"Well, my dear Annabel, very glad to see you. You don't often give me a
chance of entertaining you. Come and have some luncheon; one can't talk
business on an empty stomach."
"You're very good, Haredale. I wish my errand was a pleasanter one;
but--"
"Well, we'll hear all about it directly. Champagne? Ladies always like
champagne, so I provided some for you.--It's very good, it won't
disagree with you."
Miss Annabel Haredale did not like champagne in the middle of the day,
and thought that it was sure to disagree with her; but she smiled at her
brother and took it like a martyr.
The scene was a rather shabbily appointed set of rooms in Duke Street,
Saint James's; in one of which an elegant little luncheon was laid for
two. The actors were a lady and gentleman, both some years past fifty,
both tall, with large well-marked features, and reddish hair touched
with grey. Both were unmistakably people of family and position, and to
this air of his breeding the lady added that of personal worth. She
looked like a good though not a clever woman; her brother, Lord
Haredale, unfortunately, did not look like a good man. Their eyes,
however, met with kindness, hers openly anxious, and his furtively so.
"And so you have given up the Twickenham villa and settled at
Cleverley?" she said, after some surface conversation.
"Well, yes,--must economise, you know, and the old Admiral's lease of
the Hall being out, it seemed convenient. My lady doesn't like it much;
but she can leave the little girls down there, if she comes up to meet
you and take out Amethyst. Of course she wants to present her; but it's
confoundedly inconvenient this year."
"It is about Amethyst that I wish to speak to you," said Miss Haredale,
strenuously refusing more champagne, and showing unmistakably her desire
to proceed to business.
"What! you haven't found a chance already of settling her?"
"Oh no, no! she has seen no one. She has never been away from school.
But, Haredale, a great misfortune has befallen me; so that I can no
longer do by her as I could wish. I am a poor woman now, and it is for
you to decide what you think right about her."
"Why! Deuce take it, have _you_ been making ducks and drakes with your
money?"
"No, but Farrant has done it for me. His brothers' bank has failed, the
investments he advised have proved worthless. I shall hardly have 150
pounds a year left--I have turned it over in my mind in every possible
way--"
Lord Haredale had always felt that, however unlucky he might be himself,
it was his sister's duty to the family to keep her few thousands safe;
they had held a satisfactory place in his mind. He swore at the family
lawyer for giving her bad advice, and confounded her folly in not
looking more closely after her own affairs.
"I'm infernally sorry for you, Annabel," he said, when he had cooled
down a little. "As you know, what with Charles's cursed extravagance,
to say nothing of my lady's, I have nothing at command."
"I never supposed, for one moment, that you would have, Haredale," said
his sister, emphatically. "Nor am I reduced to beggary. I can lessen
my expenses. But if I do so, what can I do for Amethyst? Her life
would be cut down to the narrowest limits. I could not possibly
introduce her in London, which seems to me essential, in her position--
all I had saved for the purpose is gone. I cannot tell you what it
would cost me to resign the charge which I undertook. But of course you
must decide for her as you think best."
"It's deuced bad luck," said Lord Haredale. "You see, I got my lady
down to Cleverley, on the plea that she could come up for two or three
weeks when you had Amethyst in town. But as to a London house, and
bringing the girl out ourselves, it's impossible."
"In that case, she might wait another year; we might manage to keep her
at school a year longer?" said Miss Haredale, anxiously.
"Ay, but you see," said Lord Haredale, "her mother tells me she's going
to be a beauty."
"Yes, she is," said Miss Haredale, dejectedly.
"That alters the question. She might make a good match. You know my
lady won't be jealous of her, and keep her back. That never was her
way. She treated Blanche like a sister--dressed her up to the nines on
every occasion--though she wasn't her own child."
"If I thought that Blanche's story--" began Miss Haredale, vehemently.
"Blanche was a fool," said Lord Haredale, "she was born so. Perhaps
Amethyst ain't."
"Amethyst is a good, high-minded girl, with plenty of sense. But she's
as innocent as a child, and how do I know how she may turn out? Oh,
Haredale, I came to tell you my trouble, and to offer her back, because
I had promised that she should be brought out this year, and I felt that
it was due to the family. I do care for the old name, Haredale, but I
believe I am a worldly-minded woman. Let her grow a bit older, and then
we shall see. Down with me, she'll be as fresh as a rose at twenty."
