Chapter Eighteen
Glimpses of Heaven
Miss Haredale’s pretty little drawing-room at Silverfold was gay with tulips and hyacinths, and bright with a cheery mingling of sun and firelight.
In the sunny bay-window sat Una Haredale, with a book in her lap, but with eyes eagerly gazing down the pleasant bit of country road, shaded with tall trees and edged with broad pieces of turf and freely growing hedges, that was visible from the window.
Una was now seventeen, a slender, limp creature, with languor and want of strength apparent in every gesture, and a look of extreme delicacy in her pale face and large eager eyes. Her expression had softened and sweetened, her hair was fastened up on the top of her head, though its thick coils still seemed as if they were too heavy for the long over-slender neck. As she caught sight of a figure approaching the garden gate, her face lighted up into a look of positive rapture. She sprang up, and flew out to the door.
“Amethyst, Amethyst! my darling, my darling! Here you are at last I’ll never, never let you go again!”
The last words were spoken as she clung round her sister’s neck, almost stifling Amethyst’s words of greeting.
“My darling, you won’t let me speak, or look at you! Where’s Aunt Anna, – not at home?”
“She has taken Carrie to have a singing lesson. Come in; I am to give you tea, and take care of you.”
Soon Amethyst was sitting in a low chair by the fire, with Una kneeling at her side, leaning against her, and clinging to her, as some one had once said, like bindweed round a lily, a comparison resented by Amethyst as derogatory to Una. She alone knew what this clinging, dependent creature had been to her ever since, for Una’s sake, she had tried to “make things better.”
“Are you quite well, dear? and do you like being here? Have you got on with Aunt Anna?” she asked, tenderly.
“Oh, as well as can be without you. I do like it. Oh! I have a great deal to tell you. Only first I want to hear how everything is settled. Is the house in Eaton Square nice?”
“Yes, there will be plenty of room for Auntie and Carrie Carisbrooke, and you know mother will let them be quite independent. And you are all to be there. Mother wouldn’t hear of sending even Kattern and Tory to Cleverley; and as for you, she insisted on your going to the Drawing-room, and coming out regularly.”
“I? I should be half-killed with an hour of a London party. What can my lady want me for?” said Una, with a startled look.
“She says she may never be able to give you so good a chance. I said I thought that London was bad for you, and that I was sure you could not do much. But she said that it was more amusing for you to do what you could, and she liked to have us all with her. So I must take great care of you, and we must see how it answers for you.”
Una gave a long sigh.
“It keeps me with you,” she said. “But oh, it tires me to think of it! and I shall want heaps of new clothes.”
“Mother says you had better have them when you can. She is delighted at getting the London house.”
“I dare say,” said Una. “You’ll see, Kattern and Tory will get everywhere, except to the Drawing-room and the stiff balls. Kat looks grown-up, and she’s getting rather sweet in her own way – pretty milk-maid style, you know. And she looks best in a straw hat and pink cotton – which is cheap.” Amethyst laughed.
“I don’t know about Kat,” she said, “but Tory declares she’s not going to spoil her chances by and by. She means to wear a sailor hat, and go to classes. She has found out some, and I do think she will, she is very clever.”
Una twisted herself round so as to look up into Amethyst’s face.
“There’ll be the rich heiress,” she said, “and the great beauty. There’s only the good girl left for me! Which will win, I wonder – you or Carrie? She ought to have a poor peer, and you a rich cotton-spinner. But you might pull caps for a duke.”
“He should fall to you, if you are to be the good girl,” said Amethyst. “But I don’t see him anywhere on the horizon at present.”
“No, but the cotton-spinner? Of course the Grattons are going to be in town? In Eaton Square too, perhaps?”
“Yes,” said Amethyst, “on the opposite side. Carrie is to ride with the girls.”
“And you?”
“Too expensive!” said Amethyst, with an odd slow smile. “There’ll be enough to contrive for without that.”
“Where is the money coming from? Is the house all Carrie’s?”
