Christabel Coleridge - Amethyst - The Story of a Beauty

Sylvester looked with curiosity at the rest of the company. Some, of course, were well-known neighbours; others, strangers staying in the house, who did not greatly take his fancy. The most prominent of these was a middle-aged, military-looking man, who was introduced as Major Fowler, and who struck Sylvester as a specimen of the ‘bad style’ which had been sought for in vain in Lady Haredale and her daughter. Lady Haredale called him Tony, and he seemed on intimate terms in the house, especially with the younger girls, who were found in the drawing-room after dinner – Una with a bright colour in her usually pale cheeks, and a sudden flow of childish chatter. Presently Victoria, with an air of infantine confidence, came up to Sylvester and said —

“Please, are there any primroses growing here?”

“Primroses! why yes; haven’t you seen them?”

“We have never gathered any primroses, we want to go and get some. Will you show us the way?” said Tory, looking up in his face.

“Oh, Tory,” said Amethyst, who, passing near, heard this request; “there are plenty of primroses which we can find quite easily.”

“But I should be delighted to show you the best places for them,” said Sylvester, with alacrity.

“Mr Leigh will come too,” said Tory, turning to Lucian. “We’re Cockneys, we want to be taught to enjoy the country, mother says so.”

“We’ll have a grand primrose picnic,” said Lucian. “My sisters will come too. Miss Haredale, do let us show you your first primrose.”

“Oh, I have gathered plenty of primroses,” said Amethyst, smiling, but with a blush and a puzzled look, as if she did not quite know what it behoved her to say. “But one cannot have too many,” she added after a moment.

The primrose gathering was arranged for the next day, ostensibly between the Miss Haredales, and the girls from Ashfield, escorted by their governess.

“But,” said Tory afterwards with a knowing look, “we shan’t have to gather them by ourselves, you’ll see.”

“Tory!” exclaimed Amethyst, “you should not have asked Mr Riddell and Mr Leigh to come and gather primroses with us! And how could you say that you did not know where they grew, when we got some yesterday?”

“Oh, they’ll like to come,” said Tory, “and I’m quite little enough to ask them.”

She made an indescribable face at Amethyst, and walked away as she spoke.

“Did you like your first party, my pretty girl?” said Lady Haredale, putting a caressing hand on Amethyst’s shoulder.

“Oh yes, mamma, it was delightful.”

“I am going to be the old mother now, you know, Tony. It is this child’s turn now.”

“You will have a great deal of satisfaction in teaching her,” said Tony, with an intonation which Amethyst did not understand, and a look she did not like.

But, as she shut herself into her own room, the images in her mind were full of colour and brightness. She felt that she had begun to live. The manifold relations of family life, the new acquaintances, even the new dresses and jewels, filled her with interest and pleasure so great that it brought a pang of remorse.

“Poor auntie!” she thought, “and now she is dull, without me!”

And, being too much excited to sleep, she sat down to write some of her first eager impressions to Miss Haredale; till, at what seemed to her a wickedly late hour, she heard a light soft foot in the passage.

She opened the door softly, and there was Una, still in her white evening frock, with shining eyes and burning cheeks, starting nervously at sight of her sister.

“Una! Do you know how late it is? Where have you been? How your head will ache to-morrow!”

“I’ve been in the smoking-room and I’ve smoked a cigarette, and tasted a brandy-and-soda!” said Una, with a touch of Tory’s wicked defiance.

“Would mother let you?” said Amethyst slowly.

“Oh yes!” said Una, shrugging her shoulders, “but I shan’t let you !”

She flung her arms round Amethyst and kissed her with burning lips, then scuttled away into her own room.

“When do you suppose Amethyst will find my lady out?” said Kattern and Tory, as they started for the primrose-picking the next day, and Amethyst ran back again to beg her mother to drive round to the wood and join them.

“Not yet,” said Tory, “my lady is making up to her, as much as ever she did to any man she ever went in for, and Amethyst would believe black was white just at present.”

“I’d like to see her face, if we told her what my lady is really like.”

“You are not to tell her,” said Una, suddenly turning round upon them, “I won’t have it. Let her be happy while she can; I shall tell her, when I think it proper.”

Una looked languid and dull to-day. She did not care for gathering primroses, and she was not strong enough to enjoy long out-door expeditions. She watched Amethyst, with a look on her face, and thoughts in her heart, which would much have astonished the elder girl if she had noticed the one, or guessed at the other.

Amethyst good-naturedly patronised Kate and Gertie Leigh, girls matching in age with Kattern and Tory; she made friends with their governess, who had recently been the head girl at a rival school to Saint Etheldred’s, and was discussing the honours respectively gained by the two institutions at all the recent examinations, with the heartiest interest, when the party was enlarged by the arrival of Miss Riddell and her nephew, and Mrs Leigh and her son. Lady Haredale, Major Fowler, and some of the other guests at Cleverley also turned up. It was a day of rare spring loveliness, blue sky, young green leaves, and springing flowers.

“A day of beginnings,” Sylvester Riddell said, as he noted the budding oak trees, the unfolding blossoms, the opening intercourse that was still in its first spring.

“You like the woods?” he said to Amethyst.

“Oh yes,” she said, “I like everything here; you can’t think how pleasant beginning to be at home is.”

“I suppose you are making several beginnings,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, “I am beginning to know my sisters – and every one here – and next week I am going to my first ball.”

“Beginnings are very charming when they do not imply endings,” said Sylvester tritely; but he was thinking so much of the lovely slender girl before him that he spoke half mechanically.

“That can never be,” said Amethyst, with sudden gravity. “My school-days are ended, and my living with my aunt. Beginnings must come out of endings – but then they are beginnings,” she added; and stooping, she picked a primrose, round which still lingered the large faded leaves of last year, and showed it to him, with a grave smile on her soft young lips.

Sylvester never forgot her as she stood there, dressed all in mossy green that harmonised with the woods. He had a dim sense that a beginning was coming to him, as he took the fresh primrose and the faded leaf out of her hand.

“One ought to be able to spin a poem out of this,” he said; but just then Lucian Leigh came springing down the bank, a picturesque figure in his brown suit, and looking, as the little girls climbed and scrambled after him, as like a young wood god, as Amethyst was like a wood nymph.

“They matched exactly,” Sylvester thought, as they drew by instinct together, and through all the merry afternoon, seemed the motive of the picture, the centre of the piece.

“It is quite charming to be so rustic,” said Lady Haredale; while Tory and Kattern forgot about being charming as they scrambled about with their contemporaries, and Amethyst drank in happiness with the sun and the air. To-day was indeed a delightful beginning.