dear,” said the Rector again; “very few of us are. But we are all made to be a little better by effort, and prayer.”
“I am worse,” said Amethyst, tears filling her eyes, while her whole figure trembled.
“Yes, no doubt; but I think you will find it possible to make each day a little better. And I have always found it worth while, Amethyst. It makes all the difference in the long run between one man and another. I am sure there is a better and a worse before you in life, my dear, even if you think there is not a very good.”
Perhaps this was the consolation of age rather than of youth. But it came to Amethyst as a truth. It might not be worth while to be a little less self-absorbed, a little less wretched; but she knew that it was possible.
“God bless you, my dear child, and good-bye,” said Mr Riddell, “you shall come or not to the Rectory to-morrow, as you like.”
Miss Riddell went away with only a kind smile and hand-shake, and Amethyst, left alone, burst into a rain of tears. The kindness, the sense of trust in the speakers had been like her native tongue in a foreign land. It was natural; while her own people were strange. She remembered the kind of girl she used to be, as if her girlhood were twenty years away; bliss and misery had alike blotted it out.
But the habits and the instincts of her whole training were not utterly killed; the sense of duty began to lift its head. It was better to be kind to Una, and to show her that there was “a better” in life, than to acquiesce in her despair. It was better to read history, and to practise or to walk with the girls, than to sit alone and brood over her injuries, or to read, in the novels left about by her mother, of far worse injuries leading to worse despair, to learn from these books to what her infant passions were akin, and to bite deeper into the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge – of herself. Of course, she did not put it so. “It was better not to feel like those wicked people, at least not to think of feeling like them.” And slowly and dully she turned her steps homewards through the wood; a bad way to come, since she and Lucian had loved it together. Oh, what was he doing? Did he feel as if life was done? Perhaps the most agonising moment she had known, was when the conviction came to her that it was not in him to feel as she did.
“If I had thought that he had gambled or betted, or been wicked, I would have held on tighter, to help him to be good. But he gave up me!”
“But if you had thought he was faithless to you?” came an answering voice in her soul. It was no thought, but an impulse of fury, that seized upon Amethyst in reply. And then —
“But I could not think so, he could not be bad, he could not be false. But oh, he is – he is – for he has no faith in me. ‘Better!’ There’s no ‘better.’ If he were to come back now, if he ever finds out and believes, I shall never forget?”
She flung herself down on the ground, on the bank where they had sat together by the little pool where they had fished for water-lilies, where they had exchanged forget-me-nots; the very revival of spirit, caused by the friendly words, making her grief more articulate, and for the moment more bitter.
Her tears were dried up; she lay with her hands clenched in the grass, absolutely still. Suddenly a rustling, creeping sound came among the herbs and water-weeds near, then panting, sobbing breath.
Amethyst lifted her head. Not twenty yards from her stood Una, her hands clasped, her eyes fixed on the water, her foot extended. Amethyst sprang to her feet, Una gave a violent start, and either lost her balance and fell, or suddenly jumped into the water.
“Una, Una!” screamed Amethyst, all else forgotten in a moment. She scrambled through the rushes, and caught at her sister’s hands and dress.
Una was on her feet, the water was shallow, but the bottom was soft and muddy; she sank to her knees, and Amethyst, her own foothold insecure in the rushes, could not hold her up.
The young life woke up strong in them both, they screamed and struggled; Amethyst slipped off the bank up to her knees in the pool. As the cold water, the slimy mud, touched her feet, the warm sun struck on her head, the light and the blue of the sky were round and over her.
“Oh, God – oh, God! I don’t want to die! Oh, save us! oh, save us!” she cried.
There was a ringing shout.
“Stand still – stand still! For your lives, don’t struggle! It’s all right, I’ll help you!” And Sylvester Riddell came with a rush towards them, set his foot on a firmer tuft of rushes, grasped Una by the waist, and lifted her, sobbing and shaking, on to dry land, then pulled Amethyst out of the water, and in another moment they were safe on a mass of chervil, campion, stitchwort and sting-nettles high above the water’s edge, wet and miserable, covered with mud and water-weed.
Half an hour later, Sylvester came back to the Rectory with a rapid step and brilliant eyes, but with an amount of mud on his trousers that required explanation. This he gave in rather an off-hand fashion. Una Haredale had slipped into the pond, gathering lilies he supposed, and he had helped her sister to pull her out.
“Was she hurt?” said Miss Riddell, rather curiously.
“No, but she was faint and frightened, and wet through. I helped Miss Haredale to get her home. It was an awkward accident.”
It seemed, however, to have raised Sylvester’s spirits, which had been down to zero of late. He was going abroad with a friend, but he had lingered and put off his start in the hope of once more seeing Amethyst, a sight which he had nevertheless dreaded unspeakably. They had met now, with no time for resentment or embarrassment, and his one feeling was that she was now free. He saw her once again; for she came to the Rectory on the next afternoon, just as he was setting out on his journey.