“Well, no. The fact is, father has made it up with Charles, and they have agreed to sell some farms in Derbyshire. We are to see Charles sometimes. He is going on better – ”
“And is meant for Carrie! I declare, Amethyst, that’s too bad!” said Una, sitting up. “And have you seen him?”
“No, and I can’t recollect him at all. Can you?”
“I can. Amethyst, he’s a horror! Even long ago we all hated him. I should hate him to come near you?”
“Well, Una,” said Amethyst, shrugging her shoulders. “We must just do the best we can. Least said, soonest mended – as we settled long ago.”
“Oh,” said Una, with tears in her eyes, “it’s awfully hard lines on us! I want to tell you – somehow I couldn’t write. I see everything differently – since I came here – ”
She broke off, and hid her face on Amethyst’s shoulder.
“What is it, dear? What do you mean? Has anything happened to you?” said Amethyst, anxiously.
“The greatest of all things, Amethyst. I know about religion now – I know about Him! The confirmation classes, and all Mr Ross has taught us – and his sermons – oh, it is all so beautiful. I longed, I wanted to be good. If one could go and live in a place like Saint Etheldred’s, out of the temptations of the world! But yesterday he talked to us separately, and I couldn’t help telling him a little, what a bad, wicked child I had been. And he said things. And somehow, last night, as I lay awake, there came the most wonderful feeling, and I knew it was all true, and that there is peace and rest I knew it. One can be happy without earthly love, and – and all the things people care for. It’s quite true, Amethyst, I – I saw Him right in my heart, and I know…”
She lifted her face, all transfigured and radiant, as she uttered the holiest of names in an awe-struck whisper.
Amethyst looked at her, with the dreaming, seeking, unsatisfied eyes which were in such curious contrast to the repose of her beautiful face.
“You knew always,” said Una. “That was what made you so different to us all, when first you came.”
Amethyst smiled a smile that would have been a little cynical, if it had not been so intensely sad.
“I’m not very good, darling,” she said. “Life’s rather a complicated business, as you know very well.”
“Yes,” said Una, “but I feel as if I should not mind anything very much, now. Now there is something to get back into, to hide oneself in. But it is all your doing, my jewel. What should I have been like but for you?”
Una believed, poor child, that the struggle of life was over for her, or at least robbed of all its hardness. These weeks at Silverfold had lifted her into a new world; and when, a day or two after Amethyst’s arrival, the confirmation for which she had been preparing took place, the fervour of her self-dedication seemed to shine through her, as, with a face white as her dress, but beautiful with peace and joy, she came down the little church amid the crowd of stolid white-capped country girls, experiencing a sense of ineffable rest and joy.
Was this but another and more dangerous phase of the varying emotions to which she was subject, a lifting up that was likely to end in a more violent fall?
It might be so. But, only through the higher possibilities of her emotions could salvation come to so emotional a creature; she was one to whom all good must come at risk of fatal loss.
Amethyst had no answering experience. She was a strong and healthy creature, with vigorous spirits and growing energies, which one blow could not crush. In spite of many bitter hours, she had found interests and enjoyments. Vexatious as in many ways the long months abroad with her mother had been, uncongenial as were many of the visits which she had paid with her, she enjoyed seeing new places, she made new friends, took up new pursuits, thought new thoughts.
As for home, the veil had been torn from her eyes, and she never had an illusion again. She did not make herself miserable, but she had learned to expect nothing.
She knew, as far as the London season was concerned, and the career of which she had had last year a foretaste, both that she had claims to a very brilliant one, and also that she was heavily handicapped by poverty and by want of family good repute. She thought that romance and passion were over for her, and that she was free to do the best possible for herself in life; but she meant to be honourable, upright, and modest, there were bounds that she did not intend to pass. Truly, it was in her to be more a woman of the world than her mother, she had so much more forethought, and was so much less swayed by the pleasure and amusement of the moment.
The momentary sight of Lucian and Sylvester had brought back, not the love which she believed herself to have outlived, but a sudden realisation of what that love had been, and an intense resentment against the misjudgment that had destroyed it. She hated Sylvester, and yet felt that she would have died rather than let him guess that the sight of him gave her a moment’s pang.
