Lucian Leigh's side of the story did not meet with so favourable a
reception. Like Lady Haredale, Mrs Leigh had not taken warning in
time, and, while she was thinking of cautioning her son against the
penniless beauty, he stood before her with the tale of his successful
wooing, quite unprepared for the displeasure with which she received it.
He was entirely independent of her, and she had no power to prevent him
from marrying whom he would; and when she comprehended that the offer
had been made and accepted, her consternation was great.
"Lucian! In three weeks! One of those Haredales! Nothing could have
grieved me more."
"I don't think you can mean that, mother," said Lucian.
"You don't know what you are doing."
Lucian said nothing. The fewness of his words always made it difficult
to argue with him. He made no protestations of passionate love, but he
did not yield an inch, and only said at last--
"But I'm booked now, mother. I _have_ proposed to her."
"Will you not at least give in to a delay? Have you no regard to my
wishes?"
"Yes," said Lucian, "I wish you liked it. But I think I ought to settle
it for myself. Anyway I _have_ settled it."
"And have you no misgivings?"
"No," said Lucian, with a light in his handsome face never seen there
before.
Mrs Leigh felt as if she might as well argue with a statue. She went
to bed in distress and uncertainty, and, early the next morning sent
over a message to the Rectory, begging Mr Riddell to come and see her
at once. He was an old friend, and his office made her feel it right to
consult him besides; and she was a woman who liked sympathy, and always
talked freely of her troubles and anxieties.
He came before breakfast was over at Ashfield, and Mrs Leigh, rising,
with an eager squeeze of his hand, dismissed her little girls and their
governess, and said tearfully--
"My dear Rector, you know everything I would say. I shall leave you
with this foolish boy to persuade him, if possible--"
"I can go, mother, if you want to tell the Rector all your objections,"
said Lucian. "Anyway I don't see why you should go away. I _have_
proposed to Miss Haredale, and she has accepted me. The thing is done."
Lucian turned scarlet as he spoke, and embarrassment gave a certain
coldness to his tone. Mr Riddell recognised that he would be hard to
move.
"My dear boy," he said, as Mrs Leigh, in spite of her son's words, left
them alone together, "I think I am sorry that you have been so hasty.
Three weeks is a very short time."
"It's quite long enough," said Lucian.
"Yes, she is a beautiful girl, Lucian, and as guileless--as--as Psyche
herself; and brought up by a good woman. But she is only eighteen, and
no man can say what she will grow up to. There will be a very great
deal of her, Lucian. She is a great prize. She is rarely beautiful,
and she has brains, and is highly strung. She will expect a great deal
of life. She does not know at all, yet, what she will need. She has
all her growing and her living to do in the future."
"So have I," said Lucian. "But one knows very well what one will come
to."
"Yes, my dear Lucian, that is the very thing. But no one can know what
Amethyst Haredale will come to. It's a very serious thing to marry a
girl who comes of so doubtful a stock. And, my dear boy, I am certain
that her mother is not a good woman."
"Of course," said Lucian, "I know all about her people. I shall take
her right away from them. She has never been with Lady Haredale."
"Your mind is quite made up?"
"Of course," said Lucian. "It's quite easy for me to marry early, and I
don't see why I should not. My mother will get used to it."
Lucian still uttered no expressions of enthusiastic love. He hardly
attempted to defend Amethyst. His fair, beautifully formed face was
quite still and impassive. He had made up his mind and so had Amethyst,
and, with her by his side, he meant to begin at once to lead the life to
which he believed himself called; to live on his estate, look after his
tenants, keep up his shooting, attend to public business, and set a good
example in his own neighbourhood. As he said himself, he knew exactly
what he was going to grow to, and he never doubted that his wife would
grow in the same direction as himself.
He was a thoroughly good fellow; but Mr Riddell wondered whether he was
quite the mate for the lovely child, in whose face a thousand
possibilities were written, and whose nature was all in bud. The Rector
was, however, a man who could recognise the inevitable. He saw that the
engagement must be, and could only hope that the quick-springing love
between the pair was warm enough to fuse these two natures into one. At
least, they were still in a soft and malleable stage of existence. He
set himself, therefore, not to talk over the young man, but to endeavour
to reconcile Mrs Leigh to her son's choice; and, what was perhaps
equally hard, to the fact of his early marriage, and separation from her
family circle.
Lucian set off for Cleverley Hall, looking and feeling much as if he had
been about to walk up to a cannon's mouth. He was an odd mixture of
self-confidence and unreadiness, and, though he felt perfectly sure that
he was a right choice for Amethyst, he had no words in which to convey
as much to her father.
All the trouble, however, was saved him, for he was shown into the
morning-room to Lady Haredale.
"Ah, Mr Leigh," she said, "what am I to say to you? What have you been
doing with my little girl? I don't think I ought to consent till she
has seen a little of the world. I meant her to have such a success in
London."
"But that wouldn't be much good after we were engaged," said Lucian.
"And I don't think she would like it."