The weather had changed, and the sky was grey. Amethyst wore a grey frock and hat. She was pale, and looked much less pretty than usual, and her manner was cold, and, he fancied, showed displeasure.
Sylvester’s train was due, he could only shake hands and inquire for her sister.
“She was very much upset and frightened; but she has not been well lately. We must take much more care of her, then I hope she will be better.”
With the last word, she lifted her eyes for a moment to the Rector’s face as he stood behind his son; but they did not meet Sylvester’s, and in a moment she had passed into the drawing-room out of his sight.
He thought of her, as he had seen her first with the glowing amethysts on her brow and neck, an angelic vision; at the primrose-picking, a fresh and joyous girl; when he had come home at Midsummer, happy and proud in her betrothal; at the fatal garden-party, with eyes that had fallen before his own, with a cloud of doubt on her face. He had admired her, idealised her, and, he knew it now, all the while he had loved her, and yet his fate had given him a share in breaking her heart. Now he had seen her again, pale and sad, in the light of common day.
Sylvester took his ticket for London, labelled his luggage, got into the train, and exchanged a newspaper with a friend.
But, in his heart, he vowed himself to Amethyst’s service, he took her for the lady of his love, as if with her colours in his helmet, he had ridden forth to cry her name in the battle-field, and die with it on his lips.
Chapter Seventeen
“Iris.”
One sunny afternoon in spring, Lucian Leigh was sitting on a bench in the garden at Ashfield Mount. Nearly two years had passed since he had left Cleverley in the agony of his great disappointment, and he had now come back to it for the first time.
The flowers were as gay as when he had walked among them during the brief days of his betrothal, the house looked as cheerful and comfortable as of old; the great deer-hound that sat at his feet was unchanged during his absence, but Lucian himself had grown from youth to manhood, and though the expression of his impassive, regular-featured face had changed but little, it was so effectually bronzed, that hair, and even eyes, showed light against the sunburn.
He sat still and smoked, and patted Donald’s head – he liked the feel of it – till footsteps approached, and he was hailed from the neighbouring shrubbery.
“Ha, Syl!” he said, jumping up, “so there you are. Glad to see you.”
“I’m uncommonly glad to see you,” said Sylvester, grasping his hand. “I began to think you were never coming home any more, but were permanently given over to tigers and elephants. Did you like India?”
“No,” said Lucian, “the big game is the only thing worth going there for. I’ve had a shot, I believe, at everything there is there to shoot at I know all the tracks of them, but so do so many other men. Now I think of trying bears in the Rockies for a change; and I should like to go north – an arctic expedition would be rather jolly.”
“You want to add a polar bear’s hide to all the tiger skins you have sent home to adorn the hall at Toppings, before you settle down to pot your own partridges.”
“Yes,” said Lucian.
“But what does Mrs Leigh say to that?”
“She doesn’t like it. She wants me to go to London now, and, as she calls it, ‘keep up our old connection,’ and then keep open house at Toppings in the autumn, have shoots, and so on. I have been there with her now, you know, for two months.”
“And you don’t see it?”
“No, not yet. I must, of course, finally. But Evans is a very good agent, and the Rectory people look after the tenants. I subscribe properly to everything, – schools, and hunt, and county show, and so on; but I’m not going to live there now. Why should I?”
“Well, you might see a little more of the world first, certainly.”
“In two years’ time Miss Carisbrooke comes of age, and the lease of this house will be up. The mother will have to make a new start somewhere then, and it will be time for Kate, at any rate, to come out. That ought to be in our own neighbourhood, so I must be in England then.”
“Does Miss Carisbrooke mean to live here?”
“I believe so. My mother had her to stay here, and liked her, before I came home. You might try your luck, Syl, she’s a catch. Her only relation is a youngish uncle, her guardian. I believe he lives abroad a good deal.”
Lucian paused, then said —
“She has been living for the last year with that old Miss Haredale, who lost her money. She chaperons Miss Carisbrooke, and is to bring her out, I believe, in London this year.”
There was a little silence. Perhaps it had been from a kind of embarrassment that Lucian had at once rained facts upon Sylvester, and put him in possession of his intentions. Now he said —
“Don’t let the mother set you on to bully me about staying at home. I always meant to have a shot at a white bear some time – except once, for about three months. – And that’s quite over, for good and all. I’ve no more concern with it. So I must do something else, you know; and I like sport, and seeing new places.”
Lucian paused again, and Sylvester looked at him keenly, hardly knowing what to say in answer.
“I am convinced,” continued Lucian, with the same unmoved voice and face, “that I acted rightly. So we’ll say no more about it. What have you been about? The mother says you’re writing a poem.”