Into her old place in her aunt’s household she had never again quite fitted. She had spent some time with her after her return from abroad, but she could not take up her former life; she went back to her school as a splendid visitor, and wondered how she could have pictured herself as one of its teachers. Miss Carisbrooke, too, had in some measure taken her place. The little heiress was a pleasant-looking, round-faced, rosy-cheeked girl, with simple tastes and a warm heart. She loved her chaperon heartily, and found life at Silverfold delightful, even while she looked forward eagerly to her London season. She had an enthusiasm for Amethyst’s grace and beauty, and scouted the idea that her own fortune could be a better passport to partners, a constant succession of whom was her idea of social triumph.
“You will be able to have a great many more pretty frocks than we shall, Carrie,” said Una, one day when the three girls were together.
“Ah, but if I was a partner, I shouldn’t think about Amethyst’s frock. I wish I was a man. I would fall in love with her, and give her the most lovely flowers, and when she said yes, I would take her to Ashfield Mount and live there. Don’t you think it’s a pretty place, Amethyst?”
“It is a very pretty place,” said Amethyst, coolly.
“You wouldn’t marry me for the sake of it?” laughed Carrie. “Nobody else shall! But I’m so glad I am going to be with you all in London. You don’t know how much happier I’ve been since I came to live with dear Miss Haredale. She’s much more like a relation than Uncle Oliver is.”
“Don’t you like your uncle?” asked Una.
“No,” said Carrie, with some emphasis, “I don’t, but there are a great many people who do. Don’t fall in love with him, Amethyst; he will with you, directly he sees you.”
Carrie laughed as she gave this warning; but it struck both the shrewd, observant Haredales, that she had made a point of uttering it.
“I shall take the dogs for a walk,” she said, without waiting for an answer. “Poor things, they will be very dull when we are in London.”
“You should go too, Amethyst,” said Una, as Carrie went out; “you are pale. If you did your duty, you would be considering exactly what amount of exercise would give the right shade of pink to your cheeks.”
“I shall consider nothing of the kind,” said Amethyst, crossly. “Even my lady wouldn’t plan and scheme in that way. At least she does things because she likes them.”
“Darling, I did not mean to vex you,” said Una, distressed, as Amethyst started up and went over to the window, with an impetuous movement, unlike her ordinary self-restraint.
“Oh, not you, Una. But every one plans and schemes; Aunt Annabel does. I know what all this talking about ‘poor Charles’ means very well. She would do anything, in spite of all her religion, to ‘support the title,’ as she calls it. I’d rather live honestly for my own pleasure. But, there – we all plan and scheme, as I say, and make up our lives. And we can never make them as they were once intended to be.”
Her breast heaved and her eyes filled, as the thought forced itself upon her, that, let her success in life be what it would, it could never give her anything better, anything nearly so good as one hour with Lucian in the woods at Cleverley.
“That was Paradise,” she thought; “but I couldn’t live in it now!”
“I’d rather be downright wicked than worldly,” she said, defiantly.
“Oh, my darling,” said Una, “you don’t know what being wicked is like! But, Amethyst, our lives are made for us. That is what I have found out – made just as they ought to be.”
“Oh yes, in a sense, of course,” said Amethyst, “but there’s a good deal of making left for ourselves and other people, and we, or they, don’t make them very well.”
“Yes,” said Una, with shining eyes, “outside things; but not the real life, not the life within. Amethyst, the feel of that Presence is as real to me, as the feel of your arms round me when I am tired and miserable – as real, and even better. Come what may, I shall have it to remember. I know now, how the Martyrs could smile when they were burnt to death!”
Amethyst gazed at her, uncomprehending, almost wishing that Una was not going to enter on grown-up life with this new strange force within her. She recalled a saying that she had once heard Mr Riddell quote, “that a great deal of religion needed a great deal of looking after,” and she felt half afraid. She was correct and careful in the performance of the religious duties in which she had been trained; but all the glow of feeling, with which she had knelt by Lucian’s side in Cleverley Church, had departed with the earthly love from which she had hardly distinguished it.
