Christabel Coleridge - Amethyst - The Story of a Beauty

She went to London with Lady Haredale for a few days during his absence, to complete these arrangements, and there, in the brief intervals when her mind was not taken up with her lover’s letters, or with the engrossing business of the trousseau, she fancied that Lady Haredale was less cheery and light-hearted than usual. Her father, who was very little at Cleverley, met them in London, and disappointed her by his want of interest in her prospects, and by the captious, irritable annoyance with which he turned off any mention of the wedding. She returned to Cleverley with her mother, while Lucian was still absent, and found there Major Fowler, who had, he said, “been backwards and forwards” during Lady Haredale’s absence. Amethyst’s first view of the great “Tony” had been that he was a middle-aged gentleman, an uninteresting but worthy family friend.

Therefore it appeared to her quite natural that the girls should be “very fond of him,” as Tory, with a wicked twinkle in her eye, declared herself to be. Amethyst herself behaved to him graciously, as a person that she expected to know and like, but rather respectfully, as belonging to her elders.

She thought so little about him, that it was not until Lucian expressed a dislike to him, that she realised that there was something about him that she did not like herself. She was not shy; but he had a way sometimes of staring at her that made her uncomfortable, and, almost unconsciously, she held him at a distance and did not fall into the free intercourse with him practised by her sisters. Her mother called him “poor Tony,” and had explained him in the following manner some time before.

“You see, my dear, the poor fellow has been very unlucky. Of course I don’t enter into the questions between him and Mrs Fowler; she wasn’t a pleasant woman, and she is dead now. I’m sure he had his excuses. Besides, that is all over and done with, and I hate picking holes in people, one should take them as one finds them. This is his refuge; he is very domestic. Men are quite lost without a woman to turn to.”

“I suppose he is a very old friend,” said Amethyst, quite simply.

“Oh yes, darling; six or seven years I’ve known him. He was at Nice once with us, and he used to run down to Twickenham. But you know, as my lord is so much away, I always make a point of having the children about. That is why they have been so much in the drawing-room, and lost their schooling, poor dears!”

Amethyst blushed with a confused sense of misgiving, as her mother fixed her sweet, shallow eyes upon her. The apologetic tone seemed out of place.

Her time had been, however, too much taken up by Lucian for Major Fowler to come much in her way, though she was glad when now, on their return from London, after an hour’s chat with Lady Haredale, he went off by the train, without any definite promise of an immediate return.

Lady Haredale drew a long sigh as she watched him go.

“Things come to an end!” she said sentimentally. “Who would have thought it of poor Tony?”

“Thought what, mother?” said Amethyst.

“Ah, that’s a secret! Well, it’s all for the best. Nothing can go on for ever. But I don’t know. – Well! I never look forward. There’s a way out of everything. I never knew a bother, that I didn’t see round the corner of it soon!”

Lady Haredale laughed, and Amethyst looked at her, admiring her cheery sweetness; but presently the mother’s brows drew together, and she bit her lip sharply, then smiled suddenly, and, with the confidential air, which yet bestowed no confidence, said, —

“Men never believe that one has any tact at all!” and walked away.

Amethyst was puzzled; sometimes she felt as if, in addition to all other blessings, her marriage would be a refuge from a home that might have many perplexities. Her mother was occasionally mysterious. Tory threw out hints, which Amethyst did not choose to follow up. Una was ill and miserable, giving way to unexplained fits of crying, and angry when Amethyst tried to laugh her out of them.

The time of Lucian’s absence seemed endless, and, on the afternoon of his return, Amethyst’s spirits rose to rapturous pitch.

It was a lovely summer day, tea was laid out on the terrace. Over the grave, old-fashioned garden was a blaze of joyous sunlight, giving it a cheerfulness that it sometimes lacked. For the high, broad cypress hedges in front of the house were continued behind it, and enclosed the garden in a square of sombre green. These living walls were as firm and regular as if they had been built of brick.

Here and there recesses were cut in them, in which benches were placed, and at intervals, and at the corners, the cypresses grew to a great height, and were cut into all sorts of fantastic shapes – pyramids, peacocks, and lyres, the pride of the old gardener, who regarded himself as their owner in a much more real sense than either tenants or landlord.

They were certainly very striking and uncommon, and formed an effective setting to the elaborate pattern of bright flower-beds into which the turf between them was cut up. Here and there, against the dark hedges, and along the terrace, were placed really graceful statues, and in the centre was a fountain of marble Tritons and dolphins, very suitable to the formal stateliness of the whole scene. Amethyst, in her prettiest dress and hat, her beauty heightened by joyous expectation, was flitting about among the flowers, picking one here and there, and chattering to Tory and Kattern. She was longing for Lucian, but in the security of her young unbroken peace it was longing, unmixed with doubt or fear. She was happy because he was coming, not fearful that he might not come.

Una was sitting on the terrace steps. Like her little sisters she wore a bright red frock striped with white, and a fantastically-shaped hat with a red bow in it. The costume, which was becoming to the children, had an odd bizarre effect on the tall thin girl, with her masses of hair, and her melancholy eyes. Lady Haredale sat just above her, the tea-table by her side, and a French novel on her lap. She looked the picture of lazy comfort, and a very pretty picture too, with her uncovered head, as fearless as her girls of air and light, openly reading a book which most mothers, if they studied it at all, would have blushed to let their daughters see in their hands.

Presently a telegram was brought to her, and Amethyst came running up.

“Not from Lucian, mamma?”

“Oh no, my dear child. I should like to weep a little over this bit of news. Dear old Tony has been so convenient , and I like to have a man about the house; but, as he says, it wouldn’t be right to let such a chance slip. So he’s going to marry this heiress. Ah, well, it’s a great sacrifice in some ways. – What’s that?”

A sudden piercing shriek interrupted the sweet melancholy flow of Lady Haredale’s tones. Una sprang up from the steps, threw up her arms, made a movement as if to rush away, but either fell, or flung herself down headlong, across a bed of scarlet geraniums. Tory, who had come running up to hear the news, with a watering-pot in her hand, deliberately turned, and emptied its contents on Una’s head, with the result of causing her to start up, choking with sobs, half of rage, half of misery.

“Don’t be such a fool, Una,” said Tory, sharply. “You’ve known it was coming, you’ve always known it was no use.”

Una rushed away into the house, her sobs and half-choked screams echoing as she went.

“What does it mean?” said Amethyst, appalled. “It means,” said Tory, “that Tony was always fond of kissing us and spooning us, when he was hanging about my lady. But Una has been over head and ears in love with him ever since I can remember, and he liked it and called her his little wife, and she’d sit all day in the window watching for him, or hide in the passage waiting for a kiss.”