While all the bitterness of past wrongs was thus, for Amethyst,
softening into a tender haze of memory, it became apparent to Una that a
new future was offered to herself.
The pleasant, wholesome intercourse that had begun for her at
Restharrow, had made the days cheerful at Bordighera, and, together with
health much improved by the southern climate, had brought her for the
first time something of the natural gaiety of her eighteen years. She
very soon knew quite well, that her presence made the pleasure for
Wilfred Jackson, that he sought her at every possible moment, and
offered her the natural and innocent courtship of a warm-hearted youth,
which ought to have been the opening of all the joys and rights of her
young womanhood.
But behind her lay, not the "duties enough and little cares" of
unawakened childhood, not the playful preferences of attractive
girlhood, but the searing, burning memory of premature passion.
She let the pleasant thing go on, she hesitated and doubted, for she
liked Wilfred Jackson very much, and she liked--she always would like--
intercourse that was touched with possibilities of emotion. And she
would have been so glad to forget all her miserable past, to go on into
a happy future.
She knew that she was watched by Tory and Kattern, and she did not put
them off the scent; she knew that Amethyst was only blind because her
thoughts were absorbed by Lucian's condition; she knew how welcome her
engagement would be to every one belonging to her. But day by day her
heart grew heavier within her, and she dreaded more and more the moment
of decision.
It came one day, among the olive trees, over a bed of violets, with the
blue sea behind them, and the white peaks before, a sweet sense of
spring-time in the air, and everything befitting the spring of fresh
young hope.
He was alone with her, and his tongue was loosed, and all his honest
love and his eager longings were laid at her feet, and the prospect of a
good and happy life was offered to her, all the blessings the value of
which she had learned to know full well.
And her heart turned from it utterly, she shrank from his hand and his
kiss. She had had her day--a day almost before the dawn--and she
thought that she could never give herself to any man again.
She refused him, with a rain of tears and a passion of self-reproach,
knowing that she had allowed him to expect another answer. Her words
were so wild, and her manner so strange, that Wilfred, as he stood, pale
and bitterly disappointed, felt as if he had wooed a mermaid, some
incomprehensible, uncanny creature of a different race from his own.
But he was stunned.
"Una," he said, "I think you gave me a right to expect another answer.
You have given me a bitter blow. I shall go away where I cannot see
your face--your cruel face. But I don't give you up. I shall try
again!"
Una fled away from him, and rushed home, where she threw herself into
Amethyst's arms, and sobbed out all her self-reproach and her
self-despair.
"Oh, my dear, I should have looked after you better!" said Amethyst
regretfully. "But are you sure? Can't you ask him to give you a little
time?"
"Oh, Amethyst, I like him, I hoped it would come to me, till yesterday,
when we were picking flowers, he kissed my hand, and then--then all last
night I dreamt of _other_ kisses, oh, I felt them--I can feel them now.
I've none left!"
"Dear Una, the past is not meant to spoil our future--there is
forgiveness and peace--"
"For you--for you--You look back on a paradise, and I on--"
"Oh, Una--but it's all over, you have all your life left!"
"I have--I have!" cried Una, lifting her face from Amethyst's shoulder,
"I would not have that past again, not the maddest moment of it! I will
live--I will be good for something in spite of it. Oh--I should like to
give my life to telling girls that one _can_ be different. I think I'd
_die_ to keep another child from my fate! But it has been--and alas and
alas, it will be!"
This was the wrong that Tony had done her.
She had saved her soul alive, but the first spring of her heart was gone
for ever, and if a second came, it might not be till the chances of life
were over for her.
She threw herself on her knees when Amethyst left her.
"Oh, God!" she whispered, "let me not look back--let me look forward up,
up to Thee!"
There was a great outcry, when Wilfred stirred up his sisters to go back
with him on the next day to Nice. The girls were angry, and declared
that Una was a heartless flirt and had led him on; but Wilfred would not
hear a reproach cast at her, and went up to the Leighs' villa to bid
Lucian farewell, and to tell his story.
It was a bad day with Lucian, indeed each day began to show failing
strength, and the shadow lay so heavily on all around him, that it was
no wonder that Wilfred Jackson's affairs had never been guessed at.
Lucian could not talk to him, but lay and listened while Sylvester put
in occasional questions, and shortened the interview as much as
possible. Then it came over Wilfred, that he was bidding his friend
farewell for the last time, and he felt how much he had let himself be
diverted from his state by a new interest. He muttered something, he
hardly knew what, as he squeezed Lucian's hand, but it ended in "never
forgetting the Rockies."
"All right," said Lucian, "and don't forget either that--I said--that I
hoped, when you're dying, you may thank God for your love, as I do--
though we've neither of us been lucky."
Wilfred was utterly overcome, and could only hurry away with another
hand-squeeze. Lucian felt that the first of the final partings had come
for him, and his breath came a little quickly.
"You'll stay with me, Syl, won't you?" he whispered.
"Why yes, of course, dear boy, that's all settled, long ago. Now let me
read you to sleep. Then, if Amethyst comes by and by, you will be able
to see her."
Amethyst was the bright spot in the sorrowful household. She was loving
to Mrs Leigh, listening to her sorrow, and trying to give her all the
care which after so long a strain she was beginning to need, and
cheering the poor young girls as they grew too sorrowful to care for
their usual amusements, while in her ways with Lucian she showed the
most absolutely simple and unaffected tenderness, thinking of nothing
but how to give him pleasure. That the pleasure was sometimes not
easily known from pain, Lucian hid from all eyes but Sylvester's keen
ones, and, as he grew weaker, the inevitable longings mercifully sank
away, or were bravely offered up with all the other sufferings of his
failing life, and he took the joy as simply as it was given.
Lady Haredale, as usual, had adapted herself to circumstances. She took
the greatest interest in "dear Lucian," never grudged Amethyst's
intercourse with him, and, as she took occasion to tell Sylvester, "felt
that the past was entirely blotted out."
"She may," Lucian had said bluntly, when this speech was reported to
him, "but, as far as she is concerned, I don't, and I never shall."
Sylvester entirely concurred in this sentiment. If he detested any one
on earth it was "my lady." If she had ever found out that Una had
refused Wilfred Jackson, she might have found it hard to forgive her,
for money grew scarcer and scarcer, and while she smiled, and talked,
and found little satisfactions in the amusements of hotel life, she did
not know in the least what was to become of them all.
What Lord Haredale did, with their scanty means, it was easy to guess,
and, though his wife could trust to some happy-go-lucky solution, his
sister's face grew more anxious every day.
Her greatest comfort was Carrie Carisbrooke, who transferred the
incipient affection she had felt for Charles to all his family. She
told Miss Haredale, that she hoped they would continue to live together
either at Silverfold or at Cleverley, and she fully intended to put it
in her chaperon's power to give Tory the education she so much desired.
It was an undeserved return for the worldliness which had done her so
great a disservice in trying to prop up a falling family with her
fortune; but nevertheless, it made home and happiness for a very lonely
girl, and so was its own reward.
Carrie's twenty-first birthday was imminent, and on the day of the
Jacksons' departure, she received a letter from her uncle, saying that
he meant to spend it with her, and to give up his stewardship of her
fortune.
Una heard with a start of horror, "That Amethyst should meet that man
again!"
"You need have no fear," said Amethyst. "If he comes, and people guess
he ever had anything to do with me, it is no more than I deserve. He
nearly ruined my life for me, but it was my own fault Lucian will never
know, and--"
She did not finish her sentence, but she knew that, some day, she would
tell Sylvester how his trust in her had helped to save her from a second
shipwreck. She would tell him, and he would understand.