“I’m afraid, dear,” she said gently, “that Eaton Square won’t be a very heavenly sort of place for either of us. If we are tied to any stakes there, no doubt we shall have to smile at them, but I doubt whether the smiles will come from heaven!”
“I shall not mind Eaton Square now,” said Una.
“Well,” said Amethyst, giving herself a sort of mental shake, “anyhow, we have to live there for the next three months. So we must do the best we can.”
Chapter Nineteen
Marshalling the Company
“I never did see any use in making pretences. People always see through them, and then where are you? If I did try to look as if I had thousands to spare, not a soul would believe me. Nothing answers like telling the truth.”
This beautiful sentiment was uttered by Lady Haredale one bright afternoon, some few weeks after the arrival of the party from Silverfold at the house in Eaton Square.
The big drawing-rooms were flooded with all the sunlight that a spring day in London could supply, perhaps in illustration of Lady Haredale’s contempt of pretences; for their handsome fittings and furniture had seen many sets of tenants for the season, and were by no means in their first freshness. But, as Lady Haredale said, “Who cared? – There were some houses, she believed, where people were asked to come and see the furniture, but she asked people to come and see herself and her girls – and they generally came.”
Liberally supplied with flowers, and filled with graceful inhabitants, the effect of the shabby, elegant drawing-room, with its open windows and fearless daylight, was not amiss.
Indeed, there was a touch of genius in the way Lady Haredale faced the situation, and, spite of the ineffaceable memories behind her, Amethyst was sometimes almost bewitched into believing her mother to be the most ingenuous of women. Lady Haredale often bought trifles for herself or for her daughters, which took her fancy, and which were always tasteful and becoming, quite regardless of the cost; but she never bought anything, or chose anything, to conceal the fact that they had less than the usual amount to spend on their clothes. She forestalled the comments of acquaintances by the simplest confession.
“You see,” she would sometimes say, with her wide-open eyes and her sweet smile, “we have scraped every farthing we can get together, and joined with Miss Haredale’s nice little heiress to give our girls a chance. We think Amethyst is so pretty, that it is quite a duty to make a great effort. Of course we shall have to pay for it afterwards, or perhaps we shan’t – Dear me! – one can’t always, you know. We can no more afford, properly, to have a London season, than we can fly, but I can’t sacrifice such a beauty as I think my girl is, and I’ve brought all her sisters to town, that they may get a little pleasure when they can. Perhaps we shall never be able to come up again. But here we are – and so enjoying it. We have to do it all simply, but we don’t mind that the least little bit.”
Simplicity is comparative, but it was quite true that Lady Haredale wasted far less regret than most women would have done, on the defects of the turn-out in which she drove in the park with her beautiful daughter.
“What does it matter?” she would say. “My lord has had good horses more than once, and every one knows that he has always had to sell them.”
She did not mind wearing her dresses several times over; she knew that they always suited her. She appeared to be the least scheming of mothers, would throw over an invitation, for which many women would have plotted in vain, for another that seemed to her more amusing. She let Amethyst dance and talk with whom she would, cared little apparently where the young beauty was seen, or where she was not seen; and when Miss Haredale would have anxiously guarded Amethyst’s footsteps, chosen her acquaintances, and guided her smallest actions, as she would have said “for the best,” Lady Haredale observed —
“My dear Anna, you are much more worldly than I am. Let the child alone. She is getting on well enough. Let her enjoy herself, she looks much prettier when she is happy. She is getting quite enough talked about, and written about too in the Society papers. And that is the great point, you know, in getting her started.”
“I should be very sorry,” said Miss Haredale, “if anything came of the attentions of that Italian Prince.”
“What, Prince Pontresina? – Very old family. But, for my part, I’ve learned prudence, and I should be very well content if she chose Sir Richard Grattan. No – I don’t think Lord Broadstairs would do; he is nearly as badly off as we are – and a very bad character into the bargain. Amethyst wouldn’t like that.”
