Christabel Coleridge - Amethyst - The Story of a Beauty

All the trouble, however, was saved him, for he was shown into the morning-room to Lady Haredale.

“Ah, Mr Leigh,” she said, “what am I to say to you? What have you been doing with my little girl? I don’t think I ought to consent till she has seen a little of the world. I meant her to have such a success in London.”

“But that wouldn’t be much good after we were engaged,” said Lucian. “And I don’t think she would like it.”

“Don’t you?” said Lady Haredale, with a thought in her mind not very unlike her Rector’s, “Ah, you think she is a little nun. Well now, I am going to be quite frank with you. You know we are as poor as rats!”

“I – I – I have understood that – that Lord Haredale was – not wealthy,” stammered Lucian, losing his self-possession entirely.

“As rats – as church mice! Of course now I have no reserves with you. We can’t afford to take her out as we should like. Her grandfather’s will gives her 3,000 pounds on her wedding-day. We can’t give her a farthing more!”

“I know that – I don’t care. I can settle – ”

“Ah yes; you will tell Lord Haredale about that. Because we are going to say yes. We think we ought to have our girl settled. And, my dear Mr Leigh – my dear Lucian, I want her to be happy. Oh, yes, you know about her poor sister. – That came of ambition – and I mean my Amethyst to have her way.”

“I shall take care of her. I’ll make her happy – ” said Lucian, touched, and with fervour.

As he spoke, Lord Haredale came in, shook hands with him, heard his carefully prepared speech as to his money matters, and answered it. “Yes, my lady thinks we had better let her get settled at once. It will please her aunt, who brought her up. She is a good little thing, and I’m glad she should do well for herself.”

“Well then,” said Lady Haredale, “we don’t like all these formalities, do we? You will much prefer coming to Amethyst. But your mother? I suppose she doesn’t like it?”

“She does think we are rather young,” said Lucian meekly.

“I shall talk to her. Now wait here, and I will find the child.”

Lady Haredale went off to the school-room, where Amethyst was restlessly trying to look as if nothing was happening, and the younger girls, well aware of a crisis, were secretly watching her.

“Well!” said Lady Haredale. “Now you can go and enjoy yourself. I quite mean to enjoy it all myself. Little girls, Amethyst has set you an excellent example. She has fallen in love, quite in an eligible direction, without any delay, in the most irreproachable manner. Mind you all go and do likewise!”

“Oh, I knew all about it,” said Tory. “But he’s much too well off and too eligible to be so handsome. It isn’t fair!”

“It’s an awful joke!” said Kattern.

Una stood silent for a moment, then flung herself on Amethyst’s neck.

“Oh, how lucky you are!” she whispered, kissing her sister with hot quivering lips.

“So I am,” whispered Amethyst in reply.

She was blushing and confused; but there was a dreamy blissful air about her, as if she hardly heard these characteristic comments on her choice. She freed herself gently from Una, and went up to her mother, who, laughing, but with something of real tenderness, kissed her, and took her away. Tory gave a skip.

“What a jolly lark,” she said.

“It’s no such thing,” cried Una with passionate vehemence, as she rushed out of the room. “It’s losing the only thing that made life tolerable, and I’d like to go and hang myself at once.”

“I’ll tell you what it is, Kat,” said Tory. “Una’s too great a fool for anything, and some day I shall tell Amethyst all about Tony.”

“Una will half kill you if you do,” said Tory. “Never mind about that now. Let’s go into the garden, then we can peep in at the windows and see Amethyst and her young man!”

There ensued a time which seemed to Amethyst afterwards like a piece out of an age of gold, each day more full than the one before it of absorbing, intoxicating bliss. There was the day when Lucian brought the ring, set with her namesake jewel, and put it on the pink girlish finger that had never worn a ring before, then spread out her soft delicate hand on his brown palm, and looked at it proudly, saying, “That shall stay there always. That means you belong to me.” And the two hands closed tight upon each other, as if they never would unclasp again.

The first Sunday, too, when they went to church together, and gave thanks from the bottom of their young honest hearts for their great happiness, and when the hymn of the Heavenly City rang in Amethyst’s ears with vague and mystic rapture. Heaven was near and earth was good, and she did not quite know the one from the other. All was joy.

As they came out, Lucian, with his shy, boyish smile, showed her a line in his hymn-book with a deep under-score.

“Oh, Lucian,” she said, half shocked, “but you shouldn’t think about me in church!”

“Yes, I should,” said Lucian. “I shall think about you everywhere. Besides, we shall go to church together all our lives, you know, at Toppings. Then we’ll remember to-day.”

“As if we could ever forget it!” said Amethyst dreamily, while her heart beat, and her eyes shone.

“I never shall, as long as I live,” said Lucian. “Look there, look at those long-tailed tits swinging in the hedge. Do you know they grow those long tails quite smooth and straight in a little round nest? How do they manage it?”

Lucian made his profession of life-long remembrance, and called her attention to the tits, much in the same tone of voice. He was not an emotional person, and his talk was mostly of what passed before his observant eyes.

But fate did not intend that either of them should forget that summer Sunday when “all in the blue unclouded weather” they looked forward to the life that they were beginning together, in a world that seemed to them both very good, with the Heavenly City in a rainbow-tinted mist, far – far ahead of them.

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.