"Amethyst, Amethyst, I must talk to you. I can't bear it by myself.
Oh, that man, I hate and I loathe him, and my own self! But I can't get
him out of my eyes or my mind, his face blots everything else out. Oh,
don't make me come down to-night!"
This despairing outcry met Amethyst's ears, as, late in the afternoon of
the day after the _soiree_ at the Art Gallery, she came into the little
up-stairs sitting-room appropriated to her sisters and herself. Una was
lying on a couch by the window. She raised herself, stretching out her
hands, as if for help in dire distress, and Amethyst, putting down the
flowers she was carrying, came and knelt down by her side.
"Now, Una, there's a dear child, don't begin to cry about it. Of course
we both hate the sight of him. But he was sure to turn up some time,
and you mustn't put yourself into an agony about it."
Una hid her face in the comforting arms, the very touch of which brought
strength to her.
"I was afraid you might worry yourself," continued Amethyst, "but I
haven't had a chance of looking after you before. If you stay away
to-night, it will still have to be done some time. Take it as easy as
you can."
"I thought he had dropped my lady," whispered Una.
"Well, you know, they had some intercourse when the amethysts--Ah! talk
of hating, I should like to throw them into the sea--when they were got
back. It would look very odd if he cut us. And as for you, darling,
you are so different now--like another person."
Una turned round and looked up into her sister's face.
"Am I so changed?" she said.
"Why, yes, no one would know you for the same silly little girl," said
Amethyst, jestingly, but she felt, as she spoke, that her words gave a
pang. "Change is best for us both," she said steadily, with a certain
sombre look in the eyes that were bent on Una's.
Una was silent. Changed in a sense she was, for two years before she
would have sobbed herself into hysterics, if half the same weight of
emotion had been stirring in her breast. Now she lay still, enduring a
knowledge of herself that never ought to have come to her seventeen
years. The anguish that had come upon her might be shame and loathing,
but it filled her soul. The face might be hateful that had once been
adorable, but it blotted every other out. She had thought herself
possessed by a new spirit, a holy spirit of love and peace, and behold
the old possession had driven the new one away. There was a Face to
which she had learned to turn, a Love she was beginning to know, and
now--and _now_.
She pressed her hand on her heart, and was silent. Instinctively she
felt that even Amethyst would not understand. With an effort to turn to
a trouble that could be spoken of, she said--
"And Sylvester Riddell--I am ashamed to see him."
"Sylvester Riddell knows nothing about you, darling," said Amethyst.
"Amethyst, does seeing him make you--feel?"
"Oh, I don't mean to feel," returned Amethyst, lightly, "I have a great
deal too much to do; let bygones be bygones. Now then, don't let us
make mountains of molehills. Here is all your hair tumbling down, I'll
do it up prettily. If you had any consideration for the small amount of
lady's-maiding we ever get, you wouldn't grow such a quantity."
"My ridiculous hair," said Una, pulling it through her fingers, and
lingering a little on the epithet. Then, with a hot blush she rose.
"Yes, it tires me dreadfully to do it myself."
A deficiency of personal attendance was one of the forms of "simplicity"
with which the Miss Haredales had to put up, and both Amethyst and
Kattern spent most of their leisure in "fixing"--to use a convenient
Americanism--their own and their sisters' costumes. A constant
attention to frills does not leave much time for feelings, but it was of
set purpose that Amethyst absorbed herself in the present.
"You know, dear," she said, as she divided and twisted the long heavy
lengths of Una's hair, "it is absurd to think that all one's cargo must
be in one ship. No one thing is enough, and there's always something
more. For instance, one can't think only of society, and of looking
well. That's one thing. It's a good big thing, but there are so many
others. Now last night I should have liked to have looked at all those
pictures, and talked about them to some one that understood. If I go to
a concert, I feel as if there was enough in music to fill up one's life.
I want to have something of it all. There's no end to the
possibilities of everything. I could talk to that queer Mr Carisbrooke
for hours!"
"I wonder what Sir Richard would say if you told him that," said Una,
rather dryly.
"Oh, it's only that he gave me a new idea. I want to work it out. So
you see, no one thing ought to spoil everything else. Of course we're
none of us likely to expect beds of roses, we've learned our lesson.
But when there are so many chances, it is wise and right to take the
life that offers the most--the most chances of doing, and being."
Una's hair was finished by this time, and she stood up in her long white
dressing-gown, leaning her hand on the toilet-table, and looking at her
sister with searching eyes.
"Amethyst," she said, "I don't believe you were ever really in love with
Lucian Leigh at all."
The colour flamed into Amethyst's face, and her bosom heaved.
"Yes, I was," she said, "but that's just what I want to show you.