Miss Haredale sighed, and felt that she would have to swallow a great deal of old-fashioned prejudice before she could willingly see her niece marry a man in business, whose father had got a baronetcy through being mayor on the occasion of a royal visit to his borough; while to see her given to an old roué nobleman would nearly break her heart. It vexed her that Amethyst should be allowed to give up an eligible partner because Una was tired and wanted to go home, and she would much rather have taken her to a morning concert at a duchesss, than to look at pictures in an artist’s studio, farther west than Miss Haredale had ever paid a visit in her life, where she saw celebrities, and was seen by them.
“They will write about her and criticise her picture, and besides, it will be more amusing,” said Lady Haredale. “Take Carrie to the duchess’s. – Quite the best thing for her. And as for Una, it’s very pretty to see Amethyst taken up with her.”
By the sunshiny afternoon on which we lift the curtain, Lady Haredale’s method, or no method, had had time to work, and Amethyst’s name as a beauty was being rapidly made. She had danced with princes, and been praised by painters; her help at a coming fancy-fair, where princesses and actresses held the stalls, had been asked as a special favour, her presence and her costume was mentioned in accounts of fashionable gatherings; all was going well, and Lady Haredale, as she said, was enjoying herself immensely.
Her endorsement of the old proverb that honesty is the best policy, though illustrated by Amethyst’s career, had not, however, been intended to apply to it.
The party had come in from their various afternoon engagements. Amethyst, looking bright and fresh, and Carrie Carisbrooke, with much improved costume and manner, were touching up some flowers at a side table, while the elder ladies rested and talked before dressing for dinner.
“You know,” said Lady Haredale, “there’s not the least use in making pretences about Charles. Every one knows that he has been quite a trial. Now he is going to turn over a new leaf, and I think it is quite my duty to help him, now his debts are paid.”
“It’s very clever of him to have got his debts paid. I can’t think how he has done it,” said a slow, high voice from the end of the long room.
“Tory!” exclaimed Lady Haredale, “what are you doing there?”
“I’m learning a German verb, mother,” said Tory, standing up. “Don’t you think that, as our brother is coming home for the first time, Kat and I might dine down-stairs? We won’t speak unless we’re spoken to.”
“You had much better go up-stairs and finish your lessons,” said Amethyst, who preferred Tory’s absence at critical moments.
“Now don’t try to suppress us, Amethyst. It isn’t worthy of you. It isn’t, indeed,” said Tory, holding the end of her long tail of hair, and arranging the ribbon on it, with an absurdly childish look.
“Well,” said Lady Haredale, “as there are only the Grattans and Mr Carisbrooke coming, I don’t see why you should not come in. – But, as I was saying, we must try to make it pleasant and home-like for Charles. He has not been all he should have been, but we must forget that.”
“Yes, we know all about it, mother, all of us,” said Tory, – “except Carrie.”
“Carrie is one of us now,” said Lady Haredale, “so we won’t make a stranger of her.”
Carrie, who adored Lady Haredale, smiled and coloured as she ran away to dress for dinner; while Amethyst, as she too went up-stairs, remembered the conversation they had held at Silverfold, and thought it strange that Mr Oliver Carisbrooke and Charles Haredale should both make their first visit on the same day.
Amethyst, like her mother, was “enjoying herself very much.” She did inherit the same liking for life, and for the pleasant things of life, and, in spite of the occasional pressure of the past and of the future, it was not wonderful that the present was enchanting to her. A cup, rare, sweet, and intoxicating, was held to her lips, it was something to taste so fine a flavour.
She was so full of life, that she would have enjoyed all the elements of a London season heartily, if she had been but an insignificant figure in it, and to feel herself to be one of its chief attractions, naturally enhanced the charm. While the leaves in the Park were still young and green, the air cool, and all the fine clothes fresh, the end of the season seemed far away, and the result of it needed not to be forestalled.