"Una will be coming on by that time; her mother wanted to bring her out
now, the girls are getting too big to be about as children. No, if
we're to have Amethyst on our hands, which of course is uncommon bad
luck, we'd better take her at her best. Cleverley's not a bad
neighbourhood--we could bring her out first in the country. I know her
mother means to have her with her somehow this year. It won't do to let
her be permanently on our hands, now you haven't the same prospect for
her. You must see that, though how the deuce my lady will manage to get
her frocks--"
"I'll keep her, Haredale," cried Miss Haredale, starting up. "I'll keep
her, somehow. A London season and a fashionable marriage is not the end
of existence. She shall not have to go through the misery of
difficulties about dress and other things, which I knew only too well I
did not know what I was doing in coming here. Don't expose her to all
those shifts and contrivances?"
"You're upset, Anna," said Lord Haredale, "and no wonder!--By Jove!
there's nothing so upsetting as losing money, especially when you've had
nothing to show for it!"
"Can you wonder," said Miss Haredale, struggling with her feelings, "can
you wonder that I shrink from exposing the child to--to so many
temptations?"
"There's nothing to hurt her," said Lord Haredale easily. "She'll never
come in Blanche's way; and Charles, curse him, never comes home at all.
She'll be with people quite of your own sort at Cleverley. Of course
we're quite aware of all you've done for her, I shouldn't think of
taking her away from you, in any other case. But come down and talk the
matter over with my lady. Capital train at 4:30. Come for a couple of
nights and see for yourself. You'll find it all right enough for her.
Come and see."
"Well, I shall at least hear what her mother thinks," said Miss
Haredale, doubtfully; for in truth the mother was the chief subject of
anxiety in her anxious mind. When eleven years before she had taken her
niece to live with her, her object had been to make Amethyst's girlhood
as unlike as possible to her own.
Thirty years or so ago, Annabel Haredale had been a fine
distinguished-looking girl, popular in the fast and reckless set which
frequented the family place, Haredale, in the last days of her father's
life. Lord Haredale and his sons were racing men, and not at all
particular as to which of their acquaintances they introduced to the
family circle. All the men Annabel knew were fast and dissipated, and
all the ladies of her set tolerated, and even liked, fastness and
dissipation. She had very little education, and all her religion
consisted of an occasional attendance at Haredale church in a gallery
with arm-chairs and a fire; where she and her visitors laughed and
talked at intervals, and quizzed the natives. She was, however, a kind
and warm-hearted girl, affectionate to her unworthy relatives, and she
did her best, according to her lights, to keep matters straight at
Haredale, and to preserve her own self-respect. She had many admirers,
but no chance of marriage offered itself which she felt herself able to
accept. The family circumstances did not improve when the old Lord
Haredale died. His eldest son was equally deep in debt, and had less
strength of character and constitution to carry off his vices. Annabel
withdrew herself and her fortune, and, freed from the family
surroundings, she came across people of a different stamp; another
education began for her, she fell under religious influences, made good
friends, and settled down happily into a pleasant and useful life at
Silverfold, a pretty village not far from London.
She did what she could to keep up a kindly intercourse with her brother,
and made much of his son and daughter, being indeed very fond of the
somewhat unpromising boy whom she would fain have regarded as the hope
of the family, and, when his mother died, she did all she could to show
him kindness. Lord Haredale, however, married again almost immediately,
a young beauty, who proved very uncongenial to her husband's sister.
When four little girls were added to the family, Miss Haredale had not
much difficulty in getting the eldest put into her hands for education,
and since then she had given Amethyst every advantage that she had
missed herself.
The son and daughter of the first marriage had soon put themselves out
of her reach, and were causes of increased difficulty and trouble. She
had no reason to believe home-life desirable for Amethyst, or to regret
having removed her from its influence. The younger sisters were not so
brought up as to make her think the mother--whose right over her child
must needs be recognised--a wise guide for a beautiful girl. A kindly
woman, without much strength of purpose, she had, spite of later
influences, never quite outgrown the code of her youth, and it had never
occurred to her as possible that her brother's daughter should not be
"introduced" at eighteen in London, as she herself had been. She had
felt it a duty, now that she could not herself give the girl this
advantage, to let her have what opportunities her parents could give
her.
And, though this interview showed her how much her standard had changed
from that of her family, though she felt many misgivings as to the
future, though she could not respect or trust her brother, even while
she had never ceased to feel a fondness for him, she had not courage to
fight the battle out; and when she finally consented to go with him to
Cleverley to consult "my lady," she knew quite well that she had put the
decision out of her own hands, and that Amethyst would enter on grown-up
life under her mother's auspices.