That's over, but one isn't all heart, any more than I hope and believe
one is all face. One has a mind, and a soul, and possibilities. I
won't go to the bottom, if I was shipwrecked once. Nothing can ever
take up the whole of one, I suppose. I thought it could then. Now if I
don't get ready quick, I shall be late."
She ran away as she spoke. It was not her way to neglect the necessity
of the moment, and she made such good speed, that she was in the
drawing-room before any of the guests arrived. On the table lay a thin
square book bound in bluish-green, with a silver iris in the corner.
"Sylvester Riddell's poem, my dear," said Lady Haredale. "I bought it
when I was out with the children. He'll like to see it on the table.
Look at it, then you can talk to him about it."
Amethyst took it up, and glanced over the pages. She was a rapid
reader, and in a very few minutes, she caught the idea of the poem, the
passionate search for an ideal, and it attracted her. Did it contradict
the philosophy which she had been preaching to Una, or was it in truth
its justification? The look of interest was still on her face, the book
in her hand, when its author was announced, and, when she put it down
and greeted him with a delightful smile, as of one caught in the act,
Sylvester felt that all the reviews in London might cut `Iris' to
pieces. She had had her day.
He sat by Amethyst at dinner, and neither prince nor millionaire was
there to claim her attention. She appeared neither cold nor resentful,
and that she was somewhat excited, he did not guess. Her lovely eyes,
with their mysterious depths, were turned upon him, and she referred to
his poem with a certain modest deference, as if in explaining it, he did
her an honour. Sylvester had never known before, how utterly he had
failed to express his hero's rapture, when Iris shone upon him with no
cloud between.
"It is no new subject," he said, modestly, "but the idea possessed me--"
"It seems new, I think," said Amethyst, who, at twenty, had not quite
exhausted all the ideas of life. "It is very interesting, but,
practically, when Iris was so unattainable, don't you think he would
have managed to get on without her--by the help of his music--and his
battles?"
"You see," said Sylvester, eagerly and nervously, "in a measure he found
her in art, and in the struggle of life, and, in so far as she was
embodied in them, she gave them value."
"I am not sure that I understand," said Amethyst, in soft considerate
tones. "What is it that you intend Iris to signify?"
"She was his dream of perfection," said Sylvester, very low, "his
vision--well, his Beatrice. He found something of perfect beauty in
many things--when he sought it with sufficient pains, but--but love, of
course, was the higher revelation. He could be content with nothing
less."
"Ah, I must read to the end. Was she always an abstraction?"
"She did not always seem so," said Sylvester, as for a moment he met her
eyes.
Amethyst blushed, with an inward start, she had forgotten for the moment
her resentment; now came a throb of triumph. So he did not hate and
despise her, this man who had thought her false to his friend. Had she
conquered him too? As her thoughts glanced at the other conquest
awaiting her disposal, she might be pardoned for feeling that, for her
at least, life held many different possibilities.
"I don't think your father would believe in Iris," she said suddenly,
with girlish abruptness.
"I am afraid he doesn't," said Sylvester. "But why do you say so?"
"He gave me some advice once, that I have found out to be true. But it
wasn't at all consistent with dreams of finding perfection.--At least--
after all, I am not quite sure of that."
She sat for a moment with a perfectly simple, considerate expression on
her beautiful face, evidently pursuing a new idea. But she did not tell
Sylvester what it was; and turned off the subject with an inquiry for
Mr Riddell and other Cleverley friends.
Meantime, it was Una's unlucky fate to find herself sitting by Major
Fowler. Outwardly she was mistress of the situation, and behaved with
creditable self-possession; while he talked in a good-humoured,
half-joking strain, that would have been suitable enough if Tory or
Kattern had been his companion. He took up the old intimacy, asked home
questions as to this thing and the other, how Charles fitted in to the
family circle, how "Aunt Anna" managed to hit it off with my lady, and
Una answered like one under a spell. Then he began to talk about
himself, praised his wife to her, said certainly he'd done the right
thing, laughed a little at the way he was kept in order--all in the old
way, the familiar chatter to his little sympathetic friend. It was all
very natural--if only to poor Una it had not been such exquisite--
rapture or anguish, she could not tell. Then he went back to an old
habit of talking about herself. She was quite grown-up--not a little
school-girl--such a fine young lady. Somehow, he had always thought of
her as a little long-haired girl. All the awkwardness was ignored, and
he made their old relation seem the most natural thing in the world.
The poor child's eyes turned to his, and he smiled in the half-familiar,
half-flattering fashion of old times. For an instant his hand, as he
poured her out some water, touched her ungloved fingers. There was
storm and tumult in Una's soul, she turned her head away, and put all
the distance possible into her voice. He gave an odd little smile, took
up the cue, and began to talk society chit-chat, but all the while there
was an undercurrent, and Una felt that in another moment they would
laugh together at the idea of making talk for each other. There was
nothing else like it in the world.