"Don't you?" said Lady Haredale, with a thought in her mind not very
unlike her Rector's, "Ah, you think she is a little nun. Well now, I am
going to be quite frank with you. You know we are as poor as rats!"
"I--I--I have understood that--that Lord Haredale was--not wealthy,"
stammered Lucian, losing his self-possession entirely.
"As rats--as church mice! Of course _now_ I have no reserves with you.
We can't afford to take her out as we should like. Her grandfather's
will gives her 3,000 pounds on her wedding-day. We can't give her a
farthing more!"
"I know that--I don't care. I can settle--"
"Ah yes; you will tell Lord Haredale about that. Because we are going
to say yes. We think we ought to have our girl settled. And, my dear
Mr Leigh--my dear Lucian, I want her to be happy. Oh, yes, you know
about her poor sister.--That came of ambition--and I mean my Amethyst to
have her way."
"I shall take care of her. I'll make her happy--" said Lucian, touched,
and with fervour.
As he spoke, Lord Haredale came in, shook hands with him, heard his
carefully prepared speech as to his money matters, and answered it.
"Yes, my lady thinks we had better let her get settled at once. It will
please her aunt, who brought her up. She is a good little thing, and
I'm glad she should do well for herself."
"Well then," said Lady Haredale, "we don't like all these formalities,
do we? You will much prefer coming to Amethyst. But your mother? I
suppose she doesn't like it?"
"She does think we are rather young," said Lucian meekly.
"I shall talk to her. Now wait here, and I will find the child."
Lady Haredale went off to the school-room, where Amethyst was restlessly
trying to look as if nothing was happening, and the younger girls, well
aware of a crisis, were secretly watching her.
"Well!" said Lady Haredale. "Now you can go and enjoy yourself. I
quite mean to enjoy it all myself. Little girls, Amethyst has set you
an excellent example. She has fallen in love, quite in an eligible
direction, without any delay, in the most irreproachable manner. Mind
you all go and do likewise!"
"Oh, _I_ knew all about it," said Tory. "But he's much too well off and
too eligible to be so handsome. It isn't fair!"
"It's an awful joke!" said Kattern.
Una stood silent for a moment, then flung herself on Amethyst's neck.
"Oh, how lucky you are!" she whispered, kissing her sister with hot
quivering lips.
"So I am," whispered Amethyst in reply.
She was blushing and confused; but there was a dreamy blissful air about
her, as if she hardly heard these characteristic comments on her choice.
She freed herself gently from Una, and went up to her mother, who,
laughing, but with something of real tenderness, kissed her, and took
her away. Tory gave a skip.
"What a jolly lark," she said.
"It's no such thing," cried Una with passionate vehemence, as she rushed
out of the room. "It's losing the only thing that made life tolerable,
and I'd like to go and hang myself at once."
"I'll tell you what it is, Kat," said Tory. "Una's too great a fool for
anything, and some day I shall tell Amethyst all about Tony."
"Una will half kill you if you do," said Tory. "Never mind about that
now. Let's go into the garden, then we can peep in at the windows and
see Amethyst and her young man!"
There ensued a time which seemed to Amethyst afterwards like a piece out
of an age of gold, each day more full than the one before it of
absorbing, intoxicating bliss. There was the day when Lucian brought
the ring, set with her namesake jewel, and put it on the pink girlish
finger that had never worn a ring before, then spread out her soft
delicate hand on his brown palm, and looked at it proudly, saying, "That
shall stay there always. That means you belong to me." And the two
hands closed tight upon each other, as if they never would unclasp
again.
The first Sunday, too, when they went to church together, and gave
thanks from the bottom of their young honest hearts for their great
happiness, and when the hymn of the Heavenly City rang in Amethyst's
ears with vague and mystic rapture. Heaven was near and earth was good,
and she did not quite know the one from the other. All was joy.
As they came out, Lucian, with his shy, boyish smile, showed her a line
in his hymn-book with a deep under-score.
"Thine ageless walls are bonded
With _amethysts unpriced_..."
"Oh, Lucian," she said, half shocked, "but you shouldn't think about me
in church!"
"Yes, I should," said Lucian. "I shall think about you everywhere.
Besides, we shall go to church together all our lives, you know, at
Toppings. Then we'll remember to-day."
"As if we could ever forget it!" said Amethyst dreamily, while her heart
beat, and her eyes shone.
"I never shall, as long as I live," said Lucian. "Look there, look at
those long-tailed tits swinging in the hedge. Do you know they grow
those long tails quite smooth and straight in a little round nest? How
do they manage it?"
Lucian made his profession of life-long remembrance, and called her
attention to the tits, much in the same tone of voice. He was not an
emotional person, and his talk was mostly of what passed before his
observant eyes.
But fate did not intend that either of them should forget that summer
Sunday when "all in the blue unclouded weather" they looked forward to
the life that they were beginning together, in a world that seemed to
them both very good, with the Heavenly City in a rainbow-tinted mist,
far--far ahead of them.