Miss Haredale's pretty little drawing-room at Silverfold was gay with
tulips and hyacinths, and bright with a cheery mingling of sun and
firelight.
In the sunny bay-window sat Una Haredale, with a book in her lap, but
with eyes eagerly gazing down the pleasant bit of country road, shaded
with tall trees and edged with broad pieces of turf and freely growing
hedges, that was visible from the window.
Una was now seventeen, a slender, limp creature, with languor and want
of strength apparent in every gesture, and a look of extreme delicacy in
her pale face and large eager eyes. Her expression had softened and
sweetened, her hair was fastened up on the top of her head, though its
thick coils still seemed as if they were too heavy for the long
over-slender neck. As she caught sight of a figure approaching the
garden gate, her face lighted up into a look of positive rapture. She
sprang up, and flew out to the door.
"Amethyst, Amethyst! my darling, my darling! Here you are at last I'll
never, never let you go again!"
The last words were spoken as she clung round her sister's neck, almost
stifling Amethyst's words of greeting.
"My darling, you won't let me speak, or look at you! Where's Aunt
Anna,--not at home?"
"She has taken Carrie to have a singing lesson. Come in; I am to give
you tea, and take care of you."
Soon Amethyst was sitting in a low chair by the fire, with Una kneeling
at her side, leaning against her, and clinging to her, as some one had
once said, like bindweed round a lily, a comparison resented by Amethyst
as derogatory to Una. She alone knew what this clinging, dependent
creature had been to her ever since, for Una's sake, she had tried to
"make things better."
"Are you quite well, dear? and do you like being here? Have you got on
with Aunt Anna?" she asked, tenderly.
"Oh, as well as can be without you. I do like it. Oh! I have a great
deal to tell you. Only first I want to hear how everything is settled.
Is the house in Eaton Square nice?"
"Yes, there will be plenty of room for Auntie and Carrie Carisbrooke,
and you know mother will let them be quite independent. And you are all
to be there. Mother wouldn't hear of sending even Kattern and Tory to
Cleverley; and as for you, she insisted on your going to the
Drawing-room, and coming out regularly."
"I? I should be half-killed with an hour of a London party. What can
my lady want me for?" said Una, with a startled look.
"She says she may never be able to give you so good a chance. I said I
thought that London was bad for you, and that I was sure you could not
do much. But she said that it was more amusing for you to do what you
could, and she liked to have us all with her. So I must take great care
of you, and we must see how it answers for you."
Una gave a long sigh.
"It keeps me with you," she said. "But oh, it tires me to think of it!
and I shall want heaps of new clothes."
"Mother says you had better have them when you can. She is delighted at
getting the London house."
"I dare say," said Una. "You'll see, Kattern and Tory will get
everywhere, except to the Drawing-room and the stiff balls. Kat looks
grown-up, and she's getting rather sweet in her own way--pretty
milk-maid style, you know. And she looks best in a straw hat and pink
cotton--which is cheap." Amethyst laughed.
"I don't know about Kat," she said, "but Tory declares she's not going
to spoil her chances by and by. She means to wear a sailor hat, and go
to classes. She has found out some, and I do think she will, she is
very clever."
Una twisted herself round so as to look up into Amethyst's face.
"There'll be the rich heiress," she said, "and the great beauty.
There's only the good girl left for me! Which will win, I wonder--you
or Carrie? She ought to have a poor peer, and you a rich
cotton-spinner. But you might pull caps for a duke."
"He should fall to you, if you are to be the good girl," said Amethyst.
"But I don't see him anywhere on the horizon at present."
"No, but the cotton-spinner? Of course the Grattons are going to be in
town? In Eaton Square too, perhaps?"
"Yes," said Amethyst, "on the opposite side. Carrie is to ride with the
girls."
"And you?"
"Too expensive!" said Amethyst, with an odd slow smile. "There'll be
enough to contrive for without that."
"Where _is_ the money coming from? Is the house all Carrie's?"
"Well, no. The fact is, father has made it up with Charles, and they
have agreed to sell some farms in Derbyshire. We are to see Charles
sometimes. He is going on better--"
"And is meant for Carrie! I declare, Amethyst, that's too bad!" said
Una, sitting up. "And have you seen him?"
