The wedding was fixed for the middle of July, and, in the middle of
June, Lucian went to Toppings to arrange for having it prepared for the
reception of his bride. His long minority had left him with plenty of
ready money; but neither he nor Amethyst had grown-up sufficiently to
have much desire for house-decoration of an aesthetic kind. They were
much more full of the long foreign tour, which was to follow their
marriage, than of the details of their future house-keeping. He was
also obliged to pay a visit to some elderly relations in his own county,
so that he was absent from Cleverley for nearly a fortnight.
Amethyst meanwhile was free to give her mind to her wedding garments,
which delighted Lady Haredale even more than the bride herself. Money
or credit had been found for the trousseau, and Amethyst was too
inexperienced to know that it was both very costly, and rather
inadequate.
A visit, in the course of the wedding tour, was to be paid to Miss
Haredale at Lausanne, where she was spending the summer, and Amethyst
had few anticipations more delightful than that of showing her Lucian to
"auntie," whose congratulations had been full of incredulous pleasure.
In the meantime, Lady Haredale had been as sympathetic as a girl,
promoting the love-idyll in every possible way, and devising the
loveliest and most original costumes for her daughter. Amethyst set her
own girlish fancy on an "amethyst" velvet, which she considered suitable
to a young married lady, and felt would be becoming to herself; but she
cared most to have her riding habit exactly what Lucian thought correct,
and to choose hats of the shapes and colours which he admired.
She went to London with Lady Haredale for a few days during his absence,
to complete these arrangements, and there, in the brief intervals when
her mind was not taken up with her lover's letters, or with the
engrossing business of the trousseau, she fancied that Lady Haredale was
less cheery and light-hearted than usual. Her father, who was very
little at Cleverley, met them in London, and disappointed her by his
want of interest in her prospects, and by the captious, irritable
annoyance with which he turned off any mention of the wedding. She
returned to Cleverley with her mother, while Lucian was still absent,
and found there Major Fowler, who had, he said, "been backwards and
forwards" during Lady Haredale's absence. Amethyst's first view of the
great "Tony" had been that he was a middle-aged gentleman, an
uninteresting but worthy family friend.
Therefore it appeared to her quite natural that the girls should be
"very fond of him," as Tory, with a wicked twinkle in her eye, declared
herself to be. Amethyst herself behaved to him graciously, as a person
that she expected to know and like, but rather respectfully, as
belonging to her elders.
She thought so little about him, that it was not until Lucian expressed
a dislike to him, that she realised that there was something about him
that she did not like herself. She was not shy; but he had a way
sometimes of staring at her that made her uncomfortable, and, almost
unconsciously, she held him at a distance and did not fall into the free
intercourse with him practised by her sisters. Her mother called him
"poor Tony," and had explained him in the following manner some time
before.
"You see, my dear, the poor fellow has been very unlucky. Of course I
don't enter into the questions between him and Mrs Fowler; she wasn't a
pleasant woman, and she is dead now. I'm sure he had his excuses.
Besides, that is all over and done with, and I hate picking holes in
people, one should take them as one finds them. This is his refuge; he
is very domestic. Men are quite lost without a woman to turn to."
"I suppose he is a very old friend," said Amethyst, quite simply.
"Oh yes, darling; six or seven years I've known him. He was at Nice
once with us, and he used to run down to Twickenham. But you know, as
my lord is so much away, I always make a point of having the children
about. That is why they have been so much in the drawing-room, and lost
their schooling, poor dears!"
Amethyst blushed with a confused sense of misgiving, as her mother fixed
her sweet, shallow eyes upon her. The apologetic tone seemed out of
place.
Her time had been, however, too much taken up by Lucian for Major Fowler
to come much in her way, though she was glad when now, on their return
from London, after an hour's chat with Lady Haredale, he went off by the
train, without any definite promise of an immediate return.
Lady Haredale drew a long sigh as she watched him go.
"Things come to an end!" she said sentimentally. "Who would have
thought it of poor Tony?"
"Thought what, mother?" said Amethyst.
"Ah, that's a secret! Well, it's all for the best. Nothing can go on
for ever. But I don't know.--Well! I never look forward. There's a
way out of everything. I never knew a bother, that I didn't see round
the corner of it soon!"
Lady Haredale laughed, and Amethyst looked at her, admiring her cheery
sweetness; but presently the mother's brows drew together, and she bit
her lip sharply, then smiled suddenly, and, with the confidential air,
which yet bestowed no confidence, said,--
"Men never believe that one has any tact at all!" and walked away.
Amethyst was puzzled; sometimes she felt as if, in addition to all other
blessings, her marriage would be a refuge from a home that might have
many perplexities. Her mother was occasionally mysterious. Tory threw
out hints, which Amethyst did not choose to follow up. 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. These living walls were as firm and
regular as if they had been built of brick.