Neither success nor amusement ever made her forget Una, who played a much more passive part in the great Masque of Pleasure in which they were all engaged. It was for her, at any rate for the time being, an outward show. Her real life was elsewhere. This was partly, of course, because fatigue took off the edge of the pleasure, but quite as much because nothing really interested her but her emotions. She did not pass unnoticed even by Amethyst’s side, being an uncommon and interesting creature, with her extreme fragility and delicacy of appearance, and absolute self-possession and indifference of manner.
She recollected, and probably knew more about, the prodigal brother than Amethyst did, and she shrank nervously from his return. Amethyst had learned to shrug her shoulders, and “make the best of a bad business.” She encouraged Una, and would not let her dwell on what Tory called “the family crisis,” but she was a little surprised that the two younger ones also were evidently uncomfortable, and made a point of going down-stairs under her protection.
Probably they were none of them nearly so uncomfortable as the man who had lived for years under a cloud, whose reputation was tarnished, not only in the eyes of innocent girls, but in those of the men of the world with whom he ought to have associated, whose ways of life had unfitted him for a family circle, and who knew that he was watched, criticised, and tolerated.
Charles Haredale had never dined in his father’s house since his own sister Blanche had left home. He hated his step-mother, and, in blaming her for her share in the family misfortunes, eased himself a little of his self-blame. He received the kindest welcome from his aunt, who had once been fond of him, and still regarded him as the “hope” of the family, still believed that all should be pardoned to the heir.
He was meant to be an easy-going, good-natured man like his father; but his conduct had passed the bounds which he could justify to himself, his present situation contained elements difficult to swallow, and a sense of shame-faced discomfort made him look sulky.
“Here is Amethyst, Charles,” said Lady Haredale, in her sweetest tones, “you have hardly seen her since she was a baby.”
“Oh yes, I have,” said Charles, “of course I’ve seen her. Every one’s seen her. Very glad to know her, I’m sure. Great privilege.”
Amethyst shook hands, rather glad that this strange brother did not offer to kiss her, and he nodded shyly at the younger ones.
“Una? No – should never have known her. Oh yes – that’s Tory. No mistake about her.”
“You used to give me rides on your back,” said Tory, in a tone that made her sisters inclined to shake her; but just then Carrie came in, trim and fashionable in blue silk, and was introduced in due form, as Sir Richard Grattan and his sister were announced.
Sir Richard was a fair, fresh-coloured man of thirty, well-dressed and well-looking. There was nothing against him in manner, character, or appearance, and his wealth was so great, that he was worthy spoil – “big game” for the beauty of the season; while it was an open secret that the beauty of the season was the prize he meant to win. He had met Amethyst at a country house in the winter, and, with the inherited energy and determination that had made his great fortune, took measures to win what, he was enough in love to know, was not to be had without trouble and pains. He had won the good will of all her family, and he did not think the lady discouraging; but he recognised that he must let her have her great success, and submit to the approach of at any rate apparent rivals.
The right of intimacy in the house was allowed both to him and to his sisters, and he took full advantage of it. He now greeted Charles, to the surprise of the girls, as an old acquaintance, with slightly patronising friendliness, and Tory, watching with her keen eyes, caught a look, under the polite response, of savage annoyance.
“We are all here but your uncle, my dear Carrie,” said Lady Haredale, glancing round.
“Perhaps he won’t come. Sometimes he doesn’t,” said Carrie, in her clear abrupt voice.
But “Mr Oliver Carisbrooke,” chimed in with the end of her sentence, and a small slight man, with a bronzed face and a little grey pointed beard, came in. There was a little greeting and introducing, and then, men being scarce, there was a difficulty as to pairing off for dinner. Lady Haredale laughed, apologised, and went in with her two little girls. Mr Carisbrooke was given to Miss Haredale, but Amethyst found herself on his other side, and when she turned away from Sir Richard Grattan to give him courteously a small share of her attention, making some trivial remark about the London season, he looked at her keenly for a moment, and said —
“You find it very delightful?”
Amethyst was suddenly seized with the most curious self-questioning, and felt as if she wanted to settle with herself, first of all the fact of her delight, and then the why and the wherefore of it, before she answered – as of course she did —
“Oh yes, I do indeed.”