The last day of July had come, the day that should have been the
wedding-day was over and past, the fresh green turf of the Cleverley
garden was brown and dry, with long hours of scorching sunshine, the
flowers looked hot and overblown in the blazing afternoon light. Some
empty chairs, and a tea-table with empty tea-cups, stood on the edge of
a group of trees, and on the rug in front of them lay Una in a faded
shabby frock, and with a face in which there seemed to be no girlish
freshness remaining. Her long hair hung heavily round her, her eyes
stared wearily out of their dark circles; she had nothing to do but to
play with every morbid and unwholesome fancy that can enter the brain of
an ill-trained and unhappy girl.
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. It was not worth while to get up, even to
commit suicide.
As she lay still, getting a dreary sort of amusement out of these
miserable fancies, she saw Amethyst come out of the house, walk slowly
across the brown scorched grass, and sit down on one of the chairs,
without noticing her sister's presence.
She sat perfectly still, with a hard unsmiling face, at variance with
the gay trim dress in which she had been entertaining some recent
visitors. They were gone, and she could sit still now, and think--think
the bitter thoughts in which her cruel disappointment took form.
All that she had lost, still more all that she now had left, passed
before her mind, and was weighed in the balance. She had no illusions
now. Perhaps the bitterest drop was not so much the loss of Lucian, as
the sense that he ought to have read her more truly. He himself had
failed her. As for her mother, her eyes were as clear as Tory's; and
her heart, how hard and bitter! And the days had to go on. It was not
only that she was _not_ Lucian's happy wife, she _was_ Amethyst
Haredale, with parents whom she despised, and a house in which no good
thing could flourish; and yet, her aunt's anxious entreaty to join her
as soon as she would, had no attraction for her. Religion--goodness?
Mrs Leigh and Lucian were good and religious, and had cruelly misjudged
her. Were good people really much better than bad ones? She had
thought herself religious; but she had got below all the religion that
she had ever experienced, and with the distrust of all earthly love,
came also distrust of the Divine love, from which she had scarcely
distinguished it. Amethyst was one of those, to whom trouble comes, not
only in vague and overwhelming feelings, but in keen sharp thoughts;
and, young as she was, her thoughts hit life's hard problems like
well-aimed arrows.
"Well, Amethyst, do you think, now, there's any good in being good?"
Una's voice, with a hard ring through its weary languor, roused her with
a start.
"Una! Why do you lie there in the sun? It's very bad for you!" she
said petulantly.
"Suppose it is, what does it matter? There's nothing doing, and nothing
worth living for, that I can see. You can't say there is."
"You ought not to say things like that, Una," said Amethyst. "It is not
right."
"As if being right mattered!" said Una, and then with a sudden change
the ready tears filled her eyes. "I am so--so miserable," she sobbed,
"and _you_ are unkind to me now, Amethyst. The children tease me, and
you don't care for me now."
Amethyst looked round at her. It was quite true. She had not cared.
Even now she felt impatient of the trouble that was like a caricature of
her own.
"It's natural you should hate me, when I did all the mischief. But oh,
I did try to make up for it--I did!"
"Nonsense!" said Amethyst. "I don't hate you, but I don't know that I
can say anything to do you any good."
She started up, and walked away as she spoke, her nerves were all on
edge, her temper irritated, her conscience beginning to struggle with
her sense of injury. The craving for Lucian came over her, as, with
unconscious force, she said to herself, "like a flood of hot lava." How
could she think about other people? She escaped from the sight of Una,
and walked along the little path across the fields, towards the village.
Then the place recalled the beginning of her troubles. She had come
this way to post the fatal letter which Sylvester Riddell had seen. She
believed Sylvester to be her worst enemy, and it was with a sense of
angry recoil that she saw his father and aunt coming to meet her. What
part they had taken, if any, in her affairs, she did not know, and she
had seen neither of them since the party at Loseby. Probably they
thought that she was a bad girl, and would show it in their manner to
her. She stiffened up her head, and would have passed with a bow; but
the Rector, who was nearest to her, stopped, raised his hat, and held
out his hand.