Here and there recesses were cut in them, in which benches were placed,
and at intervals, and at the corners, the cypresses grew to a great
height, and were cut into all sorts of fantastic shapes--pyramids,
peacocks, and lyres, the pride of the old gardener, who regarded himself
as their owner in a much more real sense than either tenants or
landlord.
They were certainly very striking and uncommon, and formed an effective
setting to the elaborate pattern of bright flower-beds into which the
turf between them was cut up. Here and there, against the dark hedges,
and along the terrace, were placed really graceful statues, and in the
centre was a fountain of marble Tritons and dolphins, very suitable to
the formal stateliness of the whole scene. Amethyst, in her prettiest
dress and hat, her beauty heightened by joyous expectation, was flitting
about among the flowers, picking one here and there, and chattering to
Tory and Kattern. She was longing for Lucian, but in the security of
her young unbroken peace it was longing, unmixed with doubt or fear.
She was happy because he was coming, not fearful that he might not come.
Una was sitting on the terrace steps. Like her little sisters she wore
a bright red frock striped with white, and a fantastically-shaped hat
with a red bow in it. The costume, which was becoming to the children,
had an odd bizarre effect on the tall thin girl, with her masses of
hair, and her melancholy eyes. Lady Haredale sat just above her, the
tea-table by her side, and a French novel on her lap. She looked the
picture of lazy comfort, and a very pretty picture too, with her
uncovered head, as fearless as her girls of air and light, openly
reading a book which most mothers, if they studied it at all, would have
blushed to let their daughters see in their hands.
Presently a telegram was brought to her, and Amethyst came running up.
"Not from Lucian, mamma?"
"Oh no, my dear child. I should like to weep a little over this bit of
news. Dear old Tony has been so _convenient_, and I like to have a man
about the house; but, as he says, it wouldn't be right to let such a
chance slip. So he's going to marry this heiress. Ah, well, it's a
great sacrifice in some ways.--What's that?"
A sudden piercing shriek interrupted the sweet melancholy flow of Lady
Haredale's tones. Una sprang up from the steps, threw up her arms, made
a movement as if to rush away, but either fell, or flung herself down
headlong, across a bed of scarlet geraniums. Tory, who had come running
up to hear the news, with a watering-pot in her hand, deliberately
turned, and emptied its contents on Una's head, with the result of
causing her to start up, choking with sobs, half of rage, half of
misery.
"Don't be such a fool, Una," said Tory, sharply. "You've known it was
coming, you've always known it was no use."
Una rushed away into the house, her sobs and half-choked screams echoing
as she went.
"What does it mean?" said Amethyst, appalled. "It means," said Tory,
"that Tony was always fond of kissing us and spooning us, when he was
hanging about my lady. But Una has been over head and ears in love with
him ever since I can remember, and he liked it and called her his little
wife, and she'd sit all day in the window watching for him, or hide in
the passage waiting for a kiss."
"Oh, my dear child," said Lady Haredale, "of course Tony was only in
play."
"Yes, but Una wasn't. And lately he has been trying to get her out of
it. That's why she has been so miserable; only she didn't want Amethyst
to know."
"It's quite absurd," said Lady Haredale, "those things should never go
too far. It's quite Una's fault. I shall have to bring her out, when
you are married, Amethyst, to put it out of her head. As if Tony cared
for a chit like her!"
Victoria made an indescribable grimace, while Amethyst was speechless.
Tory's cynical plain-speaking, and her mothers light response, turned
her quite cold with horror.
"Mother, you will never let that man come here again?" she exclaimed, at
length. "If he could behave so--"
"Oh, my dear child," said Lady Haredale, "it was only play.--Poor little
Una will soon forget it again. It's just a little sentiment, that's
all."
Amethyst turned with a start, as Lucian, for once taking her by
surprise, came out of the house all eager and joyous.
"Oh, dear Lucian," said Lady Haredale, "we are quite upset! Such a
sudden piece of news."
"There is something the matter!" said Lucian, with an anxious look at
Amethyst, whose face was still scared and startled, even in the midst of
his greeting.
"Oh no!" said Lady Haredale. "But our dear old friend Major Fowler is
going to be married. The girls are all in tears, he is _such_ a loss,
we can't imagine ourselves without him. I think we've all had a share
in him, we don't like to give him up to an heiress. I don't know what
we shall do."
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."
"But now he is going to be married, we shall not see anything more of
him," said Amethyst.
"Have nothing to do with him. You haven't seen very much of him, have
you?"
"Why, I have _seen_ a good deal of him. He has been here so much; but--
Lucian, I don't think I notice any one now-a-days. I'm always thinking
of you."
Lucian looked down at her with eyes which, light in colour and steadfast
in expression, had a peculiar unfaltering clearness, pure as crystal,
but a little hard. He was rarely tender in word or look, he showed his
love for Amethyst by taking possession of her.
"No one else has any right to you," he said firmly; and, as he took her
in his arms, she forgot everything that troubled her, in his kiss.