Christabel R. Coleridge

“ 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. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ Amethyst herself was surprised to find that there was a kind of excitement in managing well, and, even when she was alone with Lucian, her feeling was rather that of pushing aside the hateful burden, than of wishing to confide it to him. She wanted to think of him, not of her life apart from him. Mutual confidence is a plant of slower growth than mutual love. Besides, though she could not have put it definitely to herself, she had an instinctive dread of his stern clear judgment, and would not have had him guess at Una’s folly for the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She turned, and by one of the little tables stood a tall woman, with a slight swaying figure like Una’s, a dress incongruously splendid in that squalid place, and a face—the face of one of themselves—not so much older as to have lost all its kindred beauty, but with pale cheeks and painted eyes, and a look at once familiar, as only the nearest of kin can be, and strange, as of one belonging to another kind of world. ”

“ She prayed aloud with the instinct of a child, but as the yearning impulse grew stronger, it found fewer words. She said, “Our Father—Our Father,” over and over again, as if she could and need say nothing more, and at last came a weak hoarse echo to her voice.
“Our Father—” muttered Charles, with the last look of his dying eyes fixed on his young sister’s beautiful face, on which the last rays of the sunlight fell.
“An angel—down in hell! Our Father—” he said, and then his head fell back, the great change came, and Amethyst saw him die. ”

“ She let the pleasant thing go on, she hesitated and doubted, for she liked Wilfred Jackson very much, and she liked—she always would like—intercourse that was touched with possibilities of emotion. And she would have been so glad to forget all her miserable past, to go on into a happy future.
She knew that she was watched by Tory and Kattern, and she did not put them off the scent; she knew that Amethyst was only blind because her thoughts were absorbed by Lucian’s condition; she knew how welcome her engagement would be to every one belonging to her. ”

“ She had left Cleverley with several growing purposes and intentions, and with a strong desire, an earnest wish to win that nobleness of character of which Mr Riddell had spoken, a wish that had always been as salt within her, but which Sylvester had touched with fire. She threw all the weight of her beauty on the side of maidenly conduct and modest speech, and there was neither man nor woman in the free-and-easy, careless-tongued set among whom she moved, who would take a liberty with Amethyst Haredale. ”

“ I’ve none left!”
“Dear Una, the past is not meant to spoil our future—there is forgiveness and peace—”
“For you—for you—You look back on a paradise, and I on—”
“Oh, Una—but it’s all over, you have all your life left!”
“I have—I have!” cried Una, lifting her face from Amethyst’s shoulder, “I would not have that past again, not the maddest moment of it! I will live—I will be good for something in spite of it. Oh—I should like to give my life to telling girls that one can be different. I think I’d die to keep another child from my fate! ”

“ Amethyst kept Una by her side, and Major Fowler walked with them. Sylvester caught echoes of his voice in familiar tones, which called up before him the white-robed girl in the sunny garden at Loseby, the mystery and the misery of that fatal afternoon, when the clouds had gathered round his fair ideal, and when his hateful share in her fate had been forced on him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fifty years or so ago the Rector of Cleverley had been a young undergraduate, remarkable for the fine scholarship and elegant verse-making of his day, but with a touch of genius that made him differ from his fellows; careless, simple, and untidy, yet fond of society and good fellowship, full of the romance and sentiment of his day,—a man who admired pretty women, but had only one lasting love, from whom circumstances had divided him till he married her late in life, and lost her soon after Sylvester’s birth. ”

“ There was a passion in her tone, which Lady Haredale felt.
“No,” she said. “You shall have him! How like you are to poor pretty Blanche; you shan’t be talked out of your lover as she was. I’ll not have it on my conscience. But does the child think she knows her own mind?”
Amethyst felt indescribably jarred and hurt by her mothers manner. Her cheeks burnt and her eyes were bright, as she answered with equal straightforwardness, and with unexpected passion—
“I should have liked to be a beauty, and have a success; I know I should like it. ”

“ Una was ill and miserable, giving way to unexplained fits of crying, and angry when Amethyst tried to laugh her out of them.
The time of Lucian’s absence seemed endless, and, on the afternoon of his return, Amethyst’s spirits rose to rapturous pitch.
It was a lovely summer day, tea was laid out on the terrace. Over the grave, old-fashioned garden was a blaze of joyous sunlight, giving it a cheerfulness that it sometimes lacked. For the high, broad cypress hedges in front of the house were continued behind it, and enclosed the garden in a square of sombre green. ”