"How do you do, my dear?" he said in his kindest voice; "my sister was
coming to ask a little favour of you."
"It is this," said Miss Riddell, without waiting for Amethyst to speak;
"I want to interest some of the young girls about here in improving
their minds. There are a good many in Cleverley without much object in
life; I think some of them might be encouraged to work for an
examination. As your experience is so fresh, and you were so
successful, I wondered if you would come to tea to-morrow afternoon, and
tell us a little about it."
"So fresh?" Yes, only three months old; but what a fiery gulf seemed to
roll between. Amethyst was quick enough to see that this proposal was
meant most kindly as a link with her old life, and also, to show the
neighbourhood that, in the opinion of the Rectory, Miss Haredale was an
example to be followed, a companion to be desired.
She hesitated and was silent.
"The kindness would be very great," said the Rector. Miss Riddell moved
a little away, and he continued, "You have had a great trial, nothing
seems attractive to you now. Will this be more than you are ready for?"
"I don't feel as if I could remember about it," said Amethyst, with a
sudden impulse, the change in her face showing that she was still child
enough to be touched by the first kind word.
"No, my dear, but don't you think it would be good for you to recall
it?"
"I can't be good, I wasn't made to be," said Amethyst, in a tone which
she thought was wickedly defiant, but which really showed confidence in
her listener's comprehension.
"No, my dear," said the Rector again; "very few of us are. But we are
all made to be a little better by effort, and prayer."
"I am _worse_," said Amethyst, tears filling her eyes, while her whole
figure trembled.
"Yes, no doubt; but I think you will find it possible to make each day a
little better. And I have always found it worth while, Amethyst. It
makes all the difference in the long run between one man and another. I
am sure there is a better and a worse before you in life, my dear, even
if you think there is not a very good."
Perhaps this was the consolation of age rather than of youth. But it
came to Amethyst as a truth. It might not be worth while to be a little
less self-absorbed, a little less wretched; but she knew that it was
possible.
"God bless you, my dear child, and good-bye," said Mr Riddell, "you
shall come or not to the Rectory to-morrow, as you like."
Miss Riddell went away with only a kind smile and hand-shake, and
Amethyst, left alone, burst into a rain of tears. The kindness, the
sense of trust in the speakers had been like her native tongue in a
foreign land. It was natural; while her own people were strange. She
remembered the kind of girl she used to be, as if her girlhood were
twenty years away; bliss and misery had alike blotted it out.
But the habits and the instincts of her whole training were not utterly
killed; the sense of duty began to lift its head. It was better to be
kind to Una, and to show her that there was "a better" in life, than to
acquiesce in her despair. It was better to read history, and to
practise or to walk with the girls, than to sit alone and brood over her
injuries, or to read, in the novels left about by her mother, of far
worse injuries leading to worse despair, to learn from these books to
what her infant passions were akin, and to bite deeper into the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge--of herself. Of course, she did not put it so.
"It was better not to feel like those wicked people, at least not to
think of feeling like them." And slowly and dully she turned her steps
homewards through the wood; a bad way to come, since she and Lucian had
loved it together. Oh, what was _he_ doing? Did he feel as if life was
done? Perhaps the most agonising moment she had known, was when the
conviction came to her that it was not in him to feel as she did.
"If I had thought that he had gambled or betted, or been wicked, I would
have held on tighter, to help him to be good. But he gave up _me_!"
"But if you had thought he was faithless to you?" came an answering
voice in her soul. It was no thought, but an impulse of fury, that
seized upon Amethyst in reply. And then--
"But I could not think so, he could not be bad, he could not be false.
But oh, he is--he is--for he has no faith in me. `Better!' There's no
`better.' If he were to come back now, if he ever finds out and
believes, _I_ shall never forget?"