The state of things at last caught Amethyst's notice, and diverted her
mind from philosophy and poetry. With the manner of one from whom a
word was a favour, she spoke across the table to Major Fowler, and asked
him to persuade Mrs Fowler to patronise the approaching bazaar, and so
made the conversation general, for everybody began to discuss it at
once.
"Shall you sell rosebuds, Miss Haredale?" said Major Fowler. "Anything,
of course, for the charity."
"I shall try to do my duty," said Amethyst. "Mr Riddell should give us
some copies of his beautiful poem," said Lady Haredale. "Get him to
give them to you, Amethyst, to sell yourself!"
"I shall make a point of buying one, then, at any price," said Major
Fowler.
The bazaar was a very magnificent one, the stallholders so high in rank,
that the author of `Iris' might well have felt it a lucky chance; but to
Sylvester the idea was agony.
"No," said Amethyst slowly. "Books never sell at bazaars, I can't
undertake them."
"My dear child," said her mother, "you are really rude. _This_ book
would sell, of course."
"I couldn't sell it," said Amethyst, and Sylvester felt as if he could
have gone down on his knees to her, in gratitude.
He was half-wild. The atmosphere of this London world was not pure and
sweet enough to hold his Iris. Here again was this old tempter, as he
believed Major Fowler to be, by her side. Amethyst was no heavenly
spirit, serene herself, to draw and influence struggling manhood; but a
woman of the world, for whom an anxious lover saw many dangers, a jewel
in which it was easy to find flaws, seen every moment in a changing
light. She had indeed no time to dwell on one subject. A theory of
life must give place to the exigencies of the bazaar. Una could only
have a word and a kiss, as Amethyst hurried away with her mother to a
great reception, as soon as the dinner-party was over. Sylvester
Riddell had had his word and his thought. Now, on a grand staircase,
amid a splendid throng of fine people, Sir Richard Grattan and Prince
Pontresina were both awaiting her. She felt that the choice between
Titian and the newest R.A. would soon be forced upon her, and was glad
to turn to receive the courtesies of the very great lady at whose stall
she was to help on the next day.
This was scarcely over, when she caught sight of the peculiar face of
Mr Carisbrooke, standing under a group of palms and other tropical
plants in the corridor, at the head of the staircase.
Her young intellect must have been vigorous and strong, her interest in
new ideas very keen; for, in the midst of all the distracting whirl, her
thoughts flashed back to her previous interview with him, and she made
an opportunity to join him, and put her question, as if he and she had
been alone in the place.
"Mr Carisbrooke," she said, "you have set me thinking. I should like
you to try your experiment. I want to know what my picture told you."
Probably, if Amethyst had not been accustomed to find her every word
taken as a favour, she would not have made so abrupt a demand; but she
was quite in earnest, and stood before him as simply as a scholar before
a teacher, and he answered her at once, looking straight into her eyes.
"There was the good child," he said, "there was the young fancy. They
have gone by. There _is_ the beautiful lady. She has pleasure and
power. She will have wealth, everything that the world can give. I
wonder if it will satisfy her."
"Do you think it ought to be satisfactory?" said Amethyst.
"Do you think it ever is?" he responded. "Ah! If I could have found it
so! But I'm an old fellow, you know, Miss Haredale, and it is not my
place to put lawless ideas into a young lady's head, or to take up her
time from more worthy claimants."
"Oh," said Amethyst, as Sir Richard and his sister bore down upon them,
"that is as I think. Tell us the story you were speaking of the other
day, Mr Carisbrooke. I want to hear the end of it."
Mr Carisbrooke told a curious instance of thought transference in a
pair of lovers, and told it very well. Amethyst listened with great
interest, and perhaps chose to make her interest apparent, though Sir
Richard repressed his impatience with difficulty.
When she found herself alone in her room that night, she stood for a
moment and looked at herself in the glass. Why had she been so kind to
Sylvester Riddell, when she had so much cause for righteous anger
against him? Somehow, he belonged so much to days when she had felt
kindly to every one, that she had forgotten to be unkind.
Yet he could look at her as he had done to-night, and think of her--what
he had made Lucian believe!
"All for my beauty!" she said to herself. "I despise him for it!" she
exclaimed, half aloud. "He ought to scorn me!"
But before she went to bed, she finished his poem. It vexed and
dissatisfied her. It did not seem that the hero had managed to combine
success in life with the search after, much less with the possession of,
Iris. And Amethyst was finding that success in life _was_ a very good
thing.