"No, and I can't recollect him at all. Can you?"
"I can. Amethyst, he's a horror! Even long ago we all hated him. I
should hate him to come near you?"
"Well, Una," said Amethyst, shrugging her shoulders. "We must just do
the best we can. Least said, soonest mended--as we settled long ago."
"Oh," said Una, with tears in her eyes, "it's awfully hard lines on us!
I want to tell you--somehow I couldn't write. I see everything
differently--since I came here--"
She broke off, and hid her face on Amethyst's shoulder.
"What is it, dear? What do you mean? Has anything happened to you?"
said Amethyst, anxiously.
"The greatest of all things, Amethyst. I know about religion now--I
know about _Him_! The confirmation classes, and all Mr Ross has taught
us--and his sermons--oh, it is all so beautiful. I longed, I wanted to
be good. If one could go and live in a place like Saint Etheldred's,
out of the temptations of the world! But yesterday he talked to us
separately, and I couldn't help telling him a little, what a bad, wicked
child I had been. And he said things. And somehow, last night, as I
lay awake, there came the most wonderful feeling, and I knew it was all
true, and that there is peace and rest I _knew_ it. One can be happy
without earthly love, and--and all the things people care for. It's
quite true, Amethyst, I--I saw Him right in my heart, and I _know_..."
She lifted her face, all transfigured and radiant, as she uttered the
holiest of names in an awe-struck whisper.
Amethyst looked at her, with the dreaming, seeking, unsatisfied eyes
which were in such curious contrast to the repose of her beautiful face.
"You knew always," said Una. "That was what made you so different to us
all, when first you came."
Amethyst smiled a smile that would have been a little cynical, if it had
not been so intensely sad.
"I'm not very good, darling," she said. "Life's rather a complicated
business, as you know very well."
"Yes," said Una, "but I feel as if I should not mind anything very much,
now. Now there is something to get back into, to hide oneself in. But
it is all your doing, my jewel. What should I have been like but for
you?"
Una believed, poor child, that the struggle of life was over for her, or
at least robbed of all its hardness. These weeks at Silverfold had
lifted her into a new world; and when, a day or two after Amethyst's
arrival, the confirmation for which she had been preparing took place,
the fervour of her self-dedication seemed to shine through her, as, with
a face white as her dress, but beautiful with peace and joy, she came
down the little church amid the crowd of stolid white-capped country
girls, experiencing a sense of ineffable rest and joy.
Was this but another and more dangerous phase of the varying emotions to
which she was subject, a lifting up that was likely to end in a more
violent fall?
It might be so. But, only through the higher possibilities of her
emotions could salvation come to so emotional a creature; she was one to
whom all good must come at risk of fatal loss.
Amethyst had no answering experience. She was a strong and healthy
creature, with vigorous spirits and growing energies, which one blow
could not crush. In spite of many bitter hours, she had found interests
and enjoyments. Vexatious as in many ways the long months abroad with
her mother had been, uncongenial as were many of the visits which she
had paid with her, she enjoyed seeing new places, she made new friends,
took up new pursuits, thought new thoughts.
As for home, the veil had been torn from her eyes, and she never had an
illusion again. She did not make herself miserable, but she had learned
to expect nothing.
She knew, as far as the London season was concerned, and the career of
which she had had last year a foretaste, both that she had claims to a
very brilliant one, and also that she was heavily handicapped by poverty
and by want of family good repute. She thought that romance and passion
were over for her, and that she was free to do the best possible for
herself in life; but she meant to be honourable, upright, and modest,
there were bounds that she did not intend to pass. Truly, it was in her
to be more a woman of the world than her mother, she had so much more
forethought, and was so much less swayed by the pleasure and amusement
of the moment.
The momentary sight of Lucian and Sylvester had brought back, not the
love which she believed herself to have outlived, but a sudden
realisation of what that love had been, and an intense resentment
against the misjudgment that had destroyed it. She hated Sylvester, and
yet felt that she would have died rather than let him guess that the
sight of him gave her a moment's pang.
Into her old place in her aunt's household she had never again quite
fitted. She had spent some time with her after her return from abroad,
but she could not take up her former life; she went back to her school
as a splendid visitor, and wondered how she could have pictured herself
as one of its teachers. Miss Carisbrooke, too, had in some measure
taken her place. The little heiress was a pleasant-looking,
round-faced, rosy-cheeked girl, with simple tastes and a warm heart.