“Yes,” said Sylvester; “will you read it?”
“I’ll buy it,” said Lucian, gravely; “and, yes, I’ll read it, if you like, as it’s yours. I hope you’ll make Tennyson take a back seat.”
“Thank you,” said Sylvester, laughing. “I’ll be content to hang on behind his coach. But of course I’m rather full of it. I’ve had several things in reviews and magazines, and some men, whose word is worth something, like them. But it’s all luck. The public’s harder to hit than a tiger, Lucy.”
“I hope it won’t turn and rend you. Well, it’s jolly to see you again, after all. Come in, I’ve got some curiosities for you – art objects, don’t you call them? – to adorn your rooms at Cuthbert’s.”
“Thanks. And then come down and see Aunt Meg and the governor. They’ll be delighted.”
If Lucian had not known Sylvester from babyhood, he would have had little in common with him; but, as it was, whatever he had to say, he said to Sylvester; he took all his alien tastes for granted, and never supposed it possible to be so intimate with any one else. Absence, probably, neither made his heart grow fonder, nor the reverse; he would have given and expected exactly the same amount of regard, after an absence of five-and-twenty years instead of two.
Sylvester had other friends, and his notion of sympathetic intercourse included more than this, but he had a brotherly regard for “Miss Lucy,” as the pretty-faced, but manly little boy had been called in his early school-days, and liked his company. Lucian now took him into the house, and bestowed various Indian valuables on him, stating where and when they had been bought on purpose for him, and giving him many distinct pictures of places and people; for he was very observant, and had an accurate memory.
Then, as they walked down together to the Rectory, he asked after old friends, and neighbours, till they turned into the Rectory drive, opposite which, half open, were the great iron gates of Cleverley Hall.
“There’s Aunt Meg,” said Sylvester. “Who’s that girl? – Good heavens,” as Lucian suddenly stopped, and held him back; for there, not fifty feet from them, in the act of parting from Miss Riddell, stood Amethyst Haredale.
Retreat was for her impossible. As she turned and saw them, Lucian, without an instant’s pause, raised his hat, turned and went off up a side path into the garden.
Sylvester moved forward, blushing and confused, but with an eager light in his eyes. She came straight on towards him, stopped, and held out her hand.
“How do you do, Mr Riddell?” she said, in soft gracious tones, like Lady Haredale’s own. “I have come down for a few hours on business for my mother, and I came to see Miss Riddell. I am hurrying now to catch the London train. Good-bye.”
She did not speak hurriedly, she left time for Sylvester’s confused murmurs of reply between her sentences, but she had walked on and turned out of sight before Miss Riddell had time to come up to them.
“The hand of fate!” she exclaimed. “It is months since she was here, and now only for an hour or two.”
“I’ll find Lucian,” stammered Sylvester, turning into the garden, where Lucian came quickly to meet him.
“I was told they were away,” he said abruptly.
“So they are. She came down on business. She – she – ”
“Don’t talk about her,” said Lucian, sternly. “There’s the Rector, and Miss Riddell with him.”
He came up to them, shook hands cordially, presented his little offerings of Indian curios, and after a very short visit, took his leave, and went away by himself.
“Unlucky!” exclaimed Miss Riddell. “I wish it had not occurred.”
“But, Aunt Meg, are they coming down here?” said Sylvester, hurriedly.
“No, they are to be in London for the season, Amethyst is to be presented. I suppose their affairs are looking up. They have been abroad, you know, for some time, and visiting-about; but Amethyst was in town last year for a very short time, with their cousin, Lady Molyneux, at the end of the season. You heard that? She was only there long enough to show that she would make a sensation. R, the new artist, asked to paint her, the picture is to be in the Academy this year. She will have every chance now. She looks well, and has not lost her sweet manner, but her girlishness has all gone, and she is more the grand lady than her mother.”
“I – I hardly remember what a beauty she was,” said Sylvester, rather nervously. “And that fellow, Fowler, he married the heiress, didn’t he?”
“Yes. They live in London. Haven’t you ever met them at Loseby? The marriage turned out very well. There is something very engaging about Amethyst, and she spoke nicely of her sister Una, who is very delicate, she tells me. But, dear me, it was a bad business for Lucian. I don’t know when he will settle down. His mother longs for him to marry and live at Toppings.”
“He had much better see the world first,” said Sylvester.
“One doesn’t quite see the end of it for him,” said Mr Riddell, thoughtfully. “But, Syl, I thought I was to see the magnum opus. I like to know what you young men are doing.”
Sylvester recalled himself with a start, to what had been an hour before an important ordeal to him. Now, part of the poem seemed to have come to life, and the picture faded before the original.