“ Una’s hair was finished by this time, and she stood up in her long white dressing-gown, leaning her hand on the toilet-table, and looking at her sister with searching eyes.
“Amethyst,” she said, “I don’t believe you were ever really in love with Lucian Leigh at all.”
The colour flamed into Amethyst’s face, and her bosom heaved.
“Yes, I was,” she said, “but that’s just what I want to show you. That’s over, but one isn’t all heart, any more than I hope and believe one is all face. One has a mind, and a soul, and possibilities. ”

“ When Amethyst found herself, with a shock of surprise, in Sylvester’s presence, her first thought was that he had come to plead the cause of Lucian Leigh, and there was a certain distance in her tone as she said—
“Mr Riddell!”
“Miss Haredale,” said Sylvester, standing up before her, “I have come to beg you not to marry Sir Richard Grattan. Forgive me—forgive me. I am so beyond defence on any ground but one, that no beating about the bush will soften my actions. I love you, therefore I understand you. Your heart is not in this marriage. ”

“ Amethyst took off the splendid necklet, and held it in her hands.
“They’re too beautiful to be vain of,” she said, dreamily. “It’s rather nice to have a stone and colour of one’s own. I used to think amethysts and purple rather dull when we chose favourites at school. Amethyst means temperance, you know. It’s a dull meaning, but I expect it’s a very useful one for me now.”
“Why, what do you mean?” said Una.
“Well!” said Amethyst, “I do enjoy everything so very much. I feel as if music, and dancing, and going out with mother, and having pretty things to wear, would be so very delightful. ”

“ Oh, how I hate men!” stamping her foot. “They delight in making girls sail near the wind, and then, how they talk of us! That’s what Tony used to make me do when I was little. How he used to laugh! And the books,” went on Una, after a pause. “When do we ever see one, French or English, that you’d like Sylvester Riddell, or any nice man, to see you read? Oh, if men in general liked girls to be decent, how easy goodness would be!”
“Well,” said Amethyst, “if we are to be good, it certainly won’t be because we don’t hear of wickedness, either in books or in real life. ”

“ Sir Richard gave a great start.
“I know what this means,” he said abruptly; “some one has come between us. It is your old lover.”
“No,” said Amethyst, “the truth is your due. I refused Mr Leigh’s proposals. I solemnly assure you that you have no rival. There is no one else. I don’t prefer any one. But—it is myself. I have found out that I cannot return your feelings—I never told you that I could. And I know now that I could not make you a good wife. If I married only for the sake of outside things, all the good part of me would die out I never—never ought to have entertained the idea.” ”

“ Now, when you are well married—Amethyst, of course there’s a great deal I don’t like, but I really do think that there’s nothing, not absolutely criminal, that it’s not a woman’s duty to do to save her family from such a dreadful fate. Oh, my dear, you can’t remember your uncles Percy and Tom, but never shall I forget the details that came out at their deaths, nor seeing poor Percy once abroad. My dear, when one is young and hard, one may think it serves one’s brother right, but one’s nephew—oh no, my dear. And Charles would be kind to a woman who liked him. ”

“ Amethyst made no contradiction, but she looked at her mother with tragical eyes, hardly controlling tears of she knew not what strange distress.
“What does it mean?” said Lucian, as Lady Haredale turned away. “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t ask,” said Amethyst. “Oh, Lucian, it’s like heaven to see you, and know that I belong to you,—but—but—”
“You don’t belong to any one else; keep yourself quite separate. You’re mine, mine only,” said Lucian in the short, masterful tone peculiar to him.
“I hate that fellow,” he continued, as he drew her away into the cypress walk; “he’s a bad sort.” ”

“ Restharrow was a house where every one did as they liked, and, in the evening, the large party scattered about among the different rooms. Mr Carisbrooke came up to Amethyst, and said, “Come with me;” and, quite careless as to whether they were noticed or not, he led the way into a little morning-room and shut the door.
Amethyst felt bewildered. The room was full of firelight and red-shaded lamp-light, and Oliver Carisbrooke stood in the warm glow with his deep-set, peculiar eyes fixed full upon her.
“Amethyst,” he said, “commonplace and conventional doings are not for you. ”