She loved her chaperon heartily, and found life at Silverfold
delightful, even while she looked forward eagerly to her London season.
She had an enthusiasm for Amethyst's grace and beauty, and scouted the
idea that her own fortune could be a better passport to partners, a
constant succession of whom was her idea of social triumph.
"You will be able to have a great many more pretty frocks than we shall,
Carrie," said Una, one day when the three girls were together.
"Ah, but if I was a partner, I shouldn't think about Amethyst's frock.
I wish I was a man. I would fall in love with her, and give her the
most lovely flowers, and when she said yes, I would take her to Ashfield
Mount and live there. Don't you think it's a pretty place, Amethyst?"
"It is a very pretty place," said Amethyst, coolly.
"You wouldn't marry me for the sake of it?" laughed Carrie. "Nobody
else shall! But I'm so glad I am going to be with you all in London.
You don't know how much happier I've been since I came to live with dear
Miss Haredale. She's much more like a relation than Uncle Oliver is."
"Don't you like your uncle?" asked Una.
"No," said Carrie, with some emphasis, "_I_ don't, but there are a great
many people who do. Don't fall in love with _him_, Amethyst; he will
with you, directly he sees you."
Carrie laughed as she gave this warning; but it struck both the shrewd,
observant Haredales, that she had made a point of uttering it.
"I shall take the dogs for a walk," she said, without waiting for an
answer. "Poor things, they will be very dull when we are in London."
"You should go too, Amethyst," said Una, as Carrie went out; "you are
pale. If you did your duty, you would be considering exactly what
amount of exercise would give the right shade of pink to your cheeks."
"I shall consider nothing of the kind," said Amethyst, crossly. "Even
my lady wouldn't plan and scheme in that way. At least she does things
because she likes them."
"Darling, I did not mean to vex you," said Una, distressed, as Amethyst
started up and went over to the window, with an impetuous movement,
unlike her ordinary self-restraint.
"Oh, not you, Una. But every one plans and schemes; Aunt Annabel does.
I know what all this talking about `poor Charles' means very well. She
would do anything, in spite of all her religion, to `support the title,'
as she calls it. I'd rather live honestly for my own pleasure. But,
there--we all plan and scheme, as I say, and make up our lives. And we
can never make them as they were once intended to be."
Her breast heaved and her eyes filled, as the thought forced itself upon
her, that, let her success in life be what it would, it could never give
her anything better, anything nearly so good as one hour with Lucian in
the woods at Cleverley.
"That was Paradise," she thought; "but I couldn't live in it now!"
"I'd rather be downright wicked than worldly," she said, defiantly.
"Oh, my darling," said Una, "you don't know what being wicked is like!
But, Amethyst, our lives _are_ made for us. That is what I have found
out--made just as they ought to be."
"Oh yes, in a sense, of course," said Amethyst, "but there's a good deal
of making left for ourselves and other people, and we, or they, don't
make them very well."
"Yes," said Una, with shining eyes, "outside things; but not the real
life, not the life within. Amethyst, the feel of that Presence is as
real to me, as the feel of your arms round me when I am tired and
miserable--as real, and even better. Come what may, I shall have it to
remember. I know now, how the Martyrs could smile when they were burnt
to death!"
Amethyst gazed at her, uncomprehending, almost wishing that Una was not
going to enter on grown-up life with this new strange force within her.
She recalled a saying that she had once heard Mr Riddell quote, "that a
great deal of religion needed a great deal of looking after," and she
felt half afraid. She was correct and careful in the performance of the
religious duties in which she had been trained; but all the glow of
feeling, with which she had knelt by Lucian's side in Cleverley Church,
had departed with the earthly love from which she had hardly
distinguished it.
"I'm afraid, dear," she said gently, "that Eaton Square won't be a very
heavenly sort of place for either of us. If we are tied to any stakes
there, no doubt we shall have to smile at them, but I doubt whether the
smiles will come from heaven!"
"I shall not mind Eaton Square now," said Una.
"Well," said Amethyst, giving herself a sort of mental shake, "anyhow,
we have to live there for the next three months. So we must do the best
we can."