That same brief three months, which had turned Lucian Leigh’s outward life away from the course that had seemed marked out for it, had given a colour to all Sylvester Riddell’s inward existence. When he began to add another to the many poetical versions of a youth in search of an ideal, that ideal was, for him, embodied in his memory of Amethyst Haredale. He might call her Art, Truth, Womanhood, Beauty, anything he would, she looked at him from the deep grave eyes, and smiled the enchanting smile which had filled his imagination at first sight. To Lucian, every thought of Amethyst was painful, never, if possible, to be recalled; to Sylvester, she was a dream of beauty and delight, and, as he had never seen her since the fatal summer, there was a certain dreaminess in his feelings with regard to her.
But when, encouraged by various successes in the way of criticism and of occasional verses, and having a good deal of leisure on his hands, he began to write a long poem, he had no doubt as to the source of his inspiration.
He had called his poem ‘Iris,’ and the subject was that of a youth pursuing an ideal love. The hero was a minnesinger of the early middle ages, and the story was related in sections of narrative interspersed with suitable lyrics. The subject was not new, and he could only hope that the treatment was. He had not yet decided whether Iris should be for ever unattainable, a rainbow of promise, melt mystically into his hero’s being in some ineffable manner, as a final reward, or identify herself with the maiden who had been his childish friend.
But the sight of the real Amethyst had dimmed this ideal Iris, and he hardly knew whether it was as lover or author, that he blushed and hesitated as his father settled himself in his study to listen. He was so nervous that he read hurriedly and badly, and his father told him that he was not doing himself justice, and made him read a passage over again, in which Amelot, as the minstrel boy was called, played and sang to himself in the sunset, his heart full of longing to express itself in song, till, with the sweetest strains that he had ever uttered, the soft and amethystine colours of sun and air took shape and form, and the lovely eyes of Iris shone upon him, amid rainbow hues and gleaming mists, beckoning him ever onward and upward to more strenuous efforts to attain her.
“Of course,” said Sylvester, hurriedly, as he paused, “I suppose he never did reach her – I think she was always the end of the rainbow.”
Mr Riddell did not appear deeply interested in this question. It did not, he said, affect the intrinsic merit of the poem.
But he pounced on the song with which Iris had inspired Amelot, and after declaring it to be smooth, and not without sweetness, tore it to pieces in its author’s sight, proclaimed one epithet commonplace and another redundant, and finally told him, that he should aim at simplicity of sentiment and perfection of expression.
“What all the world can feel, my dear boy, and only you can say, – that’s poetry.”
“I – I am afraid,” said Sylvester, “that Amelot’s devotion to Iris is rather unusual – the lot of the few. Dante is of course the eternal model, after which one can only labour.”
“A case in point, Syl,” said Mr Riddell, briskly. “Thousands of young men have fallen in love, like Dante, with unattainable young women. He knew how to tell the world of it. Besides, Dante was a prophet; he had another function to fulfil. But the simplest things are the greatest.”
Sylvester did not agree, he was not at all prepared to consider that the devotion of Amelot to Iris was usual; quite the contrary. It was an exceptional grace bestowed on such as could receive it.
The point was, however, rather too personal for comfortable argument. Besides, he did not know yet what his father thought about the poem.
“I gather,” he said, “that you think the sentiment of the poem rather too finespun.”
“Oh dear, no,” said Mr Riddell. “Not at all. I’ve often felt the sort of thing myself. I’m glad young men can still be honestly sentimental. Don’t get too mystical, and avoid unusual words – all sorts of aesthetic slang. The thing has a good deal of merit in its own way. I must go down and see old Tomkins.”
And while Sylvester hardly knew whether he was pleased or not, the Rector rammed on his shabby soft hat, stuck his walking-stick under his arm, and remarked —
“Glad you employ your leisure time so well Very pretty lines – many of them – excellent tone and feeling. Of course the genuine lilt of a perfect love-song only drops from the sky once in a generation.”
Sylvester had hardly expected that his father would tell him that, in Lucian’s language, he had made Tennyson take a back seat; but he felt ruffled and dissatisfied.
Sympathetic as Mr Riddell was, he did not quite know what his verdict was to his son. He had written many a smooth and graceful copy of verses in his own young days, reflecting more or less the style and taste of his generation, and he had long survived the discovery that they had not added much to what it had to tell the world. He had found quite enough to live for, without poetry.
Sylvester was of a more intense and less many-sided nature; worthy and sufficient objects in life did not seem to him so easy to find. He had secretly lived much for his poem, and he needed to find it worth living for.
Now, the thing most worth living for seemed to be the hope of seeing Amethyst again. Fate had kept them apart hitherto by a series of chances; but now, if the poem was finished, if it came out and was a success, if he met her in London, if she did not cherish any resentment against him – if she could ever know that Iris —
So Sylvester dreamed. But Lucian went up to London to meet the friend who shared his aspirations as to the bears of the Rocky Mountains, and made arrangements for an immediate start in pursuit of them.