She flung herself down on the ground, on the bank where they had sat
together by the little pool where they had fished for water-lilies,
where they had exchanged forget-me-nots; the very revival of spirit,
caused by the friendly words, making her grief more articulate, and for
the moment more bitter.
Her tears were dried up; she lay with her hands clenched in the grass,
absolutely still. Suddenly a rustling, creeping sound came among the
herbs and water-weeds near, then panting, sobbing breath.
Amethyst lifted her head. Not twenty yards from her stood Una, her
hands clasped, her eyes fixed on the water, her foot extended. Amethyst
sprang to her feet, Una gave a violent start, and either lost her
balance and fell, or suddenly jumped into the water.
"Una, Una!" screamed Amethyst, all else forgotten in a moment. She
scrambled through the rushes, and caught at her sister's hands and
dress.
Una was on her feet, the water was shallow, but the bottom was soft and
muddy; she sank to her knees, and Amethyst, her own foothold insecure in
the rushes, could not hold her up.
The young life woke up strong in them both, they screamed and struggled;
Amethyst slipped off the bank up to her knees in the pool. As the cold
water, the slimy mud, touched her feet, the warm sun struck on her head,
the light and the blue of the sky were round and over her.
"Oh, God--oh, God! I don't want to die! Oh, save us! oh, save us!" she
cried.
There was a ringing shout.
"Stand still--stand still! For your lives, don't struggle! It's all
right, I'll help you!" And Sylvester Riddell came with a rush towards
them, set his foot on a firmer tuft of rushes, grasped Una by the waist,
and lifted her, sobbing and shaking, on to dry land, then pulled
Amethyst out of the water, and in another moment they were safe on a
mass of chervil, campion, stitchwort and sting-nettles high above the
water's edge, wet and miserable, covered with mud and water-weed.
Half an hour later, Sylvester came back to the Rectory with a rapid step
and brilliant eyes, but with an amount of mud on his trousers that
required explanation. This he gave in rather an off-hand fashion. Una
Haredale had slipped into the pond, gathering lilies he supposed, and he
had helped her sister to pull her out.
"Was she hurt?" said Miss Riddell, rather curiously.
"No, but she was faint and frightened, and wet through. I helped Miss
Haredale to get her home. It was an awkward accident."
It seemed, however, to have raised Sylvester's spirits, which had been
down to zero of late. He was going abroad with a friend, but he had
lingered and put off his start in the hope of once more seeing Amethyst,
a sight which he had nevertheless dreaded unspeakably. They had met
now, with no time for resentment or embarrassment, and his one feeling
was that she was now free. He saw her once again; for she came to the
Rectory on the next afternoon, just as he was setting out on his
journey.
The weather had changed, and the sky was grey. Amethyst wore a grey
frock and hat. She was pale, and looked much less pretty than usual,
and her manner was cold, and, he fancied, showed displeasure.
Sylvester's train was due, he could only shake hands and inquire for her
sister.
"She was very much upset and frightened; but she has not been well
lately. We must take much more care of her, then I hope she will be
better."
With the last word, she lifted her eyes for a moment to the Rector's
face as he stood behind his son; but they did not meet Sylvester's, and
in a moment she had passed into the drawing-room out of his sight.
He thought of her, as he had seen her first with the glowing amethysts
on her brow and neck, an angelic vision; at the primrose-picking, a
fresh and joyous girl; when he had come home at Midsummer, happy and
proud in her betrothal; at the fatal garden-party, with eyes that had
fallen before his own, with a cloud of doubt on her face. He had
admired her, idealised her, and, he knew it now, all the while he had
loved her, and yet his fate had given him a share in breaking her heart.
Now he had seen her again, pale and sad, in the light of common day.
Sylvester took his ticket for London, labelled his luggage, got into the
train, and exchanged a newspaper with a friend.
But, in his heart, he vowed himself to Amethyst's service, he took her
for the lady of his love, as if with her colours in his helmet, he had
ridden forth to cry her name in the battle-field, and die with it